Regarding habit # 3, now I'm beginning to realize why so many limited content creators select their pick, but also read off other notable cards in the pack. They rarely just snap pick a card and move on. They'll highlight it, then mention "oh there's also a lightning bolt" or "if this bomb card wasn't in this pack, cards b, c, and d are possible considerations". Just mentioning those alternative picks registers them in their minds for the subsequent wheel to give them a hint if a given color is open or not. Thank you for this!
Really good episode, these are all really helpful things to think about. For me the biggest ones are playing slower, and not starting another draft when tilted after having a trainwreck draft. The mental game is often the hardest to develop in magic, but knowing what you need to work on definitely helps a lot.
This might be one of your best videos to date, and you have some REALLY good videos. I took this one to heart and have already noticed differences in my drafting/playing both on Arena last night and at my LGS a few hours ago. Keep up the outstanding work :)
One thing people tend to leave out about 17 lands is that you can see trophy decks. It helps me to see what cards make up certain archetypes, and sometimes realize I’m missing certain cards in my worse versions of the deck.
Playing Too Fast & Chain-drafting enjoyer here, have been taking measures to improve on those points lately, so very nice to have it called out and with great notes and ideas on what to do about it.
Regarding habit #3 if you don't have the mental dexterity to remember the pack, you can also just use the screenshot button on your keyboard to take a snapshot of your P1P1 and then pull it up to compare P1P9.
@@bossfrgfair enough, but so far I have hundreds of hours of limited gameplay so far, so I'm fairly experienced I guess, and out of that I have done exactly 1 in paper Sealed event and 0 paper drafts haha, so for some people paper is a bit irrelevant haha.
Re: More January Ideas 1) I think it was maybe during the chat Q&A on the "Deep Dives on Combat Tricks" episode, you floated the idea of doing a "How to Build Midrange decks" video. This would be great! It could be a companion to the "How to Draft Control" video you made during the DMU cycle. Not only how to draft and deckbuild, but pilot these decks, as the ebb and flow of "beatdown" vs. "control" and balancing those two is critical in midrange. Perhaps a guest appearance from Mr. Jund himself, Reid Duke? 2) A deep dive on other types of cards like you did for Combat Tricks. Counterspells, ramp spells, card draw, equipment, etc. Perhaps each card type is not enough for its own full video, but a segment of a larger video - what makes a good one, a bad one, when and why to draft, how to best use in-game, etc. 3) A deep dive on how to attack and win on tempo/mana/turns. In your "Three Fundamental Resources" video, you mention that a deck can often leverage an advantage on one or two fronts in the resource war. What does it look like to draft, build and play a deck withwhich one is attempting to beat the opponent on the tempo front? How can a player craft situations and combinations of cards to create positive tempo exchanges AND THEN leverage those positive tempo exchanges for a win. And conversely, how to play AGAINST tempo, how to disrupt the plan of a tempo deck and beat back against it on one or both of the other two fronts.
The cuts, they run so deep! I wanted to float a few more card types, if you end up doing a video on it. -Hand disruption - I could see this being its own full video. What is good vs. not good hand disruption for limited. When and why to draft it. When to cut vs. include. What types of set infrastructure make hand disruption "good/viable" vs. not. How best to use in game. When is it good in aggro vs. control. Play vs. draw considerations. When the hand disruption effect gives you a choice, what are tips for making that choice as the disruptor. As the disruptee. I find this whole avenue of attack/slice of the color pie fascinating and almost no one talks about it, especially in a limited context. -Other "blue centric" types of spells - bounce to hand, bounce to library, base power/toughness X/Y until end of turn tricks like Majestic Metamorphosis, other "bluemoval" like tap down effects, Frogify effects (looking at you Unable to Scream), and of course, as I mentioned above, counterspells. You often mention that blue decks have the biggest gaps between Top Players and the aggregate on 17Lands, and I think all the draft/deck build and especially PLAY considerations with all these card types are what trips people up with blue, so I think a video focusing on that could be a MASSIVE level up for many players. Cheers!
Great stuff as always Alex! Evergreen videos are the cream of the crop, keep 'em coming! Re: video ideas for January - It would be great to go through each of the six "main" draft sets from 2024 and do a "What this set taught us" video. I miss these videos at the end of each set, as they were a great way to send off the set and put a nice button on them. I know you just did your "Props and Slops" of 2024, so perhaps this could function as a companion piece. Elaborate for five to ten minutes on an "evergreen" lesson or two from each set, be that from the draft, the deckbuilding or the gameplay. Perhaps couch it in a "When a set looks like this..." framework. Do that for six sets plus intro/outro/Patreon shout - boom, 30-60 minute video. It ties into more recent things but can also be an evergreen touchstone for years to come, beneficial to brand new, returning, and limited-grinder players all at once.
Revenge Drafting! Yes i have that problem. Also maybe play a couple non stakes games, get a couple wins, get the confidence back. If you lose more games then its definitely time for a break.
On the topic of #5, magic players are the world's best at motivated reasoning. Everybody's always got a reason they lost other than "I didn't play well enough." And the reason is pretty simple, it's just basic statistics. There are a _lot_ of random events in this game. The more different things you consider that could be unlucky, the more likely you are to have at least one of those things happen in any given game. So after any given loss, you can almost certainly pick one of: too many lands, too few lands, drew the dorky side of your deck, drew the expensive side of your deck, drew the enablers but not the action, didn't draw the removal, opponent had the removal when they needed it, didn't play first, bad matchup... If you assume there's a 10% chance of anything going so badly wrong that you just automatically lose, and you invent ten categories of thing, then it's a 65% chance of having "horrible luck" in any given game. But anything that happens 65% of the time is by definition _not_ bad luck. For this reason I only consider the two simplest and most obvious things to be truly outside my control, screw and flood. If I'm in the bottom 10% of either, then I'm happy telling myself that game was very likely unwinnable, but if I had lands and spells I should probably be putting up some resistance in most games. It becomes a little metagame unto itself, where I'm trying to hit high scores on my all time worst flood or screw. Current record is a 0.02% chance of a hand that bad. There's some cute dynamics at play there because in those extreme screw/flood games you tend to not live very long, so by getting super invested in these unwinnable games I'm getting lots of practice hanging on and playing to my outs. Not to mention the occasional game you win because your opponent gets terrible draws too sometimes. Nothing better than your opponent missing a land drop and scooping when you're staring at a hand of 5 lands. Strongly recommend trying it if you get frustrated with screw/flood. Just google up a hypergeometric calculator and plug your deck stats in to figure out exactly how unlucky you really were.
Screw/flood isn't only a matter of math and hypergeometric modeling can be a tool of self-deception. If you have access to effects like campus guide, evolving wilds, or any draw/scry/surveil in the draft, but don't take them, that was a manabase decision. If you do even one scry/surveil/fetch in a game, we're now talking about 'seeing' cards instead of drawing them. You can model it from there but I wouldn't trust a stranger to come to valid conclusions regarding the paths not taken. My suggestion for screw/flood nongames is to take it in stride, take a break, or quit the game, rather than engage in selective hypergeometric modeling. Mana inconsistency might be the worst part about MTG (tied with play/draw?) but not really fixable at a high level without introducing worse problems (e.g. worse play/draw imbalance). On a meta level, it may be the case that skilled players should be building consistency tools into their strong, inevitable decks more, and taking more manabase risks in their weaker decks. - I heard some guy outside yell this at me. Can someone explain if it means anything? I'm scared
In the player data of 17 land they have a main color bias section and I’m often said that I should draft with more preference. I understand that this has a lot to do about the context of each set and individual player pattern but If you have any knowledge to share about this topic I would love to ear about it. Thanks again for all the good contents🙏
You asked for recommendations for content. 17 lands has been allowing full draft runs plus the game replays to be shared. Would you take viewer or patreon submissions of their draft runs and review their games?
Mate, good content, but too much intro and fluff. Get to the content and to the point ! Like narrating your plays is a great first tip, but took 3 mins to get there and another 6 talking about it. Keep it tight my man.
I like to talk out my thoughts and i know my audience likes that :) I can appreciate that it’s not everyone’s style Also consider that while some of what a talked about might seem fluffy or trivial, it won’t seem that way to players who have little or no groundwork for this stuff currently
Regarding habit # 3, now I'm beginning to realize why so many limited content creators select their pick, but also read off other notable cards in the pack. They rarely just snap pick a card and move on. They'll highlight it, then mention "oh there's also a lightning bolt" or "if this bomb card wasn't in this pack, cards b, c, and d are possible considerations".
Just mentioning those alternative picks registers them in their minds for the subsequent wheel to give them a hint if a given color is open or not. Thank you for this!
Really good episode, these are all really helpful things to think about. For me the biggest ones are playing slower, and not starting another draft when tilted after having a trainwreck draft. The mental game is often the hardest to develop in magic, but knowing what you need to work on definitely helps a lot.
This might be one of your best videos to date, and you have some REALLY good videos. I took this one to heart and have already noticed differences in my drafting/playing both on Arena last night and at my LGS a few hours ago. Keep up the outstanding work :)
finally 17 lands has an in built tierlist. ive been using limitedgrades but this looks nice
One thing people tend to leave out about 17 lands is that you can see trophy decks. It helps me to see what cards make up certain archetypes, and sometimes realize I’m missing certain cards in my worse versions of the deck.
Playing Too Fast & Chain-drafting enjoyer here, have been taking measures to improve on those points lately, so very nice to have it called out and with great notes and ideas on what to do about it.
great video Alex, thank you, and happy new year from Italy!
Thank you so much Alex for this educational content!
Amazing tips Alex! And I really liked how practical a lot of the solution tips were :)
Regarding habit #3 if you don't have the mental dexterity to remember the pack, you can also just use the screenshot button on your keyboard to take a snapshot of your P1P1 and then pull it up to compare P1P9.
I don’t believe in developing habits that can’t be translated into paper.
This is what I do :) or you can use 17lands too, but I actually prefer using a screenshot for pick 1 and pick 2.
@@bossfrgfair enough, but so far I have hundreds of hours of limited gameplay so far, so I'm fairly experienced I guess, and out of that I have done exactly 1 in paper Sealed event and 0 paper drafts haha, so for some people paper is a bit irrelevant haha.
Fantastic tips across the board. Appreciate all the level ups this year, Alex! Happy New Year bud
thnx for useful recos, HNY!
Re: More January Ideas
1) I think it was maybe during the chat Q&A on the "Deep Dives on Combat Tricks" episode, you floated the idea of doing a "How to Build Midrange decks" video. This would be great! It could be a companion to the "How to Draft Control" video you made during the DMU cycle. Not only how to draft and deckbuild, but pilot these decks, as the ebb and flow of "beatdown" vs. "control" and balancing those two is critical in midrange. Perhaps a guest appearance from Mr. Jund himself, Reid Duke?
2) A deep dive on other types of cards like you did for Combat Tricks. Counterspells, ramp spells, card draw, equipment, etc. Perhaps each card type is not enough for its own full video, but a segment of a larger video - what makes a good one, a bad one, when and why to draft, how to best use in-game, etc.
3) A deep dive on how to attack and win on tempo/mana/turns. In your "Three Fundamental Resources" video, you mention that a deck can often leverage an advantage on one or two fronts in the resource war. What does it look like to draft, build and play a deck withwhich one is attempting to beat the opponent on the tempo front? How can a player craft situations and combinations of cards to create positive tempo exchanges AND THEN leverage those positive tempo exchanges for a win. And conversely, how to play AGAINST tempo, how to disrupt the plan of a tempo deck and beat back against it on one or both of the other two fronts.
Deep cuts! Love it, yeah I think there's some good stuff here :D
The cuts, they run so deep!
I wanted to float a few more card types, if you end up doing a video on it.
-Hand disruption - I could see this being its own full video. What is good vs. not good hand disruption for limited. When and why to draft it. When to cut vs. include. What types of set infrastructure make hand disruption "good/viable" vs. not. How best to use in game. When is it good in aggro vs. control. Play vs. draw considerations. When the hand disruption effect gives you a choice, what are tips for making that choice as the disruptor. As the disruptee. I find this whole avenue of attack/slice of the color pie fascinating and almost no one talks about it, especially in a limited context.
-Other "blue centric" types of spells - bounce to hand, bounce to library, base power/toughness X/Y until end of turn tricks like Majestic Metamorphosis, other "bluemoval" like tap down effects, Frogify effects (looking at you Unable to Scream), and of course, as I mentioned above, counterspells. You often mention that blue decks have the biggest gaps between Top Players and the aggregate on 17Lands, and I think all the draft/deck build and especially PLAY considerations with all these card types are what trips people up with blue, so I think a video focusing on that could be a MASSIVE level up for many players.
Cheers!
Great stuff as always Alex! Evergreen videos are the cream of the crop, keep 'em coming!
Re: video ideas for January - It would be great to go through each of the six "main" draft sets from 2024 and do a "What this set taught us" video. I miss these videos at the end of each set, as they were a great way to send off the set and put a nice button on them.
I know you just did your "Props and Slops" of 2024, so perhaps this could function as a companion piece. Elaborate for five to ten minutes on an "evergreen" lesson or two from each set, be that from the draft, the deckbuilding or the gameplay. Perhaps couch it in a "When a set looks like this..." framework. Do that for six sets plus intro/outro/Patreon shout - boom, 30-60 minute video. It ties into more recent things but can also be an evergreen touchstone for years to come, beneficial to brand new, returning, and limited-grinder players all at once.
Awesome video Alex!
Your draft content is great
Great stuff, thank you
Revenge Drafting! Yes i have that problem. Also maybe play a couple non stakes games, get a couple wins, get the confidence back. If you lose more games then its definitely time for a break.
On the topic of #5, magic players are the world's best at motivated reasoning. Everybody's always got a reason they lost other than "I didn't play well enough." And the reason is pretty simple, it's just basic statistics.
There are a _lot_ of random events in this game. The more different things you consider that could be unlucky, the more likely you are to have at least one of those things happen in any given game. So after any given loss, you can almost certainly pick one of: too many lands, too few lands, drew the dorky side of your deck, drew the expensive side of your deck, drew the enablers but not the action, didn't draw the removal, opponent had the removal when they needed it, didn't play first, bad matchup...
If you assume there's a 10% chance of anything going so badly wrong that you just automatically lose, and you invent ten categories of thing, then it's a 65% chance of having "horrible luck" in any given game. But anything that happens 65% of the time is by definition _not_ bad luck.
For this reason I only consider the two simplest and most obvious things to be truly outside my control, screw and flood. If I'm in the bottom 10% of either, then I'm happy telling myself that game was very likely unwinnable, but if I had lands and spells I should probably be putting up some resistance in most games. It becomes a little metagame unto itself, where I'm trying to hit high scores on my all time worst flood or screw. Current record is a 0.02% chance of a hand that bad. There's some cute dynamics at play there because in those extreme screw/flood games you tend to not live very long, so by getting super invested in these unwinnable games I'm getting lots of practice hanging on and playing to my outs. Not to mention the occasional game you win because your opponent gets terrible draws too sometimes. Nothing better than your opponent missing a land drop and scooping when you're staring at a hand of 5 lands.
Strongly recommend trying it if you get frustrated with screw/flood. Just google up a hypergeometric calculator and plug your deck stats in to figure out exactly how unlucky you really were.
Screw/flood isn't only a matter of math and hypergeometric modeling can be a tool of self-deception. If you have access to effects like campus guide, evolving wilds, or any draw/scry/surveil in the draft, but don't take them, that was a manabase decision. If you do even one scry/surveil/fetch in a game, we're now talking about 'seeing' cards instead of drawing them. You can model it from there but I wouldn't trust a stranger to come to valid conclusions regarding the paths not taken. My suggestion for screw/flood nongames is to take it in stride, take a break, or quit the game, rather than engage in selective hypergeometric modeling. Mana inconsistency might be the worst part about MTG (tied with play/draw?) but not really fixable at a high level without introducing worse problems (e.g. worse play/draw imbalance). On a meta level, it may be the case that skilled players should be building consistency tools into their strong, inevitable decks more, and taking more manabase risks in their weaker decks. - I heard some guy outside yell this at me. Can someone explain if it means anything? I'm scared
I think League of Legends players might have us beat on blaming everything but their mistakes
In the player data of 17 land they have a main color bias section and I’m often said that I should draft with more preference. I understand that this has a lot to do about the context of each set and individual player pattern but If you have any knowledge to share about this topic I would love to ear about it. Thanks again for all the good contents🙏
Great episode. Moar pls
Algo
You asked for recommendations for content.
17 lands has been allowing full draft runs plus the game replays to be shared. Would you take viewer or patreon submissions of their draft runs and review their games?
dont do this
@@user-yf7gq6sn8jwhy?
@@user-yf7gq6sn8jwhy?
Mate, good content, but too much intro and fluff. Get to the content and to the point ! Like narrating your plays is a great first tip, but took 3 mins to get there and another 6 talking about it. Keep it tight my man.
I like to talk out my thoughts and i know my audience likes that :) I can appreciate that it’s not everyone’s style
Also consider that while some of what a talked about might seem fluffy or trivial, it won’t seem that way to players who have little or no groundwork for this stuff currently
bro open your vault
Well if you ever want to send your opponent to the rage trap, manually tapping during all your games will certainly do it.