The Limited thread

[unpronounceable]

I had an awesome draft this evening. I ended up in Black/Green, but then opened the best pack I've seen. The flip card was Avacynian Missionaries, the second flip card was Westvale Abbey, and the rare was Sorin, Grim Nemesis, which I took. I ended up ignoring some of the advice I was given, and splashed white for it. 2 plains, and a dual-land.

In any case, I played it pretty well, and ended up going 2-1.

[fantôme]

Yeah what is up with some SoI packs having a rare, a flip card and a flip rare?

[phlip]

From Maro's Tumblr - every pack has a common or uncommon DFC. 1 in 8 packs also has a rare or mythic DFC.

Unlike what he guesses in that Tumblr post, I believe both of these take what is traditionally a common slot ([edit] see also this [/edit]), so each pack still has 1 single-faced rare or mythic, 3 single-faced uncommons, and 7-9 single-faced commons. (I'm not sure exactly how foils fit into this, though... I remember it worked differently in ISD and DKA, and I haven't opened enough SOI boosters to know how it works now.)

[AdmiralMemo]

So it's theoretically possible to get an epic "Triple Mythic" pack? Mythic (that replaces Rare) + Foil Mythic (that replaces Common) + DFC Mythic (Avacyn, Arlinn, or Startled Awake that replaces Common)?

[phlip]

Yep, same was possible in ISD and DKA, too. Just super unlikely.

[AdmiralMemo]

Now I'm wondering the odds...

[phlip]

Well then.

• Approximately 1 in 8 boosters (more accurately, 15/121) have a mythic in the rare slot.
• 1 in 8 boosters have a rare DFC, which is a mythic 1/5 of the time (3 mythics and 6 rares, and each rare is twice as common as each mythic)
• 15/67 boosters have a foil (the "67" figure is printed on the back of the booster)... however, this is the tricky part, as it's not afaik public knowledge the rarity distribution of foils. It's not like the rare/mythic distribution, where we can make educated guesses based on how it needs to be handled on the printing sheet, the common/uncommon/rare foil sheets are still separate sheets, and the distribution is just down to how many of each sheet they print.
  
  A reasonable guess is that they follow the same distribution as a booster - for a normal set, 1/15 chance of a basic, 10/15 a common, 3/15 an uncommon, 1/15 a rare/mythic. That would have you getting a foil mythic once per ~540 packs. But that's just a guess.
  
  Empirical evidence from store owners (who open a lot of boosters, and catalog the contents, as a matter of course) suggests that there's about one foil mythic per case, on average. So that's 1 per 216 packs. It's probably not exactly those odds, but it's probably closer than the 1/540 figure.
• Finally, there's the question of if all 3 of these are independent. That's not a sure bet - print runs do exist in Magic, and by design, but they tend to be more within a rarity - cards that are close to each other on the sheet tend to be grouped together in the boosters, more often than not (and R&D specifically orders the cards on the sheet to use this).
  
  But I don't think there's much correlation between different sheets - getting a certain common doesn't affect your chances of getting a certain uncommon, for instance. There's probably still some amount of correlation, just due to exactly how they get shuffled by the printer, but it's probably not huge, and it's definitely not predictable from outside.

So under the assumption that they are independent, and using those figures: (1/8)*(1/40)*(1/216) = 1/69120, so you'd get a booster with 3 mythics about once in every 70 thousand boosters. Give or take.

[AdmiralMemo]

Alright... Who's up for buying 70,000 boosters to test this? MEGA-DRAFT!

Thanks for your insight into this. The odds aren't too good, but much better than, say, the lottery.

But OK, that's 1 pack in every 320 cases... and I wonder how many cases get made/distributed. Probably on the order of tens of thousands, if you include all the languages. So there might be like 25 to 100 "triple mythic" packs in existence.

[AdmiralMemo]

Now, this will obviously have to wait until it's fully spoiled for a more definitive answer, but...

Do you think a MMA, MM2, EMA draft would be good? Would it have enough synergies to work? Would it work better in a different order?

I mean, speculating from what we know of MMA and MM2, if it wouldn't work out already, I don't think adding EMA would help. Does anyone know if MMA and MM2 have enough synergies between them to work?

[AdmiralMemo]

I don't know about anyone else, but I just have to say that SOI isn't holding my interest very well at this point, and I'm not exactly sure why, because on paper, I should still be pretty OK with drafting it.

Flavor-wise, it's great. I love where things are headed. Mechanically, it's solid. We've got old mechanics and new mechanics. It's an interesting environment.

However, I'm already tired of drafting the set and I don't know why. I haven't drafted very much of it, comparatively to other sets. I just don't know why it's not exciting to me, and maybe I understand now what people were saying about DTK. I had a blast drafting DTK, and towards the end, people were like "When's Origins coming out?" or "What's up for Flashback?" I didn't grok why people didn't want to draft it, because I thought it was still awesome to draft. (Heck, I still want to draft it at least once again.) But I see people still hyped enough to draft SOI and I'm like "When's Eldritch Moon coming out?"

[Ladsworld]

Man, EMA looks SO GOOD. Looking forward to building a Flashback deck with 5 Giant Tortoises.

[Kapol]

Did a 2HG Chaos (Grab bag) draft today. P1P1+2 were Varolz and Putrify from a Dragon's Maze. From there, me and my partner drafted a G/B graveyard deck. It had stuff like Desecration Demon, the new creature version of Ob, and a splash of white for some bestow cards. Ended up doing some Hexproof shenanigans too. My partner ended up in U/R control. We had the morph with 'T: Counter target spell unless it's controller pays (1),' a few other counter spells, the 8/8 for 5UU, the Retrace target player draws a card, and other value cards. A lot of the good stuff was in the G/B deck. But the support deck did a great job with what it did. Lots of counters to protect stuff, Skygames to help my voltron fly over, and a lot of value. The only match we lost was to Smallpox turn 3 followed by another piece of LD on 4, and not drawing more lands soon enough to play cards.

[fantôme]

Drafted Eternal Masters today (3-0 with r/w tokens), the set is so much fun to draft, everyone's deck was really cool. What's really interesting is the balance of "fair" decks versus "unfair' ones - my deck was definitely what one would consider fair, whereas final match my opponent reanimated Inkwell Leviathan on turn 3, but the games were still really close and interesting.

It sure is pricey, (and I didn't pull anything of particular value), but I would definitely recommend this to limited players despite the investment.

[Kapol]

Today I learned just how hard it is to beat a turn 1 Mother of Runes. Every time I landed her on turn 1, my opponent was set on the back foot instantly.

[Tacos_yay]

Yesterday was the funnest draft I have ever taken part in. It was amazing. Let me run it down:
I arrive thirty minutes before and buy a pack of EMA just for fun. Immediately open mana crypt. This I take as an omen that I'm going to open shit during the draft, having used up all my luck. However, pack one this happened:

I open ANOTHER Mana Crypt. And not only did I open a Mana Crypt, but the guy next to me also opened a Mana Crypt at the exact same time.
So I drafted an amazing blue white flyers deck:

It was nuts! It was awesome to drop four squad hawks and then a thunderclap Wyvern. It was not so awesome for my opponent to play Pyrokinesis and a Dualcaster Mage to kill all four of them In a single turn.
Also pro tip: Mana Crypt is not good in limited.

[AdmiralMemo]

I've got a deck that I would like some commentary on. I went 1-2 on this, and Round 2 I won basically because Omnicrat drew poorly... So what did I do wrong here? I think this is a good deck, so I'm not sure why it lost, other than poor math in R1G2. (I got opponent down to 1 when I was at 20, and opponent swung back for 24.)

[fantôme]

So MM3 draft is (unsurprisingly) completely awesome. Everyone's deck ended up really solid and really enjoyable to play, each archetype very much did it's thing, (and yes, forcing 5-colour signets can work).

I went 2-1 with a Grixis tempo deck that was a huge amount of fun, and Grixis-tempo'd in just the way you'd want Grixis tempo to Grixis-tempo. Also I pulled a Scalding Tarn & a Misty Rainforest, so... yeah.

As with other Masters sets, the price of entry is rather high - but I would definitely recommend saving up the pennies to try this at least once - even for newer players, as the archetypes are pretty clear and "draft your rares and build around them" seems to work fine thanks to all the fixing.