Magic Numbers

New set, new data. How to position yourself well in a new format? Get the best available card evaluations as early as possible. And that is the aim of this episode. I will look at each color pair through the lens of the key card - surprising hits, reliable performars and shocking duds. Plenty of cards in each category will be discussed throughout the episode. Hopefully with this information you wi...

Set reviews are fun but what exasctly do they bring to the table? We grade cards, we speculate wildly and life moves on. This set review is different. We graded the cards before the set was released, and are coming back to our initial grading after the dust has settled. Me, and Alex, AKA Chord_o_Calls use this re-review to learn - what typpes of cards do we miss on? What trends we had during the g...

So, you have your Boros aggro and UW Eerie decks nailed to a fine detail? But perhaps recently the wins are not coming as easy as they did early season? Don't worry - I got you covered there. We will loook at the data of top 17Lands.com users and try to figure out what do they do differently to sustain a solid win rate throughout the format. And what strategies do they lean onto as the well with t...

Forcing, drafting the hard way, drafting with preferences are all different approaches to the draft part of Limited. What do the numbers tell us about those? Can you optimise your approach to draft through this and how? All in this weeks episode. Ping me for coaching. Join the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ , sign up for ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠...

One of the traps of looking at card win rates is simplifying a complex problem. Yes, a card can have a decent win rate but this may meaan many things. It can be universally good, but it can also be very good in some decks and not so in others. 17Lands.com users often will intuit it, play that card in good decks and skew the data towards a hight win rate. Today's episode loooks at each common and u...

New format, new learning curve, new possibilities. Today I look at the early data for DSK to try to figure out which cards are surprisingly good or worse than anticipated to give you that small edge in the new format. We go through some color pair data, looking at best commons, uncommons, cards that are sneakily good and cards that trap players into playing them when they probably shouldn't. Ping...

Draft decks, not cards, they say. Why do we review cards before the set release then? Our unique take on reviewing a new sets is to talk about the big picture and based on those thoughts and discussions, we just build decks. Sometimes to show what designers want us to do, sometimes to show we can defy their goals and build something more off-piste. And what a "we" do we have. Jason and R...

We say goodbye to BLB with revisiting our set review. This is an excercise in card evaluation and a farewell to all the critters in BLB. We look at what we got wrong before the set was released. Individual cards, color biases, what did we not get based on pure card evaluations. Chord_o_Calls is a limited streamer, coach, podcaster. You can find more of his excellent content at https://www.twitter....

This week we are going to look at BLB draft through the lens of Ekil, a prolific limited streamer specialising in BO3 drafts. What does he do differently that the rest to win 73% of his games and all that while playing exclusively on stream? We go through his draft habits, look at color preferences and try to figure out what makes him successful. You can find Ekil on Twitter and Twitch: https://x....

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...

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 bett...

Early data for every format is a bit of a minefield. On one hand it provides valuable information, on the other, can be misleading as it is largely based on the decks where players were still finding their footing in the new format. Join me in trying to decipher the data and find some cards that are obviously good or bad and some that may still be flying under the radar. I look at color and color...

My traditional set review. Which is also a star-studded panel discussion. But instead of looking at individual cards, we look at the decks. How do we see decks in the upcoming format, what cards are we hopeful and what synergies excited about. My guests are: Jason Ye, a Pro Tour star and one of the brains behind the Slogurk decks. But we all know that in reality, Jason only wants is to develop qui...

As with every set, at the end of the format me and Chord_o_Calls come back to the grades we gave each card in the format and see how far off were the grades from the card's actual performance. Did we nail our pre-release predictions? If not - where were the most mistakes? Were there any trends in colors, rarity? And with that information we try to speculate - what went wrong and what were righ...

MH3 has the most complicated land system in ages. A whooping 1/8th of all the cards you see during draft will be lands and that means they play an important role in the deck building process. Today I talk about how to make sure you have the right number of landscapes and what is the best way of sneaking Modal Double-Faced Cards (spells with land at the back of the card) into decks: should you repl...

In all areas of life we know that learning process is a progression. You start with simpler tasks and as you get better, take on more complicated ones building on your growing skillset. But Magic often has universal advice to all players without taking the individual level characteristics into account. Todays episode will try to at least identify some trends between different win rate groups of pl...

If you like a story with a good villain, MH3 delivers. Writhing Chrysalis is the best common we have seen by win rate and keep in mind - it all happens in a high power set. It will define the format - no doubt about it. Question is - what will you, the player do. Will you embrace it? Find a way to beat it? Or get angry with the format? If it is the latter - this content is not for you. However if...

This week I have an immense pleasure of hosting a real legend and, if Magic were a country, a national treasure, Paul Cheon. We look through the data of Paul to try to figure out what was essential to Paul's incredible win rate in OTJ. But wait, there's more. Anecdotes, stories, general insights, some thoughts on the upcoming format and many more. I had fun recording, but after that I real...

New set preview time. Me, Jason Ye and a newcomer Springbok7 look at the MH3 and try to predict how each color combination would look like. Instead of traditional card review, we look at the set's fundamentals and build a skeleton of a deck using realistic assumptions (some rares, some uncommons, lots of commons) for each color pair. Plus many bonuses that include: my cat stopping the stream d...

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 wan...

Some draft archetypes are relatively straightforward. This will naturally mean that the data related to those archetypes will be of high quality as people are playing right cards in those decks. But some color pairs turn out to be more elusive for Arena users. And this means that a lot of the data related to those archetypes is based on badly built decks, which will underestimate the color pair&#3...

Ikoria is coming back to Arena for a week. It is my favourite draft format of all the ones I played. The definition and a gold standard of a high synergy format, fun, unique in so many ways - I would not be myself if I didn’t preach its merits. And there are so many. Hopefully after listening to this bonus episode you can try it and learn that it has so much more to offer than the common knowledge...

This episode we look at the pack composition of OTJ play boosters. How many rares are there acually? What is the common frequency and how often do you get the cards from each of the many bonus sheets? On top of that - How should we approach pack one? Is sticking to one color a sustainable strategy? Should you diversify? And we look at the most attractive wheel targets, which also sheds some light...

Some strategies in draft are easier to reproduce at any skill level than others. In this episode I look at the cards, color pairs and strategies that top 17Lands.com users mastered but the general population still struggles with. What are the secrets of the best players? How do they build the decks others struggle with? Join the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ , sign up for ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠...

Early data from a draft format should be treated with caution, but also gives us some essential information on how to approach the format. I am talking about color power rankings, color pairs in the set to give you a general impression of the power level of each of them. But the real fun begins as I dive into each color pair and give you the best card, the hidden gem and the trap for each of the p...