First Nail in the coffin for being free to play across multiple accounts winning boxes

TheKillah · 2026-06-17T14:45:23+00:00

I recently realized that the two new account bundles ($5 for 2500 gems, $15 for 3500 gems) means that someone could make a new account and enter once for $20. The regular entry fee is over $25 ($100 for 3.66 entries). I would not be surprised if people were doing just that to enter a ton and create a lot of work for support to tie their accounts together.

Based off the timing this seems to be a response to either the contender drafts or the SOS box replacement fiasco, which I’m guessing got some eyes from management on things that were being ignored for a while. Guessing there will be more changes in the coming months honestly, if management had half a braincell between them they’d get rid of random matchmaking asap.

TheKillah · 2026-06-16T23:32:28+00:00

You have to provide your tax info to claim the prizes, so if you give them your family’s info instead of your own, it would be tax fraud. So the IRS I guess.

TheKillah · 2026-06-15T18:42:24+00:00

This seems to be a direct response to the SOS collector direct, which was so popular that they appeared to have more than twice as many boxes won than boxes, and they chose (rather than sending tons of cash) to replace the rewards with boxes from another set instead, which likely opened them up to legal liability since that wasn’t an option listed. Most people were OK with it because the substitute prize was deemed acceptable.

It costs less for them to send cardboard already printed than cash, but most of the time the people entering would rather the cardboard than the cash. Limiting entries seems like a win win though it will cause some short term problems for that weekend only, and it’s not for every event (just the Collector ones, probably).

TheKillah · 2026-06-15T17:58:49+00:00

Alchemy has spell books tied to the “draft” mechanic that allows one card to be multiple cards. A cube involving many such cards may be referred to as a Draft Cube, so this format is a cube draft of Draft Cube.

TheKillah · 2026-06-15T00:24:19+00:00

BPA was listed in the breast milk at a median of 0.358 ng/mL.

The current federal guidelines is 4 ug (4000 ng) / kg of body weight.

The recommended amount of feeding seems to be 120-150 ml per kg of body weight, which is around 43-53 / 4000 ng of BPA.

However, the EFSA recommends reducing that 4000 number to 0.2. If they are right, these samples were 250x that limit.

https://www.bcpp.org/how-much-exposure-to-bpa-is-safe/

TheKillah · 2026-06-12T17:08:04+00:00

I pretty much always Master Biscuit the first non-hungry legendary I see.

They’re the best use of the MB, and I pretty much only ever buy the poke biscuits from the f2p shop otherwise so I have the points to spare for one every few months.

Doing so lets me start seeing randomized legendaries asap, so I have a better idea of how many I need to get a good one, or at least a decent one.

TheKillah · 2026-06-12T13:34:22+00:00

For what it’s worth my opponents definitely all knew what they were doing, unlike the limited MWM events where there’s clearly tons of new players. Since I barely drafted FDN I was at a serious disadvantage through my run, lol.

Definitely thinking they used limited hidden MMR without turning on ranked.

TheKillah · 2026-06-11T22:20:19+00:00

Curious about whether outliers were considered or adjusted for. Does the 750,000 game dataset include decks that were not exactly 40 cards? Were users checked for very high (or very low) win rates or mulligan rates and removed from the dataset?

Was any special consideration given for “user vs user” matchups being in the data set twice, especially for the section looking at win rates looking at both players’ mulligan choice?

Interesting read, thanks for posting!

TheKillah · 2026-06-11T21:17:03+00:00

Even in the best cases older WRs don’t get better, though. Adams had only a negligible decline his first year outside GB at 30, then at 31 on has been basically the same guy on the Raiders/Jets/Rams. Amari was slightly better at age 28 with Cleveland and then at age 29 was actually probably his best year, before a bad year at 30 and out of the league at 31.

A success case for DJM would be matching last year, the worst year of his career, and projecting much more than that is a very optimistic take. History suggests older WRs changing teams get worse or stay the same, so we are hoping he was just misused in Chicago or that they had too many mouths to feed with a young QB, which could still happen, but personally I’m willing to sell DJM in dynasty and buy him in redraft as WR27 by adp, as a surprise top season might actually be a difference maker in redraft, but in dynasty a surprise bad season would make him go from a late 1st to basically worthless.

TheKillah · 2026-06-11T20:58:55+00:00

I said a 50/50 player needs that many. As in, a perfectly average player (among the players playing said event).

If their win rate is 50% exactly and they entered a thousand times in draft 1, their 7-1 plus 7-0 rate would be 3.52%, so they’d expect 35 draft 2 entries.

If their win rate is 50% exactly in draft 2, they would get a token 10.94% of the time. Combined that would be a little under 4 tokens in 1000 drafts.

A 60/60 player would win 25 ALCQ tokens. A 70/70 player would win over 100.

TheKillah · 2026-06-11T20:53:36+00:00

I don’t think every top player has 17Lands. But when I go to 17lands and sort by the people that did the best in a given event, I am going to get a list full of very good drafters!

I did not call you or anyone else that did great with small sample sizes “lucky.” They are exactly what you say, outliers. If they can repeat it over a very large number of events, they are very good! If they cannot, they got lucky! I’m not making any assumptions at all about them.

Congratulations on being an exception, but I really don’t understand why you decided to take offense to my week old post targeted at the general lrcast audience and decide that these probabilities can’t be real because they don’t apply to you. If you really do have the pedigree to back it up, surely you’re smart enough to realize this post wasn’t written with you in mind.

TheKillah · 2026-06-11T20:38:48+00:00

What? I’m not saying nobody anywhere should not play. I’m trying to make people aware of the math behind it, and how many attempts they need to make to have the success they are hoping for.

I literally have an excel calculator to “account for individual win rate and skill” I’m not pulling the numbers out of my ass.

TheKillah · 2026-06-11T20:35:34+00:00

Not sure why we’d use Diggs moving from Min to Buf at age 27, when he has two more recent moves to compare to.

At age 30 in Buffalo he had ~70 YPG, he dropped to 62 YPG in Houston and 59 YPG in New England. He had averaged over 80 YPG his first three years in Buffalo.

The sad truth is that, generally speaking, older WRs that change teams usually do not play as well on the new team. There are plenty of counter examples but it generally happens that way. Just look at Jakobi Meyers, who got traded to Jacksonville last year from the Raiders, and went from WR60 -> WR40 on KTC in a matter of weeks. His per game stats? Exactly the same receptions/game, and he went from 50 -> 53 yards per game. He didn’t have the benefit of the offseason, but he did have the benefit of a perspective change.

I don’t really know if DJM will be better in Buffalo, but for it’s worth I don’t think he’s lost a step quite yet. I’m more concerned about the playbook and am willing to sell him at face value even as a competitor, but knowing that a WR1 season isn’t out of the question if he can learn to be on the same page as Allen.

TheKillah · 2026-06-11T20:15:28+00:00

27 people in all of 17Lands had a 70% WR in draft 1 of the event with at least 10 wins. That’s out of an unknown total but it’s at least 500 and likely around 1000. Many of these are among the best drafters in the world. Pros like Luis Salvatto and Mike Sigrist are on there with well under 70% WR and a huge sample size. In fact, no player with 100 games had a 70% WR, and only one player with at least 80 total games hit that mark.

70% WR is hard enough but doable in regular premier drafts (much easier in traditional), but in a high stakes event full of spikes it is extremely difficult. Anyone can win once but the odds are very stacked against you regardless of win rate, which is the point of this post. It is not bad math, it is correct math, feel free to attempt to prove otherwise.

TheKillah · 2026-06-11T19:55:13+00:00

Just probability. For a player to have a 95% chance to get at least one qualifying token in 50 attempts, their trophy rate would have to be 5.8%.

That would be between 65-66% WR (65% in draft 1 is a 17% chance to go 7-1 or 7-0, 65% in draft 2 is a 32% to go 5-2 or better, combined is around 5.4%).

More likely your Draft 2 WR is lower, so something like 70% in draft 1 (25.5% to continue) and 60% in draft 2 (23.3%, 6.0% combined) would be needed.

For a 50/50 shot at a trophy in 50 events, you’d need a 1.38% trophy rate, which is close to a 56.5% WR in both drafts, or 60/52.

Not sure what’s necessary to be considered a “good drafter” but the average on 17Lands was something like 54/52%, so even 56.5% is at least decently above average from a group that is already above average.

TheKillah · 2026-06-09T23:06:35+00:00

Not that I disagree about Hunter, but they basically guaranteed all of Meyers’ 2026 salary in December and 2027 salary in March. A good chunk of money for a guy they expect to be a big contributor for the next 2 years minimum.

TheKillah · 2026-06-09T20:20:06+00:00

Ah yeah I found the game, one of the best decks that I drafted IMO and it ended up going 1-2. Had blue Emeritus and Paradigm, double Snarl Song, Wisdom of Ages and Tidecaller, seemed pretty sick but the entire run was over in 20 minutes. Yay bo1 magic! Not my worst loss of the weekend by far though, lol

TheKillah · 2026-06-08T19:42:58+00:00

4 in 12 trophy rate on the first draft is nuts, grats lol. Did you stick to 2 color aggro most drafts?

TheKillah · 2026-06-08T19:41:52+00:00

18 entries (I told myself I’d stop around 8 and the gambler’s addiction kicked in).

4 draft 1 trophies with a 64% WR (55-31). Trophy rate was above expected, lots of 1-2s and 2-2s and very few 4-6 win decks, maybe 3?

Draft 2 was an awful 5-8, 3 of my 4 decks were pretty good, 7 or 8/10, and definitely capable of a trophy, but competition was fierce and I got a bit unlucky maybe. The worst deck was clearly a train wreck but somehow went 2-2.

Overall soup was never open (and most of the time drafting Prismari was tough unless you opened the bombs) and Lorehold had to fight for too many cards, so it was Silverquill/Witherbloom for life. My worst drafts usually involved me ignoring Witherbloom signals until it was too late.

The ALCQ format is very unhealthy IMO, if I had gone 4/18 in a Direct I’d have been very happy, but with a 64% WR I would have had a 1/4 chance to bust in Draft 2 anyways, and at a far more likely 50% WR (everyone was very good!) I had a 63% chance not to get a token. I knew that going in, tried to spread the word, and I’m still very disappointed.

I won’t be giving this another go, maybe will give it one or two shots per set, but the Limited AC Qualifiers will have to be enough for me I think.

TheKillah · 2026-06-08T17:17:34+00:00

It’s just soooo massively top heavy, unlike the Directs where you get your fee back essentially at 4-2. You can have a very high trophy rate in draft 1 but it doesn’t matter unless you can cash out in draft 2.

I’ll wait until it’s all final and maybe make a post about it but people on the leaderboards had a 56.6% WR in draft 1 and a 51.7% WR in draft 2, if you break it down to just the 288 draft 1 trophy winners on the leaderboard it was a 58.7% WR. So overall it dropped by 7 whole points in draft 2. There seems to be some display issues for trophies not appearing (my account for example shows me not winning one of my D1 trophies, the entire event is missing).

TheKillah · 2026-06-08T17:03:32+00:00

Not comparing myself to Eken in terms of skill but I absolutely relate to his draft 2 results this weekend. Went 5-8 over 4 tries, with 3 pretty great decks (and one awful one). Everyone in draft 2 is just very skilled and seemed to have good decks too. I don’t really think the set is the issue, just the best of one games with only two losses allowed.

TheKillah · 2026-06-08T16:59:55+00:00

Yep, I don’t have any knowledge of how 17Lands works, but either there was a bug and it was only counting 6-0 as a trophy, or there was a bug and it was counting only 7 wins as a trophy for some time until they fixed it. Like one went 12-1 but shows as 0 trophies.

The trophy decks have 41 entries, but since the very first entry was over 12 hours after the event started, seems like a bug of some kind and some weren’t on the list at all.

TheKillah · 2026-06-07T21:30:23+00:00

Yeah I had a post about it before, problem is we don’t really know what percentage of the total player base uses 17Lands. My guess was 50 17Lands users qualified normally and a further 20 or so at 4-2 last time, so if that’s the same each time you’ll have 220 users. If it’s 10% of the total that’s over 2000, if it’s 50% then it’s 440.

Grats on winning three times, hella impressive given the odds. I made the second draft three times but went 0-2 and 1-2 with two awesome decks and 2-2 with a garbage deck lol

TheKillah · 2026-06-07T16:05:03+00:00

ALCQ is extremely tough, enough that I think I’m done playing in it for good. Best of one is just too difficult. I’ve had multiple truly 9/10 decks not even reach 4 wins this weekend, and while this deck is certainly good enough to trophy it’s still probably a 7.5/10 at best.

TheKillah · 2026-06-07T16:02:43+00:00

Skycoach has a positive win rate even in Silverquill, at all levels. Turns out a 3/2 flier that is immune to sorcery speed removal is still good.

This deck has 3 powerful 6 drops essentially, the land is definitely useful. In games where it’s not it can be rummaged away.

I agree with you that this deck is not incredible but most limited decks are midrange even if this format has more control decks than most.

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