EPTMagic: The Gathering - Page 223
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Shazzam
United Kingdom15 Posts
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Risen
United States7927 Posts
On October 07 2012 13:07 Judicator wrote: Cincy. Went 5-4 lost my remaining matches my friend drew into ninth ( mistake). Will post thoughts about the deck whenever. I'm sorry to hear about that. Got done with my Tough Mudder and once I was back in range of internet came here to check up on how you were doing, saw 6-0, 5-1 post and was pretty jazzed for you. Can't wait to hear your thoughts. | ||
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matiK23
United States963 Posts
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BlueBird.
United States3890 Posts
On October 07 2012 22:51 Shazzam wrote: So I've been playing paper magic with some friends locally in England (about 5) but sadly we don't really have a local scene where I am, so I've been trying to get into MTGO drafting and such, is this likely to cost me an arm and a leg if I learn how to draft while playing? And are there any resources you could recommend for learning how to draft effectively / break even on cost. Drafting on MTGO is a money sink, you can sort of draft effectively, but you have to play extremely well or get lucky with picks to make it even or profit. So all of this is off the top of my head... 4-3-2-2 is a no go, don't play in them, they give out 11 packs. Swiss and 8-4 give out 12 packs so they are better prizes for the same price. I don't know the math for what win percentage where an 8-4 is more profitable than swiss off the top of my head but I believe it's over 50 something percent, so I suggest starting with swiss drafts. It will give you 3 games guaranteed for your entry fee, and this is important. When playing a draft format, actually playing, playing against and seeing the cards in the actual format will give you a lot of information. If you keep losing first round in 8-4, you lose out on those two games, so your getting less total games/experience for your money. Eventually when you get good enough you can venture to the 8-4. Once your really good at that specific draft format, and are 3-0 and 2-1 in a majority of your drafts, try your hand at a few 8-4s, (don't discouraged if you lose 1, it's when you lose 5-6 in a row when your doing bad) Look for cards worth money and draft them, this isn't the pro-tour and a card worth above 3-4 dollars is actually adding to your total expected value for your draft, Don't pass money cards ever when looking to break even on MODO drafts. One 3.25 dollar card is about equal to a victory in a swiss draft. Certain sets are better to draft than others. What this means is there are a higher percentage of money cards in the set compared to the price of the packs, giving you better value for your packs. Sometimes one draft set might be cheaper, but opening each of those packs in that draft set might give you much lower expected value than another draft set. Also this isn't always the current set, for instance when it was Scars of Mirrodin vs Innistrad + Dark Ascension, the SOM block drafts are more profitable, the reason being is SOM had more cards worth more value. One of the reasons for this is the current big set(at that time was Innistrad + DA) has more cards being put in to circulation because more people are drafting it, this also means the prizes for the daily events are giving out packs from INN and DA at that time, so the packs are cheaper(drafts are cheaper). When Ravinca comes out and everyone drafts it, the prices on INN + DA cards as well as Avycn Restored cards should go up.. I've read some stuff on pureMTGO about the price breakdown for each set, and then looking at the prices of the packs compared to the EV of the cards you might open. I'm sure this information is on their site somewhere I know this is looked at sometimes, I just don't know which articles have the information. If your interested try looking for it. Also certain sets are way more fun to draft than others so keep that in mind as well, the whole point is to have fun while minimizing losses, if your playing something you don't enjoy compared to something you do enjoy in order to save yourself 1-2 dollars than don't do it imo. Hope this helps, some of my information might be outdated or irrelevant now, best of luck! There is no teamliquid for MTG that I know of, most magic communities are closed to outside or awful | ||
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Ryrk
United States82 Posts
How do I go infinite (play Magic online for free)? A question I get asked often. The answer: play in high Expected Value (ev) events Outside of release events, Constructed Daily Events are terrific value. These are also four round events, found in the Scheduled events room, and there is one that fires at least every hour. Entry fee - 6 Tickets 12 Points - 11 Packs 9 Points - 6 Packs With a pack price of 3.33, you can see that you just have to 3-1 one in three daily events to make a two ticket profit. This is VERY good ev. An example of bad ev is: Consider this from the most recent Prerelease of m13: Entry Fee - 25 Tickets 12 Points - 10 Packs - 33.3 9 POints - 4 Packs - 13.33 6 Points - 1 Pack - 3.33 As you can see here, everybody but the one person who wins loses value. I do not count the value of the cards you open in this calculation. You should NEVER play in prerelease queues. Release events are some of the highest ev events you can play in. Consider the m13 Release Events: Entry Fee 24 Tickets 12 Points - 13 Packs - 43.33 9 Points - 8 Packs - 26.66 6 Points - 3 Packs - 10 Not only does the event cost less, but you also can now 3-1 to garner a profit from the event. Consider this set of results, which are typical for a slightly above average Magic Player: 10 Events played = 240 Tickets cost 4-0 Record = 1 = 13 packs = 43.3 Ticket 3-1 Record = 4 = 32 Packs = 106.66 Tickets 2-2 Record = 4 = 12 Packs = 40 Tickets 1-3 Record = 1 = 0 Packs = 0 Tickets That is a total of 190 Tickets in prize winnings, with a total of 60 packs of m13 opened. It is not improbable that you get fifty tickets of value in those packs. Most of the time, you can sell a few rares or mythics to break even, and you then have a siginificant collection, all at no end cost to you. If you wait and hold on to the packs until several weeks after release events are over, you can typical get 3.5 tickets or 3.66 tickets per pack, leading to your profit being even greater. This is known as "going infinite". Playing Magic at nearly no cost or even a profit to you. What you want to AVOID are 2 man events. Consider this game: You and I decide to bet on flipping a coin. When it is heads, you give me 1.50. When it is tails, I give you 1.00 We repeat until you want to stop. Anyone can tell that this is a bad deal. You may win one or two and be ahead, but in the long run you will be losing a lot of money to me. This is the SAME for two man events. Take the most recent set available, Avacyn Restored. Current price per pack in 3.33, with entry fee for the two man event being 2 tickets. Player 1 -> 2 Tickets Player 2 -> 2 Tickets Winner -> 3.33 Tickets It is abundantly clear that unless your win rate is well over 60%, 2 mans are bad value. And if your win rate IS above 60%, play in REAL events and get way more for your time. Two mans are horrendous value and should be avoided. Go to the Tournament Practice room if you have a craving. There is no quicker way to annihilate your MODO millions than playing drafts. Going out round 1 in these single elimination events can lead to a 12-13 ticket loss in half an hour. My suggeston is to stay away and watch people stream it instead. Entry Fee 12-13 Tickets NEVER buy packs from Wizards, as players want to resell their winnings, always at a discount. 9 Points - 8 Packs 6 Points - 4 Packs I only give an example of 8-4s, because 4-3-2-2 gives out only 11 packs, and Swiss is time consuming, but fine if you want to bleed yourself slowly, as even undefeated you are down the two ticket entry fee. Winning one in three drafts is pretty unlikely, and even if you do so you are down a pack and six tickets. Wizard's rake is the real problem here, so I suggest getting the drafting out of your system during Nix Tix events that happen often. These events require ZERO event tickets to enter (only packs are required). http://www.twitch.tv/darkest_mage Essentially, drafts suck if you're trying to make money/go infinite (but it's really entertaining to viewers). | ||
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semantics
10040 Posts
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Judicator
United States7270 Posts
I am going to spoiler into parts so I don't wall-text-crit people. Despite TL's warnings of a certain Elf Shaman, I ran into her exactly twice this tournament and it was exactly good twice this tournament. Anyways some background... Part 1 - Prelude + Show Spoiler + The list I had posted was tuned for 2 match ups and to provide a 50-50 against a specific match up that showed up in testing (aka the worst match up, think UB control versus RG Wolfrun after DKA except 20 times worse). I became aware of the Bant (WGU) control match up after someone in my group said they were piloting it. The Thragtusk-Angel of Serenity line (like in the Woo Rampnica deck) was hard enough to beat without them going off with Entreats and Terminus on top of Sphinx's Revelation gaining them infinite life and actually out-carding me (something that only a few decks can do). It's a solid deck (what my friend drew into 9th overall with) that made a previously free match up (UW Miracles) into one favored for them until I introduced my tech of mainboard Zealous Conscripts. The second match up was the GW Armada Wurm/Resto Angel deck. I just didn't want to deal with 15 power of trampling Wurms. Nothing else in the deck mattered, but the Angel of Serenity and Armada Wurm off of mana dorks was something I was expecting to see a lot of and I needed to disrupt that combo. The last match up (aka the doomsday scenario) was Humans, they were too fast for Huntmaster, too swarmy for Charms. Just an overall nightmare, in playtesting I think I was something like 1-9 against it pre-board with an old list, the sole reason why I have Avacyn's Pilgrim. Post-board I am like 1.5-8.5 against it. So something had to be done or I just had to hope to dodge it the entire tournament (unlikely for the first tournament of the new Standard). I should mention that any self-respecting Zombies player who has done any kind of research or play-testing realized that BG Zombies was a real quick way to go 0-2 drop. So Falkenrath Aristocrast and the necessary Red came into to play, so it was more RBg Zombies. Those 3 match ups (and the Aristocrat) are the reason why my list deviated THAT much from Woo's original list. The Sanctifiers destroyed (by destroy I mean obliterated) the Zombies (any version) match up, but they had to come out because of their terribleness if the Humans match up and the GW match up. Zealous Conscripts destroys any kind of tempo/control deck because it literally blanks their planeswalkers (take your Jace -2, take your Tamiyo -2, take your Vraska -7 or -3 to 2 for 1 you). Mayor of Avabruck came in for the control match ups also. Turn 2 meant they had to both keep it from flipping and take not insignficant damage from Pilgrims. They also beat Humans soundly. Fiend Hunters came in to tempo Delver decks and buffer the Humans/Zombies match ups with the loss of Sanctifiers. Vault of the Archangel came in to really make the GW/Humans/Zombies match up tougher for them. One activation literally meant that the game was out of their reach (they can't swing and I just grind them out over the next few turns). I also went down to 3/2/2 Unburial/Angel/Angel split because I was overestimating dedicated GY hate. Remember I had 1/1 split of Angels in the sideboard, this becomes relevant later. Part 2 - Preboarding + Show Spoiler + Now for the boneheadedness, remember how I said my sideboard was a judgement call at the tournament? Turns out judgement calls are a bad idea when you didn't sleep that much the night before (a little under 5 hours). I get to the tournament and had my exact 75 already sleeved, deck registrations come and I start thinking about my board options. Looked at the Pithing Needles and decided that they needed to go (what targets was I gonna name? I rather jack the opponent's planeswalkers with a possible 4 conscripts). Took out the Angels so my sideboard had this exactly: SB: 1 [ISD] Fiend Hunter SB: 2 [AVR] Zealous Conscripts SB: 3 [M13] War Priest of Thune SB: 1 [DKA] Vault of the Archangel SB: 2 [DKA] Thraben Heretic SB: 2 [ISD] Mayor of Avabruck For those of you that are counting, that's exactly 11 cards. 4 cards left and my choices were 3 Centaur Healers to really hose the Zombies match up completely (6-4 to like 8-2) along with a Thragtusk (to stomp any weird aggro decks like Red Deck Wins), or to go Thragtusk, Devout Chaplain, 2 Thraben Heretics to cover all my bases. A particular card that I should have used was Sever the Bloodline, but it completely escaped me and I wanted to focus specifically on creatures and not sorcerys or instants despite playing against that card in playtesting (pay attention to cards used against you in playtesting). That's it for now, I'll post the actual tournament (part 3) some time tomorrow most likely. I'll explain the land breakdown more thoroughly and why I didn't just go all in on shocklands like someone asked earlier. | ||
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icedragon
86 Posts
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FireSA
Australia555 Posts
Firstly, drafted for the first time in about 3 years, picked populate white green, no mana fixers, but I won all my matches, centaur tokens and populate mechanics are sick, and the guildmage if unanswered can highhandedly win the game for you when drafting ravnica (most satisfying win was game 1 of the final, I was at 3 life, he was pinging me with a bird token every turn and had a ton of stuff on the field inc the filibuster token guy, loxodon, some other stuff, whilst I was biding my time, till I was down to 1 life, he was on 22, I swung with 14 3/3 guys and the guildmage, dealt 26 to win a 30 minute game, amazing stuff). No real money pulls, foil guildmage, foil growing ranks, precinct captain (hot stuff), but yeah none of that juicy ravnica $ currently going around. As for scg outcomes, pretty happy to see some zombie decks make it, and will likely play the red black zombie deck that made it to the semis this w/e to see how well it does. Also a bit silly to see Jace jump to $50 after that event. But whatever. | ||
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BlueBird.
United States3890 Posts
On October 08 2012 11:59 FireSA wrote: Hmm so this is technically not mtgo, dunno if there is a separate mtg thread (yes, too lazy for search function), but yeah wanted to add my two cents regarding the new set and starcitygames event that just ended. Firstly, drafted for the first time in about 3 years, picked populate white green, no mana fixers, but I won all my matches, centaur tokens and populate mechanics are sick, and the guildmage if unanswered can highhandedly win the game for you when drafting ravnica (most satisfying win was game 1 of the final, I was at 3 life, he was pinging me with a bird token every turn and had a ton of stuff on the field inc the filibuster token guy, loxodon, some other stuff, whilst I was biding my time, till I was down to 1 life, he was on 22, I swung with 14 3/3 guys and the guildmage, dealt 26 to win a 30 minute game, amazing stuff). No real money pulls, foil guildmage, foil growing ranks, precinct captain (hot stuff), but yeah none of that juicy ravnica $ currently going around. As for scg outcomes, pretty happy to see some zombie decks make it, and will likely play the red black zombie deck that made it to the semis this w/e to see how well it does. Also a bit silly to see Jace jump to $50 after that event. But whatever. This started as a MTGO thread but it's become the magic thread. Pretty much everything and anything magic has been posted in here, so don't worry. Anytime a new planeswalker does well right after release, expect it to be 50$, I don't think it will stay there, this is a popular set and hopefully a good draft format, but we will see you never know could go up! | ||
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Shotcoder
United States2316 Posts
R1: 2-0 Esper Stone Blade R2: 2-0 Naya Enchantress R3: 0-2 High Tide (completely out drawn, got his outs when he needed them when I had him dead on board the next turn) R4: 1-2 UG Enchantress R5: 1-2 Bant Show and Tell (Bad understanding of the MU game 1, Game 3 he show and tells into Progenitus, I had O-ring in hand expecting Emrakul) R6: 0-2 Goblins (Ringleader refilling hands > discard) R7: 2-1 Tendrils (shoulda went 2-0, but I got greedy game 2 and mis played on turn 3 which let him combo out) R8: 1-2 Naya Enchantress So Enchantress is a shitty match-up for me. Probably the only sub 50/50 match-up for the deck and unfortunately with Rest in Peace the deck has been taken to by quite a lot of players. I can't believe i lost to high tide and Show and Tell, my discard packages are more than enough to win the game I just couldn't hit the right things with therapy when I needed to. I was disappointed that I didn't perform as well as I expected. I really hoped to be 4-4 at the end of the day seeing as this was my first big Legacy event. But sometimes the match -ups and draws don't line up the way you would like. The place was filled with Esper Stone Blade, Miracles, and RUG delver which are great match ups for me, but I always seemed to be 1 table too far to the left for it to matter. There are very few things I would change with my deck, probably mostly sideboard and it would be 1 card difference. I need to figure out which cards are bad in which match ups as well as I was just boarding on the fly. Edit: It was also pretty poor that out of the 200+ people I played 3 of my buddies who I rode up with during the span of the 8 round swiss. | ||
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Artifex Magnus
United States75 Posts
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BlueBird.
United States3890 Posts
On October 08 2012 18:19 Artifex Magnus wrote: So I finally cracked and bought MTGO, but now it won't let me log in or reset my password. Does it usually take so long to grant access to your account? very frustrating t.t Maybe this is for the best, now you won't blow hundreds of dollars on drafts until you figure out that it's the constructed part of MTGO that you don't lose $ on :D!!! In all seriousness file a support ticket , they get to you within 48 hrs(not very fast I know), and are usually helpful, and good luck on Magic Online! http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/list | ||
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icedragon
86 Posts
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DEN1ED
United States1087 Posts
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Judicator
United States7270 Posts
On October 09 2012 03:39 DEN1ED wrote: Foils are usually only worth 1.25-1.5x regular version online (I've even bought foils at regular price from desperate people sometimes just looking to sell quick). Also, when drafting, you have to take into account that since 4322 is clearly worse payout, only idiots would do it, thus increasing your chance of winning by playing/drafting idiots lol. Not sure if I'm serious but I think it's true since I've often won 10-15 4322s in a row. Super sweet rating boost too. Also, fuck sets coming out so late on MTGO. Really want to test my junk midrange deck to see if it's worth buying cards irl. It's not worth it. Deck is terrible (not even kidding). | ||
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DEN1ED
United States1087 Posts
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Judicator
United States7270 Posts
I tested the list with Sublime Archangel (many variations). Notice that there was a severe lack of midrange decks with White in the recent SCG. That is not by accident. Those Selesnya Midrange decks were anything but, they only won by the sheer power of the guild leader's life gain. Edit: Actually looking at the deck lists at SCG Cincy really shows my boneheadness in my hesitation in not putting the 3 Centaur Healers in the sideboard. #FML. | ||
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I_Love_Bacon
United States5765 Posts
Ok, so I haven't played magic seriously for quite a few years, but recently I've begun watching a lot of streams. I was watching Ceddy P's Jund deck going up agaisnt MJ's Pod. Ceddy was attacking with a Messenger and 2 Goyfs (4/5 at the time) while MJ had all lands tapped, an untapped birthing pod, a Kiki-jiki, Restoration Angel, Sparkmage and Wall of Roots (had one -1 counter on it). Cedric's hand is a Bolt and Terminate (I think a land too, but it doesn't matter) with the mana open to cast both. Restoration angel blocked a goyf, the wall of roots blocked the 2nd goyf, and the sparkmage blocked the Messenger. MJ activates Kiki on the restoration angel and Ceddy responds with a terminate on the Angel. My question is, what possible reason does he have to waste the terminate there and not just bolt (or terminate) the Kiki instead? Does Kiki's ability resolve even if he gets killed? Now, all I can see is a mistake but several people were defending the line and I can't fathom the reason why (unless, as I said, his ability resolves and I'm just behind on the rules). | ||
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Risen
United States7927 Posts
On October 09 2012 11:09 I_Love_Bacon wrote: Question: Ok, so I haven't played magic seriously for quite a few years, but recently I've begun watching a lot of streams. I was watching Ceddy P's Jund deck going up agaisnt MJ's Pod. Ceddy was attacking with a Messenger and 2 Goyfs (4/5 at the time) while MJ had all lands tapped, an untapped birthing pod, a Kiki-jiki, Restoration Angel, Sparkmage and Wall of Roots (had one -1 counter on it). Cedric's hand is a Bolt and Terminate (I think a land too, but it doesn't matter) with the mana open to cast both. Restoration angel blocked a goyf, the wall of roots blocked the 2nd goyf, and the sparkmage blocked the Messenger. MJ activates Kiki on the restoration angel and Ceddy responds with a terminate on the Angel. My question is, what possible reason does he have to waste the terminate there and not just bolt (or terminate) the Kiki instead? Does Kiki's ability resolve even if he gets killed? Now, all I can see is a mistake but several people were defending the line and I can't fathom the reason why (unless, as I said, his ability resolves and I'm just behind on the rules). Once something is on the stack it will resolve so long as its targets are still legal targets. Killing the Kiki does nothing to stop the ability from resolving since it is already on the stack. Edit: AFAIK that's how it has always been since I started playing. | ||
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