Super Expensive Standard

Hi Everyone,
It appears to me lately that standard is super, duper expensive. I mean let's have a look:



I took that from mtggoldfish.com for those curious. $500+ (assuming tix are $1) for Standard?!?!?!?!?!

Yeah, I didn't read that wrong, so why is this happening?

When we look at the break down, almost $300 is Jace (or Jaces? I'm not sure the plural of Jace). 4 copies runs $284.52 at the time of this writing.

Three mythics in the deck (four copies of two and two copies of another total almost $150. That's steep but the cards are Monastery Mentor, Gideon, and Dragonlord Ojutai.

Now, the real lemon juice on the papercut. Land in this deck costs over $100. LAND in STANDARD!!!!!!

The high land price is because of the fetches in Khans combining with the Battle for Zendikar Lands (that won't make it in modern if you ask me).

So what's the deal? It looks like 80% of the deck price is because of Mythics and the other 20% is rares. Interesting that all the non-land cards that are more than about $1 are mythics. Just making an observation regarding the Mythic habits of R & D.

Non-Blue decks in Legacy?

Hi Everyone,
I have been experimenting with Legacy decks a lot lately. I know it's said to be a dying format but the more I play, the more I love it. It's a great format with a number of tier 1 decks.

It makes me sad that the format isn't as vibrant as it could be. I'm losing interest in Modern because it seems like the only thing that ever matters is opening hands and the game doesn't seem to last long enough to have draws matter because there aren't enough turns to play mana to play spells that matter after the opening hand....but I digress.

I took Legacy Jund out for a spin last week, check it out below.

Restricted List, or Unrestrict the list

Hi Everyone,
A hot topic lately in the MTG community has been the restricted list. I find that people mostly don't like it, except people who invested in the cards early on.

The list is several cards that will never be reprinted nor will they have functional reprints (different name, same everything else).

This was hotly contested in the past and is again being discussed.

I just wanted to mention that because it's interesting that the topic keeps coming up and has been said by MaRo that the restricted list isn't going anywhere anytime soon. For those wondering, now isn't soon either.

Spectral Chaos - unreleased old Magic set

Barry Reich is a friend of Richard Garfield, and one of the first people who playtested Magic.
He designed Spectral Chaos set shortly after the release of Alpha, which included mutli-colored mechanics such as domain and a sixth basic land type (colorless), known as “Barry’s land”. Spectral Chaos never saw the light of day, but it was the inspiration for Invasion. Find out what Barry had in mind. How would have Spectral Chaos impacted the course of Magic history? How would Vintage format look like now?

- each color has its own Dark Ritual in allied-color, for instance G: add WWW
- 0 Instant: "Add R to your mana pool for each tapped island you control. Add U to your mana pool for each tapped mountain you control."
- 1RW Enchantment: When Solar Flare enters the battlefield, each other player draws ten card and you draw eleven cards. Each player's maximum hand size is increased by three.

Take a look here for more! Over 400 cards, some looks normal, some overpowered like these above. It is definitely worth checking it out. It is our history.

Pauper Gauntlet S03R01 Week Two

The Pauper Gauntlet has started!

Learn what happened in week one: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/11/pauper-gauntlet-s03r01-week-one.html
All about the Pauper Gauntlet Season 03: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/11/the-pauper-gauntlet.html
All the deck lists: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/11/the-decks-of-pauper-gauntlet-s03.html

The second week of round one

If you read further than this, you will get results spoiled. That is probably why you are here, though.

Catch the matches when they are published on Twitter: @MagicGathStrat
Watch the feature matches on youtube: youtube.com/magicgatheringstrat
Also make sure you subscribe to magicgatheringstrat2 on YouTube for more matches.


 Ok, lets get into details.

Simic Oracle defeated Tortured Abzan 2-1 and made it to round 3.
Mono Black Control took on its nemesis RUG Tron and got outvalued 0-2, forcing this tier 1 deck to play in round 2 and face the risk of early elimination!
Delver took on Freed from the Reel Combo and won 2-0
White Heroes ran into the unlikely mirror match (what are the odds?) and won 2-1
Top 10 S02 deck Rebel Grind faced off against MBC but lost 1-2

Cyborgs (White Weenie Metalcraft) took on Domain and won 2-1
Crowd favorite 5-color Green took on Goblins and bounced Lone Missionaries all day for a 2-0 victory.
Top 10 S02 deck Familiars lost to Elves 0-2
The confusingly named deck The Pauper Gauntlet took on Golgari Delve and won 2-1
Creature swarm deck Blue Bichinho faced UB Control and won 2-0

Pauper Gauntlet S02 winner Stompy took on RUG Tron and won 2-1
Power_Ts Pig Trinket faced an interesting RG Eldrazi ramp deck and won easily 2-0
Glass Cannon Red proved unreliable and lost to White Weenie 1-2
Pauper Gauntlet S02 runner-up Burn took on Turbo Angler and was crushed 0-2
Tortured Madness faced Faeries (not Delver .... Faeries!) and lost hard 0-2

Everyone's darling Green Grifters faced top tier Angler Delver and somehow won 2-1. This is a behaviour we have seen before from Green Grifters. Surely that was what made everyone vote it in this year.
Top 10 S02 deck Bugs & Pigs took on Grixis Control and won 2-1
Suicide Black, cheered on by many, faced Pestilence and won 2-1 to the crowd's delight
RB Control Deck Pauper Nightmare took on DelverFiend and won 2-1. Removal is good.
UB Trinket Control, the deck that started it all, faced Bant Blink and won easily 2-0

RG Land Crusher also faced Bant Blink and made the elaborate deck unable to play its spells 2-0
Abzan Grindhouse played the grindiest match so far in the Gauntlet, winning with 15 seconds left against Dimir Control, timing him out.

22 more matches played. 18 wins. 6 losses. 31 matches to go until we are done with round one.

With the 16-9 result from week one the current result stands at 34-15.

The 15 decks that so far are facing elimination in round 02 of the Pauper Gauntlet season three are: Familiar, MBC, Rebel Grind, Glass Cannon Red, Burn, Tortured Madness, Living End, Rakdos Vampires, Mono Red Land Destruction, Cheaty Morph, Eggs, UB Justice Control, Mono Black Land Destruction, Dragon Delve and Sultai Delve

Yes, that is three Top 10 decks from last season plus a tier 1 deck (MBC) at the risk of early elimination. Last year only three decks were eliminated in round 02.

The goal is to win with all these decks in round 02 and have all 78 decks see the first tournament practice round in round 03.

Round one will end right before we record the MagicGatheringStrat podcast on December 15th. Round two will end on December 22nd. As the winners do not play in round two, the second round will be significantly faster. Round three will go on over the holidays..

What happens to the decks that lost?
Round one and round two are double elimination so round two will have the losers play yet another match in the JFF room. If the decks win they move to round three (which will be tougher!) where they will join the winners of round one.

Please visit our sponsor Mtgotickets, new customers receive 10 tickets for $8. Click on this link to check out mtgotickets

Weekly recap email

Starting this week you will receive every Saturday morning a weekly recap email. The email contains a number of useful information condensed in a unique place, such as number of trades, profit, Return On Investment, suggestions and advises. The information is available on the Online Control Panel (the email contains the links for it) but having them clearly stated in a unique place every week is useful.

What are the data you usually look for? If you think there is something we are missing, please let us know. Below an example email :

1-ofs, 2-ofs, 3-ofs and 4-ofs and Hypergeometric Distribution (part 1)

Today I am starting a new miniseries here on mtgolibrary. In a Pauper Gauntlet video I critiqued a deck for having a random 1-of. That lead to an interesting discussion about the number of copies of a card to include in a deck.

Which cards can you use a single copy of? Which cards do you need all four copies of?

Before we start with the 4-ofs next week, we need to discuss the Hypergeometric Distribution. Bear with me. This will involve some light math. OK, maybe not that light. Try to bear with me anyway. To understand high level Magic theory you have to do the math. There is no other way.

Hypergeometric Distribution calculates your chances of drawing a particular number of successes from a certain population.

Imagine that you are playing Jund in Modern. You would very much like to start the game with a Tarmogoyf. What is the likelihood of drawing of having at least one Tarmogoyf in your opening hand on seven cards?

Population Size: 60 cards
Successes in Population: 4 Goyfs
Sample Size: 7 cards

Here is an online calculator for Hypergeometric Distrubitons that I like to use: http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx

If you run the above numbers you get a 40% chance of getting at least one Goyf in your opening hand. 

Try it and see if you understand how the calculator works. 

Mulligans complicate this but the principles still hold.

We will return to Hypergeometric Distributions in the upcoming part.

I will add links below to the different parts as I publish them.

Part 2: 4-ofs Dec 9th
Part 3: 3-ofs Dec 16th
Part 4: 2-ofs Dec 23rd
Part 5: 1-ofs Dec 30th
Part 6: A sample deck 

Bonus. The even more mathematical model of doing this!

The odds of drawing a particular card in a 60-card deck are 1/60. If there are four Goyfs, the odds are 4/60. The odds of NOT drawing one of those cards in the first draw is 1 - 4/60 = 56/60.

To calculate the odds of the entire first hand, we can do it backwards:

The odds of not having any of the four cards in the first card is 56/60 The second card has odds of 55/59 (there are still 4 goyfs but only 55 non-Goyfs), and then 54/58 and so on:

• Card 1: 56/60 chance of not being the Goyf
• Card 2: 55/59
• Card 3: 54/58
• Card 4: 53/57
• Card 5: 52/56
• Card 6: 51/55
• Card 7: 50/54

The odds of ALL of these happening (i.e. there is no Goyf in your opening hand) is the result of multiplying all these odds together:

(56*55*54*53*52*51*50) / (60*59*58*57*56*55*54) = 60%

If this does not happen there is at least one Goyf in your hand. That is 100%-60%= 40% likely to happen.