State of the Game

[schild]

I think I'm going to start drafting.

[Margalis]

Hmm I still have TSP and Planar Chaos boosters on my account...

Anyway yeah, I'm Margalis, hit me up

[eldaec]

M10 drafting is nix tix for a week from the 5th.

They have a rotating schedule of nic tix drafts to encourage some use of the older formats.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/032309b

[Xilren's Twin]

BTW, wotc has a nice draft simulator up if you want to practice with M2010 cards and see how a draft would go.  Neat little tool; hope they expand it to other sets.

M2010 Draft Simulator

Edit: shoulda known they'd do a half assed job.  It's the same 3 packs over and over.  Which makes it useless.

[Johny Cee]

This is new....

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/04272010e

... for a week before the release events, you can play 'prerelease events'. These are sealed flights that cost extra and have reduced prizes.
 

I actually did a few of these this weekend.  Thirty tix for a sealed event (open 6 packs and build a deck), everyone gets a Emrakul promo card. 

-First event went 2-2 due to not reading cards.  Won a single pack and got a promo... So 7 packs and one Mythic for 30.
-Second event went 3-1, but wasn't in the top 2.  Won 4 packs, a regular Emrakul promo, and a foil Emrakul promo.  Ten packs and two promos (one foil) for 30, better.
-Last event, won the first 3 matches and split with the other 3-0 guy so walked out with 7 packs in winnings.  Thirteen packs and two promos.

The competition really wasn't too tough, though sealed is much more luck based.  Honestly, I should turn around and sell my good picks now while the prices are abnormally high...  I have a pile of good value (right now) cards that will only crash in price.

Sitting on a pile of boosters (12) to use for draft now, as well.

[grabble]

BTW, wotc has a nice draft simulator up if you want to practice with M2010 cards and see how a draft would go.  Neat little tool; hope they expand it to other sets.

M2010 Draft Simulator

Edit: shoulda known they'd do a half assed job.  It's the same 3 packs over and over.  Which makes it useless.

Try this one: http://draft.bestiaire.org/

[eldaec]

That promo card is making the casual room annoying as hell. It's like playing tf2 when they add class achievements. Easy enough to play around but you find yourself modifying decks just to squash the jellyfish o' doom.

[Raging Turtle]

Don't you bastards dare pull me back into this.

[Raging Turtle]

Quick, someone tell me how the client is still crap.

[Draegan]

It's shit.

[Xilren's Twin]

Try this one: http://draft.bestiaire.org/

MUCH better; danke!  I need to get a feel for the card sets before drafting in anything other than M10.

Come to the dark side; why bitch about mmorpg xp grinds and bugs when  you can bitch about mtgo money grinds and bugs 

[eldaec]

Quick, someone tell me how the client is still crap.

In a game it's slightly better than v2.

Elsewhere slightly worse.

I'm not convinced the game itself is quite as good as Rav/Tsp era mind you. Power creep seems to have made everything just slightly less interesting. Lightning bolt is now almost exactly as interesting as shock was a few years back. Hmmm.

[Ingmar]

Signed up, username ibell if anyone wants to put up with a couple practice games against the awful decks I am able to construct right now. 

I haven't actually played a game yet so the interface is going to be a mystery to me I'm sure at first.

[Ingmar]

Well, I won 13 or 14 out of 20 games in the noob room with the random R/G I put together with what I had, so I guess I'm ready to move on to bigger things in the sealed/draft world.

EDIT: I will just edit since this is still the last post. 2-1 in my first draft (picked ROE since it seemed like a pretty straightforward environment), which marks my first tournament since 1998ish. Not awful I suppose, I need to be better at judging when to mulligan as that was a contributing factor in both games I lost.

[Ingmar]

ROE is a really fun set to draft, but it also seems like a really easy set to draft and I'm not sure why I'm doing as well as I am. I've moved on from swiss to 4-3-2-2 as it seems almost a foregone conclusion that I'll win the first game.

Other sets have not been as kind, ROE seems to have a nice clear strategy to it, M10 and Zen/WWK seem significantly more random and removal is really scarce in M10 in particular.

[schild]

Other sets have not been as kind, ROE seems to have a nice clear strategy to it, M10 and Zen/WWK seem significantly more random and removal is really scarce in M10 in particular.

Blue / White Levelers
Blue / White Fliers
Blue / White Control
Red / Black Removal
Red / Green Aggro
Green Ramp Eldrazi
Green / Blue / White Control
Blue / Black / Red Control

I really don't think there's a clear strategy in Eldrazi but there are ones that are more likely to win than not (RB Removal and UW Fliers being those more likely).

Dawnglare is a first pick bomb.

Anyway, I've drafted Eldrazi about 85 times in real life and doing my last one tonight before the pre-release. I think I'm gonna live the dream and go straight 5 color jank.

Edit: I'm just gonna throw this out there, but I can't say more - you're going to LOVE drafting M11.

[Ingmar]

You left out "lawl vent sentinels" which I actually won one with. <3

[Johny Cee]

Other sets have not been as kind, ROE seems to have a nice clear strategy to it, M10 and Zen/WWK seem significantly more random and removal is really scarce in M10 in particular.

Blue / White Levelers
Blue / White Fliers
Blue / White Control
Red / Black Removal
Red / Green Aggro
Green Ramp Eldrazi
Green / Blue / White Control
Blue / Black / Red Control

I really don't think there's a clear strategy in Eldrazi but there are ones that are more likely to win than not (RB Removal and UW Fliers being those more likely).

Dawnglare is a first pick bomb.

Anyway, I've drafted Eldrazi about 85 times in real life and doing my last one tonight before the pre-release. I think I'm gonna live the dream and go straight 5 color jank.

Edit: I'm just gonna throw this out there, but I can't say more - you're going to LOVE drafting M11.

Those ROE strategies basically boil down to a couple of flavors of beatdown and a bit of control, with a side of ramp.  It's really pretty straight-forward limited design.  It's solid design, but if you've been drafting a long time it doesn't really engage you.

Compare that to Zen block.  You had a bunch of options for pseudo-combo decks, or primary one strategy/secondary another (throw in hedron crab!).  UW fliers, with a side of mill strategy for instance...  or combine milling or hand disruption with activated Bloodchief Ascension (Archive Trap + Ascension is an instakill, and almost guaranteed to get either an "awesome combo" or RageQuit out of your opponent).  Mind Sludge + activated Ascension was hilarious as well...

Many of the ally strategies could be a hell of alot of fun. 

One of my favorite interactions was the ally that mills cards + Rite of Replication, to instantly mill your opponents deck. 


ALA block, because of the multicolor emphasis and wide range of cards with medium power, was a hell of alot of fun because of the play diversity. 

[Ingmar]

Zen block for me has come down to 'draft as many evasive 2 drops as you can', I find ROE to be much more engaging so far.

[eldaec]

Personally I'm bored of both.

They seem far too samey. Zen has the all aggro all the time problem, and although RoE has a whole bunch of slightly different mid range strategies, most of them feel exactly the same to play against.


OTOH TPF nix tix drafts this week, I have old product to use!

[Ingmar]

Won another ROE tonight with a U/W leveler deck with a couple nice umbras (and somehow no teachers  ). Unless you completely change your mind halfway through pack 2 or something it seems pretty difficult to draft a truly bad deck in ROE.

I regressed one guy's brimstone mage at level 2 3 times in one game, he got kind of mad. 

[schild]

M11 is amazing. Probably the best core set ever.

Picked up a case.

Totally worth it.

Also, doing the San Antonio PTQ with some homebrew rogue shit based around Leyline of Anticipation and Grave Titan (yay Esper is back, maybe).

[Ingmar]

Seems like red is still pretty lame from a Limited standpoint in M11 unfortunately. I think they may have gone a little overboard with the white fliers too.

[schild]

Red isn't so bad you just have to have a lot of 2-of and 3-ofs if you're going that direction in limited play.

ALTERNATIVELY, one Fire Servant changes the math. Card is so strong it's stupid.

With that out of the way - I will avoid the ever loving shit out of Red in M11 drafts whenever possible. It's a UW environment just like RoE all over again.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, agreed, U/W is pretty silly. I main decked 2 plummets at the pre-release and it paid off in spades, there was always a good target for them.

Vengeful archon is goddamn ridiculous too. Add on that I had a whispersilk cloak on it half the time and it is just outright unfair.

[schild]

I have been maindecking naturalize whenever I play green.

It's always worth it.

[Thrawn]

Went and played at the local M11 release this weekend...as I headed home I remembered why I hate sealed format so very much.

[Ingmar]

I do actually think there's generally a lot of skill involved in sealed, contrary to the 'its too random' thing people usually think about it, but because it is such an expensive and rarely-played format very few people get enough pratice with it to really make it work. I know if I had the pre-release to do over again I'd probably have built differently just because I had a better understanding afterwards what sorts of things the set could really throw at me, and I'm sure if I did a few more events I could refine that even more.

[Thrawn]

My best cards out off all my packs being an Elvish Archdruid, a 5/5 red flyer and a pair of lightning bolts has nothing to do with skill when the guy I'm playing drops a Frost Titan and a Platinum Angel on me in the same game.

[Thrawn]

I've bee on the other side as well when my Lowryn sealed gave me Profane Command, Shriekmaw, Chamelon Colosus and a slew of cheap removal and fatties.  Stomped that entire tournament and thought it was just as dumb how luck based sealed is. :P

[Thrawn]

Sorry for the post spam, don't have an edit button on my post browser.  Replace Collusus with Garruk, Collosus isn't even Llorwyn I believe. :P

[Ingmar]

Well I'm not saying there's NO random elements to it. 

[Thrawn]

I should of just known better, but I enjoy releases because lots of old freinds show up that don't play much and its very casual and fun in thi area.  I think I need to go to relases, but not play. :P

[Ingmar]

I actually think that it is better for the game as a whole to have that random element anyway - without it it would be like chess, the best player would nearly always win instead of just mostly always. That chance to eke out a win against a really good player is a powerful motivator for keeping people involved. At the same time it is apparent that skill plays a large role in limited since there are players that manage to maintain a high ELO rating in limited consistently.

Now, moving into general rant mode, not directed at anyone in particular (well maybe at the guy who rage quit on a game I played on MTGO Saturday with "nice draw" as his parting comment) because I just find this whole topic pretty interesting:

Really this discussion gets into something really key about how people play and improve at these games, especially the ones with limited formats that on the surface appear to be too random. People as a general rule tend to focus way too much on externalities in limited play that they have no control over, in particular their opponent's luck and their own luck, both in game (help I drew no land) and out (help my opponent drew 3 baneslayer angels.) It is really really easy to just chalk up a result to these factors (and to be fair they can be sizeable) and leave a tournament without improving as a result. The key is always afterwards, looking at the things you *did* have control over - in game decisions, deck construction, level of preparation with the set list, even shit like did you remember to eat before the tournament is important - and figuring out a few things you could have done better. Iterating through this process every time you do a limited event will fairly quickly improve your results.

The problem of course is actual sealed events are expensive and infrequent, so the chances to get the repetitions are fewer and less attractive financially than they are for the draft side of limited, and what works in draft doesn't necessarily work in sealed and vice-versa; in particular the average power of a deck you can expect to run up against in each format can be wildly different. What you end up with is a format where most of the people there are at a similar level of non-prepared and so games tend to go to whoever draws their bomb first more than they otherwise would, and meanwhile that one dude who is always well-prepared wins more often than not, while tending to be perceived by the other players as really lucky.

This is something I never really grasped at all the first time I played MTG many years ago, it took playing another game competitively that had a similar sealed format* for me to really get it, and I'm already light years better at limited MTG than I ever was 10 years ago, even though I've only been playing for what, a month-ish this time. It really does work.

*D&D Minis, which substituted die rolls for card drawing in the 'random gameplay element' department but had basically the same rarity and 'deckbuilding' structure, albeit with less total things to pick from.

[schild]

Going to PTQ Amsterdam in San Antonio this Saturday. Running a post-M11 variant of Grixis Control I think. Though there's still a chance I go RW Control or RG Ramp Beatdown.

Anyone else going or in San Antonio already that wants to maybe?