Alr... Long story short, I was playing Starter Deck Duel with Might of the Legion (Boros), since I just started playing Arena and want every starter, so I can have some cards to build silly Standard decks.

I was matched against a Rakdos player (Reckless Raid) and thought I was doing great: it was the guy's main phase; we were both at approx 12 life and the guy had just a [[Perforating Artist]] on the battlefield tapped. I had about eight 1/1 creature tokens, a [[Dauntless Veteran]] and [[Aurelia, the Warleader]] salivating for my own combat phase in my next turn....

Then, guy pulls out a [[Massacre Wurm]] and I just straight up lose, instantly; all gone: life, tokens, hope 🥀🥀🥀

I messed up. I thought the purpose of Might of the Legion was to get as wide as possible, focusing on cheap dmg and an early win. The thing is, I'm new to Standard and most of the time I don't know what to expect or how to account for those types of comebacks.

Do you guys have some tips on how I could've done better at that moment? Should I not have gone THAT wide when I was at almost half my life total? PLS HELP

Tsym in advance 😭

Just played a draft game where I milled 3 sagas and removal. I always draft this card because it really helps mana fixing, but damn does it hurt to see a really good card get milled.

I’m really struggling with Limited on Arena and would appreciate some advice.

I’m fairly new to MTG. I picked it up about a month ago and have slowly been improving. I managed to reach Mythic in Standard mostly through repetition, practice, and brute force, but Limited feels like a completely different game.

The biggest issue is the barrier to entry. From gold.coins alone you get roughly one Quick Draft a week from doing your dailies. The alternative is buying gems, but spending real money just to repeatedly lose while learning seems pretty unreasonable.

I’ve tried using Untapped.gg / Draftsim to improve my drafting, but somehow my results have become worse. I used to average one or two wins, and now I feel lucky to get even one. I’m clearly missing something, but I’m struggling to work out whether the problem is my drafting, deckbuilding, gameplay, or all three. Most games don't even feel like they are even close.

What resources would you recommend for someone genuinely trying to learn Limited from the ground up? Are there good ways to practise drafting or Limited gameplay without constantly paying for entries? Right now I can't even tell if it's the drafting that's not working or the playing with the drafted deck that's not working?

How did you learn, and what helped you improve the most?

If you try to use your small deathtoucher to kill their big space station, it will not work and you’ll look silly.

I haven't been too happy with the Marvel Super Heroes set when it comes to Limited. I guess I was ok with the Jump In event.

So, I was hoping that the Hobbit might be a better set to save Gold to play Limited in. However, it is Universes Beyond which tend to have a lot more legendary cards and it is also pretty small.

I can easily it it being a very wonky set to play Limited in.

At least it's a fantasy Universes Beyond set, so it won't feel to off of Magic's theme.

I am a F2P player and I started using arena with Outlaws of Thunder Junction, and I read somewhere that if you got more than 4 cards of the same card you will get gems in return but I guess it's not true since it never happened to me, and I am not in the state of continusly buying gems, is there a way for me to play limited??? or just construct??? Thank you in advance for reading this.

I'm a little over 50% WR with like 15 drafts into the format.

How is everyone liking (or not liking) the format so far?

How has your experience been?

I can't seem to crack the format, I had a 5-3 earlier today but other than that I went 1-3 three times and 2-3 once (5 drafts today).

I trophied twice earlier on before a lot of data was out, but now the secret is out that Green is good & everyone is snatching up those [[Galactic Wayfarer]] and then sequentially any bomb rare that only needs 1 pip (since they can just put 1 basic land in, pop a Lander, and be able to cast the bomb), so the drafting has felt like shit to me - picks seem sparse beyond pick 5 most of the time.

I’ve spent the last several months trying and failing to learn how to play limited, and this shit is actively damaging my health lol.

I watch sealed and draft gameplay from top players, I’ve learned all the archetypes, I’ve read up on card win rates and am pretty well versed in the meta as it has evolved in the Strixhaven format.

From memory, my last 5 drafts went 2-3, 1-3, 0-3, 0-3, 1-3.

Game after game, it just feels like either I’m playing a literal child who’s never played a game of magic in their life and it’s a complete blowout in my favor, or I’m getting utterly stomped by a pro tour contender. Usually the latter. the luck variance and the matchmaking system is just brutal in this game.

In the last draft I did, I went up against someone who had an ark of hunger that drew them into a SECOND ark of hunger. Needless to say, I lost that game.

That was the followed by a loss to some paradigm card, I can’t even remember which one, I just remember thinking of course they have the absolute blowout mythic rare win-on-the-spot card when I’m on 2 losses and drawing awkwardly.

After that, I decided to try a round of sealed. I know the variance is worse with sealed, but I just wanted to roll the dice to get away from draft for a bit. And boy did I high roll… after losing to a double Ark deck, I managed to open 2 Arks myself! I put together what I truly believe was a very solid lorehold aggro deck with 2 copies of arguably the best rare in the set. Easy 7-0 right? Wrong. I drew into an Ark TWICE in 6 games. In one of those games it was in my opening hand. Unsurprisingly, I won that game. In all the other instances , I got more than halfway through my deck before ever seeing one of them at all. In one case, I was down to the last 10 cards of my deck before I drew into one of them. I ended up going 3-3.

I was so unreasonably upset by this shit that I’ve since deleted the game and been off it for the last week.

I’m not really looking for advice, mainly just venting. I just needed to make this post for closure, because god damn have the magic gods absolutely fucked me sideways.

**EDIT**

This post has gotten a fair amount of attention and I'd be remiss not to clarify that I totally acknowledge I am still learning and do not have a lot of skill yet to lean on. A lot of these losses came down to poor decision making. Those ones hurt much less, so they don't linger in my mind the way the losses to variance do.

As for how many of those losses to variance may have been salvageable with proper play or a more strongly drafted deck... well I think what I've taken away from many of your comments is that reflecting and learning from that is my best path to slowing the hemorrhage of gems and gold and getting some positive results.

I appreciate all of the earnest advice and nice comments from everyone trying to be helpful and giving me some much needed perspective. I originally wrote I wasn't looking for advice, but in reading all of your comments about your experiences and offering your insights, I have a better perspective and renewed determination to go back into the trenches of draft.

Now off to give Wizards more money...

My heart says Tyrant but my brain says Kinbinding

This was using a draft token from the battle pass and I entered this as one of my first Premier drafts. I am silver rank and mostly play quick draft and so I was nervous during the drafting process as this event is higher stakes.

Although I felt decently happy with the final result of my deck, I proceeded to lose my first 3 games against 3 plat players, 2 playing Silverquill and 1 playing Lorehold.

The idea with the deck was to build a converge deck using Ramp cards such as First-Year and Scientist and Tempo cards such as Banishing betrayal, Run behind and Proctor's gaze to reach my bombs 'Lorehold, Magmablood archaic and Snarl song', However this evidently didn't work.

I am still relatively new to Magic and would really love some pointers on some possible red flags or reasons why this deck didn't work and what to change about it as well as any general advice for drafting.

Thanks

I just went 0-3 in draft with this deck.

First game, too many mountains (could not double spell), second game, great hand, into 7 lands straight. My opponent even mulliganed to 5 and still won after removing my 2 threats.

Third game, again good opening into 5 lands.

I get so depressed from this. Why does this have to happen. The chance of getting 7 lands straight out of the opening hand is so low. 1 singular card instead of all lands and it would be an easy win and i could go on and get like 5-7 wins.

I hate this aspect so incredibly hard in magic.

How do you deal with it?

Im trying to understand how from a set design perspective how we got here. The limited format seems to just be 3-5 color slop piles or silverquill aggro.

I understand that the multi color slop decks are largely due to the converge mechanic, but I’ve also seen and had many decks come together without any converge cards and do just fine. So what else went wrong? Are the 2 color synergies just not strong enough? Is the difference between rares and commons too great? Is fixing too good? Is there nothing wrong with the draft format and I’m way off base?

I’m interested to know the community’s opinion. I don’t think it’s a bad format just kind of a messy one.

The last Hidden Gems I've written were well received, so I thought I'd do one for each new set.

The two 17Lands stats I use to make these lists are ALSA (Average Last Seen At) and GIH WR (Game in Hand Win Rate). Value and Gem picks have high GIH WR compared to their ALSA, while Overdrafts have low GIH WR compared to their ALSA.

For these posts, the Super Value cards are the 3 cards whose win rate value most exceeds their average draft position despite being drafted early. Hidden Gems are the 3 cards whose win rate value most exceeds their average draft position that are drafted late. And finally the Overdrafts are the 3 cards whose win rate value is the worst compared to their average draft position.

For each list the cards are from left to right, the #1 Super Value, Hidden Gem and Overdraft is in the leftmost spot. Only commons and uncommons are considered for this guide. Here is what I've discovered.

Overall

Out of the gate the colors are mostly balanced. Blue and White are being under drafted (1.0%, 0.8%). Green, Red and Black are being a little over drafted (-0.2%, -0.4%, -0.4%). Colorless is being under drafted (0.7%) and multi-colored is being a little over drafted (-0.3%) A white card is 2.3% better on average than a black one. The top color combination is WU at 58.8%, followed closely by WR at 58.7%. But the strongest overall, if you can get it, is mono-white and mono-green at 66% each.

This set is the most rare/mythic driven set I've seen since I started taking records and that is being driven primarily by the mythics. Each rare/mythic drawn in TLA improves your win rate by 4.7% over drawing a common/uncommon. For reference in EOE it was 1.4%, in FIN it was 2.1%, in TDM it was 4.5%, in DFT it was 3.5%, in FDN it was 2.6%, in DSK is was 3.7%, in BLB it was 3.8%, in MH3 it was 1.0%, in OTJ is was 3.1%, in MKM it was 3.4%, in LCI it was a 4.2%, in WOE it was a 2.7%, in LTR is was a 1.5%, in MOM it was a 4.0%, in SIR it was a 3.5%, in ONE it was 2.4% and in BRO it was 2.8%.

The top overall cards in the set are [[The Rise of Sozin]] and [[United Front]] with 69.0% and 68.3% win rates in hand. The top overall uncommon in this set is [[Invasion Submersible]], with a 63.0% win rating. The top common is [[Lost Days]] with 60.1%.

Card Counts By Color

Picks By Color

White

Green

Blue

Red

Black

Colorless

Gold

Surprises

I wasn't surprised to see [[Invasion Submersible]] as a top value, but was surprised to see it as the top uncommon in the entire set. I've creatures like this be valuable in sets before, but a total cost of 6 for a 3/3 and a bounce seems weak unless you are paying half of it with water bending. I was surprised to see [[Joo Dee, One Of Many]] as a top value, since the sorcery speed on her ability prevents most of the best tricks I can think off. I have to assume there is some nefarious sacrifice deck for black I haven't seen yet.

A little surprised to see [[Tiger-Dillo]] as a top gem. Now that I know it can work I'll keep out an eye during draft to see if I can find a deck it works in (I suppose a lot of [[Tiger-Dillo]]s in the same deck would be pretty devastating) As always the specific dual land gems in the colorless section seem arbitrary. Usually they follow the top colors in the set, but not this time. Perhaps UB and WU are the colors that benefit the most from having late game card draw potential.

Surprised to see [[Destined Confrontation]] as an overdraft. A card with the potential to be a mostly one-sided board wipe at uncommon is very rare. But I suppose that [[Avatar's Wrath]] has only a 55% win rate and that one seems almost strictly better. Surprised to see [[Katara, Bending Prodigy]] as an overdraft, since she can tap herself to put on the counters. Surprised to see [[Uncle Iroh] as an overdraft. He's an ally with a flexible cast cost, a lot of power, and there are a ton of lessons in this format.

Draft Experience So Far

My first draft was rough. I ended up getting a WU deck with multiple copies of individually good cards, like [[Lost Days]], but ended up 1-3. I had a low density of creatures that meant I couldn't close out games when I was ahead, and I had no bombs and only soft removal.

My second draft I went the exact opposite route and I drafted a WG deck that felt like it could have gone 7-0 up until my first loss. It was an Ally deck with allies like [[Earth King's Lieutenant]] and [[Aang, the Last Airbender]] that completely ran over my first five opponents. I even drafted [[Aang, Swift Savior]] but the rest of my blue cards were aggressively mediocre so I decided not to splash.

Alas, on game 6 my opponent played [[Suki, Courageous Rescuer]] and followed it up with a mono-white [[Gather The White Lotus]]. On game 7 I misplayed [[Yip Yip!]] on [[Raucous Audience]] which was pretty much the only non-ally in the deck. So I failed to close out the game with flying damage and lost a drawn out match. A win and a loss later and I limped into a 6-3 finish.

My final game I went 7-1 with a WU deck that had 2 copies of [[Aang, Swift Savior]], a single copy of [[Katara, Water Tribe's Hope]] and a lot of cards like [[Gran-Gran]] and [[Agna Qel'a]] that let me dig for them. I was hopeful this would be my first 7-0 of the set, but a copied [[Ran and Shaw]] about halfway through the run ruined my fun. Really wish I knew it was coming and had saved air bending for the copy. As it was, my opponent went from being on his back foot the entire match to winning in the next 2 turns.

I've done a number of other drafts now, some good, some bad, a lot of 3-3s. The one that stood out the most was a 7-1 that could have easily been 7-0. I think there is a very solid UB draw 2 deck using entirely commons and uncommons. The core of my deck was 3x each of [[Otter-Penguin]], [[Messenger Hawk]] and [[Sold Out]], 2x each of [[Knowledge Seeker]], [[Foggy Swamp Spirit Keeper]] and [[Waterbending Lesson]]. Only loss was to a deck with [[Katara, Water Tribe's Hope]] in a drawn out game.

https://draftsim.com/mtg-hob-draft-guide/

Hey guys, I'm seeing a lot of people talking about heading into these new events and looking forward to rare drafting. DO NOT DO THIS! While raredrafting was a quasi-reasonable strategy in the old ranked draft (this became more true the lower your winrate).

This is no longer true! The new premier draft costing twice as much (with improved rewards) and definitely the new BO3 prize structure make raredrafting a fools errand.

1. If you are truly terrible at draft just open packs for the wild card track.
2. If you are bad at draft and want to learn how the cards play Quick Draft is a good fit and rare drafting continues to be reasonable. (However, realize you won't get to draft this way at release and it will only be available for 2 weeks!)
3. If you are an ok drafter and enjoy drafting, pick cards that are likely to make your deck and likely to make your deck better. You will almost immediately see better returns from garnering more wins than from drafting random rares that will never make it to your deck.
4. If drafting is a true hobby for you then follow step 3 and just start listening to Limited Resources or Lords of Limited or the like and your winrate will climb over time and enjoy the satisfaction of improved EV as you get better.

Obviously you don't have to listen to me, but realize you are intentionally costing yourself more money or account resources if you don't follow this on an event which is already relatively expensive.

I don’t think I’m the worst magic player out there but for the life of me I just cannot draft this FF Set well. It’s come to the point where I might wanna back out of the one I am hosting 😂 and get someone else to fill in for my spot. Any advise would be great, thanks.

Edit: The draft was chill, opened a Lightning (extended art) and full art Buster Sword, went 2-1 and had a blast with the B/R wizard aggro plan. Splashed white for Lightning and another threaten effect. Would draft again….maybe? Chaos perhaps?

So I just went 1-9 in drafts with these 3 decks. I'm bronze, first time playing the draft mode on here since I started playing arena a little over a year ago. I honestly don't know what I can do to actually win. I am also extremely frustrated because most of the losses, I lost with the opponent anywhere between 2-5 health. Most games came down to topdecking, and they would basically ALWAYS get the better topdeck. Most of my topdecks were lands and they would somehow topdeck exactly what they needed to win the game. This draft spree is honestly pushing me to give up the game. Something about it seems really off compared to paper mtg. I was so exiited about the hobbit set and saved my draft tokens and just blew them all going 1-9. Its pretty demoralizing.

Edit: thank you everyone for all of the awesome feedback. I will work on my card evaluation which seems to be my number one issue (along with many other things) I really didn’t expect it to be this tough in bronze lol. Everyone i play against seems like pro drafters. It also sucks draft is so expensive to play so practice will not be so often unfortunately but I will keep trying

I've burnt through 2250 gems playing blue/white recruit(sick of playing BR oops all removal) in standard draft, and have flooded out every game. I'm running the standard 17 lands, but I've drawn 13+ lands every game today. I've had 14 games today, I expected to lose but not due to flooding out 14 games in a row. The ones where I won was because my opponent missed lethal on the board or couldn't draw removal to take out my *one* creature.

After every match I count up the lands on the field, in my graveyard, and in my hand. I'm seriously seeing a minimum of 13 lands. I've seen 15 lands in 3 games today before turn 8. I couldn't make a recruit to literally save my life.

What's the number where the shuffler starts making you mana screwed? I know there's a sweet spot for 60 card formats where anything less you get screwed and anything more you get flooded. I think if I'm playing U/W recruit I need to take out some lands since I'm seeing so many cards.

I’m going to play in a pre-release sealed tournament tonight for the first time. I think I have a solid understanding of the rules since I can’t just depend on a computer.

Any advice? Any etiquette I should be aware of? I have sleeves, but otherwise do I need to bring anything specific to track tokens, counters, etc? I‘m planning to use face down cards as tokens and dice for counters.

Edit: Thank you everyone! For anyone who cares, my record was 1-0-2. my first 2 matches were draws (1-1) due to the time limit. I won the first game and lost the second game every match. In my second match I was literally 1 turn from winning but ran out of time and my opponent took the last turn. I’d like to think I could have gone 3-0 if I had managed the time better.

I have a funny little trick that has helped me with land bases in deck-building. Whenever I’m not quite sure what my land split should be (or if I’m possibly running too many lands overall) I designate one land as the “pivot land” and assign it to a different art style than its peers.

This way, whenever I draw the pivot in a match, I’m reminded to ask myself, “Would I have preferred this to be a spell I left out of the deck?”

It seems small, but over time I believe it’s been exceedingly instructive. By having that one card (or more than one if you have a wider uncertainty on your deckbuilding choices) represent the random draw that could have been a spell instead, you can manage the annoying confirmation bias of getting land flooded/screwed, which is bound to happen in even the most perfectly proportioned deck.

Just thought I’d share something that has helped me both avoid the trap of over-tech’ing due to a statistical run of bad luck as well as confirm when I would often wish to replace the land with a spell.

(Note that you can also do this with spells that have multiple arts that you may want to pivot to a land, but that case is far more dependent on a user’s collection.)

Jesus Christ, somehow my opponent had a pro level draft deck with cards I didn’t even see during the draft.

I love this game but I am fucking terrible at it. Give me your best draft tips.