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.
We hear the wisdom from experienced players: Always play your two drops, Spend all your mana, and many more. But how do the numbers back those old truths? Do they stand scrutiny of testing them through data? Are they universal? Or are there corner cases? I test several Limited heuristics and hopefully you get to level up your game play through it!
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Watch this episode and see the slides: Episode #144 vid
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 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.
In this episode, I answer a variety of question about Magic, life, cooking and stuff. Mainly MAgic though, so don't worry - you can still get something useful out of it, I am not turning into a lifestyle content creator.
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: Episode #143 vid
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 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.
New set is with us and with it the usual struggles. What to play, which cards overperform, which do badly, what color pairs to prioritise. Fear not - I have most of the basics covered and hopefully you will leave with a solid understanding of the key features of the Pioneer set.
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: Episode #142 vid
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 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.
"Draft the good cards" is one of the basic pieces of advice you will get when starting to play limited. But just how effective is that advice? I dived deep in 17Lands.com data from BO1 Foundations drafts to measure just that. Turns out that this advice is solid. Over the course of the episode I will try to make you understand how and why does it work and how to best apply it, especially if you are a newer player.
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: Episode #141 vid
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 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.
There are some cards that are just great in Limited. You can jam them into any deck and be happy about it. Filling your whole deck with those must be nice. In reality, to find 23 playables we need to compromise a bit. Some cards will be below par. But with some knowledge you can make the most of that. Some cards can be great in one of the color pairs in the format but mediocre in others. Knowing that will help you in putting them only in the right home and thus maximising on their power. Other cards are the opposite - great in most color pairs, but significantly weaker in one. Imagine if W is aggressive in a format apart from WU decks which tend to be controlling. You can imagine cards that will be great in all W decks apart from WU and cards that are specifically great in WU. This is the plan for today's episode - sifting through all the common and uncommon cards in the set to find the ones that need a particular home.
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/fz372F0oTzI
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 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.
New set, new data. How to position yourself well in a new format? Get the best available card evaluations as early as possible. And that is the aim of this episode.
I will look at each color pair through the lens of the key card - surprising hits, reliable performars and shocking duds. Plenty of cards in each category will be discussed throughout the episode.
Hopefully with this information you will be ready to trophy more and outplay those who rely on guesswork and intuition.
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/aWoTNGMbq7E
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
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
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