I've only been frequenting the Limited subforum for a week or two now, so correct me if this has been brought up before.
I would have thought it natural for a subforum of this nature to have its own rankings on the cards of the current drafting set, perhaps with some pick data taken from online drafting, to give some players a general idea of which cards fit where in terms of good and bad.
There are some resources out there, and there are articles that have been written that accomplish the above, but I fear personal bias considering in most, if not all of these cases, the work was done by an individual only.
I envision polls done on each card using the input from this subforum (perhaps done on an external site that automates certain things and collects data if we have any resident coders*), and maybe additional comments (done by forum-goers) showcasing differing opinions and arguments.
((*There are websites I've used that give you two musical albums, choosing one, with the result being a tiered list after the input of the community. Something like this seems reasonable.))
Now, I have a feeling I'm going to get shot down fairly quickly due to the size of the project for little gain, but I still figure I should let this idea out and see what you guys think.
A ranking assembled by bad players is worse than useless.
While there are plenty of players here whose opinions I trust, they are in a small minority. I wouldn't trust the opinions of the forum at large and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do so either.
The other important thing is that drafting is so context-dependent for every pick other than p1p1 that trying to draft according to a static pick order is only good for getting a player from "horrible" to "below average". If you are any better than "below average" then static pick orders in draft make you worse at Magic.
That said, we do rank cards for sealed in most formats, and you should definitely feel free to start one of those threads once we know more of the spoiler.
A ranking assembled by bad players is worse than useless.
While there are plenty of players here whose opinions I trust, they are in a small minority. I wouldn't trust the opinions of the forum at large and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do so either.
Agreed. not to be rude or anything, but most people on this site are either new to the game, dont do limited much, are kitchen table players, or worse.... play edh. I have literally rage closed my browser at some threads posted on here. There are very few users on here that I have read/followed posts on and would trust/agree/discuss picks with. Your better off trying to find someone at your local store or contact someone on youtube or something to discuss picks. Its unfortunate if you dont have people that draft frequently at your stores because most people suffer from gaining any experience from it. MTGO is also not a very trusted source because some people on there just ruin drafts. I average about a draft of day, paper, and once every now and then online and I am still only about 90% on picks (the format changes all the time). The more and more you draft, the more car orders change and the more those card orders change, the more they cahnge again and keep evolving more and more so its hard to formulate some sort of distinct list of pick order or pick discussion or something like that. All in all, I feel a thread that you are looking for wont happen, because you shouldnt trust it and because it will change over time
I do think that data from MTGO about what people pick is interesting, even if it's not directly useful in an absolute sense to experienced players. On the other hand, a random survey of this forum's userbase seems like you'd get sketchy, noisy results.
I think there's two ways to get information that you could do something with; you can either do what Wizards does and look at a huge sample of games on, like, MTGO and collate them with all kinds of interesting information about what gets drawn and played and who wins and loses and get some numbers out of that. (While it's probably technically true that "some people on there just ruin drafts", they're a minority and I suspect mostly just wash out when your sample size is all the games.) The second is to sort of sound out what people who know what they're doing say and kind of integrate their opinions together. The amount of skill and experience a person needs to have to be a good source of information is pretty high; I would consider myself to be a "fair" limited player, but essentially every remotely nuanced opinion I have about most draft formats is something that I absorbed from someone else, modified only very slightly by my experience. I used to form way more independant opinions about limited, but I stopped doing that so much when I got good enough to realize I wasn't good enough to do that. (I mean, I'm good enough to know independantly that Murder is a good card and stuff, but my overall evaluations of most things aren't much better than approximations. I also thought Vile Rebirth was going to be awesome for some reason.)
The problem with the idea is that groups are very bad at that sort of thing. Get 10 people to evaluate a card, all of whom are good but have different playstyles, and you'll have 10 evaluations that, on average, might not be too far off from right, but that are completely divergent from each other because of playstyle considerations. And since most cards in Magic perform much better in some kinds of decks than others, the average ranking is just a bunch of sound and fury.
Ask 1000 people if the Alps are a good vacation spot, and 10 answer. 7 answer that it's a great spot to go skiing, 2 answer no, because there are no tennis courts, and 1 answers that her husband was killed in a reckless car chase involving 007 in the Alps, and it was the worst vacation ever. Average? Pretty bad, do not recommend. (People with abnormal experiences are more likely to respond to polls. This is very true with the Magic experiences people post on this site, too.)
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
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I would have thought it natural for a subforum of this nature to have its own rankings on the cards of the current drafting set, perhaps with some pick data taken from online drafting, to give some players a general idea of which cards fit where in terms of good and bad.
There are some resources out there, and there are articles that have been written that accomplish the above, but I fear personal bias considering in most, if not all of these cases, the work was done by an individual only.
I envision polls done on each card using the input from this subforum (perhaps done on an external site that automates certain things and collects data if we have any resident coders*), and maybe additional comments (done by forum-goers) showcasing differing opinions and arguments.
((*There are websites I've used that give you two musical albums, choosing one, with the result being a tiered list after the input of the community. Something like this seems reasonable.))
Now, I have a feeling I'm going to get shot down fairly quickly due to the size of the project for little gain, but I still figure I should let this idea out and see what you guys think.
Apologies if this seems ridiculous. Thanks!
While there are plenty of players here whose opinions I trust, they are in a small minority. I wouldn't trust the opinions of the forum at large and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do so either.
That said, we do rank cards for sealed in most formats, and you should definitely feel free to start one of those threads once we know more of the spoiler.
Agreed. not to be rude or anything, but most people on this site are either new to the game, dont do limited much, are kitchen table players, or worse.... play edh. I have literally rage closed my browser at some threads posted on here. There are very few users on here that I have read/followed posts on and would trust/agree/discuss picks with. Your better off trying to find someone at your local store or contact someone on youtube or something to discuss picks. Its unfortunate if you dont have people that draft frequently at your stores because most people suffer from gaining any experience from it. MTGO is also not a very trusted source because some people on there just ruin drafts. I average about a draft of day, paper, and once every now and then online and I am still only about 90% on picks (the format changes all the time). The more and more you draft, the more car orders change and the more those card orders change, the more they cahnge again and keep evolving more and more so its hard to formulate some sort of distinct list of pick order or pick discussion or something like that. All in all, I feel a thread that you are looking for wont happen, because you shouldnt trust it and because it will change over time
I think there's two ways to get information that you could do something with; you can either do what Wizards does and look at a huge sample of games on, like, MTGO and collate them with all kinds of interesting information about what gets drawn and played and who wins and loses and get some numbers out of that. (While it's probably technically true that "some people on there just ruin drafts", they're a minority and I suspect mostly just wash out when your sample size is all the games.) The second is to sort of sound out what people who know what they're doing say and kind of integrate their opinions together. The amount of skill and experience a person needs to have to be a good source of information is pretty high; I would consider myself to be a "fair" limited player, but essentially every remotely nuanced opinion I have about most draft formats is something that I absorbed from someone else, modified only very slightly by my experience. I used to form way more independant opinions about limited, but I stopped doing that so much when I got good enough to realize I wasn't good enough to do that. (I mean, I'm good enough to know independantly that Murder is a good card and stuff, but my overall evaluations of most things aren't much better than approximations. I also thought Vile Rebirth was going to be awesome for some reason.)
Ask 1000 people if the Alps are a good vacation spot, and 10 answer. 7 answer that it's a great spot to go skiing, 2 answer no, because there are no tennis courts, and 1 answers that her husband was killed in a reckless car chase involving 007 in the Alps, and it was the worst vacation ever. Average? Pretty bad, do not recommend. (People with abnormal experiences are more likely to respond to polls. This is very true with the Magic experiences people post on this site, too.)