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FRA is a banger. But a banger that is particularly hard to navigate. Cards can be contextually good, but there are some universal trends. Once you know them - the rest will become much easier. And hopefully by the end of this seminar you will have that baseline knowledge. And the true format discovery process can begin!
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195
New set is out soon so why don't you learn the ins and outs of what we think is important in out eccentric, deck-centric set review. Instead of looking at cards, we build decks and show you how we think they might work.
With me are The Rosemary Tea - check her awesome streams here. She is one of the most interesting drafters on the market, heavily invested in BO3 - as Garfield intended:
https://www.twitch.tv/therosemarytea
And Springbok. He is helping a community that organises old drafts online. XMage Draft Historical Society even has software to help playing the games. Miss drafting Tempest? Never tried Conflux? Check them out here:
https://discord.gg/tpdSfgdAMc
I started offering coaching on Metafy! Go to my profile to see what's on offer!
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode on YT:
194
This week I look into Pick Two draft. Since its introduction it has become a popular variant of Magic, both because of how fast it is, how little it costs and a relatively OK payout structure. So what does it change in drafting and what does having 12 packs in the pod change in the resulting decks?
I started offering coaching on Metafy! Go to my profile to see what's on offer!
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode on YT:
193
The format has stabilised after 2 weeks of turmoil and now is the time to actually look for solutions. And to do it, you better know what cards make which types of decks and which cards fool you into playing them. I look at all the cards in the set and see what are the best homes for them and while we do it, we discover the rules governing the Hobbit draft.
I started offering coaching on Metafy! Go to my profile to see what's on offer!
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode on YT:
192
New set, new rules of engagement. How to use the early draft data to understand the latest Magic expansion limited format? General set stats, color power, what makes each color pair tick and what are the traps to avoid. I started offering coaching on Metafy! Go to my profile to see what's on offer! Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
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191
Welcome to my eccentric, deck-centric set review. I look at some general stats for the new set, and fed with that information, set out to build functional draft deck and theory craft how the set might look like in the future. Am I right? Am I wrong - only time will tell. But I can guarantee you will get some nutritious food for thought in your own prep for the new format.
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190
Format is now well developed and the pick orders stopped evolving - so it is time to start solving a static environment. And what better way to do it that re-evaluation of every card in the set? I look at each card and see how it performs in every color combination where data is available.
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Episode #189
New format, new opportunities. We can start discovering the secrets of the MSH set, but you've got to start somewhere - and where better than with the early 17Lands data? We look at set statistics, color power levels, best cards at each rarity, key cards and biggest traps in each color pair. This should prepare you for your LGS and get you ready to explore the more subtle interactions and niche builds later in the format - in the end you can't do that without some solid fundamentals.
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Episode #188
You can get the BulkBox 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
Few days before the new set releases on Arena - why not see our vision of draft format before starting to draft? Our eccentric, deck-centric set review is back. We look at format stats, design vision and then instead of grading individual cards we propose 40 card decks skeletons to showcase what we see in each color pair. This time we have
Tresio
https://x.com/Tresio/
and Rosemary Tea
https://x.com/TheRosemaryTea/
And we are in for an interesting discussion. MSH looks like a jazz improvisation set rather thn paint-by-numbers drafting prevalent in the last few sets and I am all in for it. It is also a polar opposite of SOS - a creature and permanent centered design after instant and sorcery themed SOS so expect to re-evaluate your evaluations.
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Episode #187
You can get the BulkBox 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
This week we are trying something new. A journal club. And the reason for it is very simple - there are not that many Magic-related scientific papers out there. But last week Jess Williams and Zev Goldhaber-Gordon released a very interesting paper on opening hands, land percentages, mulliganing and mana flood.
I invited both authors to talk about their findings and what implications they have for Magic players. We will be talking about BO3 mulligan rates, links between player win rate and mulligan rate, causes for any trends in that. We will also look at a neat method of estimating optimal land composition, and impact of both mana screw and flood.
Jess and Zev are both PhD students with impressive scientific pedigree, but also Magic players with notable successes under their belts, so they combine the rigour needed for those sorts of analyses with understanding of the game.
You can follow them here:
Jess Williams:
https://x.com/mtg_jess
Zev Goldhaber-Gordon: https://bsky.app/profile/zergog.bsky.social
And - most importantly find the paper here in its simplified version (the link to the full paper can be found in there too):
https://medium.com/@mtg_jess/opening-hand-evaluation-in-limited-executive-summary-8360a819e2e6
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode on YT:
Episode #186
You can get the BulkBox 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
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