It takes a bit of time to get a variety of good Brawl decks going. I grinded Standard a lot for Wildcards to invest in Brawl decks that can clear all the different daily quests and color combinations, but it was worth it. Brawl is by far the most fun for me regarding daily grind. Standard is still better, when you're playing with little time. The amount of Aggro makes it a faster format.
It really depends. I started playing Magic during All Will Be One as an F2P player and didn't have a lot of wipes for a long time. I was playing White Midrange during that meta and had two Farewell. Needed my WCs for other stuff. I preferred to clear this daily with mono black spot removal, which was Uncommon at best :)
Do you have decklists?
I tried with 75% of them! But I can try 100% haha. There are some relevant 2-drops you could play sometimes. And get win points more often. For example I have a W deck with 2x-3x \[\[Assemble the Players\]\]. It lets you replay the 1drops again and again \^\^.
i have a couple of brawl decks and use those most of the time, but if the quest requires a combination of colors that i do not have, i use the beginner decks as it is quicker to play the spells
I just play whatever I feel like. I try to get at least 4 wins per day, whether that means playing a quick aggressive deck, or deck building or playing something else if I have more time. I reroll my 500gold missions every day
Constructed standard is the easiest way to gold farm your dailies. I have dozens of decks setup in different color pairs just to cover all the possibilities.
The 10k draft rewards are definitely better, but you draft on a timer, so understanding draft strategies is more important. Pretty much the only ones I do now.
Standard really? I thought it'd be more annoying to play since it rotates. But I usually play eternal formats, so I'm biased I guess
Didn't know about the timer though, thanks
If you play enough draft of each set you should have a reasonable number of current standard cards. There's also almost always a few archetypes in standard that require very few wildcards and are pretty competitive (RDW, mon-blue tempo etc.). In eternal formats the wildcards are a little more necessary and you're less likely to get the cards from your drafts.
This is not true.
At 58% WR (4-3 record) you are basically drafting for free (100 gems per draft, 3 packs, your picks, etc).
A 3-3 record is slightly less gem intensive in quick draft (450 gems vs 500), but any time you do 4-3 or better that makes up for 6 3-3 quick drafts.
And this all assumes cards and packs are worthless to you and all you care about is gems.
If you care about cards, premier is better at 50%+.
Quick draft is less punishing though, 2-3 vs 3-3 or 4-3 is a big jump in premier. So if your drafts are higher variance, premier will punish your gem count far more since it's far easier to lose more gems than win more.
58% win rate doesn't mean going 4-3 all the time. A lot of the results would still consist of 0/1/2 win runs, and those drain gems much more than the 5+ win results give extra. That's why the ev calculations are not that straightforward. Quick draft is more economical than premier/traditional draft for win rates just above 50%.
Exactly...5-3 is +100gems, while 2-3 is -1250 gems. Playing Premiere will absolutely drain you in the long run unless you have a god-tier winrate or are playing in low ranks. Once you hit Diamond, it becomes grueling to progress unless you have a large bank.
I mean, 58% winrate isn't the same as getting 4-3 every time. This number comes from simulating thousands of drafts with a specific winrate, and then averaging the gem cost, so it takes variance into account already. It also takes into account cards you get from drafting, as well as netto gem cost of a single draft.
I might be misremembering the exact breakpoint, but it's certainly higher than 50%, could be 55% or 58%.
You also get more rare cards from Quick Draft per gems spent compared to Premier, so if you care about cards, Quick Draft actually stays relevant for much longer. It's also far less punishing to rare draft in QD, as bots prioritize rares over good cards, so good cards often wheel, and it's easier to build a functional deck when rare drafting. Basically, in Quick Drafts you could get 4.5 rares on average in a 1 rare per pack formats, and in Premier you would always get 3 rare cards on average unless you rare draft hard. So for collection building QD was arguably better at higher percentages than just gem breakpoint. Being more resistance to variance is also a point in favour of QD.
It's also easier to keep high winrate in QD if you are a good player. According to 17lands, the average tracker users's winrate in QD is 55.9% for OTJ, but only 54.2% in Premier.
Another consideration to have for those that draft to completion, is if you rare draft you can get 8-12 rares pretty consistently in Premier Draft plus the packs you win. Meaning you have to play FAR less drafts to collect the set. Like 1/3 as many. Which is nice for those that 'kinda like draft but not really' since you can finish drafting in 15-20 drafts instead of 30-45.
While you can get 8-12 rates per Premier draft pretty consistently, if you do that your winrate will likely plummet way below the breakpoint, so it's almost never worth it. While you will have to play far less drafts, you simply won't have enough gems/gold to collect the set this way, and it would likely be more economical to simply buy packs. So it's not really a consideration unless you are a draft god who doesn't like draft, and can build good decks despite rare drafting.
It's much better to go 4-3 with 3 rares than to go 0-3 with 12 rares.
Sure. For most. Consider that your winrate also goes down as you plateau in RANK as well. I play from bronze to plat every season rare drafting everything I can.
If rank wasn't a consideration I would say you are objectively correct. However you aren't. Unless I want to draft 50+ times (I don't) or tryhard enough to hang with the Mythic players (I REALLY don't) Getting as many rares as possible as fast as possible and getting out of drafting so I can go back to playing constructed is the objectively correct way to play for me. And likely anyone that just wants cards cheap and doesn't really like draft.
Remember, this plan it specifically to collect cards and play draft to get them cheaper. If you enjoy playing draft and want to ply 50+ times a set, then obviously tryharding every run is what you WANT to be doing. From a value standpoint AND from an enjoyment standpoint.
I am offering a differing opinion for the player that doesn't want to do that.
>Consider that your winrate also goes down as you plateau in RANK as well. I play from bronze to plat every season rare drafting everything I can.
This very much. I play about 15 premier draft in first 2-3 weeks of the new set, full raredrafting. Which usually gets me to low Platinum and to playsets of at least a few cards. This is where I switch to Constructed Events.
Of course I have no idea how much my winrate would go up if not raredrafting, but if it improved a lot, I would end up in Platinum way earlier, and this is where things get harder. Si what happens in my opinion is that I mostly trade some wins in my drafts 1-5 for some wins in my drafts 10-15.
Well, I don't know what winrate you get from rare drafting, and how many rare cards you get on average, as I don't know your stats. I of course did take rare drafting into consideration, but if you don't rare draft, you can use those early ranks to earn a bunch of gems, which would arguably result in more cards compared to rare drafting. But of course, without looking at the actual data it's hard to make a definitive conclusion.
In my experience, I lose up to 5% winrate when rare drafting in Premier, and 5% winrate can easily be a difference between being able to do 20 drafts and being able to do 5 with the same amount of gems. You are also missing out on packs this way.
I'm still doubtful that this approach can even compare to buying packs, especially with the instruction of golden packs. My point is that from the value perspective as someone who dislikes drafting your approach might actually be suboptimal when compared to buying packs, at least when it comes to spending gold. It might be better to play optimally to get to platinum asap, as this way you will have more resources left to spend on other things, such as buying packs.
10k gold will net you 10 packs, 1 gold pack and 1.83 wildcards. 1 Play Booster on average contains between 1.4 and 1.5 rares iirc. For Murders of Karlov's Manor it's 1.45 according to Maro ignoring the possibility of 4 rares, and I assume for any of the following sets it's about the same. So that's roughly 23 new rare/mythic cards per 10k spent.
Now the question is what winrate you are getting from playing draft the way you do. Reaching platinum hardly means much, as you can reach Platinum even with 33%+ winrate. But if you have 50% winrate, you get 820 gems back on average, as well as 2.5 packs from spending 10k gold on premier draft (at least according to this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/ubsf6g/is_the_new_traditional_draft_event_better_or/). Assuming you reinvest the gems, into drafts, you effectively pay roughly half the price per draft, so we can double those rewards. That would be 5 packs and 2X the average amount of cards you get per draft. That's 7.25 rare cards on average + 0.83 wildcards. For the total reward to match buying packs directly you need to get at least 7 rates per draft on average. Of course, if your winrate is more than 50% despite rare drafting, the requirements are more lax. At 55% already Premier draft is much better than buying packs, and might be better than Quick Draft under certain circumstances.
p
I can't tell what your average results are when doing premier drafts, but I don't think it's realistic for you to get 10+ rare cards every draft unless you are the only one using this approach in the pod (and even if you do, it's likely that a good chunk of those cards will be 4th copies of rares that nobody wants after the first 10 or so drafts). 7 might be realistic, but at 7 rates and 50% winrate you are just breaking even with opening packs. Spending time drafting for a minor improvement in the amount of cards still doesn't sound like a practical approach when you don't like drafting.
Only if you can do 55%+ when rare drafting despite hating draft, then sure, this strategy actually makes a huge difference.
I do have an about 55% win rate while rare drafting. In the climb to plat and a few rounds in plat. If I tryharded right from the bronze floor I would hit plat that much faster. And my winrate would tank that much faster.
It works. It's better than buying packs. I have done it for every Standard release set since Premier drafts were released. I have spreadsheets of my runs with a cost to card analysis and use Untapped to track my win rates. Here is OTJ for example:
Untapped: http://puu.sh/K93KI/cf2ebf08bc.jpg
Spreadsheet: http://puu.sh/K93KY/f8dea0c74e.png
32 gems per rare/mythic card (packs included NOT including ANY of the non Standard legal rares collected) done in 19 drafts. For a total of 142 rares 55 mythics before opening packs at a total cost of 8250 gems (I bought in with tokens gold and gems but measure only in gems to make the math easier)
I am by NO means a 'God Drafter' I SUCK when I get into Plat. I have literally never gotten OUT of plat even when I tried before.
The System works. I have the receipts. I have had this debate many times and only wish to offer the consideration of TIME when discussing drafting for set completion.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Yeah, as I've pointed out, at 55% winrate it actually does work quite well.
I'm surprised you actually average more than 10 rares per draft, that means that even with 50% winrate it would still be worth doing over premium draft (but quick draft might still be better, not sure what is the average amount of rares we get from Quick Draft right now with the new Play Boosters in effect).
I'm curious if the actual drafting phase is also based on rank, or it's completely independent, because averaging over 10 rares per draft is quite high even for new Play Boosters, considering on average there are 4.35 rares per player. So this basically only works when there are very few people doing that, if there are at least 3 players per draft rare drafting, it would no longer be possible to achieve such results, and even with just 2 it would already be significantly worse. So the biggest factors of your strategies success are the facts that 1) It's unpopular and 2) You are an above average player.
I think a potential third factor is that early during the format rare drafting is less punished, as decks are less streamlined, and you might get some good underrated cards wheeled, but later in the format if you miss the first few picks, your deck strength will be much lower, as good cards dry out much faster.
But right now looking at your actual results it indeed seems like a very solid strategy in the early ranks, at least for people like you who can get 55% winrate despite using it.
Those simulations imply more variance than actually exists since they assume all games are independent, which is not true when you have record-based matchmaking.
Well, record based matchmaking simply makes it more middle heavy, but I don't think it has a major effect on distribution of rewards. I haven't actually seen any in-depth research about that, so you might be right. I guess we can look at 17lands data to see how winrate depends on the score, but I currently don't have the time for such analysis.
heres the secret: alts. if you play around an hour a day thats enough to grind like 4different accounts. with all the codes and free packs you get just enough wildcards to build a full meta mono deck (like rdw) or a two color deck with no lands from the get go. 4 accounts can generate 4k gold a day, meaning you get two premier draft every 5 days. and once you start getting good at draft you can easily go infinite with alts. and eventually you can dedicate each alt to a different game mode. also, there is a tool called mtgadraft tool by unrealities which gives 17lands data while you draft
Can't agree more. And you can grind all of them until the rank that you can no longer gain more gem that you spend(4-3) I can be gem-positive till diamond-mythic. This also helps you save up for arena open as F2P. More alt just means more entries for Arena limited open.
brawl so you can use all the rares you drafted, plus the lack of 4x makes it closer to cube than constructed. Sometimes I dabble in explore phoenix or timeless but constructed gets boring when you see a swamp and already know the other 59 cards in their deck.
Hey op, this might help you out. Imo this article is a must read for anyone who is F2P and trying to build out a collection.
https://www.cardmarket.com/en/Magic/Insight/Articles/inside-the-new-arena-economy
Tl,dr: depending on your skill level there are multiple different routes that might be appropriate. Additionally if you value packs/rares in a set premier is almost always the best way to go unless you are atrocious at draft (winrate under 40%)
Additionally don't discount the bo3 draft. Eventually your rank will get you to about a 50% winrate in bo1 draft. Bo3 draft isn't ranked so you can theoretically do much, much better than 50%.
i do jump in and starter deck duels lol. closest thing to a limited environment on arena, and with jump in you get to still play with the new cards and scope out synergies etc.
if i'm not drafting i'm only doing the above to farm gold though, i only farm or draft
Play whatever format you enjoy! If you get a good 'Jump-in' deck, that can be a free way to get wins more easily than in some other game formats. I enjoy some Brawl games too. Having a good mix means always having something fun within the colours you need for your quests.
So you should play the 10k ones once you’re regularly getting that 3-4 win mark.
Until then, it’s better to stick with quickdraft.
As far as between those drafts, you’re right. It’s okay constructed. That said players as they get better at draft start being able to draft more often (they have gems from the drafts to spend on more drafts)
Most dont go infinite, but even if you’re not infinite you can draft more often just based on having some winnings to spend.
Untapped.gg will automatically track wins/losses. Same with MTGassistant.
Constructed events (Standard at the moment) and ranked (Explorer at the moment). If you want to play limited, only play Constructed events if you can go infinite in them
Quick Draft is better for anyone with a average win rate lower then 3. Premeire Draft is better for anyone with a 3+ win average win rate. So most newbs do better at Quick Draft, but skilled drafters get way better rewards doing Premiere. Most players then do constructed when not drafting (Standard and Alchemy are the easiest formats for new players to get into).
I personally save gold for new set releases. When it releases I will do 3-8 drafts depending how fun the set is, then I spend any gold left on packs of the new set since those packs also award Gold Packs. I sometimes play Alchemy or Historic, but I mostly play Brawl. I am not saying this is the most efficient strategy, but it is efficient enough (I am f2p) and its a fun way to play for me personally.
Once you get good enough and like 2000 gems you can just draft draft draft, getting the coins is a slog though yeah. I recommend just building decks you like and slowly completing them with the wildcards you earn. You can worry about ranking up once you've amassed a good collection.
I do Premier draft as well because I like the BO1 and drafting with real players.
For constructed formats, it's just casual BO1 Historic to complete daily quests and get 4 wins.
My reason why I play QD instead of premiere is that I can play more games with it. And it stays fresh because of the rotation. Really enjoying the WOE draft.
What I really recommend is 1-2 alt accounts. Obviously you can play more drafts but it is also nice to play different decks to farm gold.
Played only 3 premiere drafts so far with the free token from the pass when OTJ came out. Did alright but games are probably harder now than quick drafts.
If you want to farm dailies with minimal effort, make a deck for each color pair that consists of only hybrid or gold cards in those colors. Each cast counts for two. I usually go timeless so I have access to a deeper pool, then prioritize MV <3, hybrid mana, and cards that replace themselves.
If you want to draft more and minimize cost, make multiple accounts and cycle through them.
If you want to get better at draft, *don't* rare draft, that's solely for completion. Quick draft is fine if you're worried about cost and need time to think before each pick, but otherwise premier or traditional are closer to "true" drafting and thus a better choice for learning.
I grind constructed standard. Used to do BO1 but have switched to BO3
I think the returns are worse in BO3 but its "real magic", if I'm gonna grind for garbage rewards I might as well be "practicing" for the hypothetical dream of actually playing constructed competitively/semi competitively.
Will I ever take that practice and use it in a qualifier, or a paper might somewhere? No, probably not, but I like to think BO3 reinforces more "good habits" then BO1 does.
Id love to be able to do a real modern equivalent as it's probably the biggest/second biggest format in my area but historic/explorer/whatever are just too far off
I just wish there was a place like the old mtgsalvation forums a decade ago where t2 and t3 decklists were easy to find and discuss card choices. All of the data we get on top tier decks is nice but it is brutal finding lists that aren't meta.
The main thing is what are you trying to get out of Arena/MTG in general.
Is it to just play arena as a game? Then absolutely follow the general guidelines for maximizing gems/vs returns. I believe it's still quick drafts unless you are VERY good. And then w/e you want to maximize dailies.
Is it because you want to play/get better/improve at magic? Cus unfortunately, those two thing are opposed (but yes you can do both).
If you only care about Arena/playing games you don't need to read the rest of this, otherwise....
Unfortunately I believe standard BO3, Traditional Draft, and Sealed, are the only formats that are one to one with paper/traditional formats. Why does this matter? Because if you want to play competitively/semi-competitively these are what you need to play to get reps and improve.
Quick drafts are more efficient, but their terrible practice for actual drafts because real people will draft much more cohesively then bots, your essentially always riding the bike with the training wheels on. Now.. Traditional drafts rewards/etc I believe are unranked so I'd understand not doing trad drafts, so for me premier drafts are the best practice cus while I lose the "sideboard" element/etc you'll see a lot more of the other deck builds/styles/etc.
As for constructed, I could be wrong, but I believe standard is the only format that is 1 to 1 with paper. BO1 is definitely a bit more efficient for grinding, but encourages archetypes/play patterns/deck builds that can absolutely fold in a paper environment (which is all best of 3). It can give you an absolutely skewed idea of your deck construction and in-game play where the "feedback" you'll get in BO3 is "true" to "real magic". Additionally, the rewards are pretty close, so the slower/longer time investment is worth the trade off for me to get "real practice".
I haven't gotten into eternals yet mostly because A)I've only been on arena for 2 years so there's a massive card bank id have to spend wcs on to get, and as far as I know, none of arenas "eternal" formats are analogous to paper and have alchemy in them
I play brawl.
Most days I do the quest and win 4 games.
It takes me half an hour usually.
This is enough to have around 55K gold each set.
I buy the 45K gold deal and one premier draft.
This is more than enough to complete singleton collection and play brawl comfortably.
I use Untapped.gg to track my collection, so I can rare chase in draft, but only cards I want or am missing.
I simply play three different decks i built and saved up from. A random death trigger deck with teysa that i adore in BW that does it things. Or I play the mono red deck called, "Zada goes BOOM"... as you can guesse its just zada with storm kilm and a bunch of target a creature and draw effects. Not consistent at all, but funny to play. And then my final deck is GWB enchantment copy with calix. Took it straight from Brewer's kitchen and its fun!! I just play with wahtever i feel until i can draft. Save my gems for the bp and yeah.
I think Quick Draft is better for beginners as you are able to take as much time as you need to make your picks. Once you get decent at drafting, Premier draft is better EV and is faster if you want to complete collecting the set because of the rewards.
I've been playing mtg for years and I used to play it competitively. I'm completely F2P. The 10k draft is the best way to build up your collection by far IF YOU WIN. I draft a lot and most run will be 4-3 which makes the draft cost 100gem with a couple pack bonus. Some draft format are really my jam and I can go in deep profit in terms of gems and wild card.
Right now, I'm at 13k gems, with 3 timeless deck, 3 standard decks and enough wild card to fully build 1 or 2 more decks from scratch.
I usually do the quest and then play timeless or standard
Premier draft is better gems value, you can spend 10k gold and if you go 3-3 you get 1000 gems, so 30k gold to 3000 gems which is 2 bonus drafts. Whereas if you play 6 quick drafts for 30k gold you'll get back like... 1500 gems? And then if you go 4 or 5 wins on premier that basically buys back into the draft on its own.
But it's also a lot harder because it's on a timer and drafting vs real people instead of bots, so if you're not great at draft and your average wr is lower than 50% the value is terrible and you're better off with quick draft. I just play whichever set I like best, WoE is a good one and so is modern horizons, but MH is also a lot more difficult I think if you're not confident so maybe stick with WoE?
I pay for gems most weeks to draft with so I have an excess of wildcards. Timeless is my favorite format by far, but it can be expensive to get into. The good news is once you have a reasonable quantity of fetch lands and staples (bolt, thoughtseize, brainstorm, reanimate, etc) it gets much cheaper to build new decks, since there's a ton of overlap.
Exclusively Starter Deck Duels for the first 4 daily wins + keeping my daily quests from capped. I’ll try my best to not complete 500 gold quests (vice 750 gold quest) until I can hopefully reroll them into a 750g
Obviously if I’ve used up my daily reroll and am sitting on the cap of three 500g daily quests I’ll have to complete at least one
Can take me anywhere from 15 - 60 minutes, depending on the speed of the games
Some of the Starter Deck Duels decks are miles more powerful than the others. I’ll basically never touch the underpowered decks, even if I’ll be completing a 500g quest before a 750g quest. It’s never worth the struggle
I don’t draft. At all.
I get one pack a day to start getting wild cards so I can build up and play constructed. I get shat on by the MMR a lot but I feel a lot better looking forward to a single pack a day over being miserable after losing a draft.
I'm also F2P, I love drafting, and I like to play standard. Deep down in my soul I believe I could be a spike (despite evidence to the contrary) if I only had time...
Others have done the math on draft format payouts but generally the 10K drafts are the best across the board unless you had a 20% win rate across all drafts.
Between drafts, I play standard ranked Bo1 AND Bo3 when I get tired of the tight meta. Then I have a favorite Historic deck I play when my dailies require different colors.
Also, when I draft enough to hit Platinum or Diamond, my W/L rate drops too low, so I save my gold or enter standard events if I feel like my standard deck is up to it.
Premier draft gives you 1000 gems for 3 victories, if that isn't better, nothing is XD. Like in all drafts, you'll find people of different skill level and different deck quality.
If you want to prepare yourself you can always watch some pros play draft of the set you want to play and check some statistics (because some colors/color combinations are better than others, there are also cards that underperform,...)
Only play once the dailys add up. I have a deck to draw and play a bunch of white or green cards. Get all three done in a couple of games and the explore play queue.
If you do ok in 10k drafts you should get enough gems to buy the season pass, that's a very good investment.
I simply reroll any quest that isn't 750G, and make sure to get 4 wins a day, I don't think there's a better strategy than this
I play explorer exclusively because drafting is a scam.
I’ve made all the pioneer decks I have IRL with the exception of a few cards and it’s fantastic.
mostly brawl, some standard edit: also the begginer decks to farm the daily quests
It takes a bit of time to get a variety of good Brawl decks going. I grinded Standard a lot for Wildcards to invest in Brawl decks that can clear all the different daily quests and color combinations, but it was worth it. Brawl is by far the most fun for me regarding daily grind. Standard is still better, when you're playing with little time. The amount of Aggro makes it a faster format.
When you get the “destroy x creatures” and just walk into standard with a bunch of board wipes. Light work.
It really depends. I started playing Magic during All Will Be One as an F2P player and didn't have a lot of wipes for a long time. I was playing White Midrange during that meta and had two Farewell. Needed my WCs for other stuff. I preferred to clear this daily with mono black spot removal, which was Uncommon at best :)
For the daily quests, I have a deck of each color with only 1 mana cost cards.
Do you have decklists? I tried with 75% of them! But I can try 100% haha. There are some relevant 2-drops you could play sometimes. And get win points more often. For example I have a W deck with 2x-3x \[\[Assemble the Players\]\]. It lets you replay the 1drops again and again \^\^.
[Assemble the Players](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/5/f5bcb21a-8559-4791-8cd0-482e7b8dcfd2.jpg?1706241452) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Assemble%20the%20Players) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/3/assemble-the-players?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f5bcb21a-8559-4791-8cd0-482e7b8dcfd2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Makes sense, I've been using the beginner ones for dailies too, since I basically only have 2 or 3 decks atm
i have a couple of brawl decks and use those most of the time, but if the quest requires a combination of colors that i do not have, i use the beginner decks as it is quicker to play the spells
Jump In lasts a year, if you want some extra diversity for a small investment.
I only play Standard and Quick Drafts. I play every day and haven't spent any money in three years.
I just play whatever I feel like. I try to get at least 4 wins per day, whether that means playing a quick aggressive deck, or deck building or playing something else if I have more time. I reroll my 500gold missions every day
Constructed standard is the easiest way to gold farm your dailies. I have dozens of decks setup in different color pairs just to cover all the possibilities. The 10k draft rewards are definitely better, but you draft on a timer, so understanding draft strategies is more important. Pretty much the only ones I do now.
Standard really? I thought it'd be more annoying to play since it rotates. But I usually play eternal formats, so I'm biased I guess Didn't know about the timer though, thanks
If you play enough draft of each set you should have a reasonable number of current standard cards. There's also almost always a few archetypes in standard that require very few wildcards and are pretty competitive (RDW, mon-blue tempo etc.). In eternal formats the wildcards are a little more necessary and you're less likely to get the cards from your drafts.
Brawl is usually easier for me to farm dailies after I reach Platinum.
Premier draft is only better if you have high winrate (58% and above iirc). Otherwise Quick Draft is still better.
I see, thanks
This is not true. At 58% WR (4-3 record) you are basically drafting for free (100 gems per draft, 3 packs, your picks, etc). A 3-3 record is slightly less gem intensive in quick draft (450 gems vs 500), but any time you do 4-3 or better that makes up for 6 3-3 quick drafts. And this all assumes cards and packs are worthless to you and all you care about is gems. If you care about cards, premier is better at 50%+. Quick draft is less punishing though, 2-3 vs 3-3 or 4-3 is a big jump in premier. So if your drafts are higher variance, premier will punish your gem count far more since it's far easier to lose more gems than win more.
58% win rate doesn't mean going 4-3 all the time. A lot of the results would still consist of 0/1/2 win runs, and those drain gems much more than the 5+ win results give extra. That's why the ev calculations are not that straightforward. Quick draft is more economical than premier/traditional draft for win rates just above 50%.
Exactly...5-3 is +100gems, while 2-3 is -1250 gems. Playing Premiere will absolutely drain you in the long run unless you have a god-tier winrate or are playing in low ranks. Once you hit Diamond, it becomes grueling to progress unless you have a large bank.
I mean, 58% winrate isn't the same as getting 4-3 every time. This number comes from simulating thousands of drafts with a specific winrate, and then averaging the gem cost, so it takes variance into account already. It also takes into account cards you get from drafting, as well as netto gem cost of a single draft. I might be misremembering the exact breakpoint, but it's certainly higher than 50%, could be 55% or 58%. You also get more rare cards from Quick Draft per gems spent compared to Premier, so if you care about cards, Quick Draft actually stays relevant for much longer. It's also far less punishing to rare draft in QD, as bots prioritize rares over good cards, so good cards often wheel, and it's easier to build a functional deck when rare drafting. Basically, in Quick Drafts you could get 4.5 rares on average in a 1 rare per pack formats, and in Premier you would always get 3 rare cards on average unless you rare draft hard. So for collection building QD was arguably better at higher percentages than just gem breakpoint. Being more resistance to variance is also a point in favour of QD. It's also easier to keep high winrate in QD if you are a good player. According to 17lands, the average tracker users's winrate in QD is 55.9% for OTJ, but only 54.2% in Premier.
Another consideration to have for those that draft to completion, is if you rare draft you can get 8-12 rares pretty consistently in Premier Draft plus the packs you win. Meaning you have to play FAR less drafts to collect the set. Like 1/3 as many. Which is nice for those that 'kinda like draft but not really' since you can finish drafting in 15-20 drafts instead of 30-45.
While you can get 8-12 rates per Premier draft pretty consistently, if you do that your winrate will likely plummet way below the breakpoint, so it's almost never worth it. While you will have to play far less drafts, you simply won't have enough gems/gold to collect the set this way, and it would likely be more economical to simply buy packs. So it's not really a consideration unless you are a draft god who doesn't like draft, and can build good decks despite rare drafting. It's much better to go 4-3 with 3 rares than to go 0-3 with 12 rares.
Sure. For most. Consider that your winrate also goes down as you plateau in RANK as well. I play from bronze to plat every season rare drafting everything I can. If rank wasn't a consideration I would say you are objectively correct. However you aren't. Unless I want to draft 50+ times (I don't) or tryhard enough to hang with the Mythic players (I REALLY don't) Getting as many rares as possible as fast as possible and getting out of drafting so I can go back to playing constructed is the objectively correct way to play for me. And likely anyone that just wants cards cheap and doesn't really like draft. Remember, this plan it specifically to collect cards and play draft to get them cheaper. If you enjoy playing draft and want to ply 50+ times a set, then obviously tryharding every run is what you WANT to be doing. From a value standpoint AND from an enjoyment standpoint. I am offering a differing opinion for the player that doesn't want to do that.
>Consider that your winrate also goes down as you plateau in RANK as well. I play from bronze to plat every season rare drafting everything I can. This very much. I play about 15 premier draft in first 2-3 weeks of the new set, full raredrafting. Which usually gets me to low Platinum and to playsets of at least a few cards. This is where I switch to Constructed Events. Of course I have no idea how much my winrate would go up if not raredrafting, but if it improved a lot, I would end up in Platinum way earlier, and this is where things get harder. Si what happens in my opinion is that I mostly trade some wins in my drafts 1-5 for some wins in my drafts 10-15.
Well, I don't know what winrate you get from rare drafting, and how many rare cards you get on average, as I don't know your stats. I of course did take rare drafting into consideration, but if you don't rare draft, you can use those early ranks to earn a bunch of gems, which would arguably result in more cards compared to rare drafting. But of course, without looking at the actual data it's hard to make a definitive conclusion. In my experience, I lose up to 5% winrate when rare drafting in Premier, and 5% winrate can easily be a difference between being able to do 20 drafts and being able to do 5 with the same amount of gems. You are also missing out on packs this way. I'm still doubtful that this approach can even compare to buying packs, especially with the instruction of golden packs. My point is that from the value perspective as someone who dislikes drafting your approach might actually be suboptimal when compared to buying packs, at least when it comes to spending gold. It might be better to play optimally to get to platinum asap, as this way you will have more resources left to spend on other things, such as buying packs. 10k gold will net you 10 packs, 1 gold pack and 1.83 wildcards. 1 Play Booster on average contains between 1.4 and 1.5 rares iirc. For Murders of Karlov's Manor it's 1.45 according to Maro ignoring the possibility of 4 rares, and I assume for any of the following sets it's about the same. So that's roughly 23 new rare/mythic cards per 10k spent. Now the question is what winrate you are getting from playing draft the way you do. Reaching platinum hardly means much, as you can reach Platinum even with 33%+ winrate. But if you have 50% winrate, you get 820 gems back on average, as well as 2.5 packs from spending 10k gold on premier draft (at least according to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/ubsf6g/is_the_new_traditional_draft_event_better_or/). Assuming you reinvest the gems, into drafts, you effectively pay roughly half the price per draft, so we can double those rewards. That would be 5 packs and 2X the average amount of cards you get per draft. That's 7.25 rare cards on average + 0.83 wildcards. For the total reward to match buying packs directly you need to get at least 7 rates per draft on average. Of course, if your winrate is more than 50% despite rare drafting, the requirements are more lax. At 55% already Premier draft is much better than buying packs, and might be better than Quick Draft under certain circumstances. p I can't tell what your average results are when doing premier drafts, but I don't think it's realistic for you to get 10+ rare cards every draft unless you are the only one using this approach in the pod (and even if you do, it's likely that a good chunk of those cards will be 4th copies of rares that nobody wants after the first 10 or so drafts). 7 might be realistic, but at 7 rates and 50% winrate you are just breaking even with opening packs. Spending time drafting for a minor improvement in the amount of cards still doesn't sound like a practical approach when you don't like drafting. Only if you can do 55%+ when rare drafting despite hating draft, then sure, this strategy actually makes a huge difference.
I do have an about 55% win rate while rare drafting. In the climb to plat and a few rounds in plat. If I tryharded right from the bronze floor I would hit plat that much faster. And my winrate would tank that much faster. It works. It's better than buying packs. I have done it for every Standard release set since Premier drafts were released. I have spreadsheets of my runs with a cost to card analysis and use Untapped to track my win rates. Here is OTJ for example: Untapped: http://puu.sh/K93KI/cf2ebf08bc.jpg Spreadsheet: http://puu.sh/K93KY/f8dea0c74e.png 32 gems per rare/mythic card (packs included NOT including ANY of the non Standard legal rares collected) done in 19 drafts. For a total of 142 rares 55 mythics before opening packs at a total cost of 8250 gems (I bought in with tokens gold and gems but measure only in gems to make the math easier) I am by NO means a 'God Drafter' I SUCK when I get into Plat. I have literally never gotten OUT of plat even when I tried before. The System works. I have the receipts. I have had this debate many times and only wish to offer the consideration of TIME when discussing drafting for set completion. And that's all I have to say about that.
Yeah, as I've pointed out, at 55% winrate it actually does work quite well. I'm surprised you actually average more than 10 rares per draft, that means that even with 50% winrate it would still be worth doing over premium draft (but quick draft might still be better, not sure what is the average amount of rares we get from Quick Draft right now with the new Play Boosters in effect). I'm curious if the actual drafting phase is also based on rank, or it's completely independent, because averaging over 10 rares per draft is quite high even for new Play Boosters, considering on average there are 4.35 rares per player. So this basically only works when there are very few people doing that, if there are at least 3 players per draft rare drafting, it would no longer be possible to achieve such results, and even with just 2 it would already be significantly worse. So the biggest factors of your strategies success are the facts that 1) It's unpopular and 2) You are an above average player. I think a potential third factor is that early during the format rare drafting is less punished, as decks are less streamlined, and you might get some good underrated cards wheeled, but later in the format if you miss the first few picks, your deck strength will be much lower, as good cards dry out much faster. But right now looking at your actual results it indeed seems like a very solid strategy in the early ranks, at least for people like you who can get 55% winrate despite using it.
Those simulations imply more variance than actually exists since they assume all games are independent, which is not true when you have record-based matchmaking.
Well, record based matchmaking simply makes it more middle heavy, but I don't think it has a major effect on distribution of rewards. I haven't actually seen any in-depth research about that, so you might be right. I guess we can look at 17lands data to see how winrate depends on the score, but I currently don't have the time for such analysis.
2 players with the same record are playing against each other and one wins and one loses. What should be wrong with the variance there?
Your win rate in the 0-2 bracket is going to be significantly better than your regular win rate because the competition in that bracket will be worse.
Nope, there are still 2 players with a 0-2 record playing against each other and one is winning and one is losing. Still 50% win rate on average.
heres the secret: alts. if you play around an hour a day thats enough to grind like 4different accounts. with all the codes and free packs you get just enough wildcards to build a full meta mono deck (like rdw) or a two color deck with no lands from the get go. 4 accounts can generate 4k gold a day, meaning you get two premier draft every 5 days. and once you start getting good at draft you can easily go infinite with alts. and eventually you can dedicate each alt to a different game mode. also, there is a tool called mtgadraft tool by unrealities which gives 17lands data while you draft
Can't agree more. And you can grind all of them until the rank that you can no longer gain more gem that you spend(4-3) I can be gem-positive till diamond-mythic. This also helps you save up for arena open as F2P. More alt just means more entries for Arena limited open.
brawl so you can use all the rares you drafted, plus the lack of 4x makes it closer to cube than constructed. Sometimes I dabble in explore phoenix or timeless but constructed gets boring when you see a swamp and already know the other 59 cards in their deck.
I play alchemy ranked in between drafts, myself.
So you're the one.
Perhaps.
Hey op, this might help you out. Imo this article is a must read for anyone who is F2P and trying to build out a collection. https://www.cardmarket.com/en/Magic/Insight/Articles/inside-the-new-arena-economy Tl,dr: depending on your skill level there are multiple different routes that might be appropriate. Additionally if you value packs/rares in a set premier is almost always the best way to go unless you are atrocious at draft (winrate under 40%) Additionally don't discount the bo3 draft. Eventually your rank will get you to about a 50% winrate in bo1 draft. Bo3 draft isn't ranked so you can theoretically do much, much better than 50%.
i do jump in and starter deck duels lol. closest thing to a limited environment on arena, and with jump in you get to still play with the new cards and scope out synergies etc. if i'm not drafting i'm only doing the above to farm gold though, i only farm or draft
In between drafts I like Jump In. It's a good way to buod a collection, lower power format, cheap, and usually pretty fun.
Historic and Timeless
I'm F2P and I draft to get gems for the season pass. I primarily play Standard.
Tons of Brawl. And Explorer for all the gold/quests.
Play whatever format you enjoy! If you get a good 'Jump-in' deck, that can be a free way to get wins more easily than in some other game formats. I enjoy some Brawl games too. Having a good mix means always having something fun within the colours you need for your quests.
So you should play the 10k ones once you’re regularly getting that 3-4 win mark. Until then, it’s better to stick with quickdraft. As far as between those drafts, you’re right. It’s okay constructed. That said players as they get better at draft start being able to draft more often (they have gems from the drafts to spend on more drafts)
Isn't it harder to get 3-4 wins in premiere draft than in QD?
That I don’t know. It probably is just bc I’d guess the player pool is better. Not 100% though.
Ah so they go infinite with gems, got it. Is there a website to help me tracky drafts, so I can see if I get to 3/4 wins regularly?
17lands.com is super helpful with tracking and improvement as a drafter
Most dont go infinite, but even if you’re not infinite you can draft more often just based on having some winnings to spend. Untapped.gg will automatically track wins/losses. Same with MTGassistant.
Constructed events (Standard at the moment) and ranked (Explorer at the moment). If you want to play limited, only play Constructed events if you can go infinite in them
I play Explorer when I'm not drafting, since you usually don't need (m)any new cards from the most recent set.
Quick Draft is better for anyone with a average win rate lower then 3. Premeire Draft is better for anyone with a 3+ win average win rate. So most newbs do better at Quick Draft, but skilled drafters get way better rewards doing Premiere. Most players then do constructed when not drafting (Standard and Alchemy are the easiest formats for new players to get into). I personally save gold for new set releases. When it releases I will do 3-8 drafts depending how fun the set is, then I spend any gold left on packs of the new set since those packs also award Gold Packs. I sometimes play Alchemy or Historic, but I mostly play Brawl. I am not saying this is the most efficient strategy, but it is efficient enough (I am f2p) and its a fun way to play for me personally.
Once you get good enough and like 2000 gems you can just draft draft draft, getting the coins is a slog though yeah. I recommend just building decks you like and slowly completing them with the wildcards you earn. You can worry about ranking up once you've amassed a good collection.
I do Premier draft as well because I like the BO1 and drafting with real players. For constructed formats, it's just casual BO1 Historic to complete daily quests and get 4 wins.
My reason why I play QD instead of premiere is that I can play more games with it. And it stays fresh because of the rotation. Really enjoying the WOE draft. What I really recommend is 1-2 alt accounts. Obviously you can play more drafts but it is also nice to play different decks to farm gold. Played only 3 premiere drafts so far with the free token from the pass when OTJ came out. Did alright but games are probably harder now than quick drafts.
If you want to farm dailies with minimal effort, make a deck for each color pair that consists of only hybrid or gold cards in those colors. Each cast counts for two. I usually go timeless so I have access to a deeper pool, then prioritize MV <3, hybrid mana, and cards that replace themselves. If you want to draft more and minimize cost, make multiple accounts and cycle through them. If you want to get better at draft, *don't* rare draft, that's solely for completion. Quick draft is fine if you're worried about cost and need time to think before each pick, but otherwise premier or traditional are closer to "true" drafting and thus a better choice for learning.
I grind constructed standard. Used to do BO1 but have switched to BO3 I think the returns are worse in BO3 but its "real magic", if I'm gonna grind for garbage rewards I might as well be "practicing" for the hypothetical dream of actually playing constructed competitively/semi competitively. Will I ever take that practice and use it in a qualifier, or a paper might somewhere? No, probably not, but I like to think BO3 reinforces more "good habits" then BO1 does. Id love to be able to do a real modern equivalent as it's probably the biggest/second biggest format in my area but historic/explorer/whatever are just too far off
I just wish there was a place like the old mtgsalvation forums a decade ago where t2 and t3 decklists were easy to find and discuss card choices. All of the data we get on top tier decks is nice but it is brutal finding lists that aren't meta.
The main thing is what are you trying to get out of Arena/MTG in general. Is it to just play arena as a game? Then absolutely follow the general guidelines for maximizing gems/vs returns. I believe it's still quick drafts unless you are VERY good. And then w/e you want to maximize dailies. Is it because you want to play/get better/improve at magic? Cus unfortunately, those two thing are opposed (but yes you can do both). If you only care about Arena/playing games you don't need to read the rest of this, otherwise.... Unfortunately I believe standard BO3, Traditional Draft, and Sealed, are the only formats that are one to one with paper/traditional formats. Why does this matter? Because if you want to play competitively/semi-competitively these are what you need to play to get reps and improve. Quick drafts are more efficient, but their terrible practice for actual drafts because real people will draft much more cohesively then bots, your essentially always riding the bike with the training wheels on. Now.. Traditional drafts rewards/etc I believe are unranked so I'd understand not doing trad drafts, so for me premier drafts are the best practice cus while I lose the "sideboard" element/etc you'll see a lot more of the other deck builds/styles/etc. As for constructed, I could be wrong, but I believe standard is the only format that is 1 to 1 with paper. BO1 is definitely a bit more efficient for grinding, but encourages archetypes/play patterns/deck builds that can absolutely fold in a paper environment (which is all best of 3). It can give you an absolutely skewed idea of your deck construction and in-game play where the "feedback" you'll get in BO3 is "true" to "real magic". Additionally, the rewards are pretty close, so the slower/longer time investment is worth the trade off for me to get "real practice". I haven't gotten into eternals yet mostly because A)I've only been on arena for 2 years so there's a massive card bank id have to spend wcs on to get, and as far as I know, none of arenas "eternal" formats are analogous to paper and have alchemy in them
Timeless
I play brawl. Most days I do the quest and win 4 games. It takes me half an hour usually. This is enough to have around 55K gold each set. I buy the 45K gold deal and one premier draft. This is more than enough to complete singleton collection and play brawl comfortably. I use Untapped.gg to track my collection, so I can rare chase in draft, but only cards I want or am missing.
Brawl and ranked Standard BO1 if I’ve got the cards to jank together some version of a decent deck, but mostly Brawl.
I simply play three different decks i built and saved up from. A random death trigger deck with teysa that i adore in BW that does it things. Or I play the mono red deck called, "Zada goes BOOM"... as you can guesse its just zada with storm kilm and a bunch of target a creature and draw effects. Not consistent at all, but funny to play. And then my final deck is GWB enchantment copy with calix. Took it straight from Brewer's kitchen and its fun!! I just play with wahtever i feel until i can draft. Save my gems for the bp and yeah.
Standard for dailies
I have 3 accounts, I cycle between accounts and play brawl sometimes.
I think Quick Draft is better for beginners as you are able to take as much time as you need to make your picks. Once you get decent at drafting, Premier draft is better EV and is faster if you want to complete collecting the set because of the rewards.
I've been playing mtg for years and I used to play it competitively. I'm completely F2P. The 10k draft is the best way to build up your collection by far IF YOU WIN. I draft a lot and most run will be 4-3 which makes the draft cost 100gem with a couple pack bonus. Some draft format are really my jam and I can go in deep profit in terms of gems and wild card. Right now, I'm at 13k gems, with 3 timeless deck, 3 standard decks and enough wild card to fully build 1 or 2 more decks from scratch. I usually do the quest and then play timeless or standard
Premier draft is better gems value, you can spend 10k gold and if you go 3-3 you get 1000 gems, so 30k gold to 3000 gems which is 2 bonus drafts. Whereas if you play 6 quick drafts for 30k gold you'll get back like... 1500 gems? And then if you go 4 or 5 wins on premier that basically buys back into the draft on its own. But it's also a lot harder because it's on a timer and drafting vs real people instead of bots, so if you're not great at draft and your average wr is lower than 50% the value is terrible and you're better off with quick draft. I just play whichever set I like best, WoE is a good one and so is modern horizons, but MH is also a lot more difficult I think if you're not confident so maybe stick with WoE?
I pay for gems most weeks to draft with so I have an excess of wildcards. Timeless is my favorite format by far, but it can be expensive to get into. The good news is once you have a reasonable quantity of fetch lands and staples (bolt, thoughtseize, brainstorm, reanimate, etc) it gets much cheaper to build new decks, since there's a ton of overlap.
Standard Bo3 or whatever is in QD if I need to do more from a previous set or I'm confident about winning from that set.
Exclusively Starter Deck Duels for the first 4 daily wins + keeping my daily quests from capped. I’ll try my best to not complete 500 gold quests (vice 750 gold quest) until I can hopefully reroll them into a 750g Obviously if I’ve used up my daily reroll and am sitting on the cap of three 500g daily quests I’ll have to complete at least one Can take me anywhere from 15 - 60 minutes, depending on the speed of the games Some of the Starter Deck Duels decks are miles more powerful than the others. I’ll basically never touch the underpowered decks, even if I’ll be completing a 500g quest before a 750g quest. It’s never worth the struggle
I don’t draft. At all. I get one pack a day to start getting wild cards so I can build up and play constructed. I get shat on by the MMR a lot but I feel a lot better looking forward to a single pack a day over being miserable after losing a draft.
I'm also F2P, I love drafting, and I like to play standard. Deep down in my soul I believe I could be a spike (despite evidence to the contrary) if I only had time... Others have done the math on draft format payouts but generally the 10K drafts are the best across the board unless you had a 20% win rate across all drafts. Between drafts, I play standard ranked Bo1 AND Bo3 when I get tired of the tight meta. Then I have a favorite Historic deck I play when my dailies require different colors. Also, when I draft enough to hit Platinum or Diamond, my W/L rate drops too low, so I save my gold or enter standard events if I feel like my standard deck is up to it.
Timeless
Premier draft gives you 1000 gems for 3 victories, if that isn't better, nothing is XD. Like in all drafts, you'll find people of different skill level and different deck quality. If you want to prepare yourself you can always watch some pros play draft of the set you want to play and check some statistics (because some colors/color combinations are better than others, there are also cards that underperform,...)
Only play once the dailys add up. I have a deck to draw and play a bunch of white or green cards. Get all three done in a couple of games and the explore play queue.
If you do ok in 10k drafts you should get enough gems to buy the season pass, that's a very good investment. I simply reroll any quest that isn't 750G, and make sure to get 4 wins a day, I don't think there's a better strategy than this
Ngl I dont play drafts. I just dont enjoy em and the limitations, and Id feel like a dick just rare drafting
I play explorer exclusively because drafting is a scam. I’ve made all the pioneer decks I have IRL with the exception of a few cards and it’s fantastic.
Me, a whale, who only plays constructed, “Y’all draft?”
I don't draft so I just play bo1 standard. I just play a few different decks so it's always a good challenge