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I agree with most things you said, but want to call out one of your points that I disagree with (and has been discussed many times before).

> If a common isn't playable in Limited, and it's not a constructed all-star like Spell Pierce, why print it in the first place? I don't get why we have to have overpowered commons either, why not keep the power curve flat?

You might enjoy MaRo's article from 15 years ago which explains why Wizards prints "bad" cards. He makes a lot of good points, but the most important one, I think, is that a flat power curve removes a lot of the enjoyable and skill-testing elements of the game by trivializing card evaluation (in both Limited and Constructed). If all the cards are approximately equal in power, it really doesn't matter all that much what you pick, and that would really sap what the fun from what I think is many people's favorite part of the game.

I do agree that they need to ere away from this in tribal focused sets like Ixalan, because while "bad" cards are not a problem on their own (Hour had plenty of them too, after all), they become problematic when the combination with an abundance of cards that are playable only within one niche archetype makes the level of playables too low for any given particular player in a pod.

Apart from that disagreement, though, I think you're spot on about most things. Thanks for taking the time to give such a thorough discussion!

OBS. Just set the output to a folder on your PC.

EDIT: This is actually the streaming software a bunch of people use to put their stuff on Twitch. I think I originally heard about it on one of Kenji's streams. I use it to record my drafts so that I can analyze them later or get feedback from friends.

Here you go, extracted from my draft sim calculator's sheet. The mana cost column is using a MTG2011 font I found on MTGSalvation's forums a while back.

Download Link

They posted the card image gallery earlier today. Gatherer usually doesn't get updated until quite a while after the set is fully spoiled.

Coverage is determined by Wizards. They have expanded their coverage teams and Marshall isn't the person they always go to, but he's scheduled to do coverage for 2 events in July: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/organized-play/grand-prix-coverage-through-july-2018-06-14

In at least one respect Ixalan draft was clearly designed to be more friendly to new players: complexity at common and uncommon.

In this article you'll get an idea of how WOTC views complexity in their limited set design. In short they believe the sets have been too complicated for years and this trend is something that could 'kill the game'. There's a whole Maro podcast on complexity here.

To paraphrase from that article, Hour of Devastation had too many mechanics and too much going on for new players. And that seems to be what they think about Kaladesh block and Shadows block as well.

So you have to expect going into Ixalan design a big priority was 'Keep it Simple'.

And they succeeded! Aggressive commons in previous sets would have some mechanic tied to attacking, like exert or the energy-spending of the Thriving cycle.

You can shorthand what they do with enough experience, but the complexity they add to the board state is still there. The text on the [[rhonas's stalwart]] you play on turn two is waiting all game to become sneakily relevant. Simply being able to keep track of what all these cards do and being able to track complex board states is a big advantage for the enfranchised player.

Wizards, through their marketing research, was hearing that this is the kind of experience that would make someone try booster draft once and never want to come back.

In Ixalan you still have the staple common 2/2s that attack as a 3/3 and the like, just without the decision-making. You don't decide which attacker to spend the energy on or whether to exert, you either have the tribal bonus or you don't.

And of course you have the subject of combat complexity, like how fewer instant-speed removal options makes the combat trick vs. combat trick meta easier to navigate.

You're not going to become an expert overnight and, believe it or not, you will need to "just draft (more)" to get better to put things into practice.

Honestly, you are looking a the right time just because of Marshall's latest article on the mothership: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/how-play-limited/dominaria-draft-primer-2018-04-23

The main thing is to go step by step and understand you are not going to be doing everything all at once. Eventually you will be able to instinctively (correctly) evaluate cards and understand what colours you are supposed to be in, but for now, just go slow and take it easy.

If you're looking for videos with more explaination on how people approach a draft, I recommend Ben Stark's as well Marshall's on CFB.

I took Frank Karsten's simulation code, and ran the numbers assuming I was casting Hydra as an 8 drop: https://repl.it/repls/FuzzyWatchfulFunction

If my interpretation of these results is correct, I was 84% to cast Hydra on turn 8 with 5 sources. Add in the London Mulligan and my card draw and I wouldn't be surprised if my real probability was closer to 90%. (Straight up adding an extra forest would've gotten me to 92%.)

Hydra was absolutely crucial to winning multiple of my matches, fwiw. Twice I would've lost without Shifting Ceratops. Does the inclusion of main-deckable creatures with protection from colors incentivize splashing? If there's an effect, it's probably very small.

If you liked Thinking, Fast and Slow, you will also enjoy The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Mindset: the New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, and Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt.

I know you explicitly asked for "not an app", but something like MTG Familiar has so many functions, that I think that maybe the storage price you pay is worth it ...

I can't help with concrete websites, 'though, Sorry.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Those were the specific instructions I received. Open 3 packs, build a 30 card-minimum deck. After my third loss I was given a fourth pack and opened that one. I was not super familiar with the format (never played it before), but looking it up right now, it seems to be how wizards intends us to play.

I created a very simple IFTTT recipe that will do this. https://ifttt.com/recipes/411686-publish-new-lr-to-r-lrcast

I have it disabled as it would post from my account but if one of the admins want to use it, please do.

Wrong.

>While you join the player pairing queue the same way as other Leagues, the paring for Draft Leagues will use a stricter pairing algorithm that only pairs you with an opponent who has exactly the same record as you. For instance, if your record is 1-1, your third match will be against a player whose record is also 1-1. This ensures matches are always competitive, which is important because Draft Leagues will not specifically be looking to pair you with the players you drafted with.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/magic-online-leagues-circle-complete-2016-08-24

People in the sports media are doing "title belt" articles, like this one that guesses who the best American athlete was from year to year: http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/17303175/best-american-athlete-championship-belt-best-athlete-sports-history-michael-jordan-michael-phelps-babe-ruth-tiger-woods-united-states

I'd love to see this for limited Magic.

Open Broadcaster Software. You need a fairly decent computer for it (a separate SSD helps a lot, so it can write to a different drive than MTGO is using), but I've done a few lets play series, so I had the prerequisite setup already. It'll take some tuning, MTGO is relatively hard to record, but it's possible for sure.

I've not read it myself, but my brother-in-law (who also enjoyed Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow recommended it, and it certainly seems to be in line with the others, and something with relevance to the LR mindset:

Everything is Obvious Once You Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails Us by Duncan J. Watts

The Art of War, by Sun Tzu?

I know that's kind of a melodramatic cliche, but considering it's largely a book about resource management, and Magic is a game of resource management, I find some value there.

Also, it's free and it's short.

I really enjoyed the episode. In fact, I listened to it twice, as the first time I was drafting and not as focused as I should have been.

I agree with the others that breaking the episode down into more clearly defined sections with an overview would have been helpful, as the podcast medium can make subjects like this difficult to understand. But I definitely feel like I've taken good points away from the episode.

The most interesting topic to me was how useful you found Blink. I'm definitely adding this to my reading list, but wonder if there are other resources that you would recommend? Here are a few resources that I can recommend that either directly speak about Magic or have been helpful in developing a strategic mindset, in case others feel the same way:

• Next Level Magic and Next Level Deckbuilding by Patrick Chapin
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
• The Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee
• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

In addition, a working knowledge of the OODA loop is very helpful in a game of Magic. Here's a resource:

OODA Loop

Yep, here's an article that mentions it: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/returning-home-2018-04-02

(Under the section "A Search Begins")

Maro comment: http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/173205826778/the-legendary-creature-appears-in-the-slot-of-its

For anyone interested in how this effects your chances of drawing a creature:

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/gd1swsyr9g

C is the number of creatures(remaining) in your library, N is the number of cards (remaining) in your library, f(C) is the probability your next draw will be a creature after one trigger, g(C) is the probability without a trigger.

Basically, yes, it slightly reduces your odds of drawing a creature next.

Also, this assumes that you're not at a point where you're revealing your entire library.

Just threw this together, so I may have screwed something up, but: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/c3l7rewpw9

X is number of Guildgates you're running, Y is what the card costs when you expect to have drawn enough lands to cast it. L is your total landcount.

Confusingly, this article (posted today) lists the changes, but the 'full card list' it links to has not been updated with the changes. Good one, Wizards!

I would not recommend buying a cheap machine to play MTGO. The machine you linked has 2 GB of RAM and I've seen MTGO eat more RAM than that just by itself. When I use my older Lenovo Yoga with 4 GB of RAM to play, I allow an additional 5 minutes of time per match because the interface eats a few seconds at every pass of priority. I expect that playing on this machine would be even worse.

Instead, I join the chorus of the thread and encourage you to check out Parallels or VirutalBox.

stuff like http://images1.mtggoldfish.com/uploads/397e16b6-6537-44af-aa71-2af187c16987/draftlog.png

If you can just zip 10-100 of them that would be great and upload that file somewhere like http://www.tinyupload.com/

Sorry LSV. Been a big fan for years and have always been impressed by your approach to things. This was a fail. A fail in choosing a sponsor and an even bigger fail as a response. You are basically making the argument, that has been used by exploitive capital forever, that altruism makes up for the bad. Which is exactly the point of the altruism...whitewash the exploitation. Here, we'll participate in the destruction of the environment, perpetuate the rich get richer, continue our grift (to the effect of billions and billions) but we also will donate some relatively small percentage back to make us look better. And to create an industry of philanthropy that avoids government oversight, and really just perpetuates the continued preeminence of the rich. I would HIGHLY encourage you to read

https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Take-All-Charade-Changing-ebook/dp/B077WZRBV2/ref=sr_1_3?crid=WEW7HWIYQHFH&dchild=1&keywords=anand+giridharadas&qid=1632506379&sprefix=anand%2Caps%2C259&sr=8-3 for a better look at how this works.

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Again, this was really disappointing. I will also be stopping my Patreon and stop listening. it's such a jarring experience now.

It's a much heavier, weirder read, but I strongly recommend the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. It's full of lots of interesting ideas, mostly about language and the mind, although it's not as focused as Thinking, Fast and Slow

Great episode, I would like to see more deep dive discussions such as this one.

For anyone who enjoyed the discussion, I would highly recommend the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. The entire book is about the various biases and logical fallacies that affect people's judgment.

Depends on what you mean by "skill". In one sense it is an unconscious internalization of complex rules. Check the Kahneman book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" for his experiments in trying to figure out intuitions!

<strong>Sushi Go</strong> - Amazon US - $12

<strong>Sushi Go Party</strong> - Amazon - $20

As I mentioned above, I far prefer the party version and think it's worth the $8 extra; it's more than twice the "content" whereas the original is always the same. I'd only recommend the original over "Party" if a super portable game (about the size of two standard decks of cards) is useful to you.

small notepad and pen/pencil for keeping track of life totals, and other notes (e.g. Bomb cards/removal your opponent uses in game 1, or sideboard notes)

I would really recommend a deck box. I like the Ultra-Pro Satin Tower. It should only run you 10$ or so, and has a nice bottom compartment for your dice/counters.

Sleeves. Whatever brand you want. Protect your cards, and makes it easier to shuffle your deck.

Water/Snacks. You will be there for a while, plan accordingly.

And have fun.

I'll be there starting Thursday, hoping to get another 60 Planeswalker Points to get a bye. Look for a guy in a Philadelphia Flyers hat.