Last article, I looked at the role luck plays in Constructed Magic. This time I want to take a look at Limited. Just how much does luck affect the outcomes of Limited matchups? At first glance, luck may play a role in matchups, in what you get passed, and in what you open. We’ll take them in turn…
Matchups
I talked about the effect of luck, or lack thereof, in multi-round Constructed tournaments in my last article. That sort of luck definitely applies to Limited – but the most common form of Limited event has to be the eight-man, single elimination Draft. Pairings for the first round – and for half the people in the Draft, that’s the only round that matters – are random. For subsequent rounds of single elimination, it’s all winners playing winners, of course, so the pairings even out a little.
In Store Drafts and Friday Night Magic, the skill levels of the players involved tend to even out. In our town, three stores run Drafts. The Pros and serious players tend to hang out at one. The mid-level players play at the second, and the third is mainly kids. While occasionally really good players show up at other stores, in general the skill levels of the players are fairly uniform. Each store has its best players, but the odds of getting a 1950 rated player facing a 1550 rated player are slim. When that does start occurring frequently, the lower rated players start finding somewhere else to play.
Magic Online, on the other hand, has only a handful of single queues for the entire world. This means you see a lot of matches between high and low ranked players. The rankings do, generally, predict the outcome of the match.
This seems obvious, but I did dig for some data. I checked the results shown for some Drafts, checking ratings discrepancies verses wins. I also looked at some of my notes. Last October, I drafted a fair amount, using up the packs I won at the Ninth Edition release events. Since I pick fairly quickly – more quickly than my opponents, apparently – I was able to check the ratings of everyone in the Draft. I noted that, at that time, the 4-3-2-2 Ninth Edition Drafts were full of 1500 rated players. A typical Draft would contain one or two players rated 1750 or higher, one or two in the 1600-1650 range, and four or five in the sub 1500 range. I also noted that I got paired against the highest ranked player way too often. In one series of ten Drafts, I ended up playing the highest rated player in the Draft round 1 eight times. I lost all but three of those matches. For the month, my average opponent rating was slightly over 1860.
I think that qualifies as having bad luck.
After an October like that, I didn’t draft at all in November, and did very little in December.
I should note that I am not much of a Limited player. I play Constructed, I play multiplayer… I draft only when there is nothing much else to do. I also play in leagues when I want some Limited action.
My rating reflects that. I now have two accounts. My original account, Judge n Bailiff, was named after my two Golden Retrievers. Both of those wonderful dogs died within three weeks of each other last fall – one of a stroke and one of kidney failure. It was not a good time, and I created another account (mtg hack) as a result. The judge n bailiff account took a serious rating hit in October, when I first opened a truly sucky pool in a Sealed Premier Event but played all the rounds to finish 1-6, then played all the high-rated players in Draft after Draft. Now I just use that account for rare-drafting, and have managed to sink the rating to around 1530. The other account, mtg hack, has only been in a handful of Drafts and sits around 1640.
Like I said, I suck at Limited. I have come very close to losing to someone rated 1430 at the time (although it required me to mulligan five times.) Here are my win-loss stats, though, for October, including some league play:
Opponent rating 100 points or more higher: 1-13
Opponent rating 50-100 points higher: 3-5
Opponent rating within 50 points: 9-4
Opponent rating more than 50 points lower: 6-1
In short – I got my butt kicked a lot, mainly facing players with much better ratings. To the extent that rating relates to skill, that’s exactly what should happen. That’s not luck. Where luck played a role, however, was in being paired against high-rated players in Draft after Draft full of 1550s.
Last article, I talked about how people remember the unusual or outstanding events, and that memory skews their thoughts on how typical results are. True, but I seemed to be facing high rated players way too often, and started logging my events to check it out. I found that, in Drafts where I had a two-in-seven or a one-in-three chance of playing against a player with a rating of over 1750, and one-in-seven chance of getting the 1850 rated player – I got the 1850 player way over half the time.
It was bad luck – and I lost. A lot.
On the flip side, I didn’t track my Drafts last spring, so maybe the odds even out. Still, if this were Mythbusters, I would call the myth that being lucky in getting a bad first round opponent plays a big part in outcome totally confirmed.
Matchups, part II
In Constructed, luck plays a significant factor in matchups, because certain archetypes had either favorable or unfavorable matchups against other archetypes. That appears to be less of a problem in Limited. While some color combinations are weaker, having a bad Draft does not seem to be a function of having bad matchups.
Of course, sometimes you just get unlucky. I remember one Ninth Edition Draft where I had an insane deck, with double Nekrataal, double Dark Banishing, Royal Assassin, three Aven Windreaders, some other small fliers, and a couple of Horned Turtles to hold the ground. My opponent played a Fellwar Stone on turn 2 – and Bog Wraiths on turns 3 and 4. Game 3, he did it again.
In a memorable Kamigawa block Draft, I had a deck with eight 2/1 and 3/1 fliers, plus card drawing and so forth. My opponent played Matsu-Tribe Snipers on turns 2 and 3. Game 2, when I played my one Frostwielder, he dropped Sachi.
On the flip side, I remember the match where my opponent dropped Royal Assassin – and I responded with Serra’s Blessing, then beat him to death with my Pegasus Chargers.
Those were all insane Draft decks (at least, I thought so) but they were destroyed by certain situational cards. That is luck at work – but it is not common or typical. I looked back over the Drafts I took notes on in the last month, and I found that that sort of thing happens in ten percent of my matches or less – even when I am looking for excuses for losing. That sort of luck doesn’t drive outcomes – it just happens sometimes. Like mana screw. It isn’t a question of good and bad archetypes.
In summary, until some much better Limited players than I am says that certain archetypes have really good and really bad matchups, this Myth is busted.
What You Get Passed
This is, in effect, another version of whom you get paired against – it comes down to how good the person passing to you is. If that person is a very good drafter, then you can rely on the signals being sent. If the person is really bad and is drafting the precious metals archetype (namely gold, silver, foils), then you can luck into some really good commons and uncommons later than you might expect. However, if you are sitting behind a mediocre to poor drafter, and you rely on the “signals” he is sending, you might get cut off unexpectedly.
There is clearly some luck in who you end up sitting next to in a random Draft queue, but I don’t know that it is a significant factor into the end result. I think it was more clearly a factor in the past, when decks were more uniform in color, and signaling more important. I think that Ravnica, and especially Ravinca/Guildpact, are more multicolored, “draft the good stuff” formats. Signals are much more difficult to read, which makes the impact of having a random scrub passing to you less of an issue. Remember, though, that my online limited rating is only 1640 – and my real life one about 1700. If some premium writer – other than Rizzo – disagrees, believe them.
Bombs
In Limited, the biggest source of randomness – and therefore the biggest potential window for luck to impact the game – has to be in what you open. Sometimes you open Umezawa’s Jitte. Sometimes you open Light of Sanction. The question is – how much impact does this have? Are opens that important?
More importantly, how to get data on this?
I play a fair amount of leagues, and a fair number of Drafts. I don’t do a ton of trading, and I have pretty good records on the cards I have bought. I can look at my collection and see what I have opened. However, I am a savage rare drafter, so that cannot tell me much about the great commons. For example, even if my collection does not show a lot of Faith’s Fetters, that does not mean I did not ever open a Faith’s Fetters – it just means that I probably took the expensive rare over the Fetters.
Let’s look at some of the bombs in Ninth Edition. I have about 180 Ninth Edition rares, and most of those come from Limited play. That’s probably something like ten leagues and two dozen drafts. So let’s try counting Ninth Edition bombs:
- Wrath of God: zero – and none in Eighth Edition either. Never opened any.
- Worship: opened one in a league – won lots packs with it.
- Royal Assassin: opened one in Draft – lost to an opponent with at least three Anaba Shamen
- Shard Phoenix: zero (this is a bomb, right?)
- Might of Oaks: opened zero (ditto)
- Loxodon Warhammer: zero. Lost to it sometimes, beat it fairly often.
- Icy Manipulator: I have nine. I have won a lot of games on the backs of these.
- Flame Wave: one – during the last week of a league, in a deck with bad Red.
- Nekrataal: at least four. Other than the aforementioned Bog Wraith fiasco, works nicely.
- Bog Wraith: fourteen. Not a true bomb, but the single most common uncommon I own. I draft these guys a lot. Pyroclasm comes in second, and then Rewind – no idea why I have so many Rewinds.
I mainly drafted in the 4-3-2-2 Ninth Edition queues on MTGO. My notes for February show that I played in twelve Ninth Edition Drafts, losing in round 1 four times, round 2 five times, round 3 once, and winning two Drafts. Here are some notes from the matches I lost:
Lost first round – opponent had turn 3 Hyppie, Millstone, multiple kill spells,
Lost in first round – opponent with GB Royal Assassin, Plague Wind, many removal
Lost round 1 – many Anaba Shamans
More important, in twelve Drafts I got exactly one painland (Llanowar Wastes.) No luck there – and I would have rare-drafted any I saw.
Looking back over the decklists and notes for the Drafts, I don’t see any real support for the idea that the Drafts have been all about bombs. The decks that won Drafts generally had good curves, strong tempos, a good mix of creatures and removal – and I won on play skill, not bombs. Icy is the only card that seems to correlate strongly with good performance, but I think that is because it matches my play style well.
Looking back over the data, I think I do well in Ninth Edition not because of bombs, but because the format is simple enough that I am good at it. I know all the cards, know the tricks, and it has few enough things to play around that I have learned it well. By comparison, I have played far too few Ravnica and Champions Drafts to learn the format well enough to read what my opponents are probably holding.
I have not played enough Champions Drafts to have anything close to a statistically valid sample. I have never opened a Jitte – but that may be because I have probably opened less than thirty Betrayers packs in any form of Online Limited event – and the odds of opening a Jitte are only one in fifty-five. I have never opened one in a real life event, either. I have to do an Eric Idle here.
Jitte! Know what I mean? Know what I mean?
Jitte. Nudge, nudge.
Say No More!
… What’s it like, anyway?
I have been reading some of the good Limited writers, and they often lay out their Drafts and card pools. I’ll do that for Ravnica. Here’s my Draft, from an 8-4 queue.
Rares: Light of Sanction; Excruciator; Golgari Grave-Troll; Phytohydra; Scion of the Wild; Spawnbroker.
Uncommons: 2 Carven Caryatid; Chant of Vitu-Ghazi; Dark Heart of the Wood; Duskmantle, House of Shadow; Ethereal Usher; Junktroller (premium); Golgari Thug; Ivy Dancer; Netherborn Phalanx; Nightmare Void; Pollenbright Wings; Psychic Drain; Putrefy; Remand; Suppression Field; Telling Time; Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree.
Commons: Centaur Safeguard; Conclave’s Blessing; Courier Hawk; Dromad Purebred; Elves of Deep Shadow; Fists of Ironwood; Goblin Fire Fiend; Golgari Signet; Grayscaled Gharial; Greater Mossdog; Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi; Induce Paranoia; Leave No Trace; Scatter the Seeds; Seeds of Strength; Selesnya Evangel; Siege Wurm; Sewerdreg; Vedalken Entrancer.
Any doubt I’m rare-drafting? The online price of the whole bundle would be about twenty tickets, so I made out okay. Want to guess how many packs I won? 8-4 queue. The above list. I won 6. I split in the finals.
Really.
This is an article about luck, remember?
No, I did not win any games because my opponent was mana-screwed, or lost the connection, or whatever. I played my games out, and my first opponent was ranked 1890.
Was ranked 1890.
My second round opponent was ranked 1910.
Was ranked 1910.
My rating went up forty-eight points after that draft.
If you counted, you might notice the above list was only forty-four cards. It’s missing the rare I opened in pack three.
I mean, how hard is it to go Elf, Carven Caryatid, Signet and Caryatid number two, Scion, Pollenbright Wings on the Scion, Glare? The only test of skill in that scenario is knowing that you use Glare on his fliers before he can declare them as blockers.
I passed that test.
In my opinion, Ravnica is not as bomb driven as some previous formats (Empyrial Armor, anyone?) but there are some amazing cards.
Here are the cards I have never opened, but I have lost to:
Hex.
Char.
Loxodon Hierarch.
Moldervine Cloak.
It’s an article about luck – and my online collection has something like 200 Ravnica rares, most obtained through leagues and Sealed – and the only Cloaks I have came through buying two copies of the Golgari Precon. As a result I can’t speak about what having it is like – but it is hard to play against.
I have three Glare of Subduals, however, and I can say that Glare is stupid good. Glare lets bad players win. I win packs with Glare.
On the flip side, I took a break from writing this article to play online for a bit. I have one online league at the moment – an all Ravnica one. I played two matches. Game 1 I played against an opponent with Glare of Subdual – and I won in three. I curved out, kept the pressure on and got just enough removal to keep his board pretty much clear. The next match I played an opponent with Hex and Moldervine Cloak, and I won that in three as well.
My rares start with Eye of the Storm and go downhill from there, but I have some decent uncommons (like double Belltower Sphinx.) Their decks had bombs – mine had a good curve and a few decent instants, like Peel from Reality and Disembowel. And I outplayed them.
In the end, while there is a luck factor in opening bombs, it is no more of a factor than mana screw or flood. It is something that good players can play around. It doesn’t appear to drive the current Limited formats to any significant extent (with the exception of the impact of Jitte on Kamigawa block leagues – but that is as much psychological as real.)
Last Minute Addition: after proofing this, I entered one last Draft. Pack two I got my first ever Moldervine Cloak in Limited! Too bad my deck was already U/B/r – and then I got nothing but good Green cards in Guildpact. I even drew Cloak in my opening hand (along with both Karoos and nothing else.) Cloak was back in the hand of six – along with Tin Street Hooligan and Psychic Drain. Unfortunately, the only spells I played that game – after my opponent killed the Hooligan) were Savage Twister for six (in case he had pump) and Psychic Drain for nine. The “highlight” of the game was having eight different lands in play on turn 8 (Boros Garrison, Dimir Aqueduct, Stomping Ground, Skarrg Rage Pit, Forest, Swamp, Island, and Mountain.) I did finally draw a creature: Petrahydrox. It kept chumping – damage on the stack, target it with Rage Pit, replay next turn.
Game 2 was the same, except that I mulliganed twice.
Somehow, having Moldervine Cloak wasn’t what I thought it would be like. Or does it work better with targetable creatures?
PRJ