I can speak authoritatively on this - I've literally just done the stats on M12 in the last week (had a guy try and claim that he hadn't doctored a box he sent me... it contained no mythics and seven duplicate rares... har har har). The facts: 1) WotC do not disclose information on the distribution in their boxes. This is to discourage box mappers like the tool I'm currently dealing with. 2) Because WotC want to encourage people to buy boxes, they purposely doctor the distribution in a box so that there are at least a couple of mythics and not many duplicate rares. To prove this, you basically need raw data (because of #1). 3) Their doctored distribution means that there are patterns in the rare/mythic order within boxes. In theory, if you can figure out the entire pattern, you can pick the top booster off one of the columns in a box, and know what's in the rare slot of each booster below it, just going off the one you've opened. This has actually been solved for sets as recently as Mirrodin Beseiged. 4) Naturally, WotC are always improving their distribution methods, and about the best you can hope for at the moment with the current sets is knowing that the next booster underneath the crap rare you just opened is likely a specific mythic rare.
For M12, I had a list of the rare order in 71 separate boxes to go off. In those 71, the mythic distribution was as follows: Min: 3 mythics. Max: 6 mythics. Avg: 4-5 mythics.
Duplicate rare distribution was as follows: Min: 0 dupes. Max: 4 dupes. Avg: 1.3 dupes (so likely to be only one, but getting two wouldn't be unheard of).
AFAIK, the distribution hasn't changed a bit since M12. They've just disrupted the distribution order a little bit more to make it harder to map, but somehow now let it affect the above numbers.
I wouldn't consider the distributions "doctored" to please players. I see it as a simple matter of economics and technical limitations.
In order to get an actual randomized distribution, they would need to literally put packs in a vat and mix them up before boxing them. This just isn't really sensible. It adds time, machinery, possibility of damages, and cost to the boxing operation.
Cards are printed on sheets. These sheets have a set order of cards, they are then cut and put into boosters in the same order. While they have multiple common/uncommon sheets, which make the booster "random", there is only one rare/mythic sheet, making it quite predictable. So, the easiest and cheapest way for them to box the cards is exactly how they come off the booster packaging equipment, which would be in perfect order.
This is obviously a problem when people discover box mapping. So, to fight it they try to mix things up a bit...but they don't want to do anything un-economical, so they go with the simplest solution with their existing equipment, just "breaking" the pattern. A quick visual to explain:
Non-broken pattern. Boosters 1-20 would be put into a box like: 1, 2, 3, 4,...., 18, 19, 20 - straight up in order.
To break the pattern. Boosters 1-7 could be put in box A, then boosters 8-17 in box B and finally 18-20 back in box A. That would make box A looks like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 18, 19, 20 and box B look like 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
Something as simple as that would break the pattern enough to screw up the box mapping. However, it is subtle enough to where it doesn't change the overall statistics of the box. Namely that there is a mythic ~ every 8th pack and a duplicate rare every ~60 packs.
So, simply put, they are not really tailoring boxes to give those statistics, they are just lazy and cheap and those are the odds that pop out from their process rather than some bean counter sitting down and saying "how can be box the cards so that each box has 3-7 mythics, 1 duplicate rare, etc, etc, etc"
1. Hah! No. You could open 3 boxes without a simple foil rare or mythic. 2. No same point above. 3. Also no. You could open up 36 of the same rare. These are all of the rumoured statistics it seems. Sorry if I sound cross.
1. Hah! No. You could open 3 boxes without a simple foil rare or mythic. 2. No same point above. 3. Also no. You could open up 36 of the same rare. These are all of the rumoured statistics it seems. Sorry if I sound cross.
Heh, no, I'm with you! They're really only rumoured because WotC refuses to confirm or deny it (in the interests of preventing box mapping). Cold, hard data and experience show that #1-3 are never the case these days (they might've been back in the day, though).
I've never bought a complete booster box since Mirage(got it dirt cheap back in the day), but I did buy the "Izzet INgenuity" intro deck from RTR, and got a mythic in both the included boosters(Vraska the Unseen in one, Rakdos' Return in the other). A friend of mine bought a booster box and got 1 mythic. Pretty random.
Has anyone noticed that certain stores have "better" packs? There's a comic shop near me that, out of 7 packs packs I got a foil thundermaw hellkite, Jace memory adept, Vraska, and Sorin Markov. I don't know if I got lucky. (the store owner picked the packs for me).
Has anyone noticed that certain stores have "better" packs? There's a comic shop near me that, out of 7 packs packs I got a foil thundermaw hellkite, Jace memory adept, Vraska, and Sorin Markov. I don't know if I got lucky. (the store owner picked the packs for me).
That's called "variance." There's no way to tell if it has any meaningful baring on whether or not your claim is correct, because the sample size is so small compared to the random factor involved. With a standard MTG set, you'd want to open thousands of packs before your numbers had much meaning. (If we're going off of pure numbers, that is. If you suspect underhanded business tactics and have some evidence, that's an entirely different conversation.)
Coming from the world of stamp collecting, I am going to guess how these cards are printed based on the information I have come across so far.
There are likely 10 separate common plates, 3 uncommon plates, and just 1 rare/mythic plate, each 11 by 11 cards. In order for someone not to get a pack with 10 common enchantments, the plates should be designed with some sort of a stacking constraint-meaning that position 1-1 for each of the 10 common plates when combined yields some of each type of card. And then there's an advertisement + tokens plate, a commons foils plate, an uncommon foils plate, a rare/mythic foils plate, and a common land plate.
Of course, what everyone is interested in is in mapping the rare/mythic plate, if there's only one....well, open 121 packs and you have it, and that means that the way to disrupt a mapper is to have breaks in sequence in packaging, something like what MTGKaioshin describes.
If someone has pulled two of the same rare in consecutive packs out of a booster box, that's something like a break in sequence in packaging.
that's my nood 2 cents.
I opened a booster box of Scars of Mirrodin and the cards do seem to be "packaged as printed:" no duplicate rares, one foil mythic rare, 4 or 5 mythics.
Magic the Gathering Adventures Blog http://mtgadventures.blogspot.com/
Has anyone noticed that certain stores have "better" packs? There's a comic shop near me that, out of 7 packs packs I got a foil thundermaw hellkite, Jace memory adept, Vraska, and Sorin Markov. I don't know if I got lucky. (the store owner picked the packs for me).
That's called "variance." There's no way to tell if it has any meaningful baring on whether or not your claim is correct, because the sample size is so small compared to the random factor involved. With a standard MTG set, you'd want to open thousands of packs before your numbers had much meaning. (If we're going off of pure numbers, that is. If you suspect underhanded business tactics and have some evidence, that's an entirely different conversation.)
If my local store switches card to make sure I have mythics in every pack, I will hardly call it underhanded
Yeah... Until next game, where it'll be right back.
Seriously, there's no way to deal with Rancor in any format. It should be banned, except Gleemax is a lobbyist for the Rancor party, so that'll never happen.
You can't ban rancor, it just returns to your deck.
You might want to actually talk to the Flavor & Storyline Board people... since, you know, our whole reason for playing Magic is the flavor. I'm willing to bet you'll get a lot more interest there than in General.
Indeed, both posters down there would be thrilled.
When talks about banning Jace first started, I was thinking that I would see him banned come June 20th. But as I think more about it, I don't really think that Jace is the problem anymore. Sure his power level leaves very little to the imagination (opening Jace is like opening a refrigerator box with a naked girl on the inside), and sure his price does have a strong impact on what players choose to play (playing Jace is like being intimate with a woman and she doesn't charge you in the morning), but it is not the source of all the problems in Standard.
How do people think saving room to print more abilities on cards is dumbing down the game?
Do you really think, say, Akroma would ever be printed if she said, "Akroma can block by creatures with this ability and cannot be blocked by creatures without this ability. If a creature without this ability would deal combat damage by Akroma would be destroyed, prevent all combat damage that creature would deal to Akroma this combat. Attacking does not cause Akroma to tap. If Akroma is blocked and deals lethal damage, it deals the remainder of its damage to the defending player. Akroma may attack and use abilities that require tapping in the casting cost the turn it enters the battlefield. Akroma cannot be damaged, enchanted, equipped, blocked or targeted by black or red sources" rather than her "dumbed down" wording she has? No freaking way. Keywording and shorthand allows them to make complicated cards easy to play with, allowing them to be printed in the first place.
1. cast frankie peanuts 2. ask opponent "will you concede the game this turn"? if they say yes, you win; if they say no, play a staying power 3. subsequently ask "will you attack this turn"? and "will you cast a spell this turn"? (using a Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir for the second question if necessary) to ensure they can't disrupt the combo 4. donate them a platinum angel 5. play a mox lotus and braingeyser them for every card in their library. play an opalescence and donate them a glorious anthem and a blacker lotus , then play enchanted evening . play and activate a mindslaver and then donate them a fastbond and the mox lotus (returning one of the donates to your hand with eternal witness or whatever) 6. during their turn, play every permanent in their hand (playing lands with fastbond) then (as yourself) cast mirrorweave on the blacker lotus, so every permanent becomes a copy of it. proceed to tear up every card they control, and hopefully do it before they notice that they aren't bound by staying power's ability anymore and can concede
Dark Ritual being overpowered is determined more by what is done with it than the card itself.
True, but the fact that it enables so many ridiculous things is pretty telling. It's like, sure I can use a shotgun as a bludgeoning instrument, but that doesn't make it not a shotgun.
Shortly before Serra died, she transferred her spark into an angel whose full name was Asha Avacyn Bolas. Her dragon father groomed her for her positions in Alara and Innistrad, and she's also been getting help from her uncle Ugin in the form of Urza, who was resurrected as Marit Lage to be the avatar as which she projects herself into material realms. Grieslbrand is a split personality who sometimes wanders the planes disguised as a human woman named Liliana Vess.
Everyone's life would be easier if players would, instead of coming to the 'net for help with a deck, just netdeck and be done with it. And I'm not talking about some Top 8 lists, for the Casualists, too, can benefit from netdecking. I've netdecked plenty of decks from the Casual Play forums from users such as Mown, Raedien, Floopfoot, and a few others. I snatched straight the heck out of my web browser. Yes, people, your original idea fell victim to a savage netdecker. You have been assimiliated.
Suppose I wanted a Zombie deck. Why on earth would I spend time searching Gatherer for a decent list of Zombie cards when Raedien already did it for me? Taking time to be creative or waiting on people on the forums to tell you why your deck sucks or 'go to Casual forums' is a disasterous waste of time (to me).
That being said, Magic was ruined back in Alpha when they added all that rules and cards [Debutantes avert your eyes]. My friends and I still like playing it the "pure" way (Basically we go into the woods and hit eachother with wiffle bats while shouting made up obscenities. You know, the way Garfield wanted it to be played).
Don't worry about it. I've come up with a list of changes to fix EDH.
-First off, there's no commander. -The minimum deck size is 60 cards, and each deck can have up to four of each card, save basic lands and relentless rats. Also decks have no color identity. -Starting life total is 20.
Here's a clever play you can try yourself: -Convince friend to run relentless rats.dec in legacy tournament -Get a deck with lots of mill, yixlid jailer, and humility -Drop humility and jailer, wait for him to dump his hand, mill him out -All his rats now have no abilities. Call a judge because he's playing an illegal deck with more than 4 of a single card. -Get him/her banned from competitive magic play
L, is for the leather gloves you weaaaar. O, is for the organs that guy could spaaaare. V, is very very, extraordinay. E, is for every vagrant i butchered in a wine cellar befooooore.
The outer layer of the Magic: the Gathering box, the carton, or crust, is fairly thin and light, and contains largely aluminosilcates.
Within that lies the middle layer, consisting of the familiar booster pack. Although solid, the booster packs' high temperatures allow them to acutally move around within the booster box. This flow, sometimes called convection, is cited by frustrated box mappers as one of WOTC's most genious uses of thermodynamics since the Ravnica block.
No one knows what lies at the core of the booster box, but scientists theorize that it must be especially dense in order to make up for the large amount of fluff distributed amongst the booster packs.
I imagine [Ajani 3's] second ability involves him hurling the creature at your opponent Brion Stoutarm style, then the guy is just like "Okay, that may have worked, but don't- GOD DAMN IT!" as he does it again because cats don't give a **** :33.
Its like that one time Elves broke out in a field of Jund. Elves became a resurgent hit, then died off again once Jund adapted to the rest of the field of G/W that it required mass removal that inherently pooped on Elves too.
Submit to the menace. Delver can, and will blot out the sun.
"I remember my days as a youth at Tolarian Academy ." "Wow, small multiverse, I actually went there too." "WAIT, DON'T- Well ****, there's $200,000 in student loans well spent."
And flavor goes out the window when you cast a second copy of a planeswalker right after the first one dies, so...
"Hey Nissa, I need a favor." "You just asked me for a 'favor' like thirty seconds ago, and it turned out to be having Sarkhan Transmogrify my only follower into a dragon like 5 times -which dickery aside also violates some laws of causality - and then you let me get beaten over the head by that hedron crab." "...I'll give you " "...Well all right then."
GM, I don't think Dill is better than you. I KNOW it. Even if he wakes up every morning, clubs a baby seal, steals all the TV remotes from within a block's radius of his house and then robs hungry orphans of their food he'd be better than you, for the simple reason that he learns from his mistakes.
What would they have to fight about? Like, all I can think of now is Gideon going "Hey, long-ears! I'm gathering a group of 'Walkers together to fight some tentacle monsters.....you want in?" and Tamiyo going "Ew! Hentai no bakka Gideon-desu desu!" and flying away.
I open 4 packs just to be on the safe side. Not only do I get more cards than everyone else, but I also get to spend the rest of the night off. Win Win.
MaRo has a thing for people opening boosters with bad cards. But since he can only get so many bad cards printed in each set, he has found a devious way of getting more bad cards into circulation: He makes entire print sheets with just bad rares, then puts them onto the assembly line. He proceeds to wring his hands and twirl his evil mustache that he grew for twirling purposes as a lightning bolt strikes in the background. Afterwards, he goes to make sure that the good cards are only opened by everyone's friends, and that we all only get to open bad cards. He does this by memorising each booster, than switching them around accordingly. Whenever someone complains about a card, he immediately jumps out from behind a chair to yell "WELL, IT'S NOT FOR YOU!" before merging back into the shadows in order to devise new ways in which he can screw over players, then claim that he has valid reasons for doing so.
Mark Rosewater is sitting in a seemingly innocuous cable TV van, outside of Bankaimastery's house. Sitting nearby are two hardened criminal hackers, fresh out of prison, and filled with resentment at their lack of physical fitness. "Have you managed to hack his brainwaves yet? The set deadline's coming up fast." "We're almost through. It should be coming up on the screen any second." The hacker presses a button, and Kevin's thoughts flash onto the screen. Mark and the hackers stare in amazement at the sheer beauty, the elegance, and the raw truth of what they see. It's like the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Brilliant light shines across the screen, the truth of existence is made clear to them, and they despair at their own foolishness, their own ignorance, their own inadequacy. And then they steal his ideas. As they return back to R&D, Mark sneers at a haggard old man chained to a cast-iron sphere. The man looks up from his laborious task of breaking rocks in the dungeon of Wizards of the Coast headquarters, and asks a question: "Kevin, my greatest student. He - he's all right, isn't he? You didn't hurt him?" Mark deals him a weighty blow with his boot. "Know your place, Richard. Get back to work."
I'm only opposed to it because it bears so little relation to how people actually play the game. The example of Miracles is actually a much better one then the Clone example I was trying to use.
From the game's perspective, the card can move instantly from face down in the library to revealed in the hand and that's fine for the rules. But in real life, we can't actually do that, so the card spends a good bit of time in locations that are neither where that player's library is nor where that player's hand is. And that's fine for real life. What I don't want is the disconnect to be explicitly codified. Along the lines of
183664.697 A game of Magic as laid out by these rules exists only as a pure Platonic ideal, utterly unrealizable by fallible mortals limited by the confines of physicality and the ravages of evil and sin.
183664.698 The cake is a lie, too.
I know it's true, but I don't want the rules to actually straight-up tell me that.
Pfft this cant be serious can it? If it is please delete your account OP. Its not even close to ban worthy, considering what JTMS and stoneforge had to accomplish to get banned i see the WotC selling magic to aquire Pokemon before that ever happens.
I'm trying to imagine sorin markov as a gym leader in one of those pokemon games which you have to beat him to get his badge... somehow I imagine that he would stab you in the chest with his sword before giving you the badge, even if you beat his pokemon....
Personally, I'd be fine with tea time but then I'm not gonna waste the mana summoning Emrakul, the Aeons Torn . He always takes all the sugar, drinks the whole pot of Earl Grey and doesn't even say thank you. SO. RUDE.
Break the Card is a regular thread in the Cards and Combo Forum. Quite simply, the participants are given a Johnnystatic card (e.g. Xenograft ) and are asked to build a deck around it. The winner and honorable mentions are sigged below. Get brewing!
This week's Break the Card was based around Xenograft . Thread : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27681049/Break_the_card_:_Xenograft?pg=1
Winner : Axterix with his Vampdrazi deck. Finalist : Vektor480 with his Ally/Golem/Plant deck. Honorable mentions : Zammm for the Turntimber Ranger combo and TinGorilla for suggesting Sarkhan the Mad .
Here's the link to the Mindlock Orb contest : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27697565/Break_the_Card_:_Mindlock_Orb?sdb=1&pg=last#497536269
Here's the link to Break the Card : Bludgeon Brawl : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27715169/Break_the_Card_:_Bludgeon_Brawl?sdb=1&pg=last#498208797
Winner : Vektor and his Grab the World deck. Finalist : Crandor with his Awesome Aliteration deck. Honorable mentions : RP Jesus with his Wat deck and Zix200 with his Signet Renewal deck.
This week was Followed Footsteps : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27748677/Break_the_Card_:_Followed_Footsteps?pg=1
Winner : Tevish_Szat with his Exponential Growth deck. Honorable mentions : Zix with his Carbon Copies deck and Escef with his Fungus of Speed and Time deck.
This week's card was Jace's Archivist : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/28063377/Break_the_Card_:_Jaces_Archivist.
Finalists : Jentaru with his "Consecration of the Draw" deck and HereticSmitty with his "ADHD: The deck" deck. Winner : JaxsonBateman with his "The Archives Are Endless!" deck.
Proliferate w/ 
Elves)
