Continuous Drafting

I've run into a curious situation with drafting the new release, Kaldheim.

I can't stop. 

I just ... keep.... drafting.

In all seriousness, I started the draft with 40,000 gold and using the gems from winning and draft tokens from the season pass and a couple draft tokens on sale for half price in the store, I've been drafting more than ever as I earn enough from winnings that I almost never completely drain the wallet. As a result I've done 23 drafts over a period less than a month; in comparison I did 35 drafts for Zendikar rising that went from late October to early January.

For some reason, I feel more successful in Kaldheim than I did in Zendikar, and I felt good about the latter to begin with. The stats support this: I had 5 trophies total in ZNR, and I'm at 4 in KHM. I think a big part of that is concentrating mainly on Best of Three drafts instead of Best of One. 

Although the reward structure is more skewed in Bo3 there are factors that mitigate this skewing and have lent to my better results.

1) Not Ranked - so I'm playing against any level player instead of increasingly better opponents

2) No Hand Smoother - so decks are less likely to "go off" on curve and games are longer

3) Variance Reduced - since its a best of three, a bad game or mulliganning down to 5 does not mean you have lost the match; the variance is spread over 2 or 3 games per match

4) Maybe I'm getting better?

Let's not put too much stock into that last one.

Whatever the reason, my enjoyment of drafting on Arena has increased with these improved fortunes as I rarely find myself grinding standard for gold and can just enjoy the game the way I like.

Now, time to see if I can break my trophy record...

Zendikar Rising Sunset Post

 

As we enter the spoiler season for the next Magic the Gathering set, Kaldheim, which is due out at the end of the month, its time to set aside Zendikar Rising and start hordeing gold and gems. 

Zendikar Rising (aka ZNR) was by far my most drafted format, with 51 total drafts compared to 24 for Ikoria. Part of that is due to a slightly better win rate and a much better trophy rate, and part of it is that I really enjoyed the tribal / party decks a lot and had a lot of fun trying to put them together.

This is also the first set I dipped my toe into Best of Three and while my success rate there was not so hot, I find I enjoyed the games there more as the variance monster's effect is lessened by the multiple chances to face an opponent. 

My slight improvement in wins and trophies I think can be acreditted to finally starting to see the signals in the draft and read the table better than I used to. I still can sometimes tunnel vision into a colour pair but I think overall I'm getting better at paying attention and finding my lane for my seat. The next step is to actually trying to evaluate the cards and keep the valuations in mind as I draft.

Courtesy of 17lands.com, my most drafted cards are: 

Grotag Bug Catcher? Makes sense, I loved red/X party decks in this format. Utility Knife? I didn't want it a lot, probably just left over a lot in packs.

Uncommons:

Types!!!!!

And rares:

My favourite deck archetype? I did like the BW Clerics and UB Rogues, but my favourite by far was RW warriors with Kor Blademaster, Grotag Bug Catcher, Goma Fada Vanguard, and friends. Four of my eight trophies were that deck.

With that we bid ZNR adieu, and look forward to shenanigans with Vikings next month!

Risk Versus Reward When Drafting

 Drafting on MTG Arena is very fun but has a frustrating aspect to it. It costs money. 

I know, the nerve of Wizards of the Coast wanting to be paid for their online product! 

The good news is that it can be free to play even for drafting because you can earn gold (and rarely gems) through playing normal games of Standard or Historic and achieving daily quests. Its not fast, but its doable. It takes about a week of grinding in order to get the 10,000 gold you need to enter a draft.

The good news is that the drafts offer rewards and the more you win in a draft the larger your reward. In fact, you win enough and you earn enough gems to enter another draft and have some left over! If you are really good, you can draft infinitely and never put any more effort into grinding Constucted. 

But how likely is that?

First off there are multiple limited modes, you can read all about them here. I'm discussing today are drafts against other humans, Premier Draft which is Best of 1 (aka Bo1) match play and Traditional Draft which is Best of 3 (aka Bo3).

In Bo1 you face your opponents in a single "winner takes all" match and the draft ends when you get 7 wins or 3 losses, whichever comes first. Your rewards are:

- No wins — 50 gems and one pack
- One win — 100 gems and one pack
- Two wins — 250 gems and two packs
- Three wins — 1000 gems and two packs
- Four wins — 1400 gems and three packs
- Five wins — 1600 gems and four packs
- Six wins — 1800 gems and five packs
- Seven wins — 2100 gems and six packs

Since it costs 10K gold OR 1500 gems to enter a draft, at 5 wins you have made your investment back and essentially played for free. Now getting 5+ wins before 3 losses is not easy, in 18 tries in Zendikar Rising Bo1 drafts I've managed it only 4 times. But even getting to 3 or 4 wins is a big deal as the amount of gems you receive puts you very close to affording another draft. 

As you can see from this graphic from 17 lands for Throne of Eldraine drafting, most drafts end below the line but still in the 3-4 win range (usual disclaimers about self selecting data, not whole playerbase, etc).

Courtesy of https://www.17lands.com/

I want to highlight the massive jump in rewards between 2 wins (250 gems) and 3 wins (1000 gems). That is the largest jump in reward of all the levels and is the difference between feeling like "I wasted my money" and "not bad, almost enough for another draft!". In fact, assume a player starts a format with 40K gold, enough for 4 drafts:

As you can see in the table above, the number of drafts you are able to do increases exponentially if you are a better than average drafter, to the point where the best drafters can draft while never paying another dime. Now I realize it does not work out that way in reality because the Bo1 is a ranked queue, players in bronze play against other players in bronze and players in diamond or mythic play each other as well, leading to the type of graph you see above where most results are in the 2/3 and 3/3 range, indicating that the win percentage trends towards 50%.

However, what it does mean that boy does it suck to be a bad drafter.

What about Traditional Draft, i.e. Bo3? Bo3 is not ranked so who you play is random and thus the better drafters can rise to the top more easily in theory, but there are two limiting factors related to each other that impact that.

1) The rewards suck if you don't get 3 wins.
2) Lower skilled drafters stick to Bo1 as a result.

Why do the rewards suck so bad? Well, for a 10K gold or 1500 gem entry fee you can earn:
- No wins - One pack
- One win - One pack
- Two wins - 1,000 gems and four packs
- Three wins - 3,000 gems and six packs

As you can see, even winning 2 out of 3 matches fails to earn you the rewards to do another draft. But winning all 3 matches wins you enough gems for 2 more matches! I'm not exactly sure why they chose this reward structure compared to Bo1. Is it because Bo3 is seen more as "real magic" and they expect players to pay a premium to participate? Is it because its not ranked so there are more 2 win and 3 win players (i.e. the distribution curve is slanted more to the right), and if rewards were higher on the 1 win and 2 win slots that too many people would be making too many gems?


Regardless, this reward structure makes it very hard for me, an average player, to justify paying for Bo3 with a 50% record on good days when that record can earn me twice as many follow up drafts in Bo1.

Limited Success

While my woes in Standard Ranked continue and this season is a write off for the most part, let's talk about Limited Draft.

I love doing drafts, either in Arena or in person. The thrill of opening a pack and seeing what's there, finding bombs, building a deck... it all appeals to me in a visceral way. The first sets I really understood what was going on and what I was doing (largely thanks to Limited Resources podcast) was War of the Spark, and the base set of M20 followed thereafter and in both of those I had moderate success.

But then Throne of Eldraine drafting started and... wow... I did not do so well.

There is someone about Throne of Eldraine that flummoxes my drafting. I know the card values, I know the deck archetypes, I know about drafting the hard way versus easy way, but for the first 9 drafts I struggled to get to 3 wins before the third loss. I never felt this bad in the previous two.

But then I got my first 6 win deck which bolstered my morale, and a few drafts later another 6-3 deck and my average in Eldraine started to look less like a disaster. Still didn't run the full 7 wins though...

That brings us to my latest draft. I pay the gold, open Pack 1 and see that smirking bastard, Oko:

Right then, that's an easy first pick! I continue on, selected other blue and green cards for what I think will be a Simic Food deck.

But there is a problem: the green cards are not coming to me. One of the 7 bots is cutting my green cards and leeching my card pool! I opened pack 2 looking for a good card to complement Oko but saw Robber of the Rich, and I wasn't changing lanes for that. But on the other hard, Merfolk Secret Keeper and Didn't Say Please kept showing up, and the bot cutting my green cards continued to, well, cut my green cards!

By the end of two packs I had this card pool going on:

In pack 3 (pick 2 no less) I did manage to score Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig but the rest of the cards continued to be scarce on good green cards. So I was left at the end of the drafting with a conundrum: Green-Blue, Blue splashing green, or go full on mill deck Mono Blue?

How can you even consider NOT using Oko, you ask? I mean, he is a super bomb and voted most likely to get banned from Standard next week. But...... I didn't have the cards to support him in the Simic food deck where he shines best. I decided reluctantly to cut him (*gasp*) and go pure mono blue:

With 5 Merfolk Secret Keepers, a Lucky Charm, 3 Didn't Say Please counter spells, I felt pretty good I could mill consistently and score some wins.

And boy did it ever! I went 7-1 with only one fast RW aggro deck killing me when he had 2 cards left in his library. There were a couple other close games but the milling always won out in time.

Sorry Oko, maybe next time.

Post Script: So that Oko I drafted, mythic rare? I had one already from the Renewal gift when set rotation happened, so this was my second copy of the card. And in the packs I got for winning this draft? I opened a THIRD Oko! You know what this means, right? Guaranteed banning incoming...

Drafting Disappointment

Last night I got together with friends to do an actual Throne of Eldraine Limited Draft! I was so excited! Here's how we did it: there was four of us, we each go four packs (not three as per usual), opened one, draft a card, pass around. After four rounds we had ~56 cards to make a 40 card deck (basic lands free of course). Then we played each other in a Best of 3 match.

After all the games were played, we will put all the rares and alternate art cards back in a pool and take turns picking them with the winner picking first, second going second, etc.

I have never drafted with real people so it was a very different experience compared to drafting against 7 Arena bots. For one thing, with only 3 other people the cards wheeling around a lot faster, and there was definitely a feeling of what the other people were picking that I did not feel online.

I started off drafting a blue rare, Midnight Clock, not because I wanted it but mainly because I was afraid of what my friend Andrew could do with it. Bad start already. Then I settled into Green and White cards for the first pack and a half but at Pack 3 I was faced with a Murderous Rider and had a couple decent black cards already so I starting snapping up black cards. The question because was I going Green White, Green Black, or Black White?

Then I drew Wintermoor Commander followed by Resolute Rider, I knew I had found my signpost. Black White Knights it is!

My deck was basically aggro based on Knight tribal synergies and recurring them from the graveyard using Barrow Witches and Forever Young, and a smattering of removal from In a Tower and Bake Into A Pie. I felt pretty good overall.

Boy, was I mistaken.

My first match was against Ben who was sporting an artifact/food deck, splashing in Grumgully who made his creatures bigger. First game did not go well, but second game I got my enchantments going and beat him down before he setup. In the tiebreaker, I was pushing hard but a Cauldron Familiar gave him enough life to hold on and win with 1 life point left. I probably screwed that up by attacking aggressively at the end when a slower approach might have been better, but it was that kind of night.

Next match was against Aaron and his Black Blue flyers/control deck. First game he easily beat me with more fliers in the air than I could stop, second game I got more creatures going but he still tied me up and beat me. We had time for a third match and this time my enchantment combo showed up in full force and I beat him down.

Finally I faced Andrew who had defeated Aaron and Ben in the previous rounds. He was sporting a White Red aggro knights deck with lots of combat tricks. First game my deck was doing what it was supposed to with lots of recurring knights but he had the mythic rare Outlaw's Merriment was just insane. Every upkeep, he just gets a new creature. Life, for free. I was able to get him down to four life but he kept getting the Clerics with lifelink and just boosted his health back up to 12. Eventually he just overwhelmed me.

How is that a card?!?!

Next game I never got going as my deck just gave up and he rolled over me.

At the end of the night I was offically 1-6 and by far the bottom of the ranking. Very disappointing.

We put the rares and alternate art back in the middle and picked them in the order of Andrew, Ben, Aaron, and me. I ended up with Clackbridge Troll, Resolute Rider, Lochmere Seprent, and alternate art Foulmire Knight.