MTG Salvation

Someone asked in another thread, and I figured this info might be of interest to a wider audience. Here's the steps that I go through to winston draft online:

Note: these instructions assume you both have working copies of MWS.

1. Create your winston draft setup from here:
1a. Set draft type to Winston
1b. Upload your cube from a text file
1c. Set your booster size (I use 20 card packs for a 120 card total stack)
1d. Make the number of players 2
1e. Share the URL on the next screen with the other drafter

2. Draft (at the end you each get a list of drafted cards)

3. Build your deck in deckstats
3a. In a text editor (I use textpad, but notepad or the deckstats text box are both sub-par equivalents that get the job done), build your deck
3b. Make sure you put all of your unplayed cards below the '//Sideboard' line
3c. Add about 20 of each basic land to your SB (incase you want to you know, sideboard in land)
3d. Analyse the deck and on that page, scroll down and click 'Download for Magic Workstation/Apprentice.dec' to save the .dec file

4. Open in MWS
4a. Open the .dec file
4b. Save it as a .mwDeck
4c. Battle!

Nice! This sounds interesting. I'm dying to cube online and haven't had the chance yet. Adding ways to do it with only two players seems like a total win! Thanks for the info, merl!

Nice! Thanks Merl. I just got done drafting 2x Winston Drafts with ffyoyo. (his cube and mine) It works really well.

So once you're done with the draft and you have your card list, is there any easier way to build the deck? Using Deckstats.net is a little clunky - I assume you just keep moving cards in and out of the sideboard until you're happy with it, then export it? It's not very visual, and kind of kludgy. Any other suggestions?

I actually use a text editor (Textpad, which is a million times better than notepad) and then paste the built deck into the deckstats window.

This is what I paste into deckstats:

I just want to say thanks for posting this, Merl. It took us from no online drafting to doing a couple of Winston drafts this weekend, building the decks, and then doing some matches using Magic Workstation. It was a little bit of work, but it was totally worth it. I'm now able to draft and play Cube with my buddy in Denver. Awesome post, thanks for sharing!

Building the deck in Deckstats was a little wonky, but I found a good method. I'm on Windows 7, so I used the keys Win+Left Arrow / Win+Right arrow to get Deckstats on the left side of the screen, and a text editor on the right. That let me view the stats on mana curve, creature count, color balance, etc. on the left side of the screen, and edit the deck on the right-hand side. Every once in a while I would copy/paste from the text editor into Deckstats to rebuild the deck. It was a lot of manual copy/paste, but it worked okay.

Here's the Esper control build I put together from our Winston this weekend, based on ffyoyo's budget cube. It turned out really nasty, with some insane card advantage and removal.

Looks like a great deck! I would have played Diabolic Edict over Soltari Trooper and Gifts Ungiven over Thirst For Knowledge in that deck.

I don't know when I'll get the chance to actually do this, but I'm pretty stoked that it's an option.

I just updated my Commons Cube & did this. It actually worked pretty well. I pasted the cards into notepad & loaded it on MTGO. Thanks

I've used this site a bunch. Lots of fun!

does http://www.metacortex.hu/~fable/generate.html still work?

I follow your instructions:

1. Create your winston draft setup from here:
1a. Set draft type to Winston
1b. Upload your cube from a text file
1c. Set your booster size (I use 20 card packs for a 120 card total stack)
1d. Make the number of players 2

I then hit Create but the next screen is Blank http://www.metacortex.hu/~fable/generate.cgi

1e. Share the URL on the next screen with the other drafter
I tried sharing http://www.metacortex.hu/~fable/generate.cgi but I think sharing a blank screen was not what was supposed to happen.

Unfortunately, metacortex no longer works for drafting. The site still looks functional, but it will not generate a draft. It's pretty sad, really.

I have no idea. I honestly find it a little odd that the site itself is still seemingly up and running, but it's just the draft program that's not working. As of right now, I think TappedOut is the only option for drafting a personal cube online. And there's no option there for Winston.

I wanted a way I could draft m12 packs on MTGO with friends, I figured Winston draft would be the way to go, since it will most likely be a 2 man draft anyway. Does anyone know of other programs or some online site to draft m12 by using MTGO m12 packs?

Is this still the only way to draft online?