Charles is a good friend (Aceman022 on MODO, one of the ringers) - it's somewhat of a running joke.

whats the mothership?

EDIT: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...ea09/welcome#4

Wich set is easiest to draft ? I am looking to get into drafting online. It been a long time...

Just draft RRR to start (R = Alara Reborn) it's a small set and pretty easy to put functional decks together (scroll up for much discussion on key cards etc). Then when you get to know that set you can switch to ACR (Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn - The current block) or just stick with RRR.

Alara Reborn visual spoiler

Ran into an interesting situation tonight:

Down game 1 in sealed, opp @ 3 life I have a resounding thunder in hand with mana up etc etc.

Opp is @ 5 minutes left on his play clock. I started to continue play to run more time off but decided to just win instead. He was in red so I was worried there might be a chance of him responding to my bolt with a burn spell of his own.

Hindsight: that's stupid b/c if he can burn to win he'll do it as my hand is under repped and I can respond.

lost game 3 to mana screw with him 35second left on clock.

Cool, I will check it out. Is it possible these days to go infinit or nearly infinite in limited ?

Is it possible - yes I'm sure it is.

If you are merely a 'decent' 1800 player though I doubt you will do it, singles prices are rather low compared to a few years ago, particularly for 'bulk crap rares'.

I don't play Limited much at all but I guess somewhere around mid 1800s ability would have nps going infinite.

If you want to go infinite play constructed - it's absurdly easy but needs an initial investment.

Yeah, your hindsight is correct - no way the opponent is going to draw a lethal instant burn spell and not cast it on you if he is losing on the board. If he's winning on the board somehow it's a different story of course.

I guess he did have a lethal burn spell somewhere in his deck as seems a bit risky to play on in a losing board position with only 5 mins on clock for the next game - probably better to concede and play game 3 quickly

Explain

Well - until very recently Conflux packs were worth 4 tix, and I'm sure they will be again soon though atm they are only worth 3.8 to the bots.

Alara Block constructed 2-man queues cost 2 tix to enter and give 1 conflux booster as prize, so you only need to win 50% of the time to break even. Anyone better than average makes tickets gradually. Even with packs at 3.8 you only need to win 53% of the time to win overall.

Daily events in constructed formats are event better. Prize payout is:

1st Place 24 booster packs (8 ALA, 8 CON, 8 ARB)
2nd Place 18 booster packs (6 ALA, 6 CON, 6 ARB)
3rd & 4th 12 booster packs (4 ALA, 4 CON. 4 ARB)
5th - 8th 6 booster packs (2 ALA, 2 CON, 2 ARB)

Total 90 packs. Usually they start with close to the minimum of 24 players, costing 6 tix so total 144 tix taken in entries. If your finishing position is totally random and uniformly distributed then you are getting over 3.75 packs on average for 6 tix, when they are worth about 14 tix.

It's easy to go infinite on Constructed.

You need to play a hell of a lot though, as even if you assume buying one single deck is a 'sunk cost', you need to win enough tix to buy the playable cards from every future set as well.

Nice post, thx Ill look into that.

If you look at Constucted/Limited in terms of effective rake, its easier to see why its easier.

In those 2 man queues, wizards is effectively taking away .2 tix (.1 tix per person).

For an 8-4 (more packs paid out than 4322), 24 packs and 16 tix go in, 12 packs + cards come out. So ~60 tix minus whatever is opened is the "rake", or ~7.5 tix per person minus whatever you open.

I'm not sure what the average value of raredrafting is, I guess you could average out the value of the good rares/uncommons and find their value per pack, shrug.

What are you guys using to post screen shots of your limited pools? I'm in the release sealed that started @ 10am, have sick removal but only 14 guys non of which are amazing.

I'm leaving a couple flyers I could splash for on the side but wondering if I need to be finding a way to get them in MD.

I might be inclined to play mtg more if I were in an active clan. FWIW, I've played in half a dozen PTs or so, but it's been several years. As a solitary experience, it hasn't held my interest.

Prt Scrn button, ctrl+v in to paint, imageshack.us?

2+2 clan anyone?

Submitted a request for a new clan (two plus two). Should be approved in 24 hrs.

Find me in game or on aim for an invite:

unemployed101 > modo
phillipxmartin > aim


On here way more then I should be right now grinding up the QPs for the tourney @ the end of June.

btw: which has more variance, limited MTG or SNG NLHE?


edit: good idea Annorax

No major agenda for the clan, just want to get the ball rolling on something. Playing a lot of limited atm but will probably drop some $ on constructed also. Just started playing again last week after a couple year hiatus but in the past I've had top 100 limited ranking.

Raredrafting sucks.

When RRR was first released there were a whole bunch of people just raredrafting and sitting out/conceding tournaments. So I did the math because, WTF, if it was profitable I'd do it too. The average value of rares are <1.5 tix. You're guaranteed 3 rares per draft plus you're going to get some as second and third picks but you're pretty much only ever going to get crap rares that are worth .5 tix or less. If we peg the value of packs at 4 tix, it costs you 14 tix to play. You get 4.5 tix back in first pick rares. Then you might get 3 or 4 crap rares. You'll get the odd uncommon like Bloodbraid that's worth something but basically everything else is close to worthless. If you're running a bot you can maybe squeeze a little more value out of it.

You're probably going to have a hard time averaging 10 tix in value from raredrafting. The odd time you're going to grab something good in the second round especially early in release (ie; not now) but it's also very high variance - There are a lot of crap rares and it's pretty common to get garbage rares in all three packs you open and a lot of the value comes from just a few cards (Pulse, Meddling, Dauntless).

It's really only a viable strategy if you're just looking to put together sets/collections and you want access to all those rares. Unless you hit some lottery cards, most of the value from drafting comes from winning.

How is this sealed pool not auto win? Dropped a match to a dragonquester and another to random guy with sick tempo. Seems like I do better with jank.

edit: SBing one Rhox Brute for the R/G land cycler. Having issues hitting right 3 color combination consistently.

Your build seems all over the place without the fixing to support it. Personally I think the GR landcyclers are sick, I would work on cutting some of your blue maybe? Go for a more GRW build, splash blue for the stoics and finest hour?

V2.

Looks better I agree. I guess I was caught up in 2cc 3/2 flyers and 3cc 2/2 flyers being good and forcing it a little too much.

By raredrafting, I mean grabbing rares that are worth $4-5+. Obviously you dont grab every rare, just ones that have decent value.

Unemployed:

Why arent you playing trace of abundance? ****s good fixins.

I would also play Mayael (5 5/x's in your deck), Jund hackblade, and Ridge rannet.

I think stoic angel is sorta poopy tbh.

I would go::

Out:
2x Stoic Angel
Finest Hour
Obelisk
2 borderposts

In:
Trace
Mayael
Hackblade
Rannet
2 lands

Would make your deck much more consistent imo.

Valid:

Mayael was just an oversight when I was reconfig deck, noticed after I posted 2nd list.

Other points are good. The angel is actually pretty meh after use. On paper it seems sick but to get good use of her ability you're probably loosing badly if they are untapping more then one guy when she comes into play. So I guess she's basically a serra angel that is hard to cast. Also her ability can hurt you if you're way ahead you can't untap all your guys.
>>>
I don't get it, 2nd sealed I played in knowing non of the cards I get 1st, since, i've won a few drafts but am generally getting lit up.

Anyway, good points I really appreciate it. It's helping me get back in the swing of things here. Its a little hard to evaluate card choices coming into it cold with no 2nd opinion to bounce off of.

limited rating: 1750 barf...like watching a bag of cement being thrown into the lake.

cards on the bubble:
slave of bolas
jund charm

I opted to just splash for deathbringer thoctar and termanite but the others seem very good obv.

Am I making a mistake leaving them on the side line?

I have nothing that produces black except for one land tutor guy and a jund fetch land, both of which I have MD already.

Disagree. There's a lot of small edges that you can pick up that go ignored, just like in poker. Strange commons and uncommons are worth money to bots, and even if it's just fractions of a ticket, that's all that might matter when it comes to breaking even or "going infinite."

I highly doubt many people in this thread are good enough to go infinite in limited based on the comments I've read, because it requires not only above average online play skill, but good raredrafting and game selection ability (aka ability to play in Nix Tix events and win; not everyone can compete in TTS or SSE). It's very hard to in today's MTGO economy from drafting alone, and it's usually better to share accounts with a trusted person to defray the cost of a constructed deck.