Jeffrey Mott

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

Now this looks like it could be fun, genuinely excited for another thoughtful and playable in universe set

[Magic: The Gathering @wizards_magic]

Reality Fracture. The last several years of Magic have been building to this moment, and today we peel back the curtain on what awaits you in the Echoverse. #MTGFracture

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

@SaffronOlive “Your opponents control” means 8 total amongst all opponents right? Since this isn’t “an opponent”

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

If spells in Strixhaven need to be prepared before it’s possible to cast them, is there a reason that this isn’t more clearly indicated on the prepared spell side like Adventures? Example below @GavinVerhey @wizards_magic @maro254

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

@SaffronOlive This is the first time I’ve ever considered buying proxies rather than real cards. I was busy when the lair dropped and paying a scalper isn’t happening. Very frustrating that this is the outcome

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

@MTGSecretLair Never bought proxies before, but with Dandân as a stand alone game is now the time to start?
Very disappointing @Hasbro that you’ve created artificial scarcity on something that should have been a cool inclusive experience.

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

Watches Fall Out? Yes
Plays Magic? Yes
Buys Secret Lair? No

#OverPrint #TooMuch
#MagicTheGathering

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

This one is incredibly accurate 🙏 🎉🐻⬇️ what a roller coaster ride 😅

https://t.co/XO1DoK2M0k

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

Skip past the intro video and the cards from Lorwyn look like this set will be a lot of fun, can’t wait! #Lorwyn #ClassicMTG

https://t.co/xtfQ15QmU0

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

@sickpodadamrank @adamrank “Almost….” The Bears once again with the chance to win in the last two minutes of the game. Loving the excitement, but it’s a wild ride with many opportunities

[Chicago Bears @ChicagoBears]

Kings of the North 👑

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

Getting decent value from Magic is the biggest frustration for someone who just wants to buy random playable cards that lead to fun competitive interactions and not throwing money away… This really hits the nail on the head.

[Saffron Olive @SaffronOlive]

Something I've been thinking about lately: Magic boxes have always been a gamble, but now they are basically slots (widely known to be the most profitable gambling for casinos and worst gamble for players).

When I first started going EV calculations 15 years ago, the payout was fairly flat. Boxes cost $100. For some sets the best open was fetchlands or shocklands (discounting a foil mythic of some chase card) at something like $25 a pop. You'd get roughly 3.5 of these lands per box on average, if you run good you might get 5, if you run bad 2 or 3. Toss in the other stuff, and a good box might get you $200 in value while a bad box might get you $65. The EV was spread out through playable mythics and rares. It felt pretty safe to open boxes, since even though it was impossible to win big because no individual card was worth much, you also couldn't really lose big, because a lot of cards had value.

Currently though, it seems like boxes are modeled after slot machines. Here's the thing about slots: they technically, by law, pay back something like 95% of what they take in (the exact percent varies a bit depending on location and such, but the return to player (RTP) is public info).

You might think this means if you bet $100 you'll make back $95 on average, and while this is true over the course of millions of bets, for any individual player, this isn't really true.

This is because of the jackpot. Sooner of later someone will get super lucky and hits the one in millions spin and win a massive amount of money, which means a huge percentage of players will lose money, despite the 95% RTP. Essentially most players lose money, so one player can win the massive jackpot.

This is how boosters, especially collector boosters, work currently. Thanks to the advent of "jackpot" cards like the 1 of 1 The One Ring or the super rare The Soul Stone, a very small number of players will hit a box that wins them tens of thousands of dollars. In some cases millions. But these jackpot cards eat up most of the box's EV, so the average box will lose a bunch of money, because most cards aren't worth that much. Basically, 99% of players lose opening boxes, so that 1% (or technically more like 0.01%) can win big by hitting the jackpot card.

This ends up being great for degenerate gamblers chasing the rush of hitting a big win, but bad for the average player opening a box here or there, since they are likely to lose value.

I have to think this change was intentionally modeled after slots. It turns out the gambling industry is really good as vacuuming up people's money. If you want to make more money *and* can legally get away with it (which is why this works for collectable cards, which are sort of a loophole of *literally* being gambling, but not being *legally* considered gambling), doing what the gambling industry does makes a lot of sense. They have it figured out, why try to reinvent the wheel?

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

Don’t see it staying this way, but man that would be something if it did…

[Adam Rank @adamrank]

Is this real life?

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

@Drizzydre87 I still wouldn’t blame the offence, there are to many variables and individual errors that in hindsight contributed to the difference between winning and losing for both players and coaches. Football’s unpredictability and the randomness make it so enthralling any given Sunday.

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

@Drizzydre87 You don’t remember that game do you, special teams was electric with Hester getting the kick off return TD. The big difference was the Bears having 5 turnovers to Indy’s 3. Defence played a decent game, but offence needed to score more points with better 3rd down efficiency

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

Huge win for the Bears today! It’s good to not lose another close game

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

Got convinced to split a play booster of #Spiderman #MagicTheGathering and the cards are absolute garbage, their value is almost half the price of the packs and they aren’t playable in commander if you’d like to try and win a game… #WorstOpeningExperience #ZeroValue #AllFiller

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

@SaffronOlive Universes beyond was fun as a Secret Lair adjacent product that would add flavour to games. However, the increasing dependency on other IPs to grow the popularity of Magic shows the lack of creativity and limited value placed by WOTC on Magic the Gathering’s own IP.

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

Just found out that Apple backs up messages and pictures as part of iCloud storage even when you turn the messages off. This feels like a huge breach of trust!
Only found this out because iCloud ran out of storage and I only back up my contacts.

[Jeffrey Mott @jeffreymott]

@wizards_magic This is insanely powerful… are we trying to ruin commander games here?
Every time you attack with a creature you target the player, so you have to be able to remove this creature (which cannot be countered)...
#Broken #NotFun