Interested in what online tools you use for MTG
General forum
Posted on Sept. 26, 2023, 6:01 a.m. by JeeCharns
Hi Tapped Out,
My first post here, I've recently started getting into MTG. I'm a software guy and love all the platforms that exist, DeckBox, Deckstats, EchoMTG etc etc.
I'd love to build something online for card games and trying to figure out if there's anything that you'd find super useful that doesn't exist already.
Like what do you find most frustrating? If you had a magic wand what would you like to be created digitally specifically for you?
Hope this post is ok here and sorry if i've posted in the wrong place! Couldn't find a forum category that made more sense than general (apar from maybe economy?)
Peace!
Thanks Wallisface,
That's an interesting problem I'll have a look!
September 27, 2023 7:18 a.m.
I ran into a similar issue using my favorite tool as listed above. To find more advanced and complex odds I made myself 2 excel spreadsheets, one that will randomize your cards, give each a unique number and show you the order of the deck and thus calculate the odds of whatever you are looking for (given you can code it properly) and another sheet to save the results in given a "Yes" "No" variable and then spitting the sums of those back in. It can run 90k iterations without crashing (much).
An example is I have a Jeskai Ensoul deck in Pioneer and at one time splashed Ob Nixilis, the Adversary and wanted to know the odds of when I drew him I could cast him.
September 27, 2023 8:14 a.m.
I use a hypergeometric calculator (it's really the bare minimum if you want to avoid constant frustration, this is usually the tool that shows you if your deck 'works' or not), but I also use a conjunction of events calculator (the best I can find is 3 events, which works for 3 colour mana bases/3 piece combos, but if I needed to make a 5 colour cEDH deck, I'd probably need a 5 event), and a binomial distribution calculator. The more Casual a deck is the less likely it is to live in Calculator Land, but competitive decks are going to have their numbers thoroughly crunched.
I still use the land base calculator from Casually Competitive, but this is restricted to Commander, and the calculator is pretty janky in some ways. It'd be nice if someone could make a similar calculator with more options, the idea is pretty good (and for the most part the really complex math in deck building is your mana base). It's amusing that it doesn't have a space for ramp spells, but cEDH doesn't really bother with those outside Crop Rotation iirc.
October 1, 2023 10:57 a.m.
We built an odds calculator recently that uses similar logic to the one you linked, you can find it in any deck's card odds button on the left. Any suggestions or improvements to that are greatly appreciated.
The idea is that it has several different categories to calculate the odds of and you can also define custom categories and calculate the odds of that
wallisface says... #2
I love this draw odds calculator but it could definitely do with a lot of improvements, giving a lot of room for a better tool to squeeze in and take its place.
It’s issues namely are:
can be a bit scary for newer players that need it most.
can be quite finicky if you’re trying to calculate more advanced odds - like the odds of drawing an actual keepable hand given a range of criteria.
it would be nice to have “odds to find x buy turn y”, taking into account cards in a deck that can draw/scry/surveil/search etc.
it would be nice to have odds of hitting X lands on-curve, in a more visual and representable way than the current finicky approach.
September 26, 2023 2 p.m.