Hi guys, I'm a very very casual player, and I played from time to time around Scars, Innistrad and RTR, but my local group of friends disbanded as we started graduating around Theros release. Yesterday, with a sudden spark of 'I wanna play some MtG' I hit the local comic store for a midnight prerelease. I didn't know much about new cards. I didn't play back in original Zendikar either, so I wanted to experience it. And boy, I had so much fun! My hands didn't shuffle any cards for over one year and a half and I forgot how fun it is!
Our event was small - 24 players. One expedition was opened - it was a Marsh Flats. They are very shinny and beautiful.
My pool was all over the place, my promo was Defiant Bloodlord and other black rare I opened was Smothering Abomination without much support of other black creatures/lifegain/sacrifice effects. Other rares were: Canopy Vista, Sunken Hollow, Sanctum of Ugin, Dragonmaster Outcast and Akoum Hellkite. I decided to go with red as a main color, second one was between white and blue, but I ultimately decided on WR aggro/fliers with some allies and landfall theme.
My deck was not super good, but it was relatively fast. And this format seems quite slow in sealed. I went 2-1.
I lost first game 0-2 to a UGrb converge deck with foil Kiora, Master of the Depths and multiple Ingest/ Processors cards. His two Serpentine Spikes and two Titan's Presence were quite brutal against me. He had good fixing too. Second game he dropped Kiora, cleared my board, stalled me with two Oracle of Dust, and then ultimated Kiora. Not having enough Octopus tokens, he put 3 cards with Pandas. The level of raging was real, table-flip kinda moment - it was so fun!
Second game I went 2-1, played against GBu sacrifice/scions/ramp deck. His deck was really slow in comparison to mine, and he couldn't cope with menace/landfall/fliers as he lacked some removal. One game I solely lost due to Woodland Wanderer casted on T4 with GBU that I couldn't remove.
Third game I went 2-0, played against WBug awaken fliers. This deck had a lot of ramp (he snatched Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger), some cheap fliers and some controlish spells with awaken. Overall it wasn't very fast, so I run him over first with ground allies with menace, then second game I dropped T6 Dragonmaster Outcast, followed by T7 Outnumber to his 4/4 awaken Forest and finishing with Akoum Hellkite.
I won two BFZ packs, opened Shambling Vent and Endless One, went out of the comic store around 4:30am and hit home happy.
It was great! It makes me wanna go back and play magic again.
+1: Look at the top two cards of your library. Put one of the into your hand and the other on the bottom of your library.
-1: Untap up to four target permanents.
-10: You get an emblem with "You may activate loyalty abilities of planeswalkers you control on any player's turn any time you could cast an instant"
Thanks Pawel.
I saw that the column had the right numbers but wouldn't have thought of seemingly random swapping like that.
I made the swaps and will start opening. If those swaps aren't correct will that column be invalid or skew the data? Or will just posting the mid and right be helpful?
Just keep the record of whatever the pattern you started opening with. As long we know the numbers we will be able to track it back.
All I know is that you will open all rares/ mythics like you suppose to, but there might be more randomness in the left column. All your middle and right column rares would end up according to the known patterns. If not I owe you a beer
EDIT:
Hmmm, it might be not totally random, pack swapping might occur always in pairs with the pack i+4 i.e. with 3 packs in between. And in that case it happens AFTER row shifting:
So it's possible that both of your packs with 1 are swapped too, as they are also separated by 3 other packs. But other than that it doesn't change the outcome.
I'm guessing there is some pack insertion/deletion in the left column. But I don't really understand how that works[...]
Hmm this quite an interesting box. Thanks for posting, in one of the cases someone posted similar thing happened to the right column. At first I thought it's all about missing packs, but I think it is not. All packs that should be in your box are there.
Here is my thought process:
Lets imagine an 'ideal' box order that you would expect based on the numbers you provided. We can speculate that's the initial pattern that sorting machine will do prior to packaging boosters in to cardboard.
Now we know that something happens to the left column but we don't know what and/ or some of the rows might be shifted, like it was reported in RTR and previous sets. I was staring at it and ask myself what happens first. Well it looks that row shift happens as a last step, at least I believe so.
So what happens to the left column? I think packs are rearranged vertically and it seems that they are rearranged in pairs. Now let's look at your 'ideal' box again and mark packs that I think were swapped:
Why do I think this is the case? Because when you look at your left column all the packs that are suppose to be there to make an 'ideal' pattern are present there. In upper half of the column there is no "3"s, but three "1", whereas in lower half there are two "3"s, but no single "1". So swapping from ideal order has to happen first what breaks the pattern. Then, both halves of the box are treated separately for row shifting like we saw it with other boxes.
Now that makes sense that they do it that way - they make sure that the amount of mythics per box on average will stay the same, but you won't be able to figure entirely the position of cards. But then again we are smarter than machines, right? You will have to accomodate for it prior to opening if you patern is screwed up a little.
There is also a possibility that more boosters are swapped in pairs within one column, but it will be the same number for the same number so we cannot track it. I wonder if this is also possible with the middle column, for sure I saw it for right one.
Good luck with opening your box and I hope I am right on this one. Also sorry for my English, I'm not native, but I hope you were able to follow my way of thinking.
Alright, the Tracks have been updated again. You might be able to start using some of them to map, if you don't mind the risk.
Awesome work SynthesisB, I wasn't sure about my A track until yu posted another track distribution, it all seems to make sense now. We only need few boxes now to complete the gaps, but it looks great so far.
My box is coming on Tue/Wed so I will be happy to sacrifice it in order to try to map it using the tracks
@Vinzito: Do you have any estimated time when you will release your application for GTC?
Alright, I've updated the partial Track lists. I am going to take a break for a while. At this rate, I might have them finished before the end of the weekend.
If you catch this before you open your boxes, please include the guild symbol or the last digit of the barcode on the back of the pack. I realize most of you don't find this page until after you've opened your cards, but that number makes things so much easier. Regardless of whether you included the number, thanks for the contributions.
Hey SynthesisB,
I focused on a mythic track only (I'm assuming it's A), and a lot of your track is similar to what I was able to get with brute force.
Also, boxes with sleeve marks help tremendously as it is easier to get pack moved, there are some tricky boxes, where upper part seems like one track and bottom half like another. Some of the packs on the right column seem missing (like they were taken from the box), and some on the left are swapped vertically. Therefore with two tracks, rows and pack swapping, reporting guild marks from packs will help a lot.
Here is what I was able to get so far (?- I'm not sure):
Lord of the Void
Soul Ransom
Gideon
Prime S Zegana
Mind Grind
Glaring Spotlight
Thespian's Stage
Aurelia's Fury
------
Enter the Infinite
Borborygmos Enraged
Thespian's Stage
Ok, that's it for now. I'm doing it for the first time and having a lot of fun with it. I will resume tomorrow, and if not solved I will report my box once it's here (~Tue).
I was Simic with a small Gruul splash, not very exciting pool, but I went 2-1 (2-1, 1-2, 2-1 we had only 3 rounds as it was midnight pre-release).
Considering my lack of skill in deck building I was happy, especially that I cracked foil Domri Rade in my first GTC booster Other than that I was positively surprised by Ivy Lane Denizen and Burst of Strength that can even out the situation a little when you are low on evolve creatures/ enablers (like it was in my pool)
Hi all, it's my first time posting in this thread, I've been looking at previous editions of box mapping though. I decided to post since my box was very unusual - I opened a lot of shocklands and I just wonder if it's a rule or something was different about the box.
Box was made in USA.
Code: HZI77LB Foil Mythic Shockland
Left column, top to bottom: Blood Crypt, Avenging Arrow
Firemind's Foresight Vraska the Unseen
Jarad's Orders
Grave Betrayal
Mizzium Mortars Overgrown Tomb
Deathrite Shaman
Grove of the Guardian Angel of Serenity, Savage Surge
Ash Zealot
Sphinx of the Chimes
Middle column, top to bottom:
Cyclonic Rift
Lotleth Troll Steam Vents Hallowed Fountain
Mana Bloom
Slaughter Games
Growing Ranks Epic Experiment, Mountain
Carnival Hellsteed
Rest in Peace
Guild Feud
Conjured Currency
Right column, top to bottom:
Precinct Captain, Archon of the Triumvirate Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
Hypersonic Dragon, Dispel Steam Vents, Psychic Spiral
Desecration Demon
Search the City Temple Garden
Chromatic Lantern
Righteous Authority
Counterflux Armada Wurm, Golgari Guildgate
Palisade Giant
Hi guys, it's my first post here, so don't mind me if I am posting in a wrong thread. I am a very very new to magic and this coming Sunday my friends are doing casual modern tournament with cards that we have, traded between each other etc.
I decided to go with tribal BU Zombie aggro deck, but I wanted to ask you what do you think about it.
I would appreciate any comments, additions, changes to deck and sideboard, any feedback in general as I am green to deck creation.
Also, at this point I won't be able to order new cards as they won't come on time, but I will list some cards that I will have available before Saturday (in so called maybeboard).
Here are the cards that I have so far in the deck:
Please let me know how could I improve mana base (I don't understand drawabacks of dual lands that much) and what should I consider for sideboard.
Only thing that I know there will be some:
* mono-black control deck
* Enduring Renewal metalcraft combo
* some Naya Pod
* Storm deck
* Superfriends with Venser, Gideon and Elspeth
* BR Delver
* one deck with Blood Artist, Blood Seeker, Suture Priest, Falkenrath Noble type effects.
Thank you very much in advance for any feedback and sorry for this lengthy post.
Our event was small - 24 players. One expedition was opened - it was a Marsh Flats. They are very shinny and beautiful.
My pool was all over the place, my promo was Defiant Bloodlord and other black rare I opened was Smothering Abomination without much support of other black creatures/lifegain/sacrifice effects. Other rares were: Canopy Vista, Sunken Hollow, Sanctum of Ugin, Dragonmaster Outcast and Akoum Hellkite. I decided to go with red as a main color, second one was between white and blue, but I ultimately decided on WR aggro/fliers with some allies and landfall theme.
My deck was:
2 Makindi Sliderunner
1 Reckless Cohort
2 Shadow Glider
1 Valakut Predator
1 Firemantle Mage
2 Ondu Greathorn
1 Ondu Champion
1 Courier Griffin
1 Belligerent Whiptail
1 Shatterskull Recruit
1 Angel of Renewal
1 Deathless Behemoth
1 Dragonmaster Outcast
1 Akoum Hellkite
1 Outnumber
1 Tandem Tactics
1 Smite the Monstrous
1 Looming Spires
1 Evolving Wilds
8 Mountain
7 Plains
My deck was not super good, but it was relatively fast. And this format seems quite slow in sealed. I went 2-1.
I lost first game 0-2 to a UGrb converge deck with foil Kiora, Master of the Depths and multiple Ingest/ Processors cards. His two Serpentine Spikes and two Titan's Presence were quite brutal against me. He had good fixing too. Second game he dropped Kiora, cleared my board, stalled me with two Oracle of Dust, and then ultimated Kiora. Not having enough Octopus tokens, he put 3 cards with Pandas. The level of raging was real, table-flip kinda moment - it was so fun!
Second game I went 2-1, played against GBu sacrifice/scions/ramp deck. His deck was really slow in comparison to mine, and he couldn't cope with menace/landfall/fliers as he lacked some removal. One game I solely lost due to Woodland Wanderer casted on T4 with GBU that I couldn't remove.
Third game I went 2-0, played against WBug awaken fliers. This deck had a lot of ramp (he snatched Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger), some cheap fliers and some controlish spells with awaken. Overall it wasn't very fast, so I run him over first with ground allies with menace, then second game I dropped T6 Dragonmaster Outcast, followed by T7 Outnumber to his 4/4 awaken Forest and finishing with Akoum Hellkite.
I won two BFZ packs, opened Shambling Vent and Endless One, went out of the comic store around 4:30am and hit home happy.
It was great! It makes me wanna go back and play magic again.
Planeswalker - Teferi
+1: Look at the top two cards of your library. Put one of the into your hand and the other on the bottom of your library.
-1: Untap up to four target permanents.
-10: You get an emblem with "You may activate loyalty abilities of planeswalkers you control on any player's turn any time you could cast an instant"
Teferi, Temporal Archmage can be your commander
Loyalty: 5
Just keep the record of whatever the pattern you started opening with. As long we know the numbers we will be able to track it back.
All I know is that you will open all rares/ mythics like you suppose to, but there might be more randomness in the left column. All your middle and right column rares would end up according to the known patterns. If not I owe you a beer
EDIT:
Hmmm, it might be not totally random, pack swapping might occur always in pairs with the pack i+4 i.e. with 3 packs in between. And in that case it happens AFTER row shifting:
1 2 3 4 5 2 2 3 4 5 1 3
3 4 5 1 2 4 4 5 1 2 3 5
4 1 1 2 5 1 2 3 3 4 5 2
.------->
...------->
......------->
.........------->
So it's possible that both of your packs with 1 are swapped too, as they are also separated by 3 other packs. But other than that it doesn't change the outcome.
Hmm this quite an interesting box. Thanks for posting, in one of the cases someone posted similar thing happened to the right column. At first I thought it's all about missing packs, but I think it is not. All packs that should be in your box are there.
Here is my thought process:
Lets imagine an 'ideal' box order that you would expect based on the numbers you provided. We can speculate that's the initial pattern that sorting machine will do prior to packaging boosters in to cardboard.
2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3
4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2
Now we know that something happens to the left column but we don't know what and/ or some of the rows might be shifted, like it was reported in RTR and previous sets. I was staring at it and ask myself what happens first. Well it looks that row shift happens as a last step, at least I believe so.
So what happens to the left column? I think packs are rearranged vertically and it seems that they are rearranged in pairs. Now let's look at your 'ideal' box again and mark packs that I think were swapped:
2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3
4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2
Now let's rearrange to see how it's swapped and mark rows for shifting (in red):
2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3
4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
1 1 2 5 4 1 3 3 4 5 2 2
As a result we have:
1 2 3 4 5 2 2 3 4 5 1 3
3 4 5 1 2 4 4 5 1 2 3 5
4 1 1 2 5 1 2 3 3 4 5 2
Which is exactly your box:
1 2 3 4 5 2 2 3 4 5 1 3
3 4 5 1 2 4 4 5 1 2 3 5
4 1 1 2 5 1 2 3 3 4 5 2
Why do I think this is the case? Because when you look at your left column all the packs that are suppose to be there to make an 'ideal' pattern are present there. In upper half of the column there is no "3"s, but three "1", whereas in lower half there are two "3"s, but no single "1". So swapping from ideal order has to happen first what breaks the pattern. Then, both halves of the box are treated separately for row shifting like we saw it with other boxes.
Now that makes sense that they do it that way - they make sure that the amount of mythics per box on average will stay the same, but you won't be able to figure entirely the position of cards. But then again we are smarter than machines, right?
There is also a possibility that more boosters are swapped in pairs within one column, but it will be the same number for the same number so we cannot track it. I wonder if this is also possible with the middle column, for sure I saw it for right one.
Good luck with opening your box and I hope I am right on this one. Also sorry for my English, I'm not native, but I hope you were able to follow my way of thinking.
Awesome work SynthesisB, I wasn't sure about my A track until yu posted another track distribution, it all seems to make sense now. We only need few boxes now to complete the gaps, but it looks great so far.
My box is coming on Tue/Wed so I will be happy to sacrifice it in order to try to map it using the tracks
@Vinzito: Do you have any estimated time when you will release your application for GTC?
Hey SynthesisB,
I focused on a mythic track only (I'm assuming it's A), and a lot of your track is similar to what I was able to get with brute force.
Also, boxes with sleeve marks help tremendously as it is easier to get pack moved, there are some tricky boxes, where upper part seems like one track and bottom half like another. Some of the packs on the right column seem missing (like they were taken from the box), and some on the left are swapped vertically. Therefore with two tracks, rows and pack swapping, reporting guild marks from packs will help a lot.
Here is what I was able to get so far (?- I'm not sure):
Soul Ransom
Gideon
Prime S Zegana
Mind Grind
Glaring Spotlight
Thespian's Stage
Aurelia's Fury
------
Glaring Spotlight
Consuming Aberration
Godless Shrine
Deatchpact Angel
Soul Ransom
Aurelia, the Warleader
Duskmantle Seer
-----
Glaring Spotlight
Obzedat
Consuming Aberration?
Deathpact Angel
Hellkite Tyrrant
Borborygmos Enraged
Whispering Madness
Gideon, Champi
Obzedat
Mind Grind
-----
Thespian's Stage
Domri Rade
Soul Ransom
Duskmantle Seer
-----
Aurelia's Fury
Godless Shrine
Giant Adephage
Master Biomancer
----
Enter the Infinite
Borborygmos Enraged
Thespian's Stage
Considering my lack of skill in deck building I was happy, especially that I cracked foil Domri Rade in my first GTC booster
My deck:
1 Wasteland Viper
2 Frilled Oculus
1 Shambleshark
2 Crocanura
1 Slaughterhorn
1 Fathom Mage
1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
2 Ivy Lane Denizen
1 Leyline Phantom
1 Rust Scarab
1 Burst of Strength
1 Gridlock
1 Aetherize
1 Simic Charm
2 Pit Fight
Sorcery (1)
1 Urban Evolution
Artifact (2)
1 Gruul Keyrune
1 Prophetic Prism
1 Domri Rade
Land (17)
7 Forest
6 Island
3 Mountain
1 Simic Guildgate
1 Blind Obedience
1 High Priest of Penance
1 Illusionist's Bracers
1 Biovisionary
1 Alms Beast
1 Consuming Aberration
1 Treasury Thrull
1 Undercity Plague
Box was made in USA.
Code: HZI77LB
Foil
Mythic
Shockland
Left column, top to bottom:
Blood Crypt, Avenging Arrow
Firemind's Foresight
Vraska the Unseen
Jarad's Orders
Grave Betrayal
Mizzium Mortars
Overgrown Tomb
Deathrite Shaman
Grove of the Guardian
Angel of Serenity, Savage Surge
Ash Zealot
Sphinx of the Chimes
Middle column, top to bottom:
Cyclonic Rift
Lotleth Troll
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Mana Bloom
Slaughter Games
Growing Ranks
Epic Experiment, Mountain
Carnival Hellsteed
Rest in Peace
Guild Feud
Conjured Currency
Right column, top to bottom:
Precinct Captain, Archon of the Triumvirate
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
Hypersonic Dragon, Dispel
Steam Vents, Psychic Spiral
Desecration Demon
Search the City
Temple Garden
Chromatic Lantern
Righteous Authority
Counterflux
Armada Wurm, Golgari Guildgate
Palisade Giant
And that's it, if you want to see opening of this box just for giggles, I posted it on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTS1JgizhiM
I decided to go with tribal BU Zombie aggro deck, but I wanted to ask you what do you think about it.
I would appreciate any comments, additions, changes to deck and sideboard, any feedback in general as I am green to deck creation.
Also, at this point I won't be able to order new cards as they won't come on time, but I will list some cards that I will have available before Saturday (in so called maybeboard).
Here are the cards that I have so far in the deck:
4x Gravecrawler
4x Fume Spitter
4x Highborn Ghoul
4x Phantasmal Image
4x Geralf's Messenger
3x Diregraf Captain
1x Death Baron
2x Undead Warchief
1x Phyrexian Obliterator
Spells:
1x Doom Blade
2x Go for the Throat
3x Mana Leak
3x Phyrexian Arena
Lands:
2x Darkslick Shores
2x Underground River
2x Drowned Catacomb
4x Creeping Tar Pit
3x Cavern of Souls
11x Swamp
1x Diregraf Captain
1x Death Baron
3x Doom Blade
2x Go for the Throat
1x Mana Leak
2x Black Sun's Zenith
1x Ratchet Bomb
4x Festering Goblin
2x Corrosive Gale
2x Steel Sabotage
2x Vapor Snag
1x Ratchet Bomb
1x Phyrexian Obliterator
1x Pithing Needle
1x Witchbane Orb
4x Dimir Aqueduct
4x Withered Wretch
4x Blind Creeper
Please let me know how could I improve mana base (I don't understand drawabacks of dual lands that much) and what should I consider for sideboard.
Only thing that I know there will be some:
* mono-black control deck
* Enduring Renewal metalcraft combo
* some Naya Pod
* Storm deck
* Superfriends with Venser, Gideon and Elspeth
* BR Delver
* one deck with Blood Artist, Blood Seeker, Suture Priest, Falkenrath Noble type effects.
Thank you very much in advance for any feedback and sorry for this lengthy post.
EDIT: minor correction in spelling and card links