oh skeletal vampire.

can anyone do some math for me please

let's say you buy 25 packs of a set that has these ratios of prices of rares (not including foil chances or uncommons)

crap rares - 25
$1 - 8
$3 - 4
$5 + - 6
$10+ - 2

should you crack it or try to sell it for 2.5$ each pack ($60ish)?

EV per pack opened =

[(25 * 1/8) + (8 * 1) + (3 * 4) + (5 * 6) + (2 * 10) ] / 45

= (3.125 + 8 + 12 + 30 + 20) / 45 = 1.625 - you should sell them.

ok thanks

now we factor in foil possibility and uncommons (this set is conflux btw so.. path $2 and volcanic fallout $1 and purge $0.5 and then add in ancient ziggurat, hellspark, shambling at like 0.3-0.5..

out of 39 uncommons if i counted right (how does 1 set have more rares than uncommons !)??

[(1*2)+(1*1)+(4*.5)]/39 = 5/39 = 0.12

does that make sense

brings price of cracked (not counting foils) ~ 1.75$?

I mean, you are less than breakeven. Even if you were BE it'd be a pain in the ass to collect that EV.

Id be interested in seeing which rares are which $ ranks. I assume the 10ers are hierarch and banefire? You arent factoring in that Bolas is like $15 or something.

Nicol Bolas is worth $30 and $60 if it's foil.

Banefire is $7
Nicol bolas is $12-13

I don't know where you're getting your prices kyle, but plz tell me where I can sell a normal Nicol Bolas for 30 .

The other 10$ card is heirarch.

The other $5 or + cards are.. Ethersworn Adjuicator, Progenitus, Maelstrom archangel, Thornling, Knight of the Reliquary.

Also, lets say that the EV of a conflux pack is 1.75 (forgetting about foils, because I doubt it's worth a quarter in EV (I could be wrong)) however, you live in a place where there are magic trades all the time and you can trade up, isn't it worth it now to crack product?

Just trying to find the point where you should be like no I wont buy packs and yes I will.. somewhere around 3packs for 5.5 is b/e point atm?

Nicol Bolas is $22 on SCG and $60 for foil. If you're just cracking packs to dump them on Ebay, there is basically no way it's worth it.

wow, kyle, like starcity is an accurate source of pricing guide. let me know when you find people that go buy starcity's sell list to price cards. i really wish there was a rolleyes face i could give this.

all prices i have done have been an aggregate of ebay prices, so thanks for saying all the research/data is worthless.

I'm just saying this because I'm staring at 11 conflux packs and 2 shards packs and I live in a place where it's almost impossible to sell packs unless its at $2 each (usually an autosell) and even at $7/set its not a autosell. However, it is possible for me to trade up in value in cards I do get so.. that has to factor a little into it.

Empiregamesonline.net is probably best online pricing source right now since they're at every Grand Prix recently with dealer tables and has the best buy/sell ratio prices of any online site currently.

FWIW's it's almost never correct to crack packs for the purpose of selling singles.

From a totally non-monetary point of view, Conflux isn't a bad set at all really is it? Plenty of playable rares in there.
Also Exotic Orchard and Martial Coup must be up around the $5 mark? There are bots buying them on MODO for 3-4 tix at least.
btw is anyone else playing in the Conflux release champs thing on Saturday?

Martial Coup, Exotic Orchid, Child of Alara, Wall of Reverence are the 4 solid $3 cards atm.

I could see Wall going up in time for GP-seattle and Exotic Orchid could be an interesting card to go up as well.. Martial coup is seeing a decent amount of play in block. Depending if wrath rotates and what new cards come, Coup can go up as well.

Obviously, cracking packs is usually not worth it, however, it's much better to crack a bunch of packs you have if you can never move it and get a decent return (prob at least close to 80%) just by cracking it, and making it over 100% when trading it.

I was going to yesterday. Not sure about next Saturday though. This whole setup has been annoying.

Sykes just draft the sets with some people, have them pay you for the sets, and win the draft, taking all the cards. That solves the problem. Otherwise, we're talking about such a meaningless amount of money that it's a waste of time.

heh I like AAC more than AAA mostly because ive lost every match of AAA ive played and won all my AAC matches(pfft sample size)

Sorry kyle sykes got the banned.

for what?

I've been crushing block n00bs with this list

land

4 savage lands
4 crumbling necropolis
4 jungle shrine
6 swamp
5 mountain
1 forest

stuff

2 executioner's capsule
4 magma spray
4 wretched banquet
4 obelisk of jund
4 blightning
4 jund charm
4 volcanic fallout
4 resounding thunder
3 broodmate dragon
3 violent ultimatum

sideboard
1 broodmate
1 violent ultimatum
4 goblin assault
2 executioner's capsule
3 hellkite overlord
4 sprouting thrinax (can't think of anything else useful, ideas?)

the premise is that most of the dominant strategies right now involve a turn 1 heirarch or nacatyl or squire. so you have a lot of cheap spot removal (the banquets are amazing) and 8 instant speed sweepers. The 2 capsules are for war monks and wolly thoctars, since you can't afford to get hit too many times.

so survive, ramp a bit, start casting bombs. violent has been fantastic, even though it's most been "destroy 3 target lands" or "destroy target bomb and 2 lands."

the only part I don't like is nuking their threats and waiting to draw something good turn 15, it'd be nice to have card draw but the price of jund charm is running this style of manabase/deck.

I played some esper combo deck, if you remove sculptors it's hard for them to get early pressure, but if you let one stick they will pretty quickly get something going.

Maybe the 4 thrinax need to be filagree fracture or something along those lines if that deck is any good.

edit - no banefire because I don't have any on modo. scepter of fugue probably >>> thrinax also.

I'm starting to think the Esper artifact deck might be really good.

At least when I was playing against it with my 4-color aggro deck (woolly thoctars / rafiqs etc), I couldn't think of an actual plan a game. It just seems like they get recursion going really fast each game, or if not they likely make a Scouring Stone or w/e its called.

yeah scourglass is rough

bugstud, sprouting thrinax over blightning in maindeck..

sprouting thrinax is so rough on any matchup. unless they remove it somehow (o-ring/path/spray) he just stalls and/or beats down until you get to 5-8 mana.

also i think blightning only has a place in b/r discard beatdown.

sideboard should have 4 of the 2/2 pro-white guys. those are huge.

I'd be a bit worried that some games you can just lose to Ajani Vengeant or Elspeth with that deck, you have so few threats that it's going to be hard to prevent their ultimate ability? All you can do is keep shocking them it seems...

part of why banquet is awesome is that I run almost no creatures. between blightning and thunder I haven't had problems with planeswalkers yet but admittedly none of the decks I faced ran many.

Really feels like you need another finisher.

What about like Charnelhoard Wurm? Get removal back every turn, shrugs. I guess Broodmate avoids removal so its good and stuff, iunno.

I think Apocalypse Hydra might be better than Charnelhoard Wurm. For the same mana you get a 10/10 instead, and its ability is pretty damn decent in a lot of situations as well, not to mention you can pay more or less mana as needed.

Obviously Banefire is another x mana alternative... but I don't think it will be that great in this deck.

What's the metagame in these things? I only played a few and it seemed like it was mainly mono-white exalted / sigil of distinction deck, with some bant-type aggro, some B/R (or B/R/G) beatdown, and some Artifact decks. It doesn't seem like a very thrilling format to me tbh...