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We're all just here for the deep Urza lore - Talking about Magic: The Gathering!
So those Bebop-themed cards turned out to not be a secret lair, but promo prizes for winning Standard events starting in August and running through May of next year. I guess that's neat for people who want to get them (they'll probably be readily available and easy to find on the secondary market), but it strikes me as a little odd to drag it out for so long. OTJ will have been out for over a year by the time they finish handing these out, and six or seven new sets will be released in the meantime.
Had my first draft last night with the Thunder Junction set. I had quite a bit of fun even though I lost all my matches. I still need to work on better identifying good cards and building a set in mind. I've only ever played Commander up to this point, so everything was new to me.
Here's the deck I put together in a Deckbox decklist (I think just linking it like that will work), people with a better eye for these things let me know how I did. And be honest, I expect my choices were a bit all over the place. I actually wanted to build a green deck but the luck of the draft just wasn't with me and I ended up going red white black.
Here's the deck I put together in a Deckbox decklist (I think just linking it like that will work), people with a better eye for these things let me know how I did. And be honest, I expect my choices were a bit all over the place. I actually wanted to build a green deck but the luck of the draft just wasn't with me and I ended up going red white black.
So, the first thing I'm gonna say is that drafting is really hard! Nobody is good at it the first time -- it takes a lot of practice to get good at drafting -- so I'm very glad to hear that you still had fun. I think it's a super rewarding way to play the game if you're willing to put in a little time.
Let me preface the next part of this post by saying I hope none of it comes off as harsh! Since you asked for critique, I'm really just trying to come from a place of explaining why I think certain things are weak, or explaining why some things that look good on the surface aren't. None of it is a reflection on you or your choices!
Having drafted OTJ enough to be rare-complete on Arena...yeah, unfortunately I have to tell you that this isn't a great deck. In a very bomb-heavy format, you need to have either bombs of your own or ways to answer your opponents' (or, preferably, both), and this deck doesn't seem to have either. What were the rares in the packs you opened? What was your first pick?
I'm also not seeing much of a reason to be in black. You typically only want to splash a third color for a good reason, like a really great bomb (Laughing Jasper Flint, for instance), and even then you only want it to cost a single pip of whatever its splash color is. You probably would've been better served strictly sticking to R/W. Most of the black cards you have need two black sources, which is stretching your mana base pretty thin given that you only have one desert that taps for black and no way to tutor it from your deck. If you really needed a black splash, the Silver Deputy in your sideboard could've helped smooth your mana base. (Arid Archway is also pretty bad here, because not only can you not use the mana it provides when you play it, it sets your development back a turn by making you bounce another land.) There's an argument to be made for keeping Ruthless Lawbringer since you have very little removal, but I suspect that it'd still be hard to cast most games. Overall it looks like you had a hard time finding the open lane (i.e., which colors were open at your seat -- more on this a little further down).
I'm seeing Sterling Keykeeper, Prosperity Tycoon, and Form a Posse all languishing in your sideboard, when those are all fine cards that should be in your maindeck. Conversely, there are some cards in the deck that just don't do anything -- Armored Armadillo blocks, sure, but if you want it to actually do damage, you have to spend a ton of mana to do so rather than developing your board or interacting with your opponent. Brimstone Roundup and Ferocification are both traps: the former because it does nothing when you cast it and requires you to invest a lot of resources to end up with a measly 1/1, the latter because it's only really good if you're already ahead. Imagine a turn sequence where you and your opponent each play a creature on turn 2, but on turn 3 they play another creature and you play Ferocification. If they remove your creature, you're left with nothing and they have full board control, putting you behind for the rest of the game. Pitiless Carnage is meant as a combo piece for constructed decks (like the Jund Analyst deck from the most recent Pro Tour, where you combo with Spendid Reclamation to sacrifice all your lands and bring them right back while drawing a bajillion cards), but it's terrible in limited. You're giving up a ton of resources to make your board state actively worse, while your opponent gets to untap and continue with their game plan.
Moving into more general draft advice here: speaking of game plans, you want to be drafting with one in mind. This is one of the hardest things to learn when you're starting out, but try to remember that you're drafting a deck, not just individual cards. As you're drafting, ask yourself "How does this deck win?" Sometimes it'll be through aggression, sometimes it'll be through attrition, sometimes it'll be with ridiculous bombs, sometimes it'll be off the beaten path completely (for instance, I've successfully drafted multiple mill decks in OTJ). Look for synergies, look for ways to exploit them. You want to go into a draft with a general idea of what each color pair is trying to do in the format. If you don't know, look at the signpost uncommons. For instance, looking at cards you drafted, if you look at Vial Smasher and At Knifepoint, you can see that R/B cares about outlaws in this set. To use another example from your deck with a common card, Desperate Bloodseeker mostly wants to go in G/B (where you want to be milling yourself) or possibly U/B (where you want it as a crime enabler).
Perhaps the broadest draft advice of all is to try and stay open for the first several picks; just because you first picked a bomb mythic doesn't necessarily mean you'll end up in those colors. It's very easy to do something like start out with a great green card, tunnel vision on feeling like you need to be playing green, and end up with a mediocre deck because you didn't notice green was actually being cut off and you were being passed good blue cards instead. Don't lock yourself in too early. Everyone has their own way of doing things, but for me personally, for the first 5-6 picks I simply try to take what I think is the best card in the pack regardless of color. Until pick 8, I'll grab something that specifically synergizes with what I've already picked up. Pick 9 of your first pack is extremely important. This is usually referred to as "the wheel", because (assuming a normal draft pod of eight drafters) this is when the pack that you opened has made its way around the table and come back to you. Look really carefully at the cards that are left. If there's a strong card still there, chances are the other drafters aren't interested in that color and you can consider it as one of your main colors. This isn't always cut-and-dry; sometimes I'll find myself needing to stay open for the entirety of the first pack. But more often than not, looking at which cards wheel is a good indicator of how you should be drafting. This is called "reading signals", because the other drafters in your pod are sending you signals about what colors are open to you and what colors they're cutting. If you happen to start a draft by picking up a bunch of strong cards in one color, you're also signaling to the drafters on your left that that color isn't open.
I don't know how deeply you want to go down the rabbit hole, but a great resource for identifying good cards in a vacuum is 17 Lands. Their data comes from people who use their app to track their own draft performance on Arena. The specific link I gave is pre-sorted by "GIH WR", or "games in hand win rate" -- in other words, if you're holding a particular card, how likely it is to win you the game. There are a lot more factors to apply contextually during a draft, but for your first few picks at least, defaulting to whichever card has the highest GIH winrate should be a strong starting point. (It's also worth mentioning that the average 17 Lands user is pretty invested in limited, so in this case a winrate of 55% is just average.) You can also watch content creators who focus specifically on limited, as they typically explain their thoughts about why they draft a particular card or make a particular play. (I like Kenji Egashira, aka Numot the Nummy.)
I know a bunch of this is more than you asked for, but if you decide to draft more in the future, hopefully some of it will be helpful!
Let me preface the next part of this post by saying I hope none of it comes off as harsh! Since you asked for critique, I'm really just trying to come from a place of explaining why I think certain things are weak, or explaining why some things that look good on the surface aren't. None of it is a reflection on you or your choices!
Having drafted OTJ enough to be rare-complete on Arena...yeah, unfortunately I have to tell you that this isn't a great deck. In a very bomb-heavy format, you need to have either bombs of your own or ways to answer your opponents' (or, preferably, both), and this deck doesn't seem to have either. What were the rares in the packs you opened? What was your first pick?
I'm also not seeing much of a reason to be in black. You typically only want to splash a third color for a good reason, like a really great bomb (Laughing Jasper Flint, for instance), and even then you only want it to cost a single pip of whatever its splash color is. You probably would've been better served strictly sticking to R/W. Most of the black cards you have need two black sources, which is stretching your mana base pretty thin given that you only have one desert that taps for black and no way to tutor it from your deck. If you really needed a black splash, the Silver Deputy in your sideboard could've helped smooth your mana base. (Arid Archway is also pretty bad here, because not only can you not use the mana it provides when you play it, it sets your development back a turn by making you bounce another land.) There's an argument to be made for keeping Ruthless Lawbringer since you have very little removal, but I suspect that it'd still be hard to cast most games. Overall it looks like you had a hard time finding the open lane (i.e., which colors were open at your seat -- more on this a little further down).
I'm seeing Sterling Keykeeper, Prosperity Tycoon, and Form a Posse all languishing in your sideboard, when those are all fine cards that should be in your maindeck. Conversely, there are some cards in the deck that just don't do anything -- Armored Armadillo blocks, sure, but if you want it to actually do damage, you have to spend a ton of mana to do so rather than developing your board or interacting with your opponent. Brimstone Roundup and Ferocification are both traps: the former because it does nothing when you cast it and requires you to invest a lot of resources to end up with a measly 1/1, the latter because it's only really good if you're already ahead. Imagine a turn sequence where you and your opponent each play a creature on turn 2, but on turn 3 they play another creature and you play Ferocification. If they remove your creature, you're left with nothing and they have full board control, putting you behind for the rest of the game. Pitiless Carnage is meant as a combo piece for constructed decks (like the Jund Analyst deck from the most recent Pro Tour, where you combo with Spendid Reclamation to sacrifice all your lands and bring them right back while drawing a bajillion cards), but it's terrible in limited. You're giving up a ton of resources to make your board state actively worse, while your opponent gets to untap and continue with their game plan.
Moving into more general draft advice here: speaking of game plans, you want to be drafting with one in mind. This is one of the hardest things to learn when you're starting out, but try to remember that you're drafting a deck, not just individual cards. As you're drafting, ask yourself "How does this deck win?" Sometimes it'll be through aggression, sometimes it'll be through attrition, sometimes it'll be with ridiculous bombs, sometimes it'll be off the beaten path completely (for instance, I've successfully drafted multiple mill decks in OTJ). Look for synergies, look for ways to exploit them. You want to go into a draft with a general idea of what each color pair is trying to do in the format. If you don't know, look at the signpost uncommons. For instance, looking at cards you drafted, if you look at Vial Smasher and At Knifepoint, you can see that R/B cares about outlaws in this set. To use another example from your deck with a common card, Desperate Bloodseeker mostly wants to go in G/B (where you want to be milling yourself) or possibly U/B (where you want it as a crime enabler).
Perhaps the broadest draft advice of all is to try and stay open for the first several picks; just because you first picked a bomb mythic doesn't necessarily mean you'll end up in those colors. It's very easy to do something like start out with a great green card, tunnel vision on feeling like you need to be playing green, and end up with a mediocre deck because you didn't notice green was actually being cut off and you were being passed good blue cards instead. Don't lock yourself in too early. Everyone has their own way of doing things, but for me personally, for the first 5-6 picks I simply try to take what I think is the best card in the pack regardless of color. Until pick 8, I'll grab something that specifically synergizes with what I've already picked up. Pick 9 of your first pack is extremely important. This is usually referred to as "the wheel", because (assuming a normal draft pod of eight drafters) this is when the pack that you opened has made its way around the table and come back to you. Look really carefully at the cards that are left. If there's a strong card still there, chances are the other drafters aren't interested in that color and you can consider it as one of your main colors. This isn't always cut-and-dry; sometimes I'll find myself needing to stay open for the entirety of the first pack. But more often than not, looking at which cards wheel is a good indicator of how you should be drafting. This is called "reading signals", because the other drafters in your pod are sending you signals about what colors are open to you and what colors they're cutting. If you happen to start a draft by picking up a bunch of strong cards in one color, you're also signaling to the drafters on your left that that color isn't open.
I don't know how deeply you want to go down the rabbit hole, but a great resource for identifying good cards in a vacuum is 17 Lands. Their data comes from people who use their app to track their own draft performance on Arena. The specific link I gave is pre-sorted by "GIH WR", or "games in hand win rate" -- in other words, if you're holding a particular card, how likely it is to win you the game. There are a lot more factors to apply contextually during a draft, but for your first few picks at least, defaulting to whichever card has the highest GIH winrate should be a strong starting point. (It's also worth mentioning that the average 17 Lands user is pretty invested in limited, so in this case a winrate of 55% is just average.) You can also watch content creators who focus specifically on limited, as they typically explain their thoughts about why they draft a particular card or make a particular play. (I like Kenji Egashira, aka Numot the Nummy.)
I know a bunch of this is more than you asked for, but if you decide to draft more in the future, hopefully some of it will be helpful!
No worries about sounding harsh, I know there's a lot I need to learn. I'll digest what you said and try and see how to improve.
I definitely need to work on being able to identify what makes a good bomb and how it might interact with other cards, I still struggle with that. I don't even recall what rares were in the packs when I opened them.
Next time they plan on doing a draft night is when Bloomburrow comes out in a few months so that gives me time to try and improve.
I definitely need to work on being able to identify what makes a good bomb and how it might interact with other cards, I still struggle with that. I don't even recall what rares were in the packs when I opened them.
Next time they plan on doing a draft night is when Bloomburrow comes out in a few months so that gives me time to try and improve.
Do you play on Arena at all? One thing that can be fun is to copilot a draft with somebody (like on a Discord call or something) since you get to bounce ideas off of each other. If you're interested I'd be down to do one with you!
Otherwise I'd say the more familiar you are with the cards in a set before you draft, the more prepared you'll be. There are a lot of resources out there (like this one, for OTJ) that'll walk you through both what to look out for and what to avoid. Having said that, if any of this feels like homework, don't worry about it. Do whatever makes the game fun for you. I just happen to like drafting a whole lot, so I'm really into all this stuff.
Otherwise I'd say the more familiar you are with the cards in a set before you draft, the more prepared you'll be. There are a lot of resources out there (like this one, for OTJ) that'll walk you through both what to look out for and what to avoid. Having said that, if any of this feels like homework, don't worry about it. Do whatever makes the game fun for you. I just happen to like drafting a whole lot, so I'm really into all this stuff.
So, I have a follow-up to this:
I logged into Arena with my old account, and it's basically treating me like a new player; I had an amount of gold still and it looks like 2 old decks. But otherwise it had me doing the mono-colored vs. AI stuff, and then I did the 3 matches with the starter decks, and I won 1 match in the next thing called "Jump In." But uh... how do I Draft? It looks like the only option for ranked play right now is Constructed...
Not for me. My only Events are still the newbie stuff: Color Challenge, Jump In, and Starter Deck Duel. I can only guess I need to win more matches...? I have 2 more Jump In tokens for some reason... so I can try using those.
Normally you have to finish all the new player stuff to unlock all the modes, but luckily for you it's entirely skippable.
Well... I only have to win 1 more of these Jump In matches, so if that's the last thing to finish, then I won't bother skipping it.
Thanks for that tip; I ended up doing the skip because winning the next Jump In match didn't unlock anything. The game didn't ever say what I had to do to unlock more modes, so I assume now I had to finish the 5 color challenges? I only did a handful of those.
Anyway! I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with this. Non-bot drafting is more expensive (gold) than I expected. I'm also not sure how I feel about Quick Draft: you're drafting against bots, but then you play other people (who also drafted against bots)? That seems like it screws up the entire point of playing against the people you drafted with. Do people generally do Premier or Traditional?
Also also, do gem purchases carry across platform? If I bought some gems with Google Play credit and then went on Steam to play, would my gems be there? A brief look at their FAQ didn't really bring this topic up...
Anyway! I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with this. Non-bot drafting is more expensive (gold) than I expected. I'm also not sure how I feel about Quick Draft: you're drafting against bots, but then you play other people (who also drafted against bots)? That seems like it screws up the entire point of playing against the people you drafted with. Do people generally do Premier or Traditional?
Also also, do gem purchases carry across platform? If I bought some gems with Google Play credit and then went on Steam to play, would my gems be there? A brief look at their FAQ didn't really bring this topic up...
Yep, that's how Quick Draft works. But it seems like you may also be expecting Arena drafts to be 1:1 with paper, and they're not -- it's league play, not pod play, so you never play against the people you drafted with. It's not the paper experience, but it does mean nobody has to commit a 3+ hour block of time (or sit around and wait while other people finish their matches before you can pair up again). To the best of my knowledge, Magic Online also operates like this, but I'm a Mac user so I can't say from personal experience.
What I can say from personal experience is that Quick Draft kinda sucks. The bots almost never pass any rares like real drafters would, which makes signals harder to read and leads to things wheeling that probably never should. However, from an economy standpoint, or as a way to convert gold into gems, it could be worse. Still, I prefer to draft against humans.
Depends on what your goals are. I intensely dislike playing Best of One as a competitive format because that's not how the game was designed to be played, but if you've got a winrate that's above 50% the rewards for Premier drafts average out much higher than they do for Traditional (unless you have an absurd trophy rate). Traditional drafts are also unranked, which means they don't contribute to your end-of-season rewards at the beginning of every month. I typically do Premier drafts until I hit platinum rank, and then I switch to Traditional for the gameplay experience I prefer. If I run low on gems I'll do some Premier (or possibly Quick Draft) entries with gold to build up the gem stash again.
Yes. Gems are tied to the Wizards account you log in with, not the platform you're playing on.
For historical context, Quick Draft used to be the only game in town for quite some time. Once they added the ability to draft against other humans instead of just bots, I and a lot of other people never looked back.
For myself, I prefer best of one because I like seeing as many decks as possible and each individual match is less of a time commitment (making it easier to stop in a hurry), although I do also enjoy sideboarding and drafting with that in mind. It's basically down to personal preference.
For myself, I prefer best of one because I like seeing as many decks as possible and each individual match is less of a time commitment (making it easier to stop in a hurry), although I do also enjoy sideboarding and drafting with that in mind. It's basically down to personal preference.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm thinking to start with Quick Draft since it's been quite a while since I've done a draft and those are cheaper entry, plus it's not like I'm familiar with Thunder Junctiom cards yet (I will at least review the set before I start) so I'm expecting to lose my actual matches at first, lol.
No harm in doing QD to get started! One nice thing about it for players like yourself who are still learning the cards is that there's no time limit to make your choices (with human drafts, there is), so you can take your time reading them and making decisions.
One tool I would highly recommend in helping you evaluate cards is the data available at 17 Lands, which I talked about in my big effortpost earlier on this page. Sorting by GIH (games in hand) winrate will show you the clearest picture of how a card performs (higher percentage = stronger card, in a vacuum). Like I said in that post, you have to use it contextually and not just blindly pick whatever has the highest number, but using it for your first four or five picks will usually give you a pretty decent foundation.
One tool I would highly recommend in helping you evaluate cards is the data available at 17 Lands, which I talked about in my big effortpost earlier on this page. Sorting by GIH (games in hand) winrate will show you the clearest picture of how a card performs (higher percentage = stronger card, in a vacuum). Like I said in that post, you have to use it contextually and not just blindly pick whatever has the highest number, but using it for your first four or five picks will usually give you a pretty decent foundation.
What is the deal Modern Horizons, in general? Like... is it mostly an excuse to get more cards (and/or reprints) into the Modern format?
Modern Horizons started as a love letter to Time Spiral, but Wizards very quickly realized the Modern Horizons sets were a way to extract money from players whose card pool had typically existed on the secondary market already. They were wildly successful and so it became a yearly thing (sort of - last year's "Modern Horizons" was the Lord of the Rings set). It turns out there's Big Money in pumping powerful cards directly into Modern without having them warp Standard sets. Wrenn and Six, Force of Negation, Hogaak, and Yawgmoth from the first set, Ragavan, Urza's Saga, Murkfiend Liege, Dragon Rage Channeler, Grief, Esper Sentinel, and Shardless Agent from the second set all defined new archetypes and added new cards for existing ones.
So yes, cynically speaking, it's a way for Wizards to artificially "rotate" Modern.
So yes, cynically speaking, it's a way for Wizards to artificially "rotate" Modern.
Every time I get close to coming back to this hobby, I see something like this from Tolarian Community College:
And precons costing over $400 and I think to myself, 'nah, I ain't giving WOTC anything...' I'll make do with Jinteki.
And precons costing over $400 and I think to myself, 'nah, I ain't giving WOTC anything...' I'll make do with Jinteki.
So what's the difference between the format playability of the LotR set and the other licensed sets (Dr. Who, Forgotten Realms...)?
LotR was designed and printed to be legal in Modern for some reason (the reason is money). The other Universes Beyond stuff has been strictly limited to Commander so far, but it's also technically legal in Legacy. This will change with the upcoming Marvel and Final Fantasy sets, as those are both also going to be Modern-legal. A lot of people think that's cool and fine, but I personally don't like it at all. I don't want to play Funko Pops: the Gathering and I wish all of the UB stuff would be siloed away from actual competitive formats. I don't even play Modern but these cards show up in some of the constructed Arena formats I do play (Brawl and Timeless) and I am just not into the IP soup they're pushing the game towards.
As for Modern Horizons sets, Büge is 100% right that Wizards uses them as a way to artificially rotate an eternal format, but I would like to add that at the same time they also use them to design extremely unique and totally wild limited formats. It's extremely unfortunate that they do this at the expense of the constructed format and charge twice as much for it, but they are truly singular draft environments and I wish it was possible to separate the two somehow. I just got home from the MH3 prerelease and it was unlike any Magic set I've ever played. I'm really glad it's going to be on Arena so that I'll actually get to draft it a bunch without spending anything.
So do I, but if there's one thing they'd learned about silver-border sets, it's that cards don't sell unless they're legal in existing formats.
Yep. And LotR was the best-selling Magic set of all time, so that gave them the green light to go whole-hog with it. Next year in Modern you'll be able to have Spider-Man and Gandalf double block your opponent's Sephiroth to make sure they don't ninjitsu in Assassin's Creed Guy (I've never played an AC game, I don't know who the characters are).
Call me old-fashioned, but I miss the days when Magic gave a shit about its own characters.
….excuse me? Well, shit.
(I agree with people that it’d be nice to have some formats remain MTG IP only, this is just me saying it’s the first time I heard about an FF set existing, and heck, I guess I’m gonna have to get some more Magic cards even though I barely play because geez. As long as they get some great art on there which I assume they will.)
Also damn, those MH deck prices are bonkers.
So, all the Modern Horizons sets to date have been "premium products", but the fact that they made Commander decks based on a set that is explicitly for one non-Commander format really goes to show how Commander has taken over Wizards' design and marketing philosophies.
There's also no reason for them to charge basically double for these precons that didn't need to exist, but why wouldn't they.
(I know I'm sounding pretty negative right now, but as a play experience I'm really liking MH3 so far. I have a sick draft deck going at the moment that I'll probably come back and talk about after I finish playing it.)
Minor gripe about Arena, I've been trying to unlock all the two-color starter decks and to do so you just need to win with them once in Starter Deck Duel. Problem is the queue for that seems to be the same as Standard and I keep getting matched up with players playing some current flavor of the month meta, with a whole bunch of 'For Mirrodin' cards and that's just an insurmountable hill to climb for these starter decks.
I'm at the point where I just want to forfeit as soon as I see someone play a For Mirrodin card. I just want to unlock these decks to add the cards to my library, feels like there's probably a better solution to do that than to throw these decks up against literally anything.
I'm at the point where I just want to forfeit as soon as I see someone play a For Mirrodin card. I just want to unlock these decks to add the cards to my library, feels like there's probably a better solution to do that than to throw these decks up against literally anything.