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[Magic: The Gathering] Go Speed Racer, Go
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17 lands offers a ton of data. It does not offer it in a nice little GUI or anything but it's there if you know how to look for it.
First of all, it's very very early in the set, so I wouldn't trust the data entirely yet. Sometimes a card looks good during previews and underperforms and the reverse is true as well. Innocuous cards that over perform. These are the types of cards that 17 lands will eventually help people figure out, but at this stage it's all pretty chaotic. If you're not confident enough in your draft skills to go in without an outside resource (which is totally fine), you might want to wait at least a week for the trends to appear.
Secondly, as with all data, there is no one statistic that will tell you the best card. You'll have to use multiple stats to try to figure out what you're looking for, and every statistic you use will be biased in some way or another.
Here are some of the more helpful sections of 17 lands to get used to. These are all found in the analytics tab.
1. Deck colour data:
This will give you a rough idea of the metagame. It tells you how many decks of which colours have been drafted, and their winrates. Only useful for a broad look but it can tell you some important things: a) if there are colour combinations that are really weak or really strong, (for example if most colour combinations have like 20,000 decks but W/G has 12,000 and a 47% winrate, it means that that colour pair is probably very weak and you should value white and green cards a little bit lower than normal) and b) how good colour fixing is in the format. Usually draft decks perform best if they are two colours, often splashing for one or two off-colour bombs. But the triple colour sac lands in MH3 are probably going to lead to a lot more 3-colour decks. You can use this tab to get an idea of whether 3 colour decks are doing better or worse in general than 2 colour decks.
2. Card Data:
This is like the meat and potatoes of 17 lands. Lists every card in the format and a bunch of stats for each of them. If you are looking for a *rough* idea of which card to first pick, the best stat to use is probably ALSA (Average Last Seen At). This tells you how likely a card is to be passed to you. An ALSA of less than 1.5 means that the *majority* of the time it is opened in a pack, it is immediately chosen. Game-winning bombs have ALSAs of <2, good cards will have ALSA of <5, and once you start getting into around ALSA of 7 is when you're getting to cards that are cut from the deck more often than not. You can also check winrates for specific cards being in your deck and a few other specifics. Some people like to look at IWD (Improvement When Drawn). A high IWD means that drawing a card makes you significantly more likely to win the game if you draw it, while a negative IWD means you actually become *less* likely to win if you draw it (it's a bad card). Don't base your whole draft on IWD, though, it can be misleading.
Card Data Comparison:
My favourite tab. Lets you graph the data found in the card data table. Go wild with visualizing data. I would say my favourite graph is a graph of Card In Deck Win % v. Game In Hand Win %.
This usually makes it pretty clear the relative strength of each colour and also lets you visualize specific cards that are way over- or under-performing relative to their own archetype.
Right now for example I can see that the early data is pointing to Writhing Chrysalis way outperforming every other common. Which means it will likely start to be more contested in the future.
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See, here's the above graph with the commons of the set. Like I said, it's early days so take this with a grain of salt. But here you can see that decks which run Writhing Chrysalis are winning a lot compared with decks that aren't. AND in addition to that, if you actually draw your Writhing Chrysalis, your chance of winning goes up way higher than usual for a common.
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https://archidekt.com/decks/7965946/corams_gravehammer
I think it's just splashing red and I want more red cards in there, but I'm basing it on my existing Kagha deck so it's very black/green right now
Some other notables:
- Chainer, Nightmare Adept is excellent recursion for this deck. You're putting stuff in the graveyard already, and sometimes you WANT to discard since an expensive beefy boy in your hand would do you more favours in the graveyard. And, crucially, any creatures you reanimate or cast from the graveyard with him, Kagha or Coram will have haste. A must-include, imo.
- Gravebreaker Lamia is a graveyard tutor, so it's very strong in this kind of deck — since it comes from your library, Coram lets you cast it right away, and the Lamia offers you a discount on that cast. Might be too much for very casual decks since you can grab a wincon.
- Feldon of the Third Path loves full graveyards and is another way to get a scary hasty creature out. Since it's a copy, it won't remove a creature who's currently granting Coram a high power, either.
If you go for the heavy mill strategy like I have, you can also throw in an Angel of Suffering, who will keep you from dying and prevent people from attacking you. But she will also potentially lead to you milling your whole deck. As long as you have some dredge cards in the yard, that's okay, because you can't deck out from mill, and you can replace your draw with the dredge, but still.
If you're talking about Limited, then 17lands data is what you'd want to look at on that site, not the user created tier lists.
MTGAzone has pretty good written articles ranking all cards for the draft format and uses those rankings to put together a tier list, and it's usually written by somebody who is pretty good at draft. I like them a good bit, and Channel Fireball is probably your gold standard for "articles written by people who actually play Limited really well".
I feel like I have no incentive to engage with it until near the last day when I can look at what all tickets I have and cash it in if I feel it is worth it.
Unless you really want one of the avatars, it’s not.
Deathsie's tier lists are generally very good.
I exclusively Premier draft so overlaid data is really important for me, so I use the Untapped.gg companion on set release, which shows LSV's ratings. Those are pre-release ratings so they don't reflect how the format shakes out, but they're great for guiding your eyes towards cards you might otherwise pass over, like mythic commons as early picks.
Through untapped you can also use Draftsmith, which gives more specific data based on win rates and takes your current deck into account. It costs money but you can do five drafts for free to try it out. I don't bother because while I like it in a format I'm unfamiliar with it ends up feeling way too guided once you know what you're doing. And that's the same thing I get out of LSV's ratings.
Yeah I can pay 2800 gems to trade tix for a draft token that only costs 1500. At least with the Mastery Pass I get other things.
I don't think you posted one.
Oh god dangit fixed it. EDIT: Also I figure I should probally drop the witch but not sure what else to drop to 40.
You're trying to bleed them out with fairies, and 4 counterspells is a lot. You probably want to have them dead to rights before the second disdainful stroke would come into play.
Apple is one of your finishers but it's a bit clunky. You don't want to be in a situation where you have two 4-cost-deal-3's in your hand.
But I also haven't played WOE in a long time so I could be missing something.
Edit: And I'd cut Sugar Rush before your witch. You only have two 3 drops and even though the witch isn't great in this deck, two mana for +3/+0 is rough, even if it does replace itself.
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Thoughts:
I think you kind of have to stick to the plan you've got but cut a disdainful stroke (less good early, spell stutter should catch most big stuff) and an apple and sort of hope to fly over them or stall for time. Curiosity also feels like an obvious cut here since it's really unlikely to pay off for you even with your fliers, and you don't actually have that many creatures to begin with.
Winning more than you lose is always good. Especially in Bo1, where any number of random things completely out of your control can cost you 3 games easily.
Putting aside the first loss, which you were mana screwed something fierce which is beyond your control, your losses came about from your lack of good creature quality. You had a bunch of counterspells just bogging down your hand every game and if 2 or 3 of those counterspells had been 2 or 3 drops, you'd have been in a much better place.
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Muttering and gnashing my teeth as I wash the car or do my taxes.
Some because of mobile controls, some bad draws/bad beats, and a couple because I am bad.
Then I bust out the rats and get a win.
This 100%
I’ve had cracked drafts go 0-3 and had mediocre decks win out. Sometimes you hit a streak of opponents who curve every game. Sometimes you never draw any gas. Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.
Yeah my ranked play stops at constructed Gold and limited Platinum, although I do allow that to naturally creep into Diamond if there are formats I can tolerate playing Bo1. Chasing Mythic is for people who are willing to spend money (or have better winrates).
Edit: I think plat is roughly average? Somewhere between gold and plat
No, additional costs do not effect color.
No, a spell's color is solely determined by the colors of mana in its cost*. Any additional costs will affect color identity (used to determine legality in Brawl/Commander), but not color.
*Or sometimes its color indicator, for spells/card faces without costs.
Of course, if you're playing MH3 there's devoid to deal with, which is actually relevant in a few ways, but for the most part just look at the upper corner.
But he has no cost area after he transforms
So they have a little circle to tell you what colors he is
He's black/white
Orzhov modified
Eldrazi
Eldrazi are so cracked. Ulalek and the Nantuko of course led to shenanigans, but my filthiest game went t2 Sage of the Unknowable, t3 Writhing Chrysalis, t4 Writhing Chrysalis and an island, sac all the tokens for Unfathomable Truths, swing in for 6, t5 Suppression Ray to tap their board, sac the token for lethal. The opponent promptly proceded to spam "Nice!" non-stop until they timed out, and I honestly could not blame them.
Edit: There is an important note to play with Ulalek, though. Turn OFF Automated Trigger Ordering in gameplay settings. It frequently put Ulalek's trigger at the bottom of the stack and it needs to be as close to the top as possible (ideally on top but if you have a spawn trigger you need to pay for it, that can go first)
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Fuck Joe Manchin
Grist was amazing for gumming up the board and Shilgengar just won games. In one game between Victimize (which also brought in Grist) and Gravedig I played Shilgengar three times. The third time I put Strength of the Harvest on him and he was eventually a 17/17. Territory Culler was prolly my next best card.
The Psychic Frog was my last add when I realized I could easily have three land sources, and my curve felt low enough that I could risk the card. I only ended up casting it once, but my opponent did concede on the spot so it seemed good.
(Including against one opponent who had four Cranial Rams!)
This deck wasn't the most powerful sealed deck I've had in this format, and it went 5-3 (the last loss was 100% my fault for miscounting), but my god was it the most fun sealed deck I've had in the format. Everything just clicked to keep the counters plan rolling. Evolving Witnesses could loop themselves or find mana, Eldrazi Ravager was a recurring draw engine with an Evolving Witness out, and the spawn gummed up the ground and presented a real win condition with either Fangs of Kaldonia or letting me just use KCommand as a combined Vampiric Tutor+++ and exile spell in the lategame if needed. The curve of broodscale into adapt + evangel + aerie auxiliary to have a 5/5 and a 5/3 and two spawn T4 was also just brutal.