Triple ISD Draft #1 with Plejades

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Plejades

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  2. Haha,

    funny thing is that I have heard that several times already. But I don’t think I have an accent ;-)
    It shows that I did that draft at 2am – my line of thought was a bit slow here. I am doing very well in Innistrad drafts. Currently I am infinite even though I am donating(!) the cards I open to our bots.
    I hope I can find time to record another one when it’s not so late into the night.

  3. What was your round 3 opponent doing? I have played that guy before and he has always played very solidly, but in g1 here he just plays awfully and scoops way too early when he has the land and other things. Same thing in g3, I guess he just scoops if he is even slightly behind? I don’t really get it

  4. Nice to see you once more. Love all your articles. Your opponents were very fast quitters. It didnt seem as if they were out of it yet.
    Side note- Im doing very poorly in ISD unless I draft White which I get cut out of majority of the time. The last 3x of Match 1′s of playing NMS I always get paired against the guy who has Swarmlord and I always lose to it. Im on a very bad streak of drafting currently. Hopefully I can bounce back soon by playing a bunch of Momir and having fun at randomness.

  5. Good job, what a concede fest!
    No wonder your infinite (kidding).

    Will this be a series on a regular basis now?

  6. @ Chris.w: I was surprised myself that my opponents conceded so early. It’s hard to tell not knowing their hand – maybe they where all blanks.

    @eXXa: While I would love to make this a regular series I probably cannot commit to a regular schedule. I will try to post as often as my time allows.

  7. LOL @ “wampires”.
    I like the accent too.
    Good job, great video, though I feel like a lot of those games were handed to you!

  8. @Justin:
    Chris and A.J. from our team are also fascinated by my “wampire” accent.

    I hope for tense games the next time I record but you cannot choose what your opponents do. The deck felt pretty strong and I definitively like B/U but have tried all kinds of archetypes, including self mill, mill, G/W, U/R, B/R, etc. Common opinion is that a good G/W deck is the best but the problem is that you will have to share the good cards in those colors with a lot of other players.

  9. @Moerutora: Bad streaks happen – I remember series of games where simply nothing turned out well. Drafting an amazing deck and then getting mana screwed or flooded is something everyone has experienced and when it happens a lot frustration can set it quickly. Changing the format as you did seems like a good idea. Momir is a lot of fun even though I really like MOJO (Momir/Jhoira) better. The added randomness of the sorceries/instants is just hilarious.

  10. You are obviously a good player and I am a noob. So, I wanted you to answer a question for me. I played a lot of Innistrad drafts. I got mana screwed at least once in every match, often twice. I moved my lands up to 18 and it seemed to get worse. I have wquit playing MTG online because it happened 3 matches in a row with 17 lands and a very low mana cost deck. I was speaking with some friends who had similar issues with Innistrad. They have also quit because they feel that the random number generator has been thrown off by Innistrad. They believe that the random number generator is counting the double sided cards twice. Now when it goes to decide what you draw from the “random” pool, there is a much lower percentage of lands to spells. I would normally think that this is nuts and that MTG would have thought of this, but they are right. Every time I draft a deck with a lot of double-siders, I get mana screwed (and never suffer mana flood). When I don’t draft double-siders, I get mana screwed much less frequently (an amount consistent with live play). I would also think that this is crazy but I played on line poker and was dignificantly “infinite”. During that time I noticed some strange things on some sites and actually reported them to the Kannawakee Gaming Commission, who did nothing saying I was crazy. Turns out that the sites in the end were in fact corrupt or had some cheating going on (Ultimat Bet, JetSet Poker, and Full Tilt). I was wondering if MTG Online publishes data anywhere for percentage of cards drawn or mana screw. What I am asking is if there is any way to to see proof that things are operating correctly, because, if not, I am sticking to live play.

  11. @Daddymac: Your issue with the shuffler is something many players have complained about in the past and still do. I see no reason to believe that the shuffler is not working as intented – arranging cards in the deck randomly. Now random unfortunately means that you will have outliners on both sides of the bell curve and in your case I assume it is simply a longer streak of bad luck.
    This does not make the shuffler less random – in a way it needs to have players getting to much or to little land as otherwise it would not be random at all. Having said that I can understand your frustration with the shuffler and maybe it helps to know that everyone playing this game will encounter streaks of bad mana draws and you will also play against those players for your benefit from time to time. There is no public data about the draws and I doubt that Wizards of the Coast has any benefit from manipulating the algorithm – they make money if you win or lose.
    Hope the streaks ends for you at some point. Good luck.

  12. The Shuffler is broken. If you look at the writing of it, they did the variables and math wrong. Don’t ask how I saw the code.

    Either way, a magic deck is not random on paper, while randomization on MTGO means it is not shuffled, your cards are placed 1-40 (in limited) and then every card is given a number and the shuffler randomizes those numbers. Problem is that they didn’t take into account making a variable, instead of just one clump. They should have made sure that mana was separate from the rest of the deck. So all you have is everyone getting mana screwed all the time.

    This isn’t the case in paper because everyone separates the mana and cards then attempts to shuffle the mana into the deck as evenly as possible. And everyone knows you don’t shuffle every card nearly as thoroughly as the randomizer.

    Either way, just like Microsoft used the incorrect base variable for Windows, the worst OS ever made, the shuffler uses no variable.

    The way you can find out the coding is incorrect? When you sideboard there is over a 75% chance you will get one of the cards you side-boarded in your opening hand, even if it’s just one card, while if you mess with the mana base in the sideboard, you will either get flooded or screwed because the writing doesn’t take into account well enough side-boarding. It takes cards that might have been #2,4,6 and make the cards you side-boarded either #1,2,3 or #38,39,40.

    Btw, you draw based on that 1-40 number. Which is a problem in itself.

  14. Look, I know math. You did a IP search on me, look up my history. I have a degree in Bio-Molecular engineering from a school that is part of NYU, and my freshman classes were advanced calc and C++.

    I can create charts. It’s the same charts I use to know when to buy and sell cards and that is how I have made so many tickets in this game.

    I would give you my data, but what’s the point? I mean I put a lot of works into my heat charts, the same as I did when I was a “Red Named” pro at Full Tilt Poker.

    I don’t need to prove anything to you, I was just pointing out what occurs in more than 75% of games on MTGO.

    And the whole “Random” thing? Doesn’t exist on paper. If you have played poker, you know that your opponent can shuffle any way he pleases, and you will be able to at least dictate about 60-65% of your deck.
    Manipulating cards is easy, especially if you have been playing poker since you were 5.

    But I am not here to make some crazy point. It’s pretty well documented. I’m just on here bc I like LR.

    If you wanted more info, all you have to do is watch every game you have played in replay. I post mine on my youtube.

    But watch them and compare the floods/logs to paper. That should be simple enough for everyone here except Marshall. He seems to have his eye on the ball, since we all can’t run a Kessig Wolf Ramp deck stolen directly from MTG dot com and play it in a daily.

    You will find me in a draft one day, and I won’t get flooded because I won’t make the mistakes where the game is flawed which might explain why in ISD drafts I am Andre the Giant Beast Mode (Although my record is worst the the LR guys, but still). Give me the worst cards and I will still beat you on my worst days.

    Regardless here’s a simple one. Change your mana base in a deck during the sideboard, and I mean a little here and there, add a plains, take out a forest, etc. and then see what happens to your mana base in that next game. Do that enough and watch enough games over and over and see which end of the “Bell Curve” you end up on.
    Btw, Bell Curves aren’t for MTGO. Heat charts tell you a lot more.

  16. @Nolander: I am pretty sure he is just trolling.

    @TERROl2: “And the whole “Random” thing? Doesn’t exist on paper.” –

    Well, then we should fix the paper shufflers (aka humans) not the online one I guess.

    “This isn’t the case in paper because everyone separates the mana and cards then attempts to shuffle the mana into the deck as evenly as possible.” -

    Judges have an abbreviation for this, it’s called cheating.

  17. Um no, that’s not cheating. That’s like taking your deck and, for example, have a 2:1 ratio. So you put 2 cards down, then mana, then 2 cards. You do everything you can to separate the mana. At least that’s how it was down when I used to play over a decade ago.

    No I am not trolling, that would mean I care. I just hear an argument and tried to help out. The only reason I go here is to see if LR is up.

    And you can manipulate your deck in a thousand different ways if played on paper. I grew up with poker, so I know how to manipulate. If anything, forcing people to put sleeves on the cards is 100x worse than not having them in sleeves. I could manage the first 30 cards of a 40 card deck with 3 judges standing around me. It’s just stuff you learn in High School.

    And you know I’m not a troll. You tracked my IP which means you found out “”"GASP”"”" what my fake name, fake address, and whatever I have on the Mirror. I’m not stupid. I do work on this computer. I am not going to let someone with some freeware get my personal info. Although you could have just asked.

    And if you don’t believe the shuffler is broken, you don’t play enough, as you have said in your opening. Bell Curve, Advanced Trip, map it out all you want, it is a poorly written program. You would know that if you played more.

    And as for tracking my IP.. Hmmm. Should I report you? I mean you are a LLC, and since there haven’t been enough cases to really understand what the true responsibilities are of an LLC are (ask a business lawyer, or my dad, one in the same), you could be in for a bit of trouble, but no harm no foul, unless you call slander a crime which it is when you referred to me as a troll.

    But I have thick skin. Something I can’t say the same about you Europeans. Shouldn’t you be protesting economic collapse anyway?

    But when you go on the suggestions page of MTG dot com, 90% of posts are about the shuffler. I was just trying to help out since your writers can’t really do much aside from Marshall.
    Did you really have an article where a guy stole a deck completely off the MTG website and play it in a daily? Wow, how original Euro.

  19. Obvious troll is obvious.

    And excessively long winded and pompous.

    Ugh, that’s the first trolling I’ve had to experience on this site, normally this site is safe from them.

  20. OK, I’m not supposed to talk about this, but I will. I was deep inside the secret WOTC facility where they house the “shuffler”. You think it’s random? It’s not random AT ALL. They actually pay illegal immigrants and UW students to generate everyone’s hands. If you get a decent hand, it was probably an illegal immigrant, because most of them don’t play magic so they are pseudo-random. But when you get those really crappy hands like 4 out of your 7 of one land type and 3 spells of your other color, that’s a UW student who’s had a crappy day. DON’T LET THE SECRET OUT!!!!

  21. This may come as a shock to some, but the shuffler is far from random.

    If you don’t buy many event tickets or boosters from the store front, then the shuffler knows this and starts giving you bad hands for not properly supporting Wizards of the Coast.

    But if you buy packs at MSRP or buy event tickets weekly, then you’ll start getting nigh-God hands every other game or so.

    It’s true! I saw the code! The algorithm was there! Who cares if my doctor and family think I’m crazy? I know what I saw! You must believe me!