Magic Numbers is a podcast about Limited format in Magic: the Gathering. The idea is to use data to try to crack current format, or try to answer longstanding questions in Magic and by answering the questions making the listeners better at drafting, deckbuilding and general strategy. The target audience is intermediate to advanced players, but rest assured, determined beginners will also find useful information that will allow them to level up. The podcast is an audio version of my Twitch seminars, so if some parts are confusing, it was designed to be watched on YouTube or live on Twitch.
Set reviews are fun but what exasctly do they bring to the table? We grade cards, we speculate wildly and life moves on. This set review is different. We graded the cards before the set was released, and are coming back to our initial grading after the dust has settled. Me, and Alex, AKA Chord_o_Calls use this re-review to learn - what typpes of cards do we miss on? What trends we had during the grading? How can we use our failures to improve the next time? Card evaluation is a skill that can be worked on and it yields results. Hope this episode will help you improving your grading skills. You can find Alex on twitter: twitter.com/Chord_O_Calls Or listen to his excellent podcast, Limited Level-Ups, which you can find on your podcast app or on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@limitedlevel-ups
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/s-s-3MdNJv4
This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at
if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
So, you have your Boros aggro and UW Eerie decks nailed to a fine detail? But perhaps recently the wins are not coming as easy as they did early season? Don't worry - I got you covered there. We will loook at the data of top 17Lands.com users and try to figure out what do they do differently to sustain a solid win rate throughout the format. And what strategies do they lean onto as the well with the best decks dries out because the knowledge of their strength becomes universal.
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/s-s-3MdNJv4
This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at
if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
Forcing, drafting the hard way, drafting with preferences are all different approaches to the draft part of Limited.
What do the numbers tell us about those? Can you optimise your approach to draft through this and how? All in this weeks episode.
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/WD2i1C07EfA
This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
One of the traps of looking at card win rates is simplifying a complex problem. Yes, a card can have a decent win rate but this may meaan many things. It can be universally good, but it can also be very good in some decks and not so in others. 17Lands.com users often will intuit it, play that card in good decks and skew the data towards a hight win rate.
Today's episode loooks at each common and uncommon in DSK and tries to see which caard is good where, at least at the color pair level. Hopefully this helps you finding your footing in the format by adding a lot of context to DSK drafts.
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/b2JkWu0AHiY
This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website. Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
New format, new learning curve, new possibilities. Today I look at the early data for DSK to try to figure out which cards are surprisingly good or worse than anticipated to give you that small edge in the new format. We go through some color pair data, looking at best commons, uncommons, cards that are sneakily good and cards that trap players into playing them when they probably shouldn't.
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/s-s-3MdNJv4
This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
Draft decks, not cards, they say. Why do we review cards before the set release then? Our unique take on reviewing a new sets is to talk about the big picture and based on those thoughts and discussions, we just build decks. Sometimes to show what designers want us to do, sometimes to show we can defy their goals and build something more off-piste.
And what a "we" do we have. Jason and Ryan are qualified for the worlds and renowned limited specialists that managed to convert their draft skills to beat on puny constructed players. Springbok7 is a draft grinder extraaordinaire, Tresio rose through the ranks of my patrons to a staple of the skeleton crew. And me, without data, so mainly for comedic purposes and the 6-pack.
You get a 3h extract of our take on the upcoming format - find neat synergies, discuss plans, point to key cards. All in time to prep you for the prereleases.
Watch the episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/WUzbX_eoZgs
You can find my panel here:
https://www.twitch.tv/springbok7
And work of many others behind the scenes shouldn't go unnoticed
This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
We say goodbye to BLB with revisiting our set review. This is an excercise in card evaluation and a farewell to all the critters in BLB. We look at what we got wrong before the set was released. Individual cards, color biases, what did we not get based on pure card evaluations.
Chord_o_Calls is a limited streamer, coach, podcaster. You can find more of his excellent content at https://www.twitter.com/chord_o_calls.
Ping me for coaching. Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else!
Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/mE5nMC7iY9I This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
This week we are going to look at BLB draft through the lens of Ekil, a prolific limited streamer specialising in BO3 drafts. What does he do differently that the rest to win 73% of his games and all that while playing exclusively on stream?
We go through his draft habits, look at color preferences and try to figure out what makes him successful.
You can find Ekil on Twitter and Twitch: https://x.com/ekiltv https://www.twitch.tv/ekiltv
Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else! Coaching is now available - reach out through any of those channels. Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/JXRjzBZxM0k
This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
Today, a different episode. I started offering coaching, and to give you the insight into my method, I invited a Commander legend, Shivam. He told me he was struggling a bit with BLB draft (aren't we all) and wanted a second pair of eyes on his drafting. We go through his draft and try to identify where the potential problems lay.
As it is Shivam, plenty of anecdotes in between, but eventually we identify some problems with his lane and hopefully - his next drafts will be better for it.
You can find Shivam 24.7 on twitter - and it is a joy. A true oasis of positivity in the bitter world of Magic content creation. https://x.com/ghirapurigears
If you are interested in coaching - ping me a message. On Discord. On Twitter. You can find my socials on https://linktr.ee/sierkovitz
Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else! Watch this episode and see the slides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbviD8zbFaU This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
Some players win more consistently. Surely there is more to that than pure luck? I look at the data of the top 17Lands.com users from Bloomburrow BO1 draft to try to see - what cards do they prioritise and what cards do they win more with. And try to speculate why that might be so.
But wait, there's more! Some cards are generically good and will make the vast majority of decks they are in better. Some cards are more niche. Bloomburrow being a typal synergy decks has some not-so-secret gold cards - cards that work in only one archetype, but not another. But it is not alway obvious. There are "false friends" among us. Some Racoons secretly want to be played with Mice. Some Bats are Lizards in disguise. I go through most commons and uncommons and using data try to figure out best homes from them. And worst homes for what it is worth.
Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else! Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/MvR7clSuFIg This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
Early data for every format is a bit of a minefield. On one hand it provides valuable information, on the other, can be misleading as it is largely based on the decks where players were still finding their footing in the new format.
Join me in trying to decipher the data and find some cards that are obviously good or bad and some that may still be flying under the radar.
I look at color and color pair power rankings and look at top, hidden gem and trap cards in each archetype.
Join the Discord, sign up for Patreon, and use this Linktree for everything else! Watch this episode and see the slides: https://youtu.be/pD7La6IbEUM
This podcast is sponsored by mtgazone.com - get your reading fix from the best and brightest Magic writers in the business.
You can get the BulkBox at https://www.bulkbox.co.uk/store/ if you are in the UK. Remember to use SIERKO10 code for a 10% discount! If you are outside of UK, you can find your local distributor on the BulkBox website.
Theme song: You Do You, Mana Junkie by essesq (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/essesq/61332
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