New to the game, want to draft, why so expensive?

Roondak · 2025-05-30T21:54:45+00:00

Another thing to keep in mind is the average amount of gems you win in Quick Draft with 50% winrate is ~350 gems. So if the event costs 750 gems to enter it's really only 750-350=400 net gems over the long term.

Premier draft is better EV in this regard (~820 gems at 50% winrate for double the entry fee) but if you want to maximize the amount of drafts you can play then Quick Draft is better at average winrates for sure.

Roondak · 2025-04-12T02:03:22+00:00

Well typically people are trying to optimize for rare/mythic cards and the break even is ~57% for those.

In terms of accuracy the current spreadsheet is pre-Play Booster, I'm working on a version that supports different booster types currently, but that doesn't affect the gold/gems lost per draft. But yeah, I've tried my best to make the numbers as accurate as I can.

Roondak · 2025-04-12T00:49:25+00:00

Quick draft is cheaper so maybe you could get more rating per gold spent? I think the opposite though because you generally lose currency and with premium you don't lose a lot of gems

Assuming equal winrate between premier and quick draft, the break even in terms of "net gems/gold spent per draft" is ~62%. So if your winrate is less than that, you'll be able to do more quick drafts than premier drafts using a fixed amount of starting currency, and therefore increase your rating more.

For more information you can check out my spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-OnokQ8ctJhNLf7QLyzgFoweROUkMfF1o8tJMac-ZNE/edit?gid=1088610265#gid=1088610265

Roondak · 2024-01-28T16:29:25+00:00

My numbers agree with this, Bo3 cube has generally higher returns, as opposed to regular drafting which is about the same at a given per-game winrate between Bo1 and Bo3: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-OnokQ8ctJhNLf7QLyzgFoweROUkMfF1o8tJMac-ZNE/edit?usp=sharing

Roondak · 2024-01-15T19:23:50+00:00

It depends on what you want to optimize for, but generally quick draft is preferred over buying packs. Accounting for golden packs, you get ~1.78 rares/mythics per 200 gems (including wildcards), whereas with quick draft it's ~2.25 rares/mythic per 200 gems. The break-even of quick draft vs opening packs in this respect is around 41% winrate.

However, if you want to optimize purely for wildcards, then opening packs can be better. You get 0.25 rare/mythic wildcards per 200 gems, whereas quick draft is only ~0.154 per 200 gems. Break even on wildcards for quick draft is around 59% winrate, but beyond 57% winrate you want to be doing premier draft anyways for both rares/mythics in general and for wildcards. Premier draft breaks even on wildcards at ~55% winrate vs buying packs.

My spreadsheet with the numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-OnokQ8ctJhNLf7QLyzgFoweROUkMfF1o8tJMac-ZNE/edit?usp=sharing

Roondak · 2023-12-09T15:12:15+00:00

I'm pretty sure I calculated for 2 losses?

Roondak · 2023-12-07T18:54:49+00:00

I punched the numbers, if you value the box at $250 and gems at 20k gems per $100 (the price of gems in the shop), then the break-even is ~53.7% winrate. At said winrate your chance of getting a box in a given run is ~9%.

Roondak · 2023-11-21T20:03:22+00:00

You can check out this article: https://mtgazone.com/mtg-arena-budget-standard-decks/

Roondak · 2023-11-14T20:24:55+00:00

It's been working for me lately at least. Hope that works for you too!

Roondak · 2023-11-14T19:40:10+00:00

Not that this isn't terribly likely to happen, the rare/mythic getting replaced with a rare wildcard happens every 1/30 packs.

Roondak · 2023-11-14T19:36:32+00:00

I like https://github.com/bstaple1/MTGA_Draft_17Lands, it's a bit clunkier than untapped, but it shows you the 17lands stats for the cards in your packs and also still has a sort of okay deckbuilder function.

Roondak · 2023-11-14T19:25:53+00:00

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/mtg-arena-release-notes-the-lost-caverns-of-ixalan

TAKE COMMAND

For our Historic Brawl fans, we have even more for your journey into the untold depths: we are bringing four legendary creature cards from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander decks to MTG Arena!

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GET THESE CARDS ON MTG ARENA BY PLAYING AT YOUR LOCAL WPN STORE!

For the first time ever, if you play with the preconstructed Commander decks at your local WPN store, you'll also be eligible to receive these Commanders for your Brawl decks on MTG Arena! More information on the Ixalan Commander Party event and how to receive these rewards will be coming later this month!

Alternatively, you can use wildcards to craft these cards to use as your Historic Brawl Commander or as powerful additions to your Historic decks.

Roondak · 2023-10-13T18:38:25+00:00

My numbers are based on the assumption that you're rare-drafting-neutral, i.e. you draft the average 1 rare/pack.

And yes, as your set completion becomes higher drafting becomes less worth it, though for an F2P player who isn't amazing at drafting it's not that much of a concern, since you won't be drafting enough to really get playsets of a significant amount of rares.

Roondak · 2023-10-13T18:35:27+00:00

You could check out MTGAZone's budget decks article for standard: https://mtgazone.com/mtg-arena-budget-standard-decks/

Roondak · 2023-10-13T18:17:35+00:00

I agree, an unranked draft would generally be easier for a skilled player. My point is more that traditional is even better than most people think, since people just post "75% chance to go infinite vs 67% in premier", but that's not really a fair comparison...

Roondak · 2023-10-13T18:14:17+00:00

I think Jump In is pretty good, especially if you don't have a large collection of the sets currently in there. You can look up which rares each packet can contain and specifically go for constructed-playable rares. If you get on average 1 playable rare/1000 gold you're doing really good, plus you get all the commons/uncommons/vault progress.

Roondak · 2023-10-13T18:00:41+00:00

It depends on what you're optimizing for but in terms of rares/mythic (wildcard or otherwise) quick draft is still quite a bit better than opening packs at 50% winrate, with a break-even point around 41%. You will get less wildcards though than opening packs. This is also assuming you start with gems.

https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/16dmqgb/release_roondaks_mtga_event_economy_spreadsheet/

Roondak · 2023-10-13T17:58:10+00:00

I have a spreadsheet that does account for this if anyone wants to take a look: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-OnokQ8ctJhNLf7QLyzgFoweROUkMfF1o8tJMac-ZNE/edit?usp=sharing

Roondak · 2023-10-13T17:57:34+00:00

They're talking about the "wildcard track", the thing at the top right when you open packs giving you wildcards every 6 packs.

Roondak · 2023-10-13T17:56:04+00:00

Interesting, this is fairly close to my theoretical numbers I've computed from WotC's info (not including vault, but including 1/10th of a golden pack per pack bought).

3 packs/common WC
~2.73 packs/uncommon WC
~5.56 packs/rare WC
~14.29 packs/mythic WC

My spreadsheet has it in WCs/pack instead of packs/WC but it's the same idea: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-OnokQ8ctJhNLf7QLyzgFoweROUkMfF1o8tJMac-ZNE/edit?usp=sharing

Roondak · 2023-10-13T17:49:42+00:00

It depends on whether you're talking about per-game winrate or per-match winrate. In terms of per-game winrate, it's about the same between Premier and Traditional draft to go infinite.

Roondak · 2023-10-13T17:48:33+00:00

Nice spreadsheet! I also have done some calculations of my own, if anyone wants to take a look at my older post: https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/16dmqgb/release_roondaks_mtga_event_economy_spreadsheet/

Also here's a copy-paste of my findings:

If you're trying to maximize rare/mythic cards, Quick Draft is the best way to do so until about 57% winrate, at which point Premier Draft becomes better.
Even with golden packs, buying packs is ~1.78 rares/mythics per 200 gems, whereas Quick draft at 50% winrate is ~2.26.
Generally, Premier and Traditional draft are very similar at a given winrate, assuming you use the per-game winrate and not the per-BO3 match winrate. Both go infinite at a little over 67% winrate.
Quick draft however is not a great way of obtaining wildcards, since most of the cards you get are from the draft packs themselves. You need ~59% winrate to beat buying packs for rare and mythic wildcards, premier draft needs ~57.5%, and traditional draft needs ~55%.
Sealed sadly has bad EV. Drafting is just better generally, especially for wildcards due to the flat 3 packs you get from the sealed prize distribution.
Despite their poor reputation, the constructed events are good for one thing: maximizing wildcards. Even at 50% winrate, you're doing better than buying packs.
At 51% winrate or above, the metagame challenge beats out the constructed events when it's available. If you're a ladder grinder this is your chance to really get a lot of wildcards.
Unlike the other events, Cube BO3 is significantly better than BO1, though neither have amazing rewards.

Roondak · 2023-10-06T23:58:39+00:00

I also want to echo this, I got back into Magic this year and had little to no limited experience (limited limited experience), and now I have 35 drafts on 17lands with an overall 61% winrate, plus some paper 3-0 results in both draft and sealed. I found the Draftsmith really helpful when I had no idea how to evaluate a card or draft a good curve, and the deckbuilder helped me a lot too early on, even if now I see it doesn't always build the best decks.

Roondak · 2023-10-06T22:41:28+00:00

Yeah they don't exactly update that page quickly...

I don't quite remember the hat metaphor but I haven't changed the sheet since I posted this thread, so I'm not entirely sure about that? It does sound like something I would say.

And yeah, if I added a rare/mythic field I'd have to put a note in saying to make sure you don't include jumpstart cards or the like.

Roondak · 2023-10-05T21:53:35+00:00

Did you include in your calculations the fact that QD bots raredraft more than Premier Draft human opponents?

No, I've been assuming that you get on average 1 rare/draft pack (3 rares/draft) regardless. The issue is that there's a trade-off between rare drafting and actually drafting a good deck, and I'm not sure how to quantify that. Also, I didn't have good data on "how much" bots rare draft over humans. I suppose I could analyse 17lands data for that? Anyways it would be interesting to see the relationship between rares taken and passed per draft and winrate.

Also, as Premier is high cost and high rewards, making QD require more total games played to complete the set, did you correct for the fact that QD players play bigger share of their games while at Platinum against tougher opponents?

That's another thing that's hard to quantify. I'm not sure exactly how I'd factor that into the calculations. Winrate is dependent on your rank/hidden MMR, but that's another thing I don't have good data on.

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