Let't do a little arithmetic.
"Pre-release" sealed for 20 MTGO event tickets (tix) plus one guild mark. Tix cost $1 from the store or you can acquire them by liquidating your old cards to other players or bots. The guild mark is only available from the store for $5 US (no bitcoins). Since you can buy and sell tix on eBay for roughly $0.98, I'll assume you are they cost $1.
The good news here is that you're paying $25 for 6 packs of cards, plus a four-round sealed tournament. That's $24 MSRP value.
The bad news is that because of the online economy, the cards are worth very little after the event and you should never pay retail price for packs. So the second thing we need to look at is the Expected Value (EV) of the event. Prizes are 10 packs for wining, 4 packs for the four people who go 3-1 and one pack for each of the six people at 2-2. The total prize support for the event is 22 packs, plus 8 pre-release cards, plus 1 "foil" pre-release card. So what I am saying is 22 packs.
Assuming each player is of equal skill and likelihood to win each match, that is EV of 1.375 packs.
Since we can use online prize packs to draft or play sealed again, the prize payout is very important to online players. The higher the payout, the more we can churn through events without putting out more cash.
Let's compare the EV of the sealed deck Release Events, which start on Monday and run for two weeks.
Entry for this event is $1 less per player, but the prize support is huge in comparison. 1x12 + 4x8 + 6x3 = 62 packs for the same number of players, for an EV of 3.875. Note, we don't get our pre-release promo or our 1 in 8 shot at the "foil" version, but the cost to enter is cheaper and the promos are worth bupkis.
Drafting is no better.
The pre-releases offer you a chance to draft triple Dragon's Maze, but why would you want to? With a small set, there are only 70 unique commons, 10 of which are cluestones and 10 of which are guildgates, which will make for an awkward and repetitive drafting experience.
Prize support for the draft isn't terrible, with one extra pack than a standard draft, but it does cost an extra ticket to enter. EV for drafts is 1.625. EV for "normal" drafts is 1.5, unless you play 4-3-2-2 drafts (which i don't recommend), where your EV is 1.375. But don't forget they are charging you an extra $1 to enter, plus you can enter "normal" drafts with packs you won as prizes from previous events.
The lesson: don't play online "pre-release" events.
* The author of this post is currently battling to convince himself not to play pre-release events. The good news is that he is currently winning.
5/12/13 EDIT: Wizards added in full block 4-2-1 payout drafts as of this morning. The cost top enter is still the full 15 tix, but at least this is a real format with slightly better than usual prize support. Starting tomorrow, you can bring your own packs to draft, which is a good thing, since Gatecrash and Dragon's Maze packs are holding around 3.33 tix each on the secondary market currently. The RTR pack is currently 3.95, bringing your cost to draft to a little more than 12.5 tix.
wow, what a blatant attempt to up charge the playerbase. it's like when i pay $60 for civ V even though I know full well the real price is $30 just a few months later.
ReplyDeletein this case you only have to wait a few days. it's a no brainer. and triple small set draft is just bullshit. some times you gotta wait a week (and maybe latenight draft it up in a vancouver hotel lobby if the internet isn't good in either of our rooms, I am not joking.)
not going to be bringing the machine that runs MODO on this trip unfortunately
Deletestay strong, brother.
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