Limited Resources: Legacy Cube Draft #2

He’s not making money from his wins, hes making money from showing entertaining and informative content. An 8-pack prize is negligible compared to the money he makes from youtube views, ad revenue, (based on high youtube views), and the continuance of his brand, which allows him to commentate and make money on the tournament and convention circuit, not to mention his highly successful podcast.

With this in mind, I, on a personal opinion level, although I’m sure this applies to many others, enjoy seeing these ripoff queues because they are different and fun. I even draft them, completely agreeing that they are ripoffs, because I play magic for fun. I play 8-4′s, tournaments, and am quite competitive and un-johnnyish. However I don’t play to win to make more packs, I play to win because I enjoy it. So I watch legacy cube drafts, and Marshall makes money.

If you want to see less of these and more standard drafting, ostensibly because either you play with getting 8 packs in mind, or on principle you feel that no payout is for sheep, (if it’s the latter I think you should reconsider playing magic online, or even paper magic, as the whole system is NOT stacked towards making your money back), you should say so.

Those are valid reasons, though I disagree with them. And Marshall here is EXTREMELY conscientious about providing the content his base wants, how they want it. He asks for feedback and changes his content around the feedback he gets more than almost any other entertainer I know, in or out of the magic community. It’s one of the many reasons he has enjoyed so much success.

So give him feedback and he’ll listen, he might not change anything if you are in the minority and he can’t please everyone, but i promise he would actually listen and consider your feedback. Calling him a sheep is the exact wrong way to change what you dislike. He’s making a lot of money doing something he loves, no one is going to be swayed by ad hominem attacks here.

TL:DR; ripoff doesn’t mean anything if you make your money with your brand, payout is negligible compared to interesting content. Marshall takes a lot of feedback. Try not calling people sheep if you want to make a point.

@cameron

Haha, glad to see that guy’s comment irked someone else too!

Leave the troll alone! Let’s talk about the content!

Round 2 (especially Game 2) was hilarious. I love when you have opponents that are just misplaying and misclicking tremendously. With the Aether Vial (and the Awakening Zone) he obviously had an eldrazi in his deck somewhere, but it was funny to see it ticking up and hardly ever being used. Also his one misclick with Mana Vault forced him to use it on 4 to get his Master of the Wild Hunt which was funny because you could have countered it had he cast it with his mana!

Also, I have regretted not killing Plainswalkers when I have a chance to more often than not. Especially in Cube, any one powerful card could complete some absurd combo as we saw in this game with Venser and Parallex Wave. Just kill the Plainswalkers when the opportunity arises. Of course that one turn he had a clear kill on you as well and still split his attackers between you and Venser, killing neither – just hilarious to watch!

Thanks for the content, Marshall, no matter the format. You are the most reliable poster of video content on MTGO Academy – we are grateful!

In game 1 round 1, after you minus Venser, you attacked Ashiok with six power (a 3/3 angel, a 2/4 Brago, and a 1/1 bird token). If you’d left back the bird, Ashiok would die but you could chump (or at least try to chump) the nighthawk and keep Venser. Obviously your line worked out okay, but it seemed a little loose (another option would be to send the bird at his face if you wanted to attack with it, since it wasn’t needed to kill Ashiok).

In pack 2 pick 4, why is vindicate not in the discussion?

Marshall Sutcliffe – spewing value so we don’t have to !!

Though really it depends on what you mean by value. I remember one LR where Marshall said he did primarily Swiss, as with a full time job, and no time to restart a draft, he valued the ability to play all 3 rounds more highly than the possibility of extra packs won.

Could it be that 3 months into the format he (and we) value a different drafting experience more than playing a format we have played or watched almost exclusively for 10 weeks, even if the monetary EV is worse? (not that we even care by watching, as its his EV taking the hit)

Also, cube looks fun, and Marshall is clearly a closet Timmy !

Great vids Marshall. Keep em coming. Love watching cube drafts and seeing the crazy interactions that are possible.

Super fun draft Marshal. Never get tired of them.

Re: value conversation above.
I like to think of it this way. Lets assume you don’t care about collecting, and you are like me and you just play online to play limited.
With the Cube swiss, if you just want to play magic, a 2-1 record gets you another free draft.
In a regular phantom sealed, a 2-1 nets you -2 phantom ticks, so you have to win a draft ~1/4 of the time if you 2-1 the rest of the time to be “infinite.”
In Cube, any wins, instead of bringing you back above even, are actually netting you a larger buffer, as your 2-1 records aren’t depleting your phantom tickets.

Either way, sealed or draft queues, that’s pretty easy comparabily to keep a record going. Once you have even a small pool of phantom tickets you need to crater pretty hard to be unable to complete do another.

TL/DR: Chaining phantom points is easy. Draft for days.