Cross tribe cards are hard since they would have to be extra powerful to counteract not benefitting from the other tribal boosts in those decks. Knight-Captain of Eos and Hero of Bladehold, Knights that otherwise fit a Soldier deck, are the examples that come to my mind. If they themselves were Soldiers, I'd be more inclined to play them.
Otherwise, great science post.
I do new-set advance orders on a large scale, so money that customers have given me or will give me is how I pay for that many boxes.
"Our region"? what the heck?
@ drew321:
If you don't care about it, or don't understand it, fine. But it seems to be very appropriate to analyzing this situation, so I'll keep it there. (Yeah, I'm in college, in that class right now actually, so I'm remembering that stuff quite well.)
As mentioned above, I took a lot of advance orders, so I'd have needed to open a lot of boxes anyway. (Indeed, I took most of the orders, and preordered most of the boxes, before the treasure news even came out.)
As for your other points, my statistical analysis indicates that there *isn't* enough evidence to reject the 1/20 odds. So, although the samples are off, I recognize that the 1/20 odds may still be accurate. And, even if WotC doesn't say anything, it's still useful to assess the validity of the Community's estimate.
One-per-box is interesting, but I'd like to know if they showed up in different boxes form the same case.
P.S.
The one Bayou I did get was indeed nice in and of itself, and it was nice to see the Treasure concept proved for myself on top of the evidence form the forums.
Does 74 boxes count as large enough?
I opened 74 boxes (actually 2659 packs, not the full 2664).
I got only one Treasure (a Revised Bayou, mentioned earlier in this thread).
Not pleased.
I sold 6 boxes and 5 loose packs still sealed, I'll be really pissed if the Treasure ended up in one of them...
Sure don't think I would have *missed* one, especially since most reported Treasure is white-bordered, it would really stick out like a sore thumb.
And yeah, $20 Taiga is a ripoff, but it's not as bad as that Timetwister for Spider crap.
The problem with aggregating data here is that it's probably a biased sample of the Zendikar packs opened, in some fashion.
@ depolarization: I understand the basic statistical concepts you're getting at, but I don't think I need them to tell me something's funky with my 1 out of 74 sample.
I would use Minitab, but like the following:
Stat --> Basic Statistics --> 1-Proportion
Summarized data (1 event, 6 trials)
Perform hypothesis test versus a hypothesized value of 0.05
P-value higher than the 0.05 level of significance, so that means that this sample gives us insufficient evidence to reject the 1/20 ratio.
Again, insufficient evidence
At 0.141 level of significance (85.9% level of confidence), we could reject the 1/20 hypothesis based on that data.
Higher level of significance = lower confidence level
Lower confidence level would make a Type I error (rejecting the 1/20 hypothesis when we shouldn't have) more likely.
However, lower confidence level would make a Type II error (failing to reject the 1/20 hypothesis when we should have) less likely.
Think of it this way:
In a court of law, the default hypothesis is innocence, the alternate hypothesis is guilt.
A Type I error would be to declare guilt [reject the default] when innocence is the actual case. A Type II error would be to fail to declare guilt when guilt is the actual case.
So, they question for statistical analysis is, which error type are you more concerned about?
"Indian" in the "indigenous American" sense of the term might be hard to do without offending people, and there are a bazillion widely divergent tribes/groups to choose from (this may or may not be related to the first issue.) Whether/how to portray the European arrivals would also be a hornets' nest, though if that was presented, it would be a good way to have MtG refer to a somewhat-more-modern tech level (1500s-1700s is quite modern compared to what we usually see)
I'd certainly second this.
I was able to get 13 cases. Yeah, 13. My left thumb and forefinger are rather sore now...:P
Anyway, I have a longterm relationship (since Lorwyn) with a really good vendor, so that factor (and planning ahead/asking them more than a couple weeks ahead) has enabled me to get the quantity I need at prices that are somewhat sane.
(These guys also came through on getting me my 7 M10 cases quickly, when we were hit by that crunch)
I would not be surprised by this being at least somewhat on purpose, either. It's hard to change practices this quickly and to enough of a degree; that's also an issue in play, and not specifically under the heading of incompetence
What about that retailer shipping to someone in the US (cough) like me (cough), with that person then proceeding to ship internationally?
The way I see it, I'm not bound by the distributor agreement with WotC, since I haven't signed one. Also, my vendors have never said anything to me about this, which implies that they don't have to indirectly-enforce this.
Don't remember what was in the same pack as the Bayou itself.
(19/20)^20 = 0.358485922
Assuming that the 1-in-20 odds are accurate (I'll be doing some statistical analysis of this later when I have more data), there's a slightly higher than 1/3 chance of not getting a Treasure out of 20 boxes.
35.85% chance of zero Treasure
37.73% chance of 1
18.87% chance of 2
5.96% chance of 3
1.33% chance of 4
This assumes that they're totally random and that each box is an independent selection; I'm willing to hypothesize that WotC spread them out evenly, somehow.
Revised Edition Bayou, EX
Had been inserted into the pack upside-down
This is the 15th box I've opened, and with 4 fetches, Day of Judgment, Sorin, Nissa, and two full-art land foils, I can't complain about the rest of the box either. Somehow, it seems appropriate to get Verdant Catacombs in the same box as Bayou.
Your link seems dead.
Well, good to know they can be in fat packs as well.
Similarly, I wonder if you could find any Treasures in the one booster per intro pack.
I think Pat Chapin and/or Paul Cheon are involved with adventuresON.com, and I've never had any problems when buying from them or selling cards to their buylist.
Heck, they're where I got two of my Zendikar cases from, back when they were ~$500
It's crazy now, but I see no reason why the craziness won't die down, especially if the 2nd print run is actually sans treasures.
While it's mainly fetches, DoJ, etc for us serious players, there seems to plenty of crazy casual-friendly stuff in ZEN.
Also, some casual players are either serious enough they they preordered early, or they're nonserious enough that they aren't rushing out to buy the new set son release day anyways.
It seems quite simple. WotC doesn't get much direct support from Eternal players right now (and vice versa). If you could get Eternal cards by buying new sets, guess what? WotC would start actually getting money form Eternal players
Having a second deck involved always seemed to add a necessary amount of realism to the testing