Magic Numbers – Details, episodes & analysis

Today, a different episode. I started offering coaching, and to give you the insight into my method, I invited a Commander legend, Shivam. He told me he was struggling a bit with BLB draft (aren't we all) and wanted a second pair of eyes on his drafting. We go through his draft and try to identify where the potential problems lay.

As it is Shivam, plenty of anecdotes in between, but eventually we identify some problems with his lane and hopefully - his next drafts will be better for it.

You can find Shivam 24.7 on twitter - and it is a joy. A true oasis of positivity in the bitter world of Magic content creation. https://x.com/ghirapurigears

If you are interested in coaching - ping me a message. On Discord. On Twitter. You can find my socials on https://linktr.ee/sierkovitz

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Some players win more consistently. Surely there is more to that than pure luck? I look at the data of the top 17Lands.com users from Bloomburrow BO1 draft to try to see - what cards do they prioritise and what cards do they win more with. And try to speculate why that might be so.

But wait, there's more! Some cards are generically good and will make the vast majority of decks they are in better. Some cards are more niche. Bloomburrow being a typal synergy decks has some not-so-secret gold cards - cards that work in only one archetype, but not another. But it is not alway obvious. There are "false friends" among us. Some Racoons secretly want to be played with Mice. Some Bats are Lizards in disguise. I go through most commons and uncommons and using data try to figure out best homes from them. And worst homes for what it is worth.

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You can get the BulkBox at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

This week me and Alex, AKA Chord_o_Calls, come back to our prerelease predictions of the OTJ set. We evaluated every card then - but how did our predictions pan out?

This review is not design to pat ourselves on the back - we focus on mistakes and try to figure out why we made them. Do we have one-off issue or is there some systematic bias in how we assess the cards.

This episode is key if you want to improve in card evaluation - might be useful with MH3 on the horizon. Yes. I went there.

Alex is one of the leading limited brains on this planet. If you don't follow him or his podcast - Limited Level-Ups - you are missing out. Check out his YT to learn more!

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Today I will be looking at differences between how late you will see cards in Pack 1 and Pack 3 of the draft. We will look at the 17Lands ALSA measure to find those differences. What is ALSA you might ask? Well I will describe it in detail and even visualize it. Looking at differences between P1 and P3 may seem unnecessarily deep, but there are big differences between how we draft pack 1 and pack 3 and knowing how it works could give you a nice edge. Which cards are almost ungettable in P1 but will travel further in P3? Which cards are relatively easy to get in P1 but get trickier to get in P3? I also look at the impact of playing your first pick. Do you get a boost from playing it or not? Spoiler: the boost is tiny, which means that all the advantages of sticking to your first pick are eaten by the drawbacks of forcing the 1st pick when you should pivot. I will also look at the anatomy of draft decks. Do trophy decks differ from others in terms of playing the first picks? Maybe they play more later picks? Well, only one way to find out.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MVvuwXsNz6I

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

Today I look at the early evolution of the Kamigawa draft format. How did Arena users' evaluations change over the first two weeks? What does it mean to your drafting? I also try a new method of quantifying if a deck is aggro, midrange or controlling and look at the colour combinations from that perspective to see what do they "want" to achieve. And I shed some light on the Neon Dynasty worst-kept secret. Look at that clickbait. Ok, it is about the numbers behind Kami of Terrible Secrets, I can't bait.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqjTgIhPYnc

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This week I look at the differences between NEO Draft and Sealed - which cards do differently, which cards to consider more carefully while building your pool. Apart from that, I look at the Artifact-Enchantment spectrum within the format. What are the optimal numbers of those two types in your deck, are there any trends in relation to the number of cards of those types you play? Based on that I also look at some of the interesting cards in Kamigawa and try to provide numbers that will help you decide whether you should play them or not.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeOO8Lb8ukU

Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

Today we look into the early data from Kamigawa BO1 drafts. I try to explain how Ninjas can sneakily influence win rates of other cards and how to see just how naughty they have been with the data (spoiler: the effect is not that big but can lead you to thinking some cards are a bit better than they really are). I also look at which color pairs are open and speculate a bit on which colors can improve in the future. I also talk about each color pair, their MVPs and cards that have surprisingly high win rates. As always, all the data is courtesy of 17Lands.com

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeVw5PSGO84

You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This episode is a primer for the new set, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. I look at the vital statistics of the set, look at how the removal aligns with the creatures and compare it with some previous sets, to get you up to date on which conditional removal is particularly interesting and which can be potentially a dud. Then I go through all 10 archetypes, looking at cards that are key to them and trying to find some overlooked pockets of synergy and two card interactions.

You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

A bonus episode: audio of the Kamigawa Neon Dynasty skeleton discussion between myself, SLKerstens and JasonILTG. Cards to watch, combinations to test and a good general overview of what NEO has to offer. And it seems it has to offer a lot. 

VOD of the stream can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6et5lk3Mr0&feature=youtu.be

You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie

This week I look at the numbers behind Double Feature drafts on Arena based on 17Lands data. Which colour pairs do best, why splashing sometimes matters, what cards over and underperform, what are the top commons and uncommons for each colour and why. I also look at each colour pair and talk about best signpost, best cards and overachievers worth mentioning for (almost) each of them.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRLDgbY95RM

You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332 Ft: Mana Junkie