With Ikoria wrapping up, I have reached the end of the mastery pass. With the exception of the random uncommon ICRs past level 80, I won't really be receiving any more cards for my IKO collection, nor will I be receiving any more booster packs. As a Free-to-Play (F2P) player, let's take a look at what all I received this set. I won't bore you with a long rambling blog story, but will instead just get straight to the stats. I got a kick start with free drafts using my free Theros draft token, free Ikoria draft token, and the token included with the mastery pass. Before we get too far, my mastery pass was paid for from last set's gem earnings, so it was free for me. I went ahead and played the token drafts while I waited the two weeks for quick draft to start. I saved all Ikoria booster packs earned to open until after I had finished quick drafting. I went ahead and opened booster packs from older sets that I received from the mastery pass. Once Ikora quick draft went live, I did 19 back-to-back drafts, bringing my self up to 22 total drafts. I only rare drafted and selected cards that I didn't already have, and then skipped playing the games. Yes, I get a lot of flack for this, but I don't care. While I do enjoy playing draft in person with my friends, I don't enjoy playing draft with strangers online. You can read more about Collection Drafting HERE. Since Ikora was a much shorter release period, I stopped at 22 drafts and started saving for M21 quick draft. I used MTGAHelper as my tracker to help figure out what I did and did not have while drafting so as to avoid duplicates as best as I could. 22 IKO Drafts + 46 IKO Packs Totals This data includes just the drafts and saved booster packs that were opened immediately after, as well as a couple ICRs I had obtained up to this point. All Packs Earned All booster packs were all earned through the set mastery, mastery pass and free codes, and one daily deal using gold. These stats include both IKO and older packs combined. I could extrapolate the IKO only stats on request if anyone wants that info. I have massive spreadsheets with all of this hand-tracked data on it. I have per-card stats for each current set, but I do not track individual cards for previous sets while playing and tracking the current set. For previous sets, I only track the numbers, such as how many rares, commons, wilds, vault status etc, but not the individual card names. Older set card names are irrelevant to the current set's stats. They do contribute to the overall wildcard count and wheel track, so this is why they are included as card counts only. I will have another article comparing IKO only pack openings against each other in various amounts and against drafting, you can see my previous article on this subject for Theros HERE. This future will include total set collections based on opened packs only. Older packs were all opened as I received them. IKO packs were only opened after I finished drafting, and subsequently after receiving each one. I will have a All Booster Pack Stats These booster packs include all packs opened during the IKO set release. There were Total IKO CollectionAfter drafting and opening packs, I still acquired another 20 booster packs. Here are the collection totals for the full amount of everything IKO that I acquired. These numbers also include ICRs acquired via daily play, event and mastery pass rewards.
I believe I have run out of stats to ramble on about, so this will conclude this set's collection stats for myself.
My plans for M21 are about the same. I am on track for having roughly 110,000 gold by the time M21 quick draft goes live. This, plus the draft token from the M21 mastery pass should afford me another 23 drafts. Since there appears to be a lot of re-prints and other not too exciting stuff with M21, I may cut it short and just start saving for Zendikar. There is also Jump Start to think about too, so I may save some for that, though that will all be mostly for Historic, which I don't play as much.
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I finished up my last day of Theros Beyond Death with a good morning run of several wins to a few losses. This is typical for my daily gold farming grind.
I was not super excited about this set, but then again I am not really into Greek mythology. Some of the mechanics were cool, such as devotion and all of the extra enchantments that came along. Anax was the only card I played out of this set on a daily basis. I migrated from Cavalcade from Throne of Eldraine over to the current RDW build for Theros. I did build some janky stuff and had some fun with other Theros cards, but nothing competitive like RDW was for me. This is the third full set that I have tracked complete stats for, having tracked Eldraine Stats as well as M20 stats. Lets just jump right into the info! All stats started on 1/16/20 and ended on 4/15/20. This equals a total of 91 days of gameplay. There may be a few discrepancies here and there, as sometimes I forgot to tally a mulligan or who conceded, or who went first, etc. It's close enough though. Don't look too harshly at this, it's still a lot of data that was collected. There's bound to be tiny errors here and there. Total Gameplay Stats These stats are from all types of gameplay, including daily gold farming in the play queue, ranked draft, events, ranked BO1, and just play testing decks for fun in the play queue.
A change for the new spreadsheet will be to track seconds. Time was rounded up or down to the nearest minute for the tracking of this set, so I feel a lot of time was not accounted for. Daily Gold Farming and Individual Daily Deck Stats My daily routine was to win a minimum of 4 games per day in the play queue, and complete a daily quest if able. I played more on occasion, but usually 30-60 mins a day was enough for me if I already met my daily minimums. These stats are only for games played in the play queue during my daily farming routine. Cavalcade 3.0
RDW (THB)
I did play several days with a RDW variant with some other less used cards, and while I think it had good bones to it, it just wasn't as strong as the current RDW T1 meta deck. Ranked BO1
Gold
Gems
ICRs
Ranked Draft I only do ranked draft for the cards, gems and booster packs. I really don't enjoy the format on Arena, and really only have fun drafting with a group of friends. For Arena, I do what I call collection drafting. You can more about that my article for Arena Collection Drafting.
Booster Packs Disclaimer/Discrepancy: While I attempted to kept meticulous track of each booster pack I opened, I appear to have a discrepancy somewhere. I have record of opening 97 packs on my pack opening spreadsheet. I show that I obtained 100 packs on my daily stats spreadsheet. I don't have 4 of the non-THB mastery packs that I show opened on the pack opening spreadsheet, which would give myself a total of 101. I'll have to be more careful on IKO when tracking all of this. So, here is what I do have.
Cards
Wild Cards
Wild Card Rates This data is for the 97 total booster packs that I tracked opening.
In Conclusion I've made some drastic changes to my tracking spreadsheets over the past 3 iterations and have honed it down to something I think works very well for the data that I am tracking. I only made a few tiny tweaks to it and I am ready to start tracking data for Ikoria! I hope everyone enjoyed their journey back through the plane of Theros are are ready to see what's next as we travel to Ikoria! Ikoria is the Land of Behemoths, but will be we be receiving monstrous value from this set's mastery pass?
WotC released the mastery pass information early this set. While we don't know what levels we will get what rewards at, we can look at past mastery mass tracks to have a pretty good guess. This will only be needed to figure out the break even point. Total value can still be obtained if you plan to complete the entire track. How long is Ikoria Lair of Behemoths? The length of Ikoria is even shorter than Theros Beyond Death, clocking in at only 71 days this time. The Mastery Tree is 80 levels total, with level 80 and beyond giving out the uncommon ICRs, the same as the last two mastery passes. Ikoria runs from 4/16/20 with it's last day most likely being being 6/25/20. The release date for Core Set 2021 starts July 3, Paper pre-release and Arena play generally begins the weekend before. For active players, I am still recommending the same model of playing 4 wins per day for maximizing your gold farming ability without running into burnout. Doing so averages out to 1135 XP per day over the course of the week. With 71 days of play, you should be at Level 80. This gives you exactly enough time to reach the final level of reward. Here is what this looks like calculated out:
In fact, to be more accurate, we can use MTGAHelper's excellent Mastery Pass Calculator to figure this out for us once the new pass goes live. Where do the values come from? All values have been carefully traced back to actual money that you can spend in the game through gems, or using gold to gem conversion rates. Everything in the game can be traced back to an actual dollar amount at this point in time. Even individual random cards, which includes ICRs. For more information on real world Arena values, please click on my article HERE. Free Mastery Track Lets start by looking at what is in the free path of the mastery track. Ikoria free mastery track includes the following:
So all of you F2P players are getting $43.48 value for just playing the game. That's excellent value for zero dollars spent! Paid Mastery Pass Now, lets see what the paid mastery pass gives you this set. Ikoria mastery pass includes the following:
This gives us a combined total of $183.17. Thoughts on the Ikoria Mastery Pass. Lets say you aren't interested in the cosmetic items. You are still getting $40.82 in value for virtual product at just under $20 worth of Gems. This is still a pretty decent value for any active player. Although... Keep in mind that when Zendikar Rising releases in the late summer, that 13 of these booster packs will no longer be used in Standard, which is about $14 in value. This still leaves us with $26.72 in value. The mastery pass costs us $19.85 in gems. This is barely worth it at this point from just a product perspective, but it's still in the positive. It may get worse... For those that have been playing for a while and like to draft or open lots of booster packs, then those 20 extra booster packs from older sets may be worth nothing to you at all. This brings total value to $19.13, which is not a great buy if all you care about is virtual product only. I didn't really get back into Arena until the end of RNA, so while my collection of GRN and RNA are low, and I have less WAR than M20 and beyond, I already have crafted anything I needed from these older sets, making anything I open in those packs rather worthless for me. I am also in the same boat as a lot of active players in the past year in that for M20 and newer, I have nearly the entire playset for all of these sets, so I won't be getting much value out of these booster packs either. The only thing of value at this point is the duplicated protected rare slot from those booster packs, and the vault progress from all the useless duplicates, neither of which I care about at this point for those particular sets. If you love cosmetics, then this is always an excellent value. You will get your cosmetics for the latest set sooner than waiting on them to show up in the store later. Also, it appears that from what we have seen so far in the store, this is a much better value on cosmetics. Think of it as buying most of this set's cosmetics at a discounted bulk rate. Is the Ikoria Lair of Behemoths Mastery Pass it worth it?
TL:DR version
Today starts preview season for the new Magic: The Gathering set Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths. With the new set announcement going live today, we saw some new spoiler cards, new mechanics and some awesome new art to get excited about. As with past sets, WotC have released pre-release bundles on Arena prior to the new set launching. Are they a good deal or not? Just like with the previous Ashiok and Elspeth bundles from Theros Beyond Death, they are offering a bundle purchase of both bundles and throwing in the new set pet, Azizi. I will go into depth on each bundle separately, and then discuss both bundles combined at the end. Pricing and value information is all found on my main Arena site. All values shown are as of 4/2/20. Vivien Pack Bundle - $49.99 What's in it? The Vivien Pack Bundle mimics the previous Ashiok Pack Bundle with a slight discount on bulk packs plus some fun extras thrown in for "free". This time around we are getting the awesome Godzilla card styles thrown in! Let's see what we get!
From this we can see there is $84.13 worth of value here. The previous Ashiok pack bundle only had a value of $64.41. If we remove the Godzilla card styles ( and the $.17 value of the single planeswalker card that was not calculated previously), then we come out to $62.06 for the Vivien pack bundle. This is less value than the previous bundle at the same price. What are we actually getting? If you only care about actual items, being the booster packs and the Vivien card, you're looking at a value of $54.41, which still has more value than the cost of the bundle, and is still worth purchasing for the booster packs alone. The really cool value comes into play here because these Godzilla Series Monster card styles are a brand new item for MTG. These are the new card styles that add a Godzilla style monster into the Ikoria theme, while still maintaining the original creature. Since these are basically being thrown in for free, this makes the Vivien pack bundle an exceptional value for those wanting the new Godzilla cards without having to wait for the chance to purchase them later in the Arena store. Don't confuse the Godzilla card styles with the Collector Booster (comic book) card styles. For certain cards, we will now have 3 really cool and unique styles to choose from. Who is this for? This bundle is for anybody looking to beef up their collection on opening day while getting a slight savings on booster packs. This bundle is also for those excited about the new Godzilla style art and who will want them to immediately start having fun with upon release. I feel that since they bundled these Godzilla card styles in with the booster pack bundle, this is going to be a very popular purchase for Arena players. It includes a discounted rate on booster packs and a highly sought after and extremely exciting card style all at a great price. Who knows if and when we might see these special Godzilla cosmetics show up in the Arena store. Is this a good buy? YES! I wish had the funds to purchase this bundle. If you do, then you're getting an excellent value out of this. Lukka Play Bundle - $49.99 What's in it? The Lukka play bundle follows in the path of the previous Elspeth play bundle. The previous Elspeth play bundle was not really worth it. Lets see if the Lukka play bundle gives any better value this time around.
We can see from this that we're getting $65.41 in value... but not so fast! Again, they have included the 10 mastery pass levels, which are really pretty worthless. The reason being, WotC has adjusted the mastery pass so that with minimal dedicated play, you can easily reach the last level of pass a couple of weeks before the end of the set. Now, I like to stick with facts, and I don't like to speculate or make assumptions, but I believe it's fitting for this instance. I could be totally wrong, let me know in the comments. I am going to assume that those shelling out $50 are probably going to be more dedicated players, who will could easily reach the end of the mastery pass well before the end of the set. My assumption is based on: Why spend money if you don't intend to play the game? The general consensus among patrons of various online forums and social media outlets seem to have the same negative sentiment towards these 10 extra bonus levels as I do. The mastery pass is also built into this cost. We all know what it already costs, which is 3400 gems, or $19.72. Looking at the sealed token value, these are only useful if you had planned to spend money on gems to play sealed games. The sealed format costs 2000 gems, or $11.68/ea, to play. The Lukka card, card style and sleeve is worth $7.99. This brings the total bundle value, minus the 10 mastery pass levels, to $50.91. I would consider this to be a break even price. I wouldn't even consider the 10 extra levels as a free throw in since they are so worthless. Now, if you take the Lukka cosmetics and 10 extra mastery pass levels out of this bundle, you are left with $42.92 in value for just the mastery pass and 2 sealed tokens. Since this is less than the cost of the bundle, you are losing a lot of value if you don't care about the Lukka cosmetics. This immediately becomes a bad deal. I have lots of gems already. Lets make another assumption here. For those talented and dedicated enough to perpetuate their gem spending, they probably don't need to buy gems for the mastery pass or for the sealed games that they play. They continuously win sealed and traditional draft games and convert their gold to even more gems via ranked draft. These players really aren't hurting for gems, and are able to play for free for the most part. So for these types of players, again, unless they really want the Lukka swag, I can't see what value this bundle will bring them either. Free to Play players. F2P players typically grind away during each set, convert their gold to gems and large collections when ranked draft starts, and generally keep their mastery pass going for free. These players generally aren't going to spend $50 anyway on Arena. This is not even worth considering for these players, myself included. Is this bundle worth it? This begs the question then of, who is this bundle for? I'm not really sure. Maybe just for the whales that want it all and don't want to play as often? I really have no idea. It's a terrible bundle. The main culprit of bad value is the 10 mastery pass levels. If WotC were to remove this item and replace it with something more useful, or more cosmetics, then this bundle would be more worth your while. Otherwise, this is a bad value no matter how you look at it. Purchasing Both Bundles - $99.98
You will also need to analyze the Lukka play bundle to see if this bonus pet value makes up for the huge deficit in value you receive in that particular bundle. If you removed the 10 bonus levels and combined remaining value, you are at $135.04 in value with the cosmetic items and sealed tokens from both sets combined. Throwing in the $19.32pet as a free bonus for buying both bundles, the total value for $99.98 spent is 154.36. Are both bundles worth it? It really depends if you want the Lukka cosmetics or not. If you don't, then don't buy the Lukka play bundle at all. If you do want the Lukka cosmetics, and you had planned to purchase the mastery pass and 2 sealed games, then this comes out to a $.91 discount, and you then get the $19.32 pet for free. You have to have already wanted the Azizi pet the moment you saw it too to even consider both bundles as a valuable purchase. If you did not see any value in the Lukka play bundle, and you wanted the Azizi pet, you would still come out ahead by just purchasing the Vivien pack bundle + Azizi separately. I hope this evaluation of value and cost helps in your purchase decisions. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Due to the COVID-19 quarantine going on in the USA and around the world, and most game stores closing their doors to public events during this time, many of us have nowhere to go to play for Friday Night Magic (FNM). Entering stage left is WotC, who stepped up to keep all of us Magic players entertained on our weekends. Over the next 3 weeks, they are hosting a new event on Arena to cater to the Friday night crowd. These events are free to enter, and have rewards. What's more, these events actually look interesting! Prizes so far include 2 random rares for completing 2 wins, and then if you post a screen shot of your event screen to your WPN associated Local Game Store's (LGS) social media outlets, they are supposedly going to message you back a code for digital sleeves in Arena. They state quantities are limited. We'll see how this goes. I am skeptical. You can see all 3 of the sleeves here: MTG Arena Sleeves Gallery I have about a dozen LGSs in my area, so I picked the one that I frequent the most, which is Cool Stuff Games in Waterford Lakes, the local brick and mortar store for CoolStuffInc.com. The first event for March 27, 2020 is the Challenger Deck event. In this event, you get to play with each of the 4 2020 Challenger decks, as much as you like, until the event ends. I won't go into a review of each deck, that has been done many times over on other sites, so I will instead just give my experience of the one deck I played with. I was excited for this event, as I was considering picking up the Cavalcade Charge deck. It includes some highly played cards for RDW, all in an affordable package. Unfortunately I realized very quickly how broken this deck was, and I don't mean broken in a good way. Right away I found that they jammed the Cavalcade shell from the Eldraine era together with the RDW shell from the Theros Beyond Death era. This makes no sense. Sure, Bone Crusher Giant, Rimrock Knight, Runaway Steamkin and Embercleave are highly played cards, but not in Cavalcade. Meanwhile when you do get Cavalcade of Calamity down, good luck getting 1/1 haste creatures out when all you have in your hand is everything that is not a 1/1. What good are the above mentioned cards with Cavalcade of Calamity? Steamkin rarely stays a 1/1, and equipping any 1/1 with Embercleave makes Cavalcade not trigger anymore. I was a Cavalcade player all through Throne of Eldraine, and then I switched to RDW after drafting all the needed cards during Theros Beyond Death. I know both decks very well, and I enjoy them both very much. This new Challenger deck is trying to do two things at once, and it does not work very well. The designers appeared to be taking the win-cons from both games and only putting in the best of those cards from each deck. You are then left with a weak deck that doesn't finish as quickly as it could. I was left feeling pretty disappointed. You can see in the above screenshot from my MTGAHelper logs how much slower this deck is. The top 5 games are my daily Win-4 regiment. I am using the current THB RDW shell without Steamkins (I use Grim's instead). It's a much faster game. The bottom 4 games are the Challenger Event games. You can see how much longer the games take to close out. Granted, this is a very small sample size, and opponents were figuring out what they were doing, as was I, but they took twice as long to play out. While I do enjoy long drawn out games, I don't enjoy them when playing a deck that is supposed to be a fast deck. They've managed to turn it into a mid-range deck as you are waiting for enough pieces to put one of two win-cons together, rather than just assembling your one single win-con. While I still had fun playing, I was frustrated with my opening hand options and my card draws. This is a deck I would buy, then split it in half and build each respective deck as they should be. Maybe that's WotCs intention? If so, that's both good and bad. It's good in that I now have two pools of cards that I can fill in with missing cards for 2 full popular decks that I really enjoy playing. It's also bad in that off the shelf, this is not going to be as competitive as it should be. It's too slow. ...Update: I went ahead and pre-ordered this deck from my LGS, CoolStuffInc. The value is excellent and I have enough other parts to finish both decks with. I don't know how the other decks will play out, I ran into Simic Flash, Golgari Adventures and the Fires deck while playing. I pretty much knew what to expect from each one already, so I was quickly trying to figure out how to salvage this broken RDW deck to compete against them. My two rare ICRs were Soul Diviner and Temple of Silence. I hope you all enjoy this event. I feel this is an excellent marketing move for WotC to make this event free, using off-the-shelf products that will be available next week in stores. If you like what you see, these are retailing for about $25-$30 per deck in their pre-order state right now. You can get them here: 2020 Challenger Decks An ongoing debate in MTG Arena is how to spend your gold in order to build your card collection. There are opposing sides on the best way to achieve the most glorious collection: Open a bunch of booster packs or do a bunch of ranked drafts. This is a debate that both sides have feverishly argued over. Up until now, only the draft side has had any solid information to back their side. I decided I wanted to help inject more date into this debate by showing both sides using a small sample size. So, without further adieu, here is what the data shows so far: How data was collected Draft data was collected while I performed my own ranked drafts. As I made each and every pick from each and every pack, I recorded what I picked. This took many hours and a large and complicated spreadsheet to calculate all of this data. Arena booster pack data was collected much in the same way. After opening each Arena booster pack, I recorded which cards were in each pack. I also recorded all wild cards found in each individual pack as well as tracking the wild cards gained from the wheel. A user on Reddit contacted me and stated he would share his pack openings with me once he got to 100 booster packs of the current set, which is THB as of this writing. He then videoed himself opening each of these 100 packs one at a time. I was able to capture data from every card in every pack, pack wild cards as well as the wheel wild cards. I really appreciate this individual reaching out, as I would not have been able to open 100 packs on my own due to cost. Below is a breakdown of where these booster packs and drafts came from.
All of my own gathered data was hand written into a spreadsheet, then double checked using MTGAHelper for accuracy. While this sample size is extremely small, this data will still tell us something useful. If you have data you would like to share, please let me know and I will give you details of exactly what is needed so that we can start increasing our sample size. 50 Booster PacksThis data shows what spending 50K gold, or $50 on a pre-release bundle, will get you when opening 50 Arena booster packs. As we can see, these numbers are close enough that we can get a good idea of what to expect if you open 50 booster packs from a particular set. Data set 2 is just pure RNG luck with the extra mythics. I would just average these out into the rares from the other two data sets for a more accurate idea of what you can expect from 50 booster packs. The data shown here is completely stand-alone, having been recorded by hand and calculated in a spreadsheet. Each set of 50 was opened with and without various amounts of drafting that may or may not have taken place before the booster packs were opened. The only reason this is mentioned is that it may effect the number of unique rares and mythics shown due to duplicate protection. This amount of booster packs opened will in no way come close to duplicate protection with gems. Vault progress is stand-alone in that it was calculated via spreadsheet and not viewed from within Arena. You can confidently use these numbers as a good indicator of what to expect when opening 50 Arena booster packs. 100 Booster Packs This data shows what spending 100K gold will get you when opening 100 Arena booster packs. Again, these 100 Arena booster packs were opened after doing 20 drafts, but is completely stand alone data. 10 Ranked Drafts and 12 Booster PacksFor those looking to spend 50K gold on ranked draft for collection building, this data will show you what you might expect from your efforts. I did not play any of the draft games. I collected my cards, quit and started the next draft. I have an article explaining this process for those that don't enjoy playing draft, but want to build their collections using the ranked draft method. The 12 booster packs are calculated based on the 20% chance of getting 2 packs when you complete a draft after 0 wins. This % chance will increase with the more games you win per individual draft. 20 Ranked Drafts and 24 Booster Packs For those that saved 100K gold to spend on ranked draft for collection building, this will give you a good idea of what to expect for your efforts. The 24 booster packs are calculated based on the 20% chance of getting 2 packs when you complete a draft after 0 wins. This % chance will increase with the more games you win per individual draft. Comparisons Lets compare the two methods against each other. I broke these down into 50K and 100K gold sections for an easier way to compare each method of spending your gold. The numbers highlighted in yellow are the highest numbers of each method. From this we can make a simple comparison between them.
The only real positive from opening packs instead of drafting is that you acquire a lot more wild cards. But, what if you already had all of the previous sets, and you were going to use these wild cards to make up for the fewer cards you got from opening packs? In the data below, I added in each wild card to each rarity to show what they make up for this particular set. This data tells a slightly different story depending how much you spend. For 50K gold we can see this change
For 100K gold we can see this change
Interestingly enough, we have the same number of total Rares with this sample size. What does this all mean? What this shows us is that if you want a larger collection, especially at the uncommon rarity, ranked draft is the better method. If you want gems, ranked draft is the only option. If you want wild cards you can use for sets other than the set you just opened packs or drafted for, then only opening booster packs is the better method. The amount of wild cards gained from only opening booster packs does not make up for the large deficit of missing cards from that particular you just opened packs for. To make the packs-only method worth your while, you will want to be using your wild cards for sets other than the set you just opened packs for. You will also need to be OK with the lack of uncommons you received. Keep in mind you will most likely need to spend some of these wild cards on this particular set for the missing uncommons, should you need those. Doing so brings your total usable wild cards to a lower number to use for other sets since you ended up spending them on this set. Now, all of that said, uncommon wild cards are the most bountiful and easy to receive of the 4 card rarities. They not only show up at a faster random rate when opening packs, but you receive one from the wheel for every 6 packs you open. If you only open booster packs, this may make up for the deficit of uncommons for your specific needs and you may be OK with this. Conclusion I hope you found this data interesting and insightful.
I am not swaying any particular method of spending your gold to build a collection. I will leave it up to you to make your own conclusions on what you want out of the gold you spend. What I generally see is that if you do roughly 20-22 ranked drafts, you end up obtaining nearly 100% of the entire common and uncommon playset. After this, you will want to spend all remaining gold on opening booster packs if you still seek more rares and mythics. Personally, I prefer the draft method. I find that most of the interesting cards are at lower rarities anyway, and I can do far more brewing with these cards than with many of the rares and mythics. That is just my opinion for my play style and what I want out of my collection. Remember that having more rares is not always a good thing, but having the right rares is. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Historic Anthologies was released on March 12, 2020. With it comes 25 new-old cards curated just for the Historic format in Arena.
For the previous article on past sets, click here: Historic Anthologies 1: Is it Worth It? There are some excellent new cards available in this new bundle. This article won't go into whether cards are good or bad or what cards are the most exciting, there are plenty of articles on this subject already. This will stick purely to the topic of value. The previous set included 20 new singles to add to your collection, where as this new set adds 5 cycle lands, bringing the total singles to 25. The entire play set is 100 cards. The cost for the entire 100 card play set is 25,000 Gold or 4,000 Gems. Real World Cost Because the pricing structure for this set introduces a new unequal exchange rate to the economy, we have yet another data point that changes the values again. We are now looking at a calculated value of 5.8360 Gold per Gem. This gives Historic Anthology 2 two different calculated values, depending on your method of payment:
All values are in $USD. What's in the set? Let's take a look at what you get in this set. The $USD values listed here are current mid-trading values in Paper Magic, and have absolutely no coloration to Arena. The Paper Magic values are listed just for fun and reference.
A quick word on Paper Magic Values While the Paper Magic values have no connection to Magic Arena, I just wanted to show some sort of Paper Magic values, even if these are just virtual cards. I invest in Paper Magic too, so this is important to me in knowing how much free or discounted value I am getting from Arena. For $23-$25, you are getting excellent value from this. The Paper Magic singles alone are worth $70.30, with a full Paper Magic play set being worth a cool $281.20 in value. What this is telling you is that if you wish to play with these cards at all, regardless if they are Paper Magic or virtual Arena cards, you are able to play with them on Arena for almost a 12X cheaper cost. Of course we don't need to state there is absolutely zero value to anything you have purchased in Arena. The minute you put money into Arena, you are simply spending it on current and future fun in the game. There is no investment value received for money spent in Arena. Free to Play Players (F2P) If you have a lot of extra gold laying around, and play a lot of historic, it's a no-brainer to grab these up at the gold rate, since this is the F2P method of choice and this would be completely free. If you are successful at drafting and have acquired a lot of extra gems from winning that you don't need for the foreseeable future, then use gems, since this is cheaper than using gold. You will need to make a choice regarding your extra gold or gems and which one is worth the cost. Since this is such a large purchase, you will need to plan ahead on what you need that gold and those gems for in the future. 25,000 gold takes roughly 23 days to build back up with minimal play effort. Will you need that gold before then? Gems take a while to build back up too from all those draft games you will need to win. Spending Real Money If you spend real money regularly in Arena, you can look at this a bit differently. Since you can't buy gold, and many items are gold purchases only, do you have enough gold to keep yourself going for whatever you may need, such as new Daily Deal cosmetics? If so, spend the gold, since you don't need it since you spend real money anyway. Otherwise, spend the gems on this set, because, again, it's a better rate over gold for someone who actually spends real money in Arena. You can easily replace those gems by purchasing more, or through draft winnings if you are successful in that format. Before Purchasing this entire set! Keep in mind that either 25,000 gold or 4,000 gems is a huge purchase price. Do you still need to do more drafts? The addition of Daily Deals in the Arena Store has added a lot more gold and gem sinks lately. Do you value cosmetics items? Those new Nyx lands cost 15,000 gold on their own. They are constantly bringing back older sleeves and other deals and bundles lately. Also consider too that completing the Mastery Pass will give back 1,800 gems over time, paying for almost half the Historic Anthologies II set, or the purchase price of the next Mastery Pass. There is a lot to mull over. What if I only need a few cards? Here are the individual card values for each purchase method: Gold = 25,000 Gold / 100 Cards = 250 Gold per Card = $.25 per card Gems = 4000 Gems / 100 Cards = 40 Gems = $.23 per card That said, lets take a look at current wild card values:
Using wild cards on a single set of these cards will cost you 7 x Common = $22.75 6 x Uncommon = $16.14 10 x Rare = $54.20 2 x Mythic = $32.54 A full play set, being 4 of each card, will set you back $125.63. Why is this important to know wild card values? It helps us determine how many wild cards to spend before it becomes more expensive than just purchasing the entire set. Remember that you also can't buy wild cards directly. You must get them from opening Arena booster packs. Some Arena booster packs you get for free, some you get from spending gold or gems over time. All of this adds up to how much free or real money you have spent in the game for those wild cards vs how much cheaper real money might be depending on your needs. A good example of this is that 1 Arena Booster pack is 1,000 gold. Every 6 booster packs you open is guaranteed to give you a Rare Wild Card from the Wild Card Wheel. To get just 4 rare wild cards, you will need to have spent 24,000 gold on 24 booster packs. You may as well just spend 1,000 more gold and purchase the entire Anthologies set and get all 100 cards. I have a ton of useless wild cards I don't need... You may think that you have an abundant supply of wild cards that you don't care about, and you have every card in all the sets already. But keep in mind that WotC keeps teasing bringing older sets back into Arena. You may suddenly find you have a big need for wild cards if that happens. Spend at your own risk. So, is it worth it? This depends entirely on your needs. Do you want the entire play set for completionist purposes? It's cheaper to just buy it using gems or gold. Do you only need a single set for Brawl use? It's still cheaper to purchase the entire play set using gems or gold. Do you only need a few cards for Brawl? Craft those few cards you need using Wild Cards, but do your homework first to figure out if you will want more beyond just a few cards. Do you only need a few cards here and there for Historic decks? Keep in mind that regular constructed decks need 2-3-4 copies of each card. This can quickly add up to costing you more in wild cards than it would be to just purchase the entire set. Make sure to do your homework before crafting any cards. In Conclusion... I hope this article was of use to you and helped you in your decision making process for Historic Anthologies II. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. See you in the Arena! It's time to do another purge of stuff. I buy/sell/trade computers and other electronics, and have a lot of stuff that needs to go. I have a large amount of Magic: The Gathering cards for sale as well, cheap! Local pickup only (Orlando/Mt Dora, FL Area), no shipping. Everything sold As-Is. No Refunds. Please contact me for more info. Laptops For those with no AC adapter, they are generally $15 on eBay, I can also order you one for the additional cost if you commit to buy. Batteries all in unknown conditions. The newer models I would assume still work fine and have some life left, the older models, just assume they don't work, or hold a shorter charge. Most show signs of wear, a few have surface scratches or cracks in the plastic. Contact me for more specific details on anything in particular. Unless otherwise noted, everything is in good working condition. I did not test any DVD drives as I do not use them. WiFi works on everything. All laptops have a fresh clean install of a legit Windows 10 license and all updates as of when I refurbished the unit.
Other Stuff
New-ish in box. Has about 10 minutes of flight time on it. Only signs of wear are a few gentle landings in the grass. Works great, never wrecked. I just realized it wasn't for me after flying it around for a few minutes. I'm not really an RC guy. Has brand new upgraded 4000mAH battery, direct from Traxxas, with only a couple minutes of flight time on it. Includes everything it came with in the box. https://traxxas.com/products/models/heli/Aton Magic: The Gathering
Pauper / Common Playsets 2/12/20 PRICE DROP! ALL sets $5/ea!!! As of early July, 2019, Wizards of the Coast announced that they are officially recognizing Pauper as a fully sanctioned format! This means that they will have official events and tournament support for both local game stores and at larger events. New to Magic Arena and want to try your hand at Pauper? You can own physical copies of many of the cards you play with daily online. This is a cheap way to get into paper Magic. Many of these sets are out of print, so get them while you can! I am also willing to trade sets. I am looking for War of the Spark common playset, and anything else not listed here. I am also looking for vintage cards. Let me know what you got! Also available: If you want some "almost" full sets, and don't mind some missing cards, let me know, I will give steep discounts on multiple sets of your choice. If you want to buy all the remaining bulk (roughly 50K+ cards), it's all for sale too, all boxed and sorted by set, color and alphabetized. Start your own online store! $500 for all of it ($.01/ea per card). ALL sets $5/ea!!! I will be happy to meet you somewhere nearby 32822 for delivery. The following sets are still available:
------------------------------------------------------- *Missing Cards / Partial Sets – Please ask what’s missing if interested in a partial set, I have them documented on each set’s box. *Amonkhet 99% - includes only 2x Essence Scatter, otherwise 100% *Amonkhet 98% - includes only 1x Essence Scatter, otherwise 100% *Guilds of Ravnica partial sets – ask about what’s missing, it ranges from 6 – 30 cards (out of ~400ish) – I can make a deal on these, let me know if interested. *Ravnica Allegiance partial sets – ask about what’s missing, it ranges from 32-55 cards (out of ~452ish) – I can make a deal on these, let me know if interested. *Iconic Masters – missing: Mana Leak, Thought Scour, Mind Stone, Star Compass and includes only 1 x Lead the Stampede. ------------------------------------------------------- Cards are all Near Mint condition. All prices adjusted to reflect any missing cards, and the included uncommons. If dual/special lands were not included in the set, it means I just don’t have any, so don't ask. Cards come in a mix of MTG bundle deck boxes, plain white card boxes, and empty booster boxes. Boxes may have markings on them left over from the previous owners. If there is a card missing that wasn’t mentioned, please let me know. I’ve handled hundreds of thousands of cards while putting these sets together. My hands, back, eyes and brain are tired, and sometimes things get miscounted by mistake. If the card was not mentioned as missing, then I probably have it and can get it to you. This page will be a running log of changes to the Arena Current Values when the occur. Calculations can be found on my shared Google Sheet: Arena Calculated Values 8/31/20 This update is long overdue, but not much has changed since May. The July 16, 2020 update brought the borderless planeswalker bundles, and with it a another price point to add to the card style pricing. Prices actually dropped from $2.19/avg to $2.14/avg overall, with these particular bundles being priced at $1.87 / 320gems and $1.60 / 1600gold. The average price of avatars came down slightly, though that price decrease was for only one avatar, Basri Ket. While his gem price of 500 remained the same across the board, they lowered the gold price from 3000 down to 2500 for just this one avatar. Not much else has changed. Gold/Gem/Dollar values are still the same. 5/17/20 Not much has changed. It appears that WotC is dialing in what people are willing to pay, as well as their conversion rates. Rates have been kept the same for many months now. As far as changes go, the only change in the past month was for sleeves. There was a daily deal on country flag sleeves for 1,500 gold / 300 gems. This brought the average value of sleeves down from $5.63 to $4.30. There are no other changes to report. I have not messed with the individual card values pricing at all, I may pick back up on that project later. 4/2/20 I did not have a March update, since it was so close to the Feb update, and nothing had really changed. I have a new calculation that I added in. Individual card values. WotC is selling individual cards via Historic Anthologies I and II. With this, I was able to calculate the cards values. Since there is no actual value on each rarity or card itself, we can only go by a bulk purchase price at this time. There are 80 cards in Historic Anthologies I and 100 cards in Historic Anthologies II. There are also the special art lands they are now selling, the Unsanctioned full art lands, and Unsanctioned Hidden Squirrel lands. Unlike the Theros Nyx Lands, these particular lands are not being sold as "cosmetic". Based on this, and the fact that you can use basic lands infinity times, I am going to go out on a limb her and say each land bundle has 20 of each land to help calculate an actual real world price for them. I figure that most decks have 24 lands, most people use special castle lands or dual lands for most mono or duel colored decks, and then 20 regular basic lands would be the minimum you would need to fill out your deck for a cohesive look. Based on this, I figure that each land is really 20 lands each, and therefore 100 total lands for the purchase price of each of the two land bundles. Calculating out each gold and gem value of each bundle, the values come out to 4 different dollar amounts, bringing the average to $.17 per card. I don't know if I will keep this value or not, as it seems a stretch to add in the lands this way, but it's the only logical way that I see since nobody just purchases 1 single land, and gets to use it 20 times in each deck in a real paper deck, meanwhile the other bundles you actually need and get 4 individual copies of each unique card. Gold dropped a little. Card styles had even more wacky pricing in the "daily deals" area of the store, making their values drop slightly. Uncommon wild cards went up slightly in value, as did the Gold per Gem exchange rate. 2/29/20 With the release of Historic Anthologies II, the exchange rate will be changing once again. They have priced this at 4000 Gems or 25,000 Gold. This adds one more different rate of 6.2500, bringing the total number of different rates to 5. We now have:
This moves the rate from 5.7325 to 5.8359, and thus lowering the $USD value in the game economy. 2/29/2020 Rate Calculation Adjustment! Going into March, we see more sales happening in the Daily Deals section of the store. I decided to not count these as part of the exchange rate simply because they are sales. But of note, it seems they are keeping the values in the Daily Deals to a 5 Gold per Gem rate, regardless of the wildly changing random prices they are putting on things. After looking over all the various rates, I decided to change how the Exchange Rate is calculated. Instead of counting every different item I see in the entierty of Arena, and averaging them together, I am only going to average together the different exchange rates found. For this we have 4 different rates showing:
This averages out to 5.7325 Gold per Gem. This of course will change the values of everything, but I believe this is a much better way to calculate this value going forward. 2/11/2020 Today marks the February Update and with that comes new things in the store. We have the introduction of the "Daily Deals" which I believe is going to wreak havoc on the values of everything with their "sales". Some have new rates we can use for conversions too, which helps, but doesn't help. I added in the Brawlers Guildhall cost into the conversion rate as well since it seems to be sticking around. I decided that even if it changes the pricing, I will start to include any and all items or events into the conversion rate if they have both a gold and a gem cost listed. We also have the coveted Theros Beyond Death Full Art Lands, each color bundled with a Nyx basic land. These are being sold for 3000 gold, so basically 2 card styles for that price, which actually lowered the value of card styles this week from $2.26 down to $2.21. The Secret Lair first bundle of 7 sleeves is also now available. These are selling for 600 gems or 4000 gold each, giving us another data point to use for conversion rates. The changes are shown below
2/9/2020 Today we have a new event that has appeared: Standard Treasure. The Gem to Gold rates are different for both costs, so we now have yet another item to use for our Gold to Gem conversion rates. Standard Treasure costs either 500 Gems or 2500 Gold, which is equivalent to $2.90 and $2.50 respectively (as per previous rates). This averages out to 5 gold per Gem, which is currently the same rate of a Booster Pack. This changes the Gold per Gem rate from 6.0833 to 5.8667. I also added a few more data points that I had not previously looked at that will change the average values of everything as well. I included both the Standard and Historic Events (95 Gems or 500 Gold) and Traditional Standard (190 Gems, 1000 Gold). These both come out to the same rate of 5.26 Gold per Gems. Since the Standard and Historic events are the same rate, I only included a data point for a single one. This changes the Gold per Gem rate from 5.8667 to 5.6942. I am also starting to track the Traditional Draft costs, as this is one of the few items you can directly purchase via Gems. The full updated list is as follows:
2/4/2020 Previously we had Sleeves at 1200 Gems, with the one lone Gold obtainable sleeve, Liliana Yoshitaka Amano, at 4,000 Gold. This stayed this way for a long time, leading me to believe that that would be the standard Gold price for a sleeve. As of the previous update, WotC has bucked the trend of sleeve pricing, and we now have new Exquisite sleeves (Cryptic Command and Lightning Bolt) at 8,000 Gold. I feel that this no longer represents a representation of Gems vs Gold because of the direction they are going with premium products, so I removed Sleeves from the conversion chart. Because of this removal as a data point for Gems vs Gold conversions, this lowered the amount of items available with direct Gem and Gold costs, and thus has changed the values. This changes the Gold per Gem rate from 5.533 to 6.083. We also have a Standard Event that costs either What this has done is lower the values, and thus the cost, of each item in the game across the board. The full updated list is as follows:
It's been a while since I last wrote up a recipe article. I've been really busy with my new job lately and just don't have time to write as many food articles as I would like. My new boss loves bacon, jerky and bourbon. What better way to to say thanks than by serving him up with some good cooking! Before getting started, this will either require a dehydrator or your oven needs to be able to hold a low temp at 160*F Ingredients
Marinade
I don't take credit for this marinade. I got into jerky making and have really been enjoying the Jerkyholic line of recipes. These guys are full of tips and tricks for great marinade recipes to best cuts of beef for jerky making. I have modified this slightly to exclude curing salt and substituted molasses for maple syrup. Yield Roughly half the weight of the raw meat, so 1 lb = 1/2 lb. This is why Jerky is so expensive to buy in the store. Prep Cut your bacon either in half or into bite sized pieces. I went with the bite sized pieces myself. It makes for a more convenient snack. Put the cut bacon into a ziplock bag. Next, mix all of the marinade ingredients up and pour into the bag. Let all of the air out of the bag as you close it. Massage the bag a bit to make sure all of the bacon gets separated and that the marinade is able to coat everything as evenly as possible. Then set the bag in the refrigerator overnight. Pre-heat your oven to 200*F Prepare a few baking sheets with wire cooling racks on top of them. I also lined my baking sheets with aluminum foil, and then coated everything in olive oil. This will help later when the bacon is ready to come out of the oven and wants to stick to everything. Place your bacon across the cooling racks so that they are suspended over the baking sheet. The purpose here is to help melt off as much fat as possible while they slowly cook. Place your bacon in the oven for roughly 3 hours. I would set a timer to check once per hour to see how they are doing. Below is a time progression of what my bacon looks like as it's cooking over the 3 hours. You do not want them to get too crispy, or it will ruin the chewy texture of the final jerky. Once they start to just lightly crisp up, they are done. Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes. Heavily pat the bacon in some paper towels to remove as much grease as you can from them. This will be important for the dehydrator. You can see how much grease drained out of the fat already in the bottom of the baking sheet. Now, there are two paths to go next, one is if you have a dehydrator, and the other is if you do not. Finish in the Oven (if you don't have a dehydrator) If you only have an oven, you can set your bacon back on the cooling rack pans and cook for another few hours at 160*F, checking every hour until they appear done. My oven is a newer (I say newer, it's 12 years old now!) LG digital model that lets me dial in the temp exactly where I need it. If you have an older analog dial oven, you will need to use an oven thermometer to make sure it can hold 160*F. Otherwise it will overcook the meat and make it too crispy for jerky. It will still taste good, but it will be more like crispy bacon than jerky. Finish in the Dehydrator My dehydrator is the Nesco Professional 600W 5-Tray Food Dehydrator, FD-75PR. I paid $12 for it from Goodwill, new-in-box. Dehydrators are easy to find at most larger thrift stores, such as Goodwill. I typically find one every other time I visit there. They run about $10-15, often in a brand new in beat-up-dusty-box condition. People buy these things, use them once, then let them collect dust. Their loss is your gain! Place all of your bacon pieces in the dehydrator. Spread them out enough to give them room for the air to move around them. I used 2 racks for 1lb of bacon. Set the dehydrator for 160*F and let them cook for another 2-3 hours. As I approached hour 3, I decided they were done and took them out. You can see here they look a bit more shriveled up and darker in color. Further grease had dripped into the bottom tray and these are about as dry as I can get them without cooking them further. Bacon is so fatty that it's hard to get all of the grease out. Beef dries up a lot better, but then it's not bacon! I patted them all again with paper towels to remove further grease and then stored it all in a sealed container with some paper towels in the refrigerator. If you want to store these longer term, I suggest reading up on curing salts. Jerkyholic explains the use of curing salts if you want to get into that, but mine jerky usually doesn't last a week so it will be fine in the refrigerator. Be Creative! Don't think of this as just "jerky". Think of it also as fancy bacon bits! Put these in salads, put some in your sandwiches, dice it up and put it in recipes that call for bacon, such as baked potatoes or broccoli salad, etc. The bourbon maple flavoring adds a rich taste to any recipe! I will be adding mine to a special mac and cheese recipe for another article soon. I hope you enjoyed this article. Making jerky is not very difficult so long as you have time, patience and a good dehydrator. The right cuts of meat and a good marinade makes for wonderful high protein snacks. |
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