Tuesday 17 April 2018

MTG Arena: my mythic tracking spreadsheet

I've played Arena quite a lot since I got into the closed beta in February. It's come to me that one of the trickiest questions is how to spend your hard-earned gold and that led to me writing a spreadsheet to track my mythics.

Here's my thinking:

- a collectible card game limits you by limiting your access to the rarest cards.

- commons, uncommons and to a lesser extent rares are cards you're quite likely to get anyway and so shouldn't be the focus of how you build your collection.

- wildcards can and should be used pretty freely with the more common cards and help you to quickly build playsets of the ones you want. Mythic wildcards are a much rarer and more precious resource.

- mythics include some of the most interesting and flavour-rich cards.

- mythics include some of the most powerful cards.

- therefore it's best to spend your gold on packs that will most improve your mythics collection.

The spreadsheet has 5 columns.

Column B is personal. You should copy the sheet and edit in your own values. For me if a card is Legendary I'll usually limit it to 1 because drawing two means a dead card in your hand, if a card is confusing I'll limit it to 1 until I understand it better and if a card is expensive I'll limit it to 1 because I don't need many top end finishers in a deck. By all means start with my numbers if you're lazy but it really is better to look through Gatherer and make your own list. (Links to the Gatherer search for each set's mythics are in the spreadsheet).

Column C is where you keep track of your mythic collection. Don't put a bigger number than Column B so if you want 1 but you have 3 put 1 in this column.

Column D calculates the total mythics you want from that set but don't have.

Column E calculates the total mythics you want from that set but don't have as a percentage,

The best way to develop your collection is to choose the set with the highest column E number in the purple box, the set most likely to provide you with a Wanted Mythic. Over time as you open packs of the set with the best Column E number that number will drop until a different set now has the best column E number.


So:

- copy the spreadsheet.

- use the Gatherer links to browse the mythic cards in each set and change the numbers in column B to reflect your own preferences.

- in Mtg Arena edit a new deck and search for rarity = mythic and status = owned. Put your numbers in Column C. Going forward amend this column every time you get a new mythic.

- Compare the number in the purple box for each set. The biggest number shows you which set is best. If in doubt avoid the set that is currently being used for prizes as you'll collect this set passively. (Currently Rivals of Ixalan). In my own case (at the time of writing) it's still worth opening RIX because there are so many mythics I want from it.

- make decks, pwn noobs.

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