PROOF that Golden Packs are better than Quick Drafts for Set Completion

PROOF that Golden Packs are better than Quick Drafts for Set Completion | MTG Arena Economy Guide

Рет қаралды 17,017

Жыл бұрын

Get the most out of the MTG Arena economy without spending any money at all (unless you want to) with this complete beginners guide to building your collection the best way. It's time to prove for sure that buying packs in the store and unlocking Golden Packs is a better strategy for completing your card collection than doing endless quick draft events.
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Standard Pack Guaranteed Value
Each pack gives 1 rare and 7 commons/uncommons.
Every 6 packs gives 1 uncommon wildcard and 1 rare wildcard. (1/6 per pack = 0.17)
Every 10 packs gives 1 golden pack, which is equal to 6 rares (6/10 per pack = 0.6)
Rares in a pack equal 1 + 0.17 + 0.6 = 1.77
Commons/uncommons in a pack equal 7 + 0.17 = 7.17
5 packs is 5 x 1.77 = 8.85 rares
and 5 x 7.17 = 35.85 commons/uncommons
If a quick draft costs 5,000 gold, it needs to provide more value than this.
Quick Drafts provide, on average, 6-7 rares and about 45 commons/uncommons, including the free reward pack.
Add to this the value of 300 gems reward, which is 1.5 packs, or 2.7 rares and 10.8 commons/uncommons. This gives the Quick Draft a value of 8.7-9.7 rares and 55.8 commons/uncommons, which is slightly higher than the guaranteed value from buying packs.
If paying for a Quick Draft in gems, the equivalent value is 3.5 packs, which is
3.5 x 1.77 = 6.195 rares
3.5 x 7.17 = 25.095 commons/uncommons
Add to this the value of the reward gems, a Quick Draft entry paid in gems is equal in cost to just 2.25 packs, which is
2.25 x 1.77 = 3.9825 rares
2.25 x 7.17 = 16.1325 commons/uncommons
This makes a Quick Draft paid in gold slightly better and a Quick Draft paid in gems significantly better if no card duplication occurs, and if we don't include the value of wildcards.
The biggest difference comes from the duplication protection you get from packs, and the fact that they can give you extra wildcards. This benefit makes a bigger difference the nearer you get to set completion.
Let me know what you think in the comments below...
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Пікірлер: 81

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

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@justinpearson6449 10 ай бұрын

For a free to play player like me though... the gems mean that I can buy the season pass and that gives a significant upside. So for me in a season drafting is better than packs until I have earned enough to buy the pass. After that it is possibly better to buy packs, but by then I have become better at drafting that set so get better average results. Plus I get to play with a new deck every week not just slowly grinding to marginally improve my other few decks.

@guybrushthreepwood8174 Жыл бұрын

I realize some people hate drafting and I used to be one of those people. It is very difficult and doing poorly feels bad. For anyone who's interested these are the people I've learned the most from: limited level ups (chord o calls), Jim Davis bronze to mythic, Sam Black drafting archetypes, limited resources with Luis and Marshall, and watching Floridamun and dafore_ drafting on twitch. If you are interested in getting good at limited realize that it will take some time and effort. But I can say for sure that it pays off in the long run because it's much more fun to win draft games than lose and you'll be drafting for free eventually.

@reidyo5404 Жыл бұрын

It’s important to save opening your packs until you are done drafting since packs have duplicate protection. When you draft you can hold cntrl (I think, or shift or something, it’s been a while) to see how many copies of a card you have. If you don’t like drafting, then stick to packs and rare drafting when you need to draft. If you enjoy drafting and just aren’t that great, I would recommend just picking the best card for your deck even if you skip a rate. That way you have a better chance of getting a good draft deck to get more wins and subsidize your next draft

@guybrushthreepwood8174 Жыл бұрын

YES. I will often take a really good common or uncommon for my actual draft deck versus grabbing a rare that I probably don't care about or even a rare that I might wish I had in standard. It feels bad taking a common removal spell over a cool rare but, I think this discipline is paid off in the long run as I have an overall winning record in my quick drafts and so I've been doing pretty well building the collection and getting wild cards that way. Never paying $. Unfortunately I'm opening my packs every time I get them because I play standard and I'm trying to collect rares for those decks too. I really don't want to wait till the end of the season.

@tomramecin6995 Жыл бұрын

Awesome, I came to the comment section to ask how one can see if you already have a card while building the drafting deck and here you just give me the answer :) Nice 👍

@alley5911 Жыл бұрын

@@tomramecin6995 I think it’s ALT, but not sure off the top of my head. It’s one of those 3 for sure tho😂

@StreetWorkout Жыл бұрын

Great review as always! Thank you!

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Thanks again!

@mikemichal7181 Жыл бұрын

Nice analysis. Golden packs are a great option for folks who (hate/aren't good at/don't have time to) quick draft. I'm trying it out for BRO, but I'm finding that my uncommon completion percentage is suffering. When you value draft even for uncommons, like I do, you're getting so many more uncommons per draft than 5 packs would get you. Since I only needed to do 5 drafts to pay for my MP, I haven't filled in the uncommons like I would have had I done 8 or 9 drafts. I hope that they continue to offer the golden packs in sets going forward.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

I'm planning to do 10 quick drafts of the new set once it's out and then look at switching over to packs then, depending on how my collection looks. They have confirmed that golden packs are staying for the next set at least, so that's good news!

@photo_watcher Жыл бұрын

@@gameschooldadMTG But if you haven't money to buy some gems for real, YOU NEED to play drafts if it more effective way to have gems. And to improve collection YOU NEED to buy season pass for gems - but gems you can have only in a draft.

@Late_Night_Mega-MTG Жыл бұрын

I did 19 quick drafts and drafted a total of 76 rares/mythics, won a total of 26 packs (3 of them were the 2nd pack off the random chance), and it cost me a total of 5,250 gems. Those gems could have bought only a total of 26 packs. Even with getting 2 golden packs (12 more rares/mythics), quick draft still blows buying packs out of the water, and it wasn't even close.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

That's a great example of quick drafting working out. By those numbers, I'm assuming you won 7 games in 4 events, and in total won 9,000 gems in the event rewards too, which is an average of just over 4 wins per draft, or an average win rate of about 57%. I'm not surprised you got a lot more value out of quick drafting, because your win rate is higher than the average player across those events 👍 And this is assuming there were no duplicate rares wasted when you drafted them, which would be much more likely to happen as your collection gets more complete.

@Late_Night_Mega-MTG Жыл бұрын

@@gameschooldadMTG The numbers you figured are correct. I did some premier and alchemy drafts prior to the quick drafts. In the quick drafts I did get 4 rares that were 5th copies, but that's not part of the 76 number I stated earlier. I also didn't count any retro rares/mythics in that number either. My number of wins was fairly evenly distributed. I had 4 drafts at 7 wins, 3 drafts at 0, 1 draft at 1 win, and about 4-5 drafts each for 3 wins and 4 wins. My average loss per draft ended up being about 276 gems. Compared to the premier draft stats I kept track of, this fell into the better half of things. I have more detailed comparisons over on my channel for breakdowns of that. My 19 quick drafts were also done in platinum, and I hit top 1200 mythic in the process. I also didn't open any packs until I was done drafting completely. I think I had about 114 rares from brothers war before opening my 140+ packs. And now I have a full set of all the regular rares after opening packs.

@oa8418 28 күн бұрын

@@Late_Night_Mega-MTGthis dude said he hit mythic in the process lol… i get hard stuck and farmed in plat3 😂 ty for reminding me why golden packs are way better

@Late_Night_Mega-MTG 24 күн бұрын

@@oa8418 I guess if you get stuck in Platinum for 19 drafts while I go from Platinum to Mythic with 19 quick drafts then I guess golden packs would be better for you.

@oa8418 24 күн бұрын

@@Late_Night_Mega-MTG for the average drafter, not just myself, you’re correct! thanks for proving gameschooldad’s point! 👌 I’ll farm std event all day for 7 wins though ;) many mythic rank drafters do quick draft because its much easier and cheaper, and you get to pray on the noobies. mythic drafters are much much better than platinum drafters, we all know that.

@afikolami Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the analysis. Btw, I have some questions regarding the prize packs from drafting and sealed. Should I open them right away, or are there any merits in hoarding them? When is the best time to open those packs if I don't want to open them right away?

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

The best time to open them for building your collection and making them most of duplicate protection, would be as late as possible. At the beginning of a set you'll benefit more by building a collection from Jump In events, as well as draft and sealed. Once you've done as much of that as you want to, it makes sense to open your packs at that point. You can potentially get more value out of Individual Card Rewards by waiting even longer, but the benefit of that is not as significant.

@leftkehsvault2712 Жыл бұрын

Hi and Happy New Year! Just a quick question : is it certain that opening packs doesn't give rare/mythic cards that we already have 4 copies of? That could really be a gamechanger for opening packs when the collection is mostly complete...

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Happy new year! Yes, here's a quote directly from Wizards of the Coast: "If you would open a rare or mythic rare card that you already have four copies of, the system will automatically replace it with a different card of the same rarity from that set."

@Marthisdil Жыл бұрын

Yes, it's certain.

@GeneraleKenobi88 Жыл бұрын

For experienced limited players quick draft method is undoubtably more profitable. Anyway it's a good analysis, casual players may prefer this way to gain a reasonable payback from this method.

@co1inn Жыл бұрын

Would playing some jump-ins helps in your plan towards set completion? Would love to see an analysis on that too

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Jump In events are really good at building a collection to start with because they have such a low cost for the number of cards they give you. There isn't too much difference between the value of cards you get from a Jump-In event and what you can get from a Quick Draft when you take into account the average rewards. They'll both give you about 2 rares & 20 commons per 1000 gold or 200 gems, very roughly speaking. Quick Draft is probably better for the average player, and definitely better when you have a higher win rate, where Jump-In is much easier for beginners to get straight into it.

@mikeha Жыл бұрын

i've been playing a few jump ins and I'm pretty disappointed because most of the cards I am getting are not from the current set, they seem to have cards from previous sets too.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

@@mikeha That's right, Jump-In events have multiple packs from all current standard sets, not just the most recent. If you only want cards from the most recent set, then drafting or buying packs are the two best options.

@dennismonk9559 Жыл бұрын

can you do one on the value of quick drafts vs premier/traditional drafts or sealed? Or have you done that already?

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Hi Dennis, thanks for your suggestion. I haven't done a video on that yet, but I have added it to my list of upcoming videos now, so look out for that one in the near future! :)

@lunte0198 Жыл бұрын

I would have liked to see an explicit number how much Percent I should have before switching to buying packs. Also, I did not quite understand: If bought with gems, quick Draft is always worth?

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

If anyone can provide an exact amount of drafting everyone should do for each set, I'd love to see how they work that out! The best guideline I can give is that you should draft as much as you can afford in gold or gems at the beginning of a new set. If you have a lower win rate (3 wins or less on average), and you are prioritising the rare cards, then you might want to stop when you start to see rares that you already have 4 copies of, because that means you're getting diminishing returns on the amount of rares that you are able to draft. If your win rate is high enough (4+ wins on average), then you could do as many quick drafts as you want, because you can win back your entry fee and essentially draft for free. It doesn't matter then how many rares you can pick up, because free drafting is better than spending anything on packs.

@Denriall 8 ай бұрын

I know this video is 9 months old but I think there is something that's not stressed here: MTGA denies us from quick drafting a set for the first couple weeks when a new set releases. As a constructed player this is the most exciting time: build new decks, craft ideas nobody has come up with and try to meta game. So the interest in drafting is at an all-time low at this point - and WotC denies us to quick draft at all because it's the "best" format for your collection. So timing is also an important factor. A new set lasts for ~10/12 weeks and in the first two you can't even do" the thing" you should do to build your collection. What shoudl you do instead? Playing with old constructed decks and wait for two whole weeks? I think this is a missing point in evaluating the situation.

@gameschooldadMTG 8 ай бұрын

That's a good point. It's also one of the main reasons I moved from Quick Drafts over to pretty much only Premier Drafts. You get to do them straight away, and if you're ok at drafting, the rewards are much better too. I look at Quick Draft more as a training ground for newer players now. For anyone who doesn't want to do Premier Drafts, I'd recommend opening a few new packs and using a few wildcards to craft what you need to upgrade your existing decks first of all, and then jump into Quick Drafts when they come around if you want to.

@qzxerty Жыл бұрын

my biggest issue is quick draft is always disabled whenever a new set is released. Premiium draft way too expensive.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

The quick draft event switches to the latest set within 1-2 weeks of the new set launching, so that's a great opportunity to do lots of drafting in the early stages.

@tracephage Жыл бұрын

I'm not opening any Golden Packs until ONE comes out :D Gonna be a lot of new Rare lands in those packs probably though

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Good idea. Let me know how well that works out!

@tek9058 2 ай бұрын

Quick draft got nerfed hard, had around 20 QD games today, NEVER more than 4 rare/mythic per draft. I remember when i played last year, I had tons of rares, 5-8 but now bots never pass valuable cards.

@mythical___Jinx Жыл бұрын

This is wrong on several counts. as you are factoring the extra commons and cuncommons that work towards the vaults and then the Wcs and then the set completeion once again, its a cycle. you draft for 5000 gold, you complete all parts of the set filtering extras into itself once again, look at the wheel Quick draft, rares into gems, into more drafts into vault into wild cards into set completetio0n into more drafts into rares into gems, its a process that once you start to complete the current quick draft set it just spirals and you are drafting over and over and over for FREE. while if you bought packs you cannot do this as there are not enough cards in the packs to cycle through and you have to keep putting money into the game, if you are paying money for set completeion you are defeating the purpose.

@guybrushthreepwood8174 Жыл бұрын

Yeah. Buying and opening packs does not reimburse me with gems to keep repeating the process the way drafting does. I'm *pretty sure* this is what you were trying to say in that long comment.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

I agree that quick drafts are best for decent limited players who can go infinite or at least get maybe 4 wins on average per event. But if someone doesn't want to play limited or isn't very good at drafting, golden packs can be much more convenient and offers duplicate protection that you don't get from quick drafts.

@l0lan00b3 Жыл бұрын

That requires at least a break even win rate in draft. Going infinite, at this point in time because they changed the reward systems, varies but requires a 65+% WR. Going infinite not only requires you to be proficient at drafting but also fairly lucky. I'm sure you already know the rates and equations but, again for anyone else reading, taking the route of buying BROTHERs war and golden packs is the equivalent of a 49/50% WR in draft. On top of that it's guaranteed rares and mythics for standard constructed. You don't have to pay to keep playing, personally I haven't in 2 or 3 years but I bounce between limited and constucted, you just have to invest time and patience in saving your resources.

@utribal5258 Жыл бұрын

You do realize you are repeating exactly what he said right? He states when you are very good at drafting and can go infinite it will almost always be better to draft. If you are not that good and can't get back what you paid (or don't enjoy), it will be only favorable for the first couple drafts

@mythical___Jinx Жыл бұрын

@@utribal5258 golden packs are not better though

@MrWindamere Жыл бұрын

What about Jump In? It does have a low cost 2 rare return.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

I would recommend doing Jump In events to build up a base for a collection, as you get a good amount of rares for the cost. But the closer we get to rotation, it becomes less valuable to pick the Jump-In packs that will rotate out of Standard, unless you want to collect cards for Historic.

@pinguinman0 Жыл бұрын

What about sealed? It's only available at the beginning of a set but it seems quite appealing

@davidgrenier2181 Жыл бұрын

Sealed is the best deal for limited even in the worst case. It costs 2000 gems for entry (=10 packs); but you get 6 packs to play the games, plus 3 packs and 200 gems if you get no victories.That equates exactly to 10 packs. If you win even one game it's all benefit.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

To play sealed you need to pay in gems, so it's only fair to compare it to paying gems for quick draft. For 3 wins, a quick draft will give you probably 6 rares or more for a net cost of 450 gems. Sealed with 3 wins gives you 9.5 rares for 800 gems net cost. Based on that, quick draft is likely to give you slightly more rares for your entry cost, but if you don't like the drafting process, then sealed gives you a deckbuilding experience that skips over that. They're both pretty close really, so I'd just choose the one you enjoy playing more.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

If you get no victories in a quick draft, you get slightly better value for your gems than the normal 200 gems per pack/rare.

@NoviceExpert Жыл бұрын

Sorry if this is a stupid question. But what is a 'Golden Pack' ? I don't see any option by this name in the store.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

A golden pack is a bonus pack that you get for every 10 normal packs you buy. They have to be from the most recent set, so Brother's War packs at the moment. There is a small display in the top left of the store that shows how many more packs you need to buy before you unlock a bonus golden pack.

@NoviceExpert Жыл бұрын

@@gameschooldadMTG got it thanks!

@guybrushthreepwood8174 Жыл бұрын

@@gameschooldadMTG I really really strongly disagree with having it be ONLY the most recent set. I think that is very very stingy on their part.

@hogarthheathan 10 ай бұрын

does the progress for golden packs carry over if a set changes? and is there any benefit to finishing a set?

@gameschooldadMTG 10 ай бұрын

Yes the progress carries over between sets. There isn't any particular benefit to completing a set, after you've got 80-90% you've probably got all the cards you'll want even if you want to build a variety of decks.

@hogarthheathan 10 ай бұрын

@@gameschooldadMTG ok thanks, i got 1 more question, would completing a set fully 4 cards of each, and buying packs from that set, would it give you all wildcards? since they have duplicate protection?

@gameschooldadMTG 10 ай бұрын

@@hogarthheathan your chances of getting wildcards wouldn't change for completing a set. If you buy another pack, you would get 20/40 gems instead of the rare/mythic in the pack, and the common/uncommon cards would give you vault progress instead.

@reefalefunk1244 Жыл бұрын

what about premier draft tho?! also I feel like playing with the cards in the draft has to be worth something. But I get some people don't like limited

@davidgrenier2181 Жыл бұрын

I don't play Premier draft often, but in my experience chances are higher that other players will skip the rare and pick some stronger card. It's usual that I get 7 or 8 rares, whereas in quick draft I've been having 4 rares at most lately (I used to get more than that). However you should really play premier if you're good at draft, as the gem rewards can be very substantial. I haven't done the computations like our host here, but I think it's best to concentrate on quick draft until you get good at draft

@guybrushthreepwood8174 Жыл бұрын

I actually greatly enjoy the games themselves in the quick drafts so yeah for me there's definitely some value from that 5,000 gold and just getting to play these interesting games. And I'm someone who always used to hate drafting and I never tried until Neo. I only played constructed. But now I love drafting just as much as constructed.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Premier draft has better rewards for skilled limited players, but for the average player, quick draft gives you twice as much value in building a collection.

@edgabrillo1909 Жыл бұрын

i sucked in playing limited tbh, it always frustrates me lol

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

I'm like that sometimes 😅

@eostigaard Жыл бұрын

One thing I think you forgot is limited season rewards. I play enough limited to get to platinum which is 3 more packs and 1000 gold. Also, I average about 5 wins in quick draft so it pays to do that most of the time. I don't think I have purchased a pack in over a year. I have over 100K gold so no problem paying for quick drafts.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Yeah, if you are very successful in quick drafts, then the rewards get better and better, but the average player isn't going to get 5 wins per draft event, so unfortunately this won't work for everyone.

@artoras6098 Жыл бұрын

So funny how these limited grinders in the comments absolutely just can't phathom people actually not enjoying or God forbid, not being good at drafting.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Drafting just isn't for everyone, but on the other hand, I used to hate it because I didn't understand it and didn't know how to approach it differently to constructed games. Now that I know how to draft better and I get around a 60% win rate, I find it's definitely worth it for me. It's always worth learning about it and giving it a try, but if you decide it's just not something you're interested in, then it's great that there's an alternative in just buying packs that works just as well.

@guybrushthreepwood8174 Жыл бұрын

Sorry about commenting twice. But I wanted to push back a little bit on the concept of taking the rare when you're drafting. I think in the long run it's better to take the cards that'll give you a good deck and give you a chance to getting winning record in the draft. Doing well in the draft will in turn reward you with more packs and gems. You can then use those gems to enter more quick drafts. As far as I can tell buying packs doesn't really allow me to get into a cycle like this.

@brianfeeley6140 Жыл бұрын

I agree... I'm not as interested in getting 100% of a new set... I'm interested in getting 100% of the playable cards in a set! (And even that is hard to do!) Cheers!

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the tips!

@delconagher12 Жыл бұрын

Drafted 8 rares and won 7 games so I don't think so bud.

@gameschooldadMTG Жыл бұрын

Cool, well done!

@Spiethstar Жыл бұрын

Good job! Do love this stuff. I also play ranked for the rewards. Might be not worth the mental effort but its 7 packs and 2000gold each month. So I only draft till Im in the gold tier and platinum for constructed. Been hoarding gems for a while and figured that I only want to use them on anthology and mastery pass for now, all the extra will go back into quick drafting so I save gold for these Golden Packs. Thanks for sharing. Then there is also this for guiding to set completion asap docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IZtHgzCH8x8GUin2CWfvnhKmz-PkL-YYSMCjkh0cs10/edit#gid=580097418