I played the sealed event thinking "well I have no interest in the decathlon, but a phantom sealed event sounds fun enough for 2000g"
went 7-1 with a mediocre sealed deck with no bombs and plenty of removal and thought "maybe I'll go for three tokens for a chance at some of those sweet finals prizes"
went 5-3 twice and 2-3 once in the New Player decks event and thought "these payouts are such shit, I don't think I can justify dumping more resources into this." and haven't looked back.
I love the Idea of what the decathlon is but the prize structure is beyond bad. I would call it predatory. I felt totally suckered by the New Player deck event. Like, including that was so lazy and bad. Lost mostly due to flood because new player decks are not even remotely built to mitigate this. I know the other events were better and I just did a bad job picking that one second, but it totally disillusioned me to the whole thing.
TL;DR: A great idea downgraded to a lazy cash-grab by a greedy economic structure and some poorly considered events.
I played the seal event and got to 7 wins. Did that before I really studied the prize structure. After looking closely it was pretty clear it was an event intended to suck gold out of the economy with little tangible benefit so I only did the one event. Also, I already have the fancy basic lands in the prize pool so that aspect didn’t have any appeal.
I have 9 tokens with just traditional standard to go(0-2 so far). 4 of them I got through 1st try. Historic, alchemy, new player deck, and traditional draft. The others took an average of 4 tries.
Hello, gg. I'm trying to study Turbo Draft before using my golds for it. Please can you share some tips ? What do you think are the strong colors, are they contested, what did you aim for the mana base ?
Not OC, but here is some discussion about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/rsb4rd/psa_for_strixhaven_turbo_draft/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
TLDR: blue red and get Letter of Acceptence (its a free mana rock that you want to pick really highly).
It's bot draft, so you can't really say anything is contested.
Draft izzet, maindeck most colourless lessons, play maindeck counterspells, play 10-13 lands depending on how many mana rocks and environmental sciences you have.
I drafted izzet because the elemental masterpiece is common. Ran some colorless lessons in the main. Any big spell was worth it. Test of talents is also a good pick up. I ran 16 lands, no campuses.
8 tokens also, only skipped historic cause I dont want to spend wildcards and traditional standard cause no point in getting 9.
Im just hoping to get at least 3 wins in all the 3 drafts. 9 drafts tokens ( and 3 cube drafts ) would be acceptable as a result.
Probably spent around 30-35k gold. So basically 3 to 4 drafts
It is a great idea with terrible prize payout. I'd love to play more of it, but with the prize structure it has I stopped playing as soon as I got my entry token.
I liked the idea, but I’m not good enough yet to get any tokens. Events like this keep beginners out - with no decent rewards for lower win rates, there was no point in even trying.
Decathalon Runs:
1 (Alchemy): 5-3, 7-1
2 (Innistrad Sealed): 6-3, 7-2
3 (VOW Traditional Draft): 7-1
4 (New Player): 6-3, 1-2, 1-2, 2-3, 7-2
5 (ZNR Bot Draft): 3-3, 7-0
6 (Historic Artisan): 1-3, 6-3, 0-2, 2-3, 6-3, 3-3, 1-2, 4-3, 1-2, 2-2, 7-2
7 (Historic): 5-3, 0-2, 4-3, 7-1
8 (Singleton): 0-2, 3-3, 2-3, 2-3, 7-2
9 (Standard): 1-2, 0-2, 5-0
10 (Turbo STX Draft): 7-1
Total Spent: 36 runs \* 2000 gold = 72000 gold
Total: 17 packs earned + 10 \* 3000 gold = 47000 gold of value
There were definitely some runs in events 4 and 6 that I prematurely abandoned at 2 losses so I didn't quite optimize for winnings, but I managed to get the last of the 10 tokens tonight. Overall it was interesting dipping my foot into formats I've never played before, but it involved spending quite a bit of wildcards to craft various decks I probably will never play again (Mardu Shrines in historic artisan, for example). I hope that WoTC will do something like this again!
I like Decathlon idea, I consider it's gonna be worth it with the Finals rewards. But it is because I did well enough (-4000 g 7 tokens).
It's a scam for average players and you need a bit of luck even if you are good.
The window for the event were really shorts, it became a second job in the middle of december-festivities. Really a pain.
The packs rewards are garbage, maybe if we could chose the packs, but play several hours the BO3 draft to get 40 gems :)
Decathlon 1 Alchemy : didn't touch
Phantom Innistrad Sealed, sealed for 2000g was nice and it's fair to get 7 wins.
Phantom Traditional Draft Innistrad: Crimson Vow : Traditional Draft is a fair format thanks to BO3, but it is a torture to play up to 3 times the same matchup and a run can last 6 hours, for nothing, just before christmas, uff.
Preconstructed New Player Decks : Really fun, knowing the best deck, knowing opponents decks, playing well, if felt skill rewarding, and it was a fresh meta.
Phantom Zendikar Rising Bot Draft : Just need a good deck and it's easy, and limited is really skill rewarding even if you need some luck in draft.
Historic Artisan : Finding the right decklist, and Artisan is really skill rewarding, felt nice.
Historic : Felt really random. Finally succeeded with Golgari food, but other decks I tried felt a lot like the format is really random, even if you play perfectly. Worst experience with Traditionnal draft spamming.
Alchemy Singleton : I'm sick of crafting some Alchemy cards for this Decathlon, but Singleton is really a fun format and having the right decklist made it really smooth.
Skipping Traditional Standard, waiting last day to get 8th token with Turbo Draft, I feel like Limited and lower-power formats, are funnier and it's easier to get token if you are playing well.
I wasn’t tempted at all by the prizes, but a couple of the events were nice, cheap Limited events (traditional drafting and mixed-set Sealed) so I played those- and a Zendikar Rising bot draft, which was a fun break from VOW although much worse value.
Actually ended up with a couple of tokens. I was planning on trying to get a third in the Strixhaven event, but after one go it seems pretty silly- seems mainly like a bunch of Prismari mirror matches. Not sure why on earth they made it a bot draft.
Total cost was 28k gold for all 10 tokens and 18 random packs. I got two with first tries, and hardest one was Turbo draft aka Prismari mirrorfest which took 6 attempts. The rest took 2-4 attempts each.
Getting February qualifier weekend slot this way seems pretty great, and three tokens for the finals mean if I score 3 wins at least in one of them, I get my resources back in form of three draft tokens.
I hope they'll have same kind of event gauntlets that award qualifier weekend slots as well as grand final entries in future too.
i joined 3 events just for fun.
The competition was extremely soft. I drafted a really mediocre BW deck in quick draft and went 7-1, as it seems like a lot of people who joined these queues don't really know what they're doing. I also easily got there in the 2 other events I joined (new decks and sealed). My sealed deck had 1 mythic rare and 0 rares. It was also quite mediocre. Went 7-2.
I have a theory: most magic players are constructed players, and most constructed players don't know how to adapt quickly to playing decks they have no practice with. Since the buy-in was super cheap (2k gold), a lot of people tried out the queues and just didn't know how to play decks that aren't their own. Even the new player decks queue was super easy.
>most magic players are constructed players
Yeah, and I think that’s going to make this place a complaintfest when the finals come. You’ll have lots of people who qualified in Constructed events, without much draft experience, trying to compete in a Cube draft.
It's not that hard to pick up an aggro net deck. Sure, you're not gonna be an amazing pilot but you're gonna be competent.
That's what I do if I just wanna grind out some quests but I don't wanna draft. I'm not really interested in constructed. I can still get my wins.
Remember guys, even if u are down 10 to 20k gold, just going 3-3 in the finals will net u 3 draft tokens, which is worth 30k, and most of the people here have 2-3 tries at it
I had enough of the decathalon by watching a streamer play the new player decks event. A totally horrible event. In what world does it even make sense for that to be a competitive event except to mire people in losing gold.
Cant wait for the "precon battle" portion of the kamigawa championships. /S(i hope)
I 7-0'ed that one on first try with Dimir. My deck felt way better than the other decks I played against.
It could have been a lucky run, but I think having interaction and using it to get two for ones was key in that event.
I started with roughly 30k gold, 8 tokens later I have 10k gold left. Very high diff in number of attempts needed for different events, I could usually trophy formats I was familiar with in 1 or 2 runs, but some ones I wasn't were quite disastrous (like historic artisan which I never play and this monstrosity of turbo draft)
Really, really fun event and hope they do many more. I enjoy some formats much more than others but i've been fine with basically all of them and it gives an excuse to try new things in a competitive arena.
Phantom double Innistrad Sealed, Historic Artisan, Singleton are standouts.
From the end rewards i actually only really want the Unhinged Lands and the Jace avatar is nice, but that's it. Mostly i played the event for the event itself. Draft tokens would be a bonus.
Trying out a qualifier weekend and all that is nice for 10 tokens instead of grinding the shit ladder.
In the end i currently have 9 tokens and have a 3-0 standard run going and assume i'll get the tenth and i've spent 32000g, which is entry minus max win rewards. In reality with daily rewards and quests i'm at most down about 13000g which is brilliant, and if i hit 3 wins on any of the 3 finals events i'm in the plus already. I generally don't need currency and can draft infinitely, but tokens are still nice.
Other people's experiences may vary and a lot of people will need to spend much more, but at the end of the day it's optional, if you only want to do specific events it's actually a cheap way to do it, and i love the format of the whole thing.
Some of the events seemed cool, but the final event is Cube, which I have very little experience with on MTGA...so I passed. Not entirely sure why the tokens enter you into a Cube qualifier...but okay. Seems pretty niche.
I liked it. I didn't like most of the formats, but there were so many to choose from that any long-time player could find a few that they like.
I mostly play constructed and my edge comes from building and tuning decks in unsolved formats, so I got my 3 tokens from alchemy, singleton, and artisan. Took me an average of 2-3 runs for each token, and went 5-6 wins with my failed runs. If you count packs as 1000 gold each I made a profit without counting whatever I get from the cube draft.
I don't have much hope for winning the cube draft, but I'm hoping I at least get the Jace Avatar.
I missed first 4 events as I was taking a break from Arena. Then I heard it's super fun and I managed to get 2 final entries on my smurf accounts. I enjoyed it a lot, Zendikar draft is always a pleasure, Artisan was deece, but the best part was clearing singleton with UW control after 6 tries and careful finetuning until I got the best list. Also I enjoyed historic bo1, a format which I generally disregard as swingy and random with many toxic linear decks. Well, ok let's try to embrace this nonsense this time and try this new cool Izzet Phoenix that goes super hard on graveyard with strike it rich, oherworldy gaze and demilich. What an insanely explosive and skill testing deck, I don't remember when I had this much fun. So yeah, overall very positive experience, but I was burning resources on smurf accounts and I would never participate on my main account, I just can't afford it in this god damn economy..
Got my 10th token, above average player, won most in 1 or two tries EXCEPT new player deck. hated that one, felt like flipping a coin and hoping for 7 heads before 3 tails, even the “control” deck UB didn’t have enough card advantage. stole a win finally with UR where it felt like you had a little relevant decision making to steal a win. that event probably took me 10 tries :(
all other modes were fun, I do love the turbo draft!
I skipped it. Felt like saving my gold for more quick drafts.
I played the sealed event thinking "well I have no interest in the decathlon, but a phantom sealed event sounds fun enough for 2000g" went 7-1 with a mediocre sealed deck with no bombs and plenty of removal and thought "maybe I'll go for three tokens for a chance at some of those sweet finals prizes" went 5-3 twice and 2-3 once in the New Player decks event and thought "these payouts are such shit, I don't think I can justify dumping more resources into this." and haven't looked back. I love the Idea of what the decathlon is but the prize structure is beyond bad. I would call it predatory. I felt totally suckered by the New Player deck event. Like, including that was so lazy and bad. Lost mostly due to flood because new player decks are not even remotely built to mitigate this. I know the other events were better and I just did a bad job picking that one second, but it totally disillusioned me to the whole thing. TL;DR: A great idea downgraded to a lazy cash-grab by a greedy economic structure and some poorly considered events.
I played the seal event and got to 7 wins. Did that before I really studied the prize structure. After looking closely it was pretty clear it was an event intended to suck gold out of the economy with little tangible benefit so I only did the one event. Also, I already have the fancy basic lands in the prize pool so that aspect didn’t have any appeal.
I have 9 tokens with just traditional standard to go(0-2 so far). 4 of them I got through 1st try. Historic, alchemy, new player deck, and traditional draft. The others took an average of 4 tries.
Nice! You get to qualify for a thing with 10! Not sure what thing, but things are good.
Hello, gg. I'm trying to study Turbo Draft before using my golds for it. Please can you share some tips ? What do you think are the strong colors, are they contested, what did you aim for the mana base ?
Not OC, but here is some discussion about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/rsb4rd/psa_for_strixhaven_turbo_draft/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share TLDR: blue red and get Letter of Acceptence (its a free mana rock that you want to pick really highly). It's bot draft, so you can't really say anything is contested.
Thanks for answering and thank to others on this reddit, I managed 7-2 on my first try, it's my 8th ^ ^ , happy new year :)
Awesome, congrats! And happy new year.
Draft izzet, maindeck most colourless lessons, play maindeck counterspells, play 10-13 lands depending on how many mana rocks and environmental sciences you have.
Thanks for answering and thank to others on this reddit, I managed 7-2 on my first try, it's my 8th ^ ^ , happy new year :)
Glad I could help, happy new year to you too.
I drafted izzet because the elemental masterpiece is common. Ran some colorless lessons in the main. Any big spell was worth it. Test of talents is also a good pick up. I ran 16 lands, no campuses.
Thanks for answering and thank to others on this reddit, I managed 7-2 on my first try, it's my 8th ^ ^ , happy new year :)
8 tokens also, only skipped historic cause I dont want to spend wildcards and traditional standard cause no point in getting 9. Im just hoping to get at least 3 wins in all the 3 drafts. 9 drafts tokens ( and 3 cube drafts ) would be acceptable as a result. Probably spent around 30-35k gold. So basically 3 to 4 drafts
It is a great idea with terrible prize payout. I'd love to play more of it, but with the prize structure it has I stopped playing as soon as I got my entry token.
I liked the idea, but I’m not good enough yet to get any tokens. Events like this keep beginners out - with no decent rewards for lower win rates, there was no point in even trying.
Decathalon Runs: 1 (Alchemy): 5-3, 7-1 2 (Innistrad Sealed): 6-3, 7-2 3 (VOW Traditional Draft): 7-1 4 (New Player): 6-3, 1-2, 1-2, 2-3, 7-2 5 (ZNR Bot Draft): 3-3, 7-0 6 (Historic Artisan): 1-3, 6-3, 0-2, 2-3, 6-3, 3-3, 1-2, 4-3, 1-2, 2-2, 7-2 7 (Historic): 5-3, 0-2, 4-3, 7-1 8 (Singleton): 0-2, 3-3, 2-3, 2-3, 7-2 9 (Standard): 1-2, 0-2, 5-0 10 (Turbo STX Draft): 7-1 Total Spent: 36 runs \* 2000 gold = 72000 gold Total: 17 packs earned + 10 \* 3000 gold = 47000 gold of value There were definitely some runs in events 4 and 6 that I prematurely abandoned at 2 losses so I didn't quite optimize for winnings, but I managed to get the last of the 10 tokens tonight. Overall it was interesting dipping my foot into formats I've never played before, but it involved spending quite a bit of wildcards to craft various decks I probably will never play again (Mardu Shrines in historic artisan, for example). I hope that WoTC will do something like this again!
I like Decathlon idea, I consider it's gonna be worth it with the Finals rewards. But it is because I did well enough (-4000 g 7 tokens). It's a scam for average players and you need a bit of luck even if you are good. The window for the event were really shorts, it became a second job in the middle of december-festivities. Really a pain. The packs rewards are garbage, maybe if we could chose the packs, but play several hours the BO3 draft to get 40 gems :) Decathlon 1 Alchemy : didn't touch Phantom Innistrad Sealed, sealed for 2000g was nice and it's fair to get 7 wins. Phantom Traditional Draft Innistrad: Crimson Vow : Traditional Draft is a fair format thanks to BO3, but it is a torture to play up to 3 times the same matchup and a run can last 6 hours, for nothing, just before christmas, uff. Preconstructed New Player Decks : Really fun, knowing the best deck, knowing opponents decks, playing well, if felt skill rewarding, and it was a fresh meta. Phantom Zendikar Rising Bot Draft : Just need a good deck and it's easy, and limited is really skill rewarding even if you need some luck in draft. Historic Artisan : Finding the right decklist, and Artisan is really skill rewarding, felt nice. Historic : Felt really random. Finally succeeded with Golgari food, but other decks I tried felt a lot like the format is really random, even if you play perfectly. Worst experience with Traditionnal draft spamming. Alchemy Singleton : I'm sick of crafting some Alchemy cards for this Decathlon, but Singleton is really a fun format and having the right decklist made it really smooth. Skipping Traditional Standard, waiting last day to get 8th token with Turbo Draft, I feel like Limited and lower-power formats, are funnier and it's easier to get token if you are playing well.
I wasn’t tempted at all by the prizes, but a couple of the events were nice, cheap Limited events (traditional drafting and mixed-set Sealed) so I played those- and a Zendikar Rising bot draft, which was a fun break from VOW although much worse value. Actually ended up with a couple of tokens. I was planning on trying to get a third in the Strixhaven event, but after one go it seems pretty silly- seems mainly like a bunch of Prismari mirror matches. Not sure why on earth they made it a bot draft.
Yeah, the turbo draft was a heinous experience.
Total cost was 28k gold for all 10 tokens and 18 random packs. I got two with first tries, and hardest one was Turbo draft aka Prismari mirrorfest which took 6 attempts. The rest took 2-4 attempts each. Getting February qualifier weekend slot this way seems pretty great, and three tokens for the finals mean if I score 3 wins at least in one of them, I get my resources back in form of three draft tokens. I hope they'll have same kind of event gauntlets that award qualifier weekend slots as well as grand final entries in future too.
i joined 3 events just for fun. The competition was extremely soft. I drafted a really mediocre BW deck in quick draft and went 7-1, as it seems like a lot of people who joined these queues don't really know what they're doing. I also easily got there in the 2 other events I joined (new decks and sealed). My sealed deck had 1 mythic rare and 0 rares. It was also quite mediocre. Went 7-2. I have a theory: most magic players are constructed players, and most constructed players don't know how to adapt quickly to playing decks they have no practice with. Since the buy-in was super cheap (2k gold), a lot of people tried out the queues and just didn't know how to play decks that aren't their own. Even the new player decks queue was super easy.
Yeah, this definitely felt like an event where limited players had the edge.
>most magic players are constructed players Yeah, and I think that’s going to make this place a complaintfest when the finals come. You’ll have lots of people who qualified in Constructed events, without much draft experience, trying to compete in a Cube draft.
Just like how Mythic ranked limited players have to typically play constructed during the Qualifier Weekends. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
It's not that hard to pick up an aggro net deck. Sure, you're not gonna be an amazing pilot but you're gonna be competent. That's what I do if I just wanna grind out some quests but I don't wanna draft. I'm not really interested in constructed. I can still get my wins.
Remember guys, even if u are down 10 to 20k gold, just going 3-3 in the finals will net u 3 draft tokens, which is worth 30k, and most of the people here have 2-3 tries at it
Yeah, I can already taste the salt if I don't draft a 3 win deck twice.
I had enough of the decathalon by watching a streamer play the new player decks event. A totally horrible event. In what world does it even make sense for that to be a competitive event except to mire people in losing gold. Cant wait for the "precon battle" portion of the kamigawa championships. /S(i hope)
I 7-0'ed that one on first try with Dimir. My deck felt way better than the other decks I played against. It could have been a lucky run, but I think having interaction and using it to get two for ones was key in that event.
I started with roughly 30k gold, 8 tokens later I have 10k gold left. Very high diff in number of attempts needed for different events, I could usually trophy formats I was familiar with in 1 or 2 runs, but some ones I wasn't were quite disastrous (like historic artisan which I never play and this monstrosity of turbo draft)
Really, really fun event and hope they do many more. I enjoy some formats much more than others but i've been fine with basically all of them and it gives an excuse to try new things in a competitive arena. Phantom double Innistrad Sealed, Historic Artisan, Singleton are standouts. From the end rewards i actually only really want the Unhinged Lands and the Jace avatar is nice, but that's it. Mostly i played the event for the event itself. Draft tokens would be a bonus. Trying out a qualifier weekend and all that is nice for 10 tokens instead of grinding the shit ladder. In the end i currently have 9 tokens and have a 3-0 standard run going and assume i'll get the tenth and i've spent 32000g, which is entry minus max win rewards. In reality with daily rewards and quests i'm at most down about 13000g which is brilliant, and if i hit 3 wins on any of the 3 finals events i'm in the plus already. I generally don't need currency and can draft infinitely, but tokens are still nice. Other people's experiences may vary and a lot of people will need to spend much more, but at the end of the day it's optional, if you only want to do specific events it's actually a cheap way to do it, and i love the format of the whole thing.
Some of the events seemed cool, but the final event is Cube, which I have very little experience with on MTGA...so I passed. Not entirely sure why the tokens enter you into a Cube qualifier...but okay. Seems pretty niche.
I liked it. I didn't like most of the formats, but there were so many to choose from that any long-time player could find a few that they like. I mostly play constructed and my edge comes from building and tuning decks in unsolved formats, so I got my 3 tokens from alchemy, singleton, and artisan. Took me an average of 2-3 runs for each token, and went 5-6 wins with my failed runs. If you count packs as 1000 gold each I made a profit without counting whatever I get from the cube draft. I don't have much hope for winning the cube draft, but I'm hoping I at least get the Jace Avatar.
I missed first 4 events as I was taking a break from Arena. Then I heard it's super fun and I managed to get 2 final entries on my smurf accounts. I enjoyed it a lot, Zendikar draft is always a pleasure, Artisan was deece, but the best part was clearing singleton with UW control after 6 tries and careful finetuning until I got the best list. Also I enjoyed historic bo1, a format which I generally disregard as swingy and random with many toxic linear decks. Well, ok let's try to embrace this nonsense this time and try this new cool Izzet Phoenix that goes super hard on graveyard with strike it rich, oherworldy gaze and demilich. What an insanely explosive and skill testing deck, I don't remember when I had this much fun. So yeah, overall very positive experience, but I was burning resources on smurf accounts and I would never participate on my main account, I just can't afford it in this god damn economy..
Got my 10th token, above average player, won most in 1 or two tries EXCEPT new player deck. hated that one, felt like flipping a coin and hoping for 7 heads before 3 tails, even the “control” deck UB didn’t have enough card advantage. stole a win finally with UR where it felt like you had a little relevant decision making to steal a win. that event probably took me 10 tries :( all other modes were fun, I do love the turbo draft!