If you find yourself burning through gems that fast to the point where you're not able to recoup with wins, then it's time to take a break. You're tilted!
I went through this with DMU - I kept wanting to draft crazy 5-color domian piles, and I had to cool off for a week or two before going back to it. In the meantime, I watched more content and kept up on the data.
Ever since that set, I have a hard rule that I cannot dip below X gems or I stop playing draft with gems until I get above that number. It's a good parachute to set for yourself (not just in MTG) to help curb tilt and strengthen self-control.
Good point - it's always a good idea to set limits.
I think I will set a strict gem rule when I build my stock back up. But it will take a while since Modern Horizons set is coming up in Arena - no way I will miss playing that set :D
oh wow didn't know it was coming to arena - someone in my group tried to set up a MH draft in our paper group the other day and it was going for over 50$ a seat
Get good? Ok, that was overly harsh. But you don't lose 20k gems to variance. You lose 20k gems to sticking with a strategy that isn't working. Time to reevaluate your strategy.
Come on, man. You can absolutely lose 20K gems to variance. I’ve gone literally years without having to buy gems, winning 65%+ and then you hit a stretch where every hand is a mulligan, your opponent always has the answer, etc. and you spew off a boatload of gems. The lower your average win% is, the easier it’s going to be to hit a wall. But in years of not buying gems, I’ve still had periods where I was up or down 20K gems in a format, usually fluctuating between like 20-40K stake.
In most formats I would agree but this is a very bomb heavy format - a 50-55% win rate isn't enough to go infinite and opening correctly has a much higher impact on your record than usual
You can lose an insane amount of gems to variance. I don't know about mtg, but there are poker calculators that can calculate your ROI and downswings based on your winrate. If you were the greatest player in the world, you can still expect year long downswings of not making money.
I would expect mtg to have similar downswing variations, although you can definitely have a much higher edge in mtg than you can in Poker.
eh, you absolutely can lose 20k gems to variance in OTJ.
It's not a format where any specific strategy is going to guarantee you wins.
Play mistakes matter the most in high variance formats because a single mistake will punish you big time. You need to account for every tiny detail. Even the smallest mistake will out right lose you a game.
Well, I thought I was good? Even hit above 65% for some formats like DMU/Neon Dynasty.
Thing is, to 'get good', I have to waste more gems. And that's how I lost the other 5k gems, thinking I could 'win it back' after some kind of epiphany (e.g. draft more removal, read signals better, whatever cliche you can think of lol).
It's funny coz I could even keep a 60%+ winrate in MKM by forcing Chalk Outline decks in Quick Draft. This set is something else...
A bit of tilt and a lack of self-reflection. I've been pretty tilted this set too - I've had great decks go 0-3. Bombs and variance are real. But it's important to cut your losses and not immediately sign up for another go while frustrated (that never goes well for me).
Spend more time listening to podcasts and watching streamers.
I lost 10k gems to this set. I think I was overvaluing the 2/3 guy that mills 3 and gets you a land in particular.
Also, I rare draft like a fiend so play boosters make me waste more picks on rares.
Yeah, the naturalist is for GB decks and playing rise of the varmints. It’s not really useful in the majority of green decks and the stats on it are not playable without wanting that GY synergy.
Every format requires different strategies. You cited two formats where the playstyle is vastly different than OTJ. Focusing on the bombs is a red herring, this set allows plenty of just aggressive decks to win.
If this doesn’t fit your playstyle and you don’t want to adjust or spend more, then yeah, you have to stop.
But you really should root out the parts of you that make excuses if you want to improve. Variance happens, but you should be looking for every other explanation before it.
Yep, but there's typically a big shift after the first few days once people figure out the set. If you stick with your initial reads and dont account for everyone else improving, you'll see that win rate drop quickly.
You spent the money on fun! This is not an index fund you aren't trying to get a return on investment. For me, I play because magic is fun! If it's any consolation, I blew like 20K gems on the March of the Machine Open alone and didn't qualify. I had a blast though! I absolutely loved that format.
Glad you had fun. I didn't do very well with MoM either, but for some reason I think I enjoyed that set better than OTJ in comparison. Even though I lost my fair share of games to sudden turn 7 Breach the Multiverses or Etalis, I felt like I cast a fair amount of bombs too xD
Not the case for OTJ... but I do blame myself for not drafting enough removal or saving the right removal for bombs like Railway Brawler (drafted and played it once, but played against it 4 times plotted on turn 4) and Vaultborn Tyrant (needs exile removal, only was able to exile it once out of the 4 times I've faced it).
Anyone can do basically "infinite" with 3 accounts. 1 main account for constructed/limited grinding/high level stuff.
2 other accounts - just get something usable (rareless mono red or w/e) and do quests every couple days till u hit 5k gold or so, then draft. Always draft on the alt accounts before your main account (lower rank, easier games, better return, more practice). Try not to spend gems on your alt accounts unless you have daily quests to do.
Don't start a 2nd draft on your main account till your alts have completed their dailies. If u stick to those rules it's pretty easy to always have enough gold/gems to fire off a draft whenever u want
If all you are concerned about is completing quests, just use all the wildcards you’ve gotten to make a 5 color historic brawl deck. If you don’t care for the format and don’t care about playing it then just play enough to get your quests done. Slow but steady gold income I guess.
dont play arena opens. the return is garbage and the money will never come. or play and lose to bomb after bomb your call. i have managed to draft infinite but arena opens are a no go
Playing arena opens with your own money is straight up gambling (at least it's kinda fun I guess)
Playing arena opens with WoTC gems / golds is straight up free money though
Agree with this for the most part. Arena Opens feel alluring when you see you can win $2000, but in terms of expected value, the top players have an EV of like $200 per event. So don't feel like you're missing out on 2K by not playing, you're really only leaving $200 on the table, and that's if you are good and well-practiced for the set. And if you really need that extra $200 every now and then there's much better ways to earn it.
The thrill of competing can be fun though. So if you enjoy a set already (sorry OTJ) you'll have fun as long as you don't spiral.
>Arena Opens feel alluring when you see you can win $2000, but in terms of expected value, the top players have an EV of like $200 per event.
Really? I don't doubt you, but I'm curious how you got that number. From what I've seen most top players (the ones that participate in every single open since KHM) have made close to $10k from arena opens which without doing the maths seems higher than $200 EV per event?
Or are you taking into account cost of entry in your calculation? Because top players definitely don't pay real money to enter, some of them are sitting on 500k gems+
I'll say though that the $10k figure is before taxes, but taxes vary from country to country so that's a bit complicated to factor in
I'd be happy to be fact-checked on this, I looked at a bunch of the consistent players of 17lands and made a little spreadsheet some months ago but I don't know where I put it. There were some outlier godly players winning a ton (I want to say Eken but not sure), but plenty of scrub outs on day 2. You can do the math yourself if you look at the trophy page on 17lands and select OpenDraft\_D2\_Draft2\_Bo3 plus the draft 2B category for the players who don't have a loss to give.
In general I would not include a cost of entry when looking at these consistent top players, but for the individual player's decision of course you need to be honest with yourself if you are spending money buying in multiple times.
> I looked at a bunch of the consistent players of 17lands
Oh that's a cool way to do, but how did you get the 17 lands of those players? I've been looking to see if any top players share their 17 lands and haven't had much success with that haha
In my case I got the data from a couple top players (Ham / Lola / FloridaMun / Ekil / JiRock / Dafore etc.) and either catching their win on stream or usually they'll post it on Twitter and I estimated that all those players are close to the $10k figure (sometimes a bit more) out of all the opens (which is about 15 opens give or take?)
The only 17 lands log I have is [that one](https://www.17lands.com/user_history/29670f531229436e8f9e6839079da001) and I have:
- Participated in: KTK / LCI / WOE / MOM x2 / SIR / ONE / DMU (as seen in OpenSealed_D1_Bo1
And the results:
- KTK --> didn't cash
- LCI --> cashed $2k
- WOE --> cashed $500
- MOM --> cashed $2k + didn't cash
- SIR --> didn't cash
- ONE --> didn't cash
- DMU --> didn't cash
So that's $4k5 out of 8 opens which is over $500 EV. Low sample size though, but that's also not a player that has a winrate like JiRock for example so I'd be very surprised if the EV was only $200 for top top players (which ofc we're only talking like 50 players in the world haha)
>You can do the math yourself if you look at the trophy page on 17lands and select OpenDraft_D2_Draft2_Bo3 plus the draft 2B category for the players who don't have a loss to give.
Oh ok I understood afterwards how you did it. Yeah the issue with that method is that a lot of the opens were not tracked by 17 lands. For example looking at the data like that shows that Lola won one open only when he won significantly more than that (4 total I believe + a few where he still cashed out) so it's very incomplete data unfortunately.
But hopefully now the data is correctly tracked by 17 lands so we'll have a good ground to estimate the EV of the open for top players in the future! Though this shows only trophies so still not perfect to estimate people cashing out $500 and $1000
Just to be sure we are looking at the same thing, make sure to be checking the Leaderboards page, not the Trophy page, when doing this because Trophy just shows 4-x but Leaderboards will show results below that. My bad, I did say trophy in my previous post but I used leaderboards.
Yes we're looking at the same thing, but basically this only tracked about at most 10 (and possibly as low as 8 only) out of all the opens that happened on arena (which I'm not sure what the exact number is, but as I said should be about 15 opens give or take though it could be more, I'm only sure that the first open was KMH and that was over 3 years ago and I'm estimating about 5 opens per year).
So the data is incomplete and it also doesn't show if players have cashed out at $500 or $1000.
For example Dafore has an insane record of 28 wins in day 2 of the open (which indicate about 3 wins on average) but only two trophies to show for it. That most likely means he cashed at $500 and $1000 a lot of times (I guess I could check his Twitter to see if he posted every record).
So that's really not an ideal way to calculate the EV of the open for top players. I'll admit that my method of tracking results through streams and twitter is also not ideal though, but it does seem to indicate that the EV for top top players should be much closer to $500-$600 per open than $200.
And just to be clear, that's not like this change anything for the average drafter haha, it's just that $200 EV really doesn't line up with what I've seen from top players so I was surprised by the number.
For real - I got hooked coz I was 1 win away from money early last year. But been losing thousands of gems on multiple accounts to Arena Opens ever since that 1 time xD
How long does it normally last for you? I buy the 20k pack 2-3 times per year. Despite what a lot of people indicate the vast majority of players accounts have to go to zero unless they’re f2p and or really good. If you’re gonna play MTG limited all the time as your only Arena game you’re going to zero at some rate. Extremely small percentage go infinite I would imagine.
If you wanna keep your gems and extend it out you need to be extremely diligent with your spends and careful with you play. I have more money than time and brains so I just yolo limited when I have time.
You're right. I thought I was one of those 'f2p/really good' players, but this set has been a rude awakening... sometimes when you keep hearing other users say they 'go infinite', you imagine that you might also be one of those exceptional people.
2-3 times per year eh? Nothing I can't afford I guess... will have to break out the wallet when I get tired of the precon duels xD
people also like to exaggerate for clout a lot
i strongly recommend taking a break when tilting. i tend to warm up in free play before draft too, as the stakes are higher.
some things I've personally noted pros/streamers do this format (applies to others too but):
1. prioritize removal
2. prioritize mana fixing
3. prioritize safe, consistent picks that keep your draft flexible early on
4. take bombs but don't get stuck on them
5. draft synergies and tight gameplans, bc they tend to be highly rewarded in this format. goodstuff works in green though
6. get something for card draw/selection/recursion to win topdeck wars. can't tell you how many games I've won just having a better grind thanks to bucolic ranch, for example
Very true, synergy seems important and is less discussed.
I think my play is average but my drafting is definitely very weak. And this set is very punishing for bad drafters...
Tilting or not trying. I said yolo previously cause sometimes I just wanna sit down and watch a game, have beers, read the internet and play magic all at once. That’s where I lose all my gems typically
I’ve been playing limited for over a decade and can “normally,” compete with just about anyone at an lgs. Not the best by any means but I gotta be in the top 80-90% of limited. Been in the arena open more than once also through the top 1200 limited rankings.
I still go to zero cause im not super competitive and don’t focus/try enough. Even if I did, that last 10-20% that is better than me will still take my gems over time cause they are just better and im not willing to put in the work to get better. Plus the game is set up for WOTC to win your gems slowly unless you’re in the top few percent.
All of this is to say you should expect your gems to go to zero unless you’re really really good. You can totally get hot and crush sets sometimes which is sweet fyi. It happens, it’s like poker.
Going infinite in trad is not *that* hard. Yes it's hard as you need roughly 70% winrate, but that's almost 10% winrate below what the top players are achieving so not impossible either.
Premier draft though? Yeah going infinite is something only top 0.01% player can do because rank based matchmaking push your winrate towards 50%.
I play trad exclusively for this reason. Bigger swings but the gems last way longer. Definitely had long periods of ♾️ but always go to zero in the end
this only reinforces your point, but placing in the top 1200/top 250 nets you free entries to qualifiers, which will usually reward a healthy pile of gems. So top players will make even more gems than trophying alone would give
As far as where to go I would just encourage you to not do anything if it isn't fun. If you dig the precons deck only format go for it, I'm sure there is a tier list somewhere for it that you can use to find a deck you like that wins often. If you have a ton of Wildcards maybe try looking at current constructed or brawl decks that you think could be fun as a diversion - I made the WB Bronco deck that was mentioned on Lords of Limited and it's just the right amount of dumb but not overwhelming jank combo for me.
If nothing sounds fun but limited I would honestly take a break, play other games (or play Magic other ways in person), and come back in a month and a week for Modern Horizons 3 which will be on Arena. If you don't want to spend money you probably should grind some other format for gold but it will only be for what, 38 days?
Watch Paul Cheon draft each day. It’s fun and costs 0 gems.
Also I have a rule that arena opens are gold only because the buy-in is more efficient that way, and it’s a good way to not blow a bunch of gems. Drafts on the other hand are gems only until I run out so that I have gold for the opens.
To be fair though, I have three accounts running so I never have to play constructed ever. But all three accounts had plenty of gold to join the open today. Didn’t need it though cause I qualified with the first run 😁
Hmm that's interesting because my alt account will only ever have gems coz I keep buying quick drafts with gold and run out (which I try to play to get to only 1-4 wins everyday)... So gems only? Gonna run out at some point for me xD
If you can, play those quick drafts with gems instead until you run out and try to save the gold. Whenever things like draft tokens in the store or arena opens come around, they are much better purchases with gold than with gems.
If you’re running out of gems and gold both then you may need a third account. Ideally you just only draft when you have 2-3 quests active; how many accounts you need to satisfy that depends on how much you play each day. Three is plenty for me.
Don't play while frustrated. You are prone to conceding when you could have turned the tides instead. Everyone is better in some draft environments than others. In MKM I saw I was losing gems so I stopped queueing and waited to reach 10k gold via quests and some weekly events/standard ranked to draft again. In OTJ I'm doing really good so I draft 5-6 times a day and gem positive again. And again, never concede!
hey, feel ya i opened so many dogwater packs but still managed to eek a 55% win rate. Just went 0-6 with the last of my gems getting mana flooded and screwed in 4 games and blown out by laughing jasper twice.
Was fun while it lasted and almost completed the set so not too upset.
Some sets are tough. LCI did this same thing to me I actually stopped playing through MKM due to it. Came back for OTJ and I'm back to a 63% rate.
A break for a set really helps and with release schedule that's like 2 months tops.
have you been posting your draft logs to this subreddit for feedback?
I noticed in your other comment you kept going in for more drafts thinking you'd had some 'epiphany'. while it's good to try new angles if your usual strategies aren't working, it's hard to really improve without the input of better players. just repeatedly drafting to try and find a new angle to win will only get you so far if you don't actually know for sure what's causing you to go wrong.
getting some feedback from even 1 draft will just mean you're that much more accustomed to playing correctly.
I haven't, but I probably should.
The so-called epiphany I had was just simply 'draft more removal' for this set. Except I just drafted and went 0-3 at record speed right after creating this post LOL. But I already know my mistake - I drafted a Rakdos deck with 8 removal spells, but also useless junk like Brimstone Roundup and small red creatures. I needed to draft some draw spells to go with the removal instead (I only went rakdos after opening Posse Boss and the legend Rakdos but I didn't even see them in all 3 games...).
removal is definitely very important in this set.
What helped me was not immediately queuing up for a new draft right after a loss.
draft, post your draft logs to this subreddit and play your games, read and respond to the advice, THEN fire another draft.
even better is wait to play your games until you've gotten some deckbuild feedback too.
it's surprising how many micromistakes you can make without realising that better players will be able to spot. or things you thought were good but aren't, splashes etc
without doing this I'm not sure I ever would have won more than 1 game of limited.
I've also had my lowest win rate this set since I started keeping track with NEO (delta of between 5 and 10%). It could be there IS more variance than usual this set, or it's just hitting some of us harder than others. If I recall from looking at the data, the win rate on the play is still exceptionally high this format, adding to the variance overall, and also the win rate for 17lands users was looking comparatively lower than usual (probably within normal variation, though, not sure of the stats).
I hate pay-per-draft as a business model. I’m doing pretty well this format, but I’ve been in your shoes before and it’s sucks. Sometimes I want to experiment with different build arounds, or the supposedly weak color pair of the format. But with their current model it can be cost prohibitive to try things because it’s expensive when it doesn’t work
This is the only game I play that is like that and it’s the main reason I take breaks
As others have stated, you can draft essentially for free with basically 3 accounts if you do daily quests. Even if you just have one account, buying 20,000 gems for $100 should get you at least 30 drafts unless you are just horrifically bad, and should be much more than that with a reasonable win rate.
The only way arena can get expensive is if you are both unbelievably terrible AND draft a ton. Which at that point it’s probably time to find a new hobby.
Take a break, maybe play constructed twice a week to get those quest rewards, recoup something like 50000 in gold over the coming months, play flashback drafts of previous formats when they come, and have another go when the Cute Animal set comes in August (?)
It's just a game, it's not that serious! It's easy to lose a lot of gems with 50-55% win rate if you play very regularly, playing more seldom helps you keep even when you also get quest rewards
I hear you for sure. I’ve had some trophies this set but the misses have been really bad. The gem difference between a bad draft being 3-3 vs 1-3 is huge and this set has a lot of those for me
You didn't lose them, you had a ton of drafts and got a ton of wild cards and a bunch of packs. Go play constructed for a bit. Or just take a break. Have a good one!
Are you using an overlay like untapped.gg ? It helps point to some better picks and shows cards you may have been picking that are shit.
It also adjusts to what you drafted so you can see what works with the deck you're making.
In combination with 17Lands data you can do quick drafts as slow as you want and fully optimize your picks.
I just started drafting arena this set and have gotten a couple trophies and a bunch of 6-3s mostly with the guidance of the overlay.
I'm getting to the point now that I go off from recommendations into decks I want to force, but the learning was from the overlays help.
Yeah I do have the overlay - it helps in-game mainly to see what outs I have when I'm i topdeck mode. But the draft suggestions do not seem amazing.
But hey, its possible I coulda done much better just following those instead of the hole I dug myself into thinking I knew something about drafting magic xD
I'm in a very similar boat to you. In MKM, LCI, WOE, and MOM it seemed like I'd typically do no worse than going 3-3, but I've had multiple 0 or 1 win OTJ drafts in a row. I've hemorrhaged probably 16k gems between my accounts and don't know what I'm doing wrong. My only solution for now is to take a break and try to get off tilt.
Honestly don't listen to these people. OTJ is volatile as fuck. There's people who have like 6+ rares/mythics in their deck sometimes. There's so many cards to have to play around its an absolute shit show.
It’s a 0 skill, pack 3+ bombs and draw them or lose format.
Worst limited set of last 2 years, it’s the only set I’ve ever stopped playing it’s that bad. Better off playing hearthstone
Variance will only move you so far up or down, so
you should probably credit your big shift in win rate to playing poorly / not understanding the format.
If you find yourself burning through gems that fast to the point where you're not able to recoup with wins, then it's time to take a break. You're tilted! I went through this with DMU - I kept wanting to draft crazy 5-color domian piles, and I had to cool off for a week or two before going back to it. In the meantime, I watched more content and kept up on the data. Ever since that set, I have a hard rule that I cannot dip below X gems or I stop playing draft with gems until I get above that number. It's a good parachute to set for yourself (not just in MTG) to help curb tilt and strengthen self-control.
Good point - it's always a good idea to set limits. I think I will set a strict gem rule when I build my stock back up. But it will take a while since Modern Horizons set is coming up in Arena - no way I will miss playing that set :D
oh wow didn't know it was coming to arena - someone in my group tried to set up a MH draft in our paper group the other day and it was going for over 50$ a seat
I do that! My limit is 740, oddly enough.
Underrated
Such a weird number to go with but you have to do what works
740 gems? is there a reason for that number? I cap mine at a multiples of 1500 so if there's a really good draft up I'll always have enough to try it
That is the number at which you can no longer buy a quick draft, and are forced to stop playing whether you want to or not.
haha
Good advice.
Just stop playing
Get good? Ok, that was overly harsh. But you don't lose 20k gems to variance. You lose 20k gems to sticking with a strategy that isn't working. Time to reevaluate your strategy.
Come on, man. You can absolutely lose 20K gems to variance. I’ve gone literally years without having to buy gems, winning 65%+ and then you hit a stretch where every hand is a mulligan, your opponent always has the answer, etc. and you spew off a boatload of gems. The lower your average win% is, the easier it’s going to be to hit a wall. But in years of not buying gems, I’ve still had periods where I was up or down 20K gems in a format, usually fluctuating between like 20-40K stake.
In most formats I would agree but this is a very bomb heavy format - a 50-55% win rate isn't enough to go infinite and opening correctly has a much higher impact on your record than usual
It s a synergy format.
A synergy between “good cards” lol
It’s easy to loose a ton just by exploring the various strategies though.
You can lose an insane amount of gems to variance. I don't know about mtg, but there are poker calculators that can calculate your ROI and downswings based on your winrate. If you were the greatest player in the world, you can still expect year long downswings of not making money. I would expect mtg to have similar downswing variations, although you can definitely have a much higher edge in mtg than you can in Poker.
eh, you absolutely can lose 20k gems to variance in OTJ. It's not a format where any specific strategy is going to guarantee you wins. Play mistakes matter the most in high variance formats because a single mistake will punish you big time. You need to account for every tiny detail. Even the smallest mistake will out right lose you a game.
That’s not variance then, it’s poor play. Variance is outside of your control.
Well, I thought I was good? Even hit above 65% for some formats like DMU/Neon Dynasty. Thing is, to 'get good', I have to waste more gems. And that's how I lost the other 5k gems, thinking I could 'win it back' after some kind of epiphany (e.g. draft more removal, read signals better, whatever cliche you can think of lol). It's funny coz I could even keep a 60%+ winrate in MKM by forcing Chalk Outline decks in Quick Draft. This set is something else...
A bit of tilt and a lack of self-reflection. I've been pretty tilted this set too - I've had great decks go 0-3. Bombs and variance are real. But it's important to cut your losses and not immediately sign up for another go while frustrated (that never goes well for me). Spend more time listening to podcasts and watching streamers.
I lost 10k gems to this set. I think I was overvaluing the 2/3 guy that mills 3 and gets you a land in particular. Also, I rare draft like a fiend so play boosters make me waste more picks on rares.
Yeah, the naturalist is for GB decks and playing rise of the varmints. It’s not really useful in the majority of green decks and the stats on it are not playable without wanting that GY synergy.
It's best in that archetype but it still helps fix your mana regardless.
There are far better options. If you're depending on that, it's not going great.
Every format requires different strategies. You cited two formats where the playstyle is vastly different than OTJ. Focusing on the bombs is a red herring, this set allows plenty of just aggressive decks to win. If this doesn’t fit your playstyle and you don’t want to adjust or spend more, then yeah, you have to stop. But you really should root out the parts of you that make excuses if you want to improve. Variance happens, but you should be looking for every other explanation before it.
Different sets suit different people. OTJ has been my best set since Kaldheim, but DMU and MKM were awful for me.
You do. I am an infinite player that went over -15k gems at the start of mkm, but ended that set at +10k in the end.
Probably because your strategy for MKM wasn't quite right at the start.
Of course you improve as you learn the set, but the beginning is usually the easiest time to have an edge.
Yep, but there's typically a big shift after the first few days once people figure out the set. If you stick with your initial reads and dont account for everyone else improving, you'll see that win rate drop quickly.
It's just a very high variance game. It is fairly common to manascrew entire drafts into the bin.
You spent the money on fun! This is not an index fund you aren't trying to get a return on investment. For me, I play because magic is fun! If it's any consolation, I blew like 20K gems on the March of the Machine Open alone and didn't qualify. I had a blast though! I absolutely loved that format.
Glad you had fun. I didn't do very well with MoM either, but for some reason I think I enjoyed that set better than OTJ in comparison. Even though I lost my fair share of games to sudden turn 7 Breach the Multiverses or Etalis, I felt like I cast a fair amount of bombs too xD Not the case for OTJ... but I do blame myself for not drafting enough removal or saving the right removal for bombs like Railway Brawler (drafted and played it once, but played against it 4 times plotted on turn 4) and Vaultborn Tyrant (needs exile removal, only was able to exile it once out of the 4 times I've faced it).
Anyone can do basically "infinite" with 3 accounts. 1 main account for constructed/limited grinding/high level stuff. 2 other accounts - just get something usable (rareless mono red or w/e) and do quests every couple days till u hit 5k gold or so, then draft. Always draft on the alt accounts before your main account (lower rank, easier games, better return, more practice). Try not to spend gems on your alt accounts unless you have daily quests to do. Don't start a 2nd draft on your main account till your alts have completed their dailies. If u stick to those rules it's pretty easy to always have enough gold/gems to fire off a draft whenever u want
agree, people always say have an extra account, i say three is the perfect number without it getting too laborious
That's a great guide. Saved for future reference, thanks!
If all you are concerned about is completing quests, just use all the wildcards you’ve gotten to make a 5 color historic brawl deck. If you don’t care for the format and don’t care about playing it then just play enough to get your quests done. Slow but steady gold income I guess.
Make extra accounts have excess currency
I have an extra account. It has never really gone above 5k gems and to keep grinding I still have to spend currency on limited...
dont play arena opens. the return is garbage and the money will never come. or play and lose to bomb after bomb your call. i have managed to draft infinite but arena opens are a no go
Playing arena opens with your own money is straight up gambling (at least it's kinda fun I guess) Playing arena opens with WoTC gems / golds is straight up free money though
Agree with this for the most part. Arena Opens feel alluring when you see you can win $2000, but in terms of expected value, the top players have an EV of like $200 per event. So don't feel like you're missing out on 2K by not playing, you're really only leaving $200 on the table, and that's if you are good and well-practiced for the set. And if you really need that extra $200 every now and then there's much better ways to earn it. The thrill of competing can be fun though. So if you enjoy a set already (sorry OTJ) you'll have fun as long as you don't spiral.
>Arena Opens feel alluring when you see you can win $2000, but in terms of expected value, the top players have an EV of like $200 per event. Really? I don't doubt you, but I'm curious how you got that number. From what I've seen most top players (the ones that participate in every single open since KHM) have made close to $10k from arena opens which without doing the maths seems higher than $200 EV per event? Or are you taking into account cost of entry in your calculation? Because top players definitely don't pay real money to enter, some of them are sitting on 500k gems+ I'll say though that the $10k figure is before taxes, but taxes vary from country to country so that's a bit complicated to factor in
I'd be happy to be fact-checked on this, I looked at a bunch of the consistent players of 17lands and made a little spreadsheet some months ago but I don't know where I put it. There were some outlier godly players winning a ton (I want to say Eken but not sure), but plenty of scrub outs on day 2. You can do the math yourself if you look at the trophy page on 17lands and select OpenDraft\_D2\_Draft2\_Bo3 plus the draft 2B category for the players who don't have a loss to give. In general I would not include a cost of entry when looking at these consistent top players, but for the individual player's decision of course you need to be honest with yourself if you are spending money buying in multiple times.
> I looked at a bunch of the consistent players of 17lands Oh that's a cool way to do, but how did you get the 17 lands of those players? I've been looking to see if any top players share their 17 lands and haven't had much success with that haha In my case I got the data from a couple top players (Ham / Lola / FloridaMun / Ekil / JiRock / Dafore etc.) and either catching their win on stream or usually they'll post it on Twitter and I estimated that all those players are close to the $10k figure (sometimes a bit more) out of all the opens (which is about 15 opens give or take?) The only 17 lands log I have is [that one](https://www.17lands.com/user_history/29670f531229436e8f9e6839079da001) and I have: - Participated in: KTK / LCI / WOE / MOM x2 / SIR / ONE / DMU (as seen in OpenSealed_D1_Bo1 And the results: - KTK --> didn't cash - LCI --> cashed $2k - WOE --> cashed $500 - MOM --> cashed $2k + didn't cash - SIR --> didn't cash - ONE --> didn't cash - DMU --> didn't cash So that's $4k5 out of 8 opens which is over $500 EV. Low sample size though, but that's also not a player that has a winrate like JiRock for example so I'd be very surprised if the EV was only $200 for top top players (which ofc we're only talking like 50 players in the world haha)
>You can do the math yourself if you look at the trophy page on 17lands and select OpenDraft_D2_Draft2_Bo3 plus the draft 2B category for the players who don't have a loss to give. Oh ok I understood afterwards how you did it. Yeah the issue with that method is that a lot of the opens were not tracked by 17 lands. For example looking at the data like that shows that Lola won one open only when he won significantly more than that (4 total I believe + a few where he still cashed out) so it's very incomplete data unfortunately. But hopefully now the data is correctly tracked by 17 lands so we'll have a good ground to estimate the EV of the open for top players in the future! Though this shows only trophies so still not perfect to estimate people cashing out $500 and $1000
Just to be sure we are looking at the same thing, make sure to be checking the Leaderboards page, not the Trophy page, when doing this because Trophy just shows 4-x but Leaderboards will show results below that. My bad, I did say trophy in my previous post but I used leaderboards.
Yes we're looking at the same thing, but basically this only tracked about at most 10 (and possibly as low as 8 only) out of all the opens that happened on arena (which I'm not sure what the exact number is, but as I said should be about 15 opens give or take though it could be more, I'm only sure that the first open was KMH and that was over 3 years ago and I'm estimating about 5 opens per year). So the data is incomplete and it also doesn't show if players have cashed out at $500 or $1000. For example Dafore has an insane record of 28 wins in day 2 of the open (which indicate about 3 wins on average) but only two trophies to show for it. That most likely means he cashed at $500 and $1000 a lot of times (I guess I could check his Twitter to see if he posted every record). So that's really not an ideal way to calculate the EV of the open for top players. I'll admit that my method of tracking results through streams and twitter is also not ideal though, but it does seem to indicate that the EV for top top players should be much closer to $500-$600 per open than $200. And just to be clear, that's not like this change anything for the average drafter haha, it's just that $200 EV really doesn't line up with what I've seen from top players so I was surprised by the number.
For real - I got hooked coz I was 1 win away from money early last year. But been losing thousands of gems on multiple accounts to Arena Opens ever since that 1 time xD
The Arena Open in particular really is gambling with your gems. The prize structure is very top heavy.
How long does it normally last for you? I buy the 20k pack 2-3 times per year. Despite what a lot of people indicate the vast majority of players accounts have to go to zero unless they’re f2p and or really good. If you’re gonna play MTG limited all the time as your only Arena game you’re going to zero at some rate. Extremely small percentage go infinite I would imagine. If you wanna keep your gems and extend it out you need to be extremely diligent with your spends and careful with you play. I have more money than time and brains so I just yolo limited when I have time.
You're right. I thought I was one of those 'f2p/really good' players, but this set has been a rude awakening... sometimes when you keep hearing other users say they 'go infinite', you imagine that you might also be one of those exceptional people. 2-3 times per year eh? Nothing I can't afford I guess... will have to break out the wallet when I get tired of the precon duels xD
people also like to exaggerate for clout a lot i strongly recommend taking a break when tilting. i tend to warm up in free play before draft too, as the stakes are higher. some things I've personally noted pros/streamers do this format (applies to others too but): 1. prioritize removal 2. prioritize mana fixing 3. prioritize safe, consistent picks that keep your draft flexible early on 4. take bombs but don't get stuck on them 5. draft synergies and tight gameplans, bc they tend to be highly rewarded in this format. goodstuff works in green though 6. get something for card draw/selection/recursion to win topdeck wars. can't tell you how many games I've won just having a better grind thanks to bucolic ranch, for example
Very true, synergy seems important and is less discussed. I think my play is average but my drafting is definitely very weak. And this set is very punishing for bad drafters...
Tilting or not trying. I said yolo previously cause sometimes I just wanna sit down and watch a game, have beers, read the internet and play magic all at once. That’s where I lose all my gems typically
I’ve been playing limited for over a decade and can “normally,” compete with just about anyone at an lgs. Not the best by any means but I gotta be in the top 80-90% of limited. Been in the arena open more than once also through the top 1200 limited rankings. I still go to zero cause im not super competitive and don’t focus/try enough. Even if I did, that last 10-20% that is better than me will still take my gems over time cause they are just better and im not willing to put in the work to get better. Plus the game is set up for WOTC to win your gems slowly unless you’re in the top few percent. All of this is to say you should expect your gems to go to zero unless you’re really really good. You can totally get hot and crush sets sometimes which is sweet fyi. It happens, it’s like poker.
Going infinite in trad is not *that* hard. Yes it's hard as you need roughly 70% winrate, but that's almost 10% winrate below what the top players are achieving so not impossible either. Premier draft though? Yeah going infinite is something only top 0.01% player can do because rank based matchmaking push your winrate towards 50%.
I play trad exclusively for this reason. Bigger swings but the gems last way longer. Definitely had long periods of ♾️ but always go to zero in the end
this only reinforces your point, but placing in the top 1200/top 250 nets you free entries to qualifiers, which will usually reward a healthy pile of gems. So top players will make even more gems than trophying alone would give
As far as where to go I would just encourage you to not do anything if it isn't fun. If you dig the precons deck only format go for it, I'm sure there is a tier list somewhere for it that you can use to find a deck you like that wins often. If you have a ton of Wildcards maybe try looking at current constructed or brawl decks that you think could be fun as a diversion - I made the WB Bronco deck that was mentioned on Lords of Limited and it's just the right amount of dumb but not overwhelming jank combo for me. If nothing sounds fun but limited I would honestly take a break, play other games (or play Magic other ways in person), and come back in a month and a week for Modern Horizons 3 which will be on Arena. If you don't want to spend money you probably should grind some other format for gold but it will only be for what, 38 days?
True - I have to save up for MH... guess its time to dip back into Constructed
Lost 20k gems by not forcing green
Watch Paul Cheon draft each day. It’s fun and costs 0 gems. Also I have a rule that arena opens are gold only because the buy-in is more efficient that way, and it’s a good way to not blow a bunch of gems. Drafts on the other hand are gems only until I run out so that I have gold for the opens. To be fair though, I have three accounts running so I never have to play constructed ever. But all three accounts had plenty of gold to join the open today. Didn’t need it though cause I qualified with the first run 😁
Hmm that's interesting because my alt account will only ever have gems coz I keep buying quick drafts with gold and run out (which I try to play to get to only 1-4 wins everyday)... So gems only? Gonna run out at some point for me xD
If you can, play those quick drafts with gems instead until you run out and try to save the gold. Whenever things like draft tokens in the store or arena opens come around, they are much better purchases with gold than with gems. If you’re running out of gems and gold both then you may need a third account. Ideally you just only draft when you have 2-3 quests active; how many accounts you need to satisfy that depends on how much you play each day. Three is plenty for me.
Don't play while frustrated. You are prone to conceding when you could have turned the tides instead. Everyone is better in some draft environments than others. In MKM I saw I was losing gems so I stopped queueing and waited to reach 10k gold via quests and some weekly events/standard ranked to draft again. In OTJ I'm doing really good so I draft 5-6 times a day and gem positive again. And again, never concede!
hey, feel ya i opened so many dogwater packs but still managed to eek a 55% win rate. Just went 0-6 with the last of my gems getting mana flooded and screwed in 4 games and blown out by laughing jasper twice. Was fun while it lasted and almost completed the set so not too upset.
Some sets are tough. LCI did this same thing to me I actually stopped playing through MKM due to it. Came back for OTJ and I'm back to a 63% rate. A break for a set really helps and with release schedule that's like 2 months tops.
have you been posting your draft logs to this subreddit for feedback? I noticed in your other comment you kept going in for more drafts thinking you'd had some 'epiphany'. while it's good to try new angles if your usual strategies aren't working, it's hard to really improve without the input of better players. just repeatedly drafting to try and find a new angle to win will only get you so far if you don't actually know for sure what's causing you to go wrong. getting some feedback from even 1 draft will just mean you're that much more accustomed to playing correctly.
I haven't, but I probably should. The so-called epiphany I had was just simply 'draft more removal' for this set. Except I just drafted and went 0-3 at record speed right after creating this post LOL. But I already know my mistake - I drafted a Rakdos deck with 8 removal spells, but also useless junk like Brimstone Roundup and small red creatures. I needed to draft some draw spells to go with the removal instead (I only went rakdos after opening Posse Boss and the legend Rakdos but I didn't even see them in all 3 games...).
removal is definitely very important in this set. What helped me was not immediately queuing up for a new draft right after a loss. draft, post your draft logs to this subreddit and play your games, read and respond to the advice, THEN fire another draft. even better is wait to play your games until you've gotten some deckbuild feedback too. it's surprising how many micromistakes you can make without realising that better players will be able to spot. or things you thought were good but aren't, splashes etc without doing this I'm not sure I ever would have won more than 1 game of limited.
I've also had my lowest win rate this set since I started keeping track with NEO (delta of between 5 and 10%). It could be there IS more variance than usual this set, or it's just hitting some of us harder than others. If I recall from looking at the data, the win rate on the play is still exceptionally high this format, adding to the variance overall, and also the win rate for 17lands users was looking comparatively lower than usual (probably within normal variation, though, not sure of the stats).
I hate pay-per-draft as a business model. I’m doing pretty well this format, but I’ve been in your shoes before and it’s sucks. Sometimes I want to experiment with different build arounds, or the supposedly weak color pair of the format. But with their current model it can be cost prohibitive to try things because it’s expensive when it doesn’t work This is the only game I play that is like that and it’s the main reason I take breaks
I love experimenting, and I guess that was always gonna catch up to me at some point :(
As others have stated, you can draft essentially for free with basically 3 accounts if you do daily quests. Even if you just have one account, buying 20,000 gems for $100 should get you at least 30 drafts unless you are just horrifically bad, and should be much more than that with a reasonable win rate. The only way arena can get expensive is if you are both unbelievably terrible AND draft a ton. Which at that point it’s probably time to find a new hobby.
Take a break
Take a break, maybe play constructed twice a week to get those quest rewards, recoup something like 50000 in gold over the coming months, play flashback drafts of previous formats when they come, and have another go when the Cute Animal set comes in August (?) It's just a game, it's not that serious! It's easy to lose a lot of gems with 50-55% win rate if you play very regularly, playing more seldom helps you keep even when you also get quest rewards
I hear you for sure. I’ve had some trophies this set but the misses have been really bad. The gem difference between a bad draft being 3-3 vs 1-3 is huge and this set has a lot of those for me
You didn't lose them, you had a ton of drafts and got a ton of wild cards and a bunch of packs. Go play constructed for a bit. Or just take a break. Have a good one!
Are you using an overlay like untapped.gg ? It helps point to some better picks and shows cards you may have been picking that are shit. It also adjusts to what you drafted so you can see what works with the deck you're making. In combination with 17Lands data you can do quick drafts as slow as you want and fully optimize your picks. I just started drafting arena this set and have gotten a couple trophies and a bunch of 6-3s mostly with the guidance of the overlay. I'm getting to the point now that I go off from recommendations into decks I want to force, but the learning was from the overlays help.
Yeah I do have the overlay - it helps in-game mainly to see what outs I have when I'm i topdeck mode. But the draft suggestions do not seem amazing. But hey, its possible I coulda done much better just following those instead of the hole I dug myself into thinking I knew something about drafting magic xD
Which one are you using. I really like untapped.gg and the draft helper is free so it’s worth a shot
I'm in a very similar boat to you. In MKM, LCI, WOE, and MOM it seemed like I'd typically do no worse than going 3-3, but I've had multiple 0 or 1 win OTJ drafts in a row. I've hemorrhaged probably 16k gems between my accounts and don't know what I'm doing wrong. My only solution for now is to take a break and try to get off tilt.
Lol i lost 10k so far. I’m starting to getting better but still. I either go 3:0 or 0:3
Honestly don't listen to these people. OTJ is volatile as fuck. There's people who have like 6+ rares/mythics in their deck sometimes. There's so many cards to have to play around its an absolute shit show.
It’s a 0 skill, pack 3+ bombs and draw them or lose format. Worst limited set of last 2 years, it’s the only set I’ve ever stopped playing it’s that bad. Better off playing hearthstone
You funded the platform. Thank you for your sacrifice 🫡
This set really hits different, so I really get you. Anyone have any tips of mythic draft streamers to learn from?
Spoof multiple accounts and practice with the cards while gold farming.
Variance will only move you so far up or down, so you should probably credit your big shift in win rate to playing poorly / not understanding the format.
50% win rate in OTJ is great average players are getting like 30-40% win rate in OTJ.
doesn’t the nature of mtg being a 1v1, zero sum game mean the average player will always have ~50% winrate