That's correct - right now it is not taking into account curve and synergy/card type. We are looking into implementing these in the future but hopefully that explains the current suggestions you're seeing.
The ratings are all maintained by me and based on experience, professional reviews, pick order lists, etc. Essentially what the rating represents is a "pick one pack one" decision based on sheer power level, with some consideration for color. As you move farther away from P1P1 and start building based on synergy, the engine is still only going to make recommendations based on power and your color commitment, not on synergy with what you have.
I will say about Built to Smash specifically that it is the second best red commonH after Welding Sparks. So part of this depends on your view of the format and the fact that WotC lately likes pushing strong combat tricks over removal, for example.
Channelfireball has built to smash as the second best red common (corresponding to ~2.8) since it's critical to the aggressive red archetype.
In this deck, it's quite powerful and gets in a lot of damage. However, to a certain extent, it is situational (combat trick, requires attacking, likes artifact creatures).
Historically, quality creatures have been in the 2.0-3.0 range and tricks have been in the 1.7-2.0 range. This makes the suggested picks and auto-building lean toward stable, creature-heavy decks.
First, the Renegade Freighter rating has been updated (since we all know how good it is now).
@zenbitz I think that the right way to implement deck composition is to implement an empirical "curve bonus." For example, the first three-drop in the deck gets a +1.0 bonus, the fourth gets a +1.0 bonus, and the seventh gets a -0.5 bonus. This will guide decks towards 5-6 three drops.
To enforce this during the draft, an "expected number" of three drops can be introduced (i.e. if a player has 2 three drops halfway through the draft, they are on pace for picking up a total of 4).
@Cele - at one point I had included autobuilding bot decks, but it was a bit computationally intensive for slow browser. There's a new team in charge of development now, maybe they'll think of implementing something like this
@FTW - yes it's pure power, no synergy. Some of the mathematical details might get posted on the methodology page soon
I'm curious to see how you tweak it to handle more synergy oriented sets, seems kinda tricky. I mean do you manually create tags/links between cards that care about each other and assign a value? Or do you design a system that reads player choices and how they change for given cards based on the cards they already have?
I think you have to add more dimensions.
You have some dimensions, like colour-red for example that are linear. The more red cards you have the more highly that causes you to rate future red cards.
Other dimensions have diminishing returns, like 5-drops. Once you have 3 good 5-drops, the bar really goes up before you want more of them. So you need different drafting logic (basically a negative modifier) for them.
So when you want combo cards like Act of Treason and Sacrifice effects, I think you have two dimensions: threaten effects that play well with sac cards, and sac cards that play well with threaten effects.
Looking into this! Stayed tuned in the next few weeks/months for the implementation.
Also I don't know that the goal is to make genius-bots. I mean, it'd be cool to *truly* optimize the drafting experience but given that nobody really ever does that with the much more adaptable human brain, I kinda doubt that an algorithm brain is going to manage it. You can write in some kind of value-adjustments based on all sorts of criteria, but actually getting them to adjust correctly gets harder with every variable you add. I mean, ORI is a good format for working out the basics of a bot like this because splashes are basically never a thing and synergy is a low priority. It'll be much harder to make the bots even as realistic as they are now, in a more complex environment. I think bots that can analyze a curve and can usefully evaluate gold/colorless cards probably puts them in a really good spot for players to learn to draft a format. Getting more complex than that is probably a job for actual human players.
The goal is to make the bots as smart as possible based on a model that accounts for:
1. power level
2. color
3. curve
4. synergy
The current live version accounts for 1 and 2. Making a Ben Stark quality bot would be quite ambitious, although a winning 8-4 level bot is probably tractable. And yes, figuring out some of the more subtle nuances of drafting is much of the fun!
The bots are an improvement on bestiaire's bots, considering color in addition to raw card power level.
The community would really like to see a better approximation of human drafting and some work on curve and synergy considerations is in the works. Hopefully that will be out by battle for zendikar, maybe sooner.
Print runs reduce the chances of duplicates in boosters and we want to take this into account in the model
Fiery Impulse, Cruel Revival, and Whirler Rogue are great cards and I agree with the first three picks.
For the fourth pick, I rate Hellion a bit higher than Angel. A 4/5 trample is a great body, and it has a lot of upside with the other red cards in your deck.
Draft simulators are widely used within the MTG community and there has been great interest in improving the quality of these AI drafters.
I've created a new draft simulator with bots that draft playable two-color decks. To do this, the drafting process is divided into three phases:
1. Speculation: Take the highest rated card out of each pack, with a preference for on-color cards
2. Commitment: Commit to drafting a two-color deck with a very strong color preference
3. Deck construction: Construct a deck with the 23 most powerful cards in a two-color pair
This model is also used to offer users pick suggestions and automatic deck construction.
Sentinels is probably the second best uncommon, behind Whirler Rogue. Because I like to draft white, I take it over all the uncommons and behind the premium rares.
Also, Archangel of Tithes is obviously castable on a 10-7 mana-base. Most often, you'll draw more lands in the main color (i.e. 3-2) and be able to slam the angel after drawing 4-6 lands. Sometimes it will get stuck in hand, but when you do cast it, the power level of the card more than makes up for it.
P1P1, I like Karn over Academy - he's a premium threat that fits into any deck.
In terms of time, learn the MTGO shortcuts. Using F6 and F8 can save you a lot of time. Treat time as a resource. If you're low on time and losing game 2, it might make sense to conserve time and move onto game 3.
Does anyone know of of the best place to pull large numbers of limited decks from?
I'd like a large data set to train a draft AI that I'm working on, specifically quantifying what a good curve looks like, but a surprising number of magic deck databases are constructed only.
Decklists from GP/PT drafts would be ideal for training, although any database would help.
Channelfireball has built to smash as the second best red common (corresponding to ~2.8) since it's critical to the aggressive red archetype.
In this deck, it's quite powerful and gets in a lot of damage. However, to a certain extent, it is situational (combat trick, requires attacking, likes artifact creatures).
Historically, quality creatures have been in the 2.0-3.0 range and tricks have been in the 1.7-2.0 range. This makes the suggested picks and auto-building lean toward stable, creature-heavy decks.
@zenbitz I think that the right way to implement deck composition is to implement an empirical "curve bonus." For example, the first three-drop in the deck gets a +1.0 bonus, the fourth gets a +1.0 bonus, and the seventh gets a -0.5 bonus. This will guide decks towards 5-6 three drops.
To enforce this during the draft, an "expected number" of three drops can be introduced (i.e. if a player has 2 three drops halfway through the draft, they are on pace for picking up a total of 4).
@FTW - yes it's pure power, no synergy. Some of the mathematical details might get posted on the methodology page soon
Thanks,
-Dan
Looking into this! Stayed tuned in the next few weeks/months for the implementation.
The goal is to make the bots as smart as possible based on a model that accounts for:
1. power level
2. color
3. curve
4. synergy
The current live version accounts for 1 and 2. Making a Ben Stark quality bot would be quite ambitious, although a winning 8-4 level bot is probably tractable. And yes, figuring out some of the more subtle nuances of drafting is much of the fun!
Also, what do you think of having the bots rare-draft from time to time?
The pick orders are primarily based off the pick orders from Frank Karsten, found here:
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/a-pick-order-list-for-magic-origins/
The bots are an improvement on bestiaire's bots, considering color in addition to raw card power level.
The community would really like to see a better approximation of human drafting and some work on curve and synergy considerations is in the works. Hopefully that will be out by battle for zendikar, maybe sooner.
Print runs reduce the chances of duplicates in boosters and we want to take this into account in the model
Looking into print runs and models for creature count/curve
Fiery Impulse, Cruel Revival, and Whirler Rogue are great cards and I agree with the first three picks.
For the fourth pick, I rate Hellion a bit higher than Angel. A 4/5 trample is a great body, and it has a lot of upside with the other red cards in your deck.
Draft simulators are widely used within the MTG community and there has been great interest in improving the quality of these AI drafters.
I've created a new draft simulator with bots that draft playable two-color decks. To do this, the drafting process is divided into three phases:
1. Speculation: Take the highest rated card out of each pack, with a preference for on-color cards
2. Commitment: Commit to drafting a two-color deck with a very strong color preference
3. Deck construction: Construct a deck with the 23 most powerful cards in a two-color pair
This model is also used to offer users pick suggestions and automatic deck construction.
You can visit the site at:
http://draftsim.com
I hope that your find this a useful tool for drafting practice and sealed deck generation. Post some sweet draft decks in this thread!
Best,
-Dan
Also, Archangel of Tithes is obviously castable on a 10-7 mana-base. Most often, you'll draw more lands in the main color (i.e. 3-2) and be able to slam the angel after drawing 4-6 lands. Sometimes it will get stuck in hand, but when you do cast it, the power level of the card more than makes up for it.
In terms of time, learn the MTGO shortcuts. Using F6 and F8 can save you a lot of time. Treat time as a resource. If you're low on time and losing game 2, it might make sense to conserve time and move onto game 3.
MTGO shortcuts:
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-complete-guide-to-mtgo-shortcuts/
I'd like a large data set to train a draft AI that I'm working on, specifically quantifying what a good curve looks like, but a surprising number of magic deck databases are constructed only.
Decklists from GP/PT drafts would be ideal for training, although any database would help.
Thanks!
-Dan