Thinking of playing as a 100% free player for the next standard set

[Minmataro]

I'm curious how someone who spends no money in the game completes a standard set.
So i'm going to try it. currently im hoarding my gold. on set release i'll use the gold to draft and with the gems i earn i'll buy the mastery pass and draft more. I want to see how close i can get to set completion without using money. People say its a grind but not difficult. i want to test this.

As free players yourselves do you have any advice? Like waiting on quick draft first? when should i stop drafting and start saving gold again for the following set? a month before release? any tips would be nice.

[magnumaniac]

Wait for the quick draft to use your gold. Use any draft tokens you have to try out the premier / traditional draft while waiting, to get a feel for how the set drafts.
Spend all your gold on quick drafts, taking rares / mythics whenever you see them.
Use your first 3400 gems to buy the mastery pass, then use gems for more quick drafts when you run out of gold.
Do NOT open any packs until you have enough to nearly complete the rares / mythics (i.e. if the set has 70 rares and 20 mythics, you need 360 for a complete playset, so the number of packs you need before opening any is 360 minus the number of R/M you have drafted, and wildcards you have. Seems like a big number, but you will get lots from the mastery pass and draft winnings.
They are making this harder with the growing number of bonus sheets and sub sets (e.g. The Big Score in OTJ) - not sure if it will remain viable if they keep this up, but at least it has been a long season for this set.

Bonus from this method is that you do get quite a few vault completions, plus all the rare wildcards from opening packs, so you can use those to fill in gaps if needed.

For reference, I drafted twice a day during the first 2 quick draft periods for OTJ - so about 50 drafts before opening any packs to get set complete (ignoring the non-standard lbonus sheet cards)

[Minmataro]

Originally posted by magnumaniac:

Wait for the quick draft to use your gold. Use any draft tokens you have to try out the premier / traditional draft while waiting, to get a feel for how the set drafts.
Spend all your gold on quick drafts, taking rares / mythics whenever you see them.
Use your first 3400 gems to buy the mastery pass, then use gems for more quick drafts when you run out of gold.
Do NOT open any packs until you have enough to nearly complete the rares / mythics (i.e. if the set has 70 rares and 20 mythics, you need 360 for a complete playset, so the number of packs you need before opening any is 360 minus the number of R/M you have drafted, and wildcards you have. Seems like a big number, but you will get lots from the mastery pass and draft winnings.
They are making this harder with the growing number of bonus sheets and sub sets (e.g. The Big Score in OTJ) - not sure if it will remain viable if they keep this up, but at least it has been a long season for this set.

Bonus from this method is that you do get quite a few vault completions, plus all the rare wildcards from opening packs, so you can use those to fill in gaps if needed.

For reference, I drafted twice a day during the first 2 quick draft periods for OTJ - so about 50 drafts before opening any packs to get set complete (ignoring the non-standard lbonus sheet cards)

I have eight draft tokens but planned to keep hold of them to see if i could pull off this gold only set release. By the time the next set is out i'll have around 80k gold. As for bonus sheets. I have 90 rare and 30 mythic WCs saved but again i wanted to try to not use many. If i come close enough to set collection i'll be happy but the ultimate goal is 100%.

[mwesthoff]

I spent 200k drafting Otj and got to 92% complete and then opened the 102 Otj packs that I won and now I'm at 98%

What ended up happening was when I opened the packs all I got was all the junk rares that I never drafted.

I could finish it off with the wild cards if all else fails, but don't think I will need to because I still have a lot of Mastery packs to gain.

[Minmataro]

Originally posted by mwesthoff:

I spent 200k drafting Otj and got to 92% complete and then opened the 102 Otj packs that I won and now I'm at 98%

What ended up happening was when I opened the packs all I got was all the junk rares that I never drafted.

I could finish it off with the wild cards if all else fails, but don't think I will need to because I still have a lot of Mastery packs to gain.

Yeah thats the problem, you draft to win so you usually only grab the best cards in the set of specific colors and you're left with a large gap in your collection. This happened at first with me drafting MH3. i hardly ever picked black cards except a few removal so i needed to rely on packs and WCs.

[Nubbles]

I wait for quickdrafts. I pick all the rares, so sometimes I'm left with a bad deck with which I won't get the gems back through winning, but picking 12 rares/mythics for 5k gold is a win on itself and I can do that more in quickdraft. And often I still end up with good decks and win enough. Currently have 14k gems saved up through quickdrafts and rare drafting, so I still win enough.

And I open packs only after I've done the drafts, for the rare protection.

For the first 2 weeks of the new sets release, I just play brawl where new cards have a minimal impact and if I REALLY want to try a new card for that format right away it won't burn through all my wildcards.

EDIT: the 14k gems are not just from quickdrafting, so this is for the sake of being complete keeping expectations realistic. I use the draft token from the former mastery pass before the quickdrafts and in there I draft to win. I only draft to complete the sets, so after doing so and while waiting for the next set, my emblem status gets reduced a lot. With the draft token, I play vs players who are just not very good and usually get the max gems off of that, I think its 2200. Also, since I have almost all of standard, my wins from the midweek magic is usually 20 or 40 gems twice each week, so that eventually adds up. You also sometimes get rares from the daily wins, which usually turn into gems aswell for me.

[Serkian]

Originally posted by Minmataro:

I'm curious how someone who spends no money in the game completes a standard set.
So i'm going to try it. currently im hoarding my gold. on set release i'll use the gold to draft and with the gems i earn i'll buy the mastery pass and draft more. I want to see how close i can get to set completion without using money. People say its a grind but not difficult. i want to test this.

As free players yourselves do you have any advice? Like waiting on quick draft first? when should i stop drafting and start saving gold again for the following set? a month before release? any tips would be nice.

GL playing us F2P u can reach 80k-100k gold, and only if u are a god like Kai budde it can be worth play draft changing ur gold for gems so GL with ur F2P, this game is making for P2W.

[Minmataro]

Originally posted by Serkian:

Originally posted by Minmataro:

I'm curious how someone who spends no money in the game completes a standard set.
So i'm going to try it. currently im hoarding my gold. on set release i'll use the gold to draft and with the gems i earn i'll buy the mastery pass and draft more. I want to see how close i can get to set completion without using money. People say its a grind but not difficult. i want to test this.

As free players yourselves do you have any advice? Like waiting on quick draft first? when should i stop drafting and start saving gold again for the following set? a month before release? any tips would be nice.

GL playing us F2P u can reach 80k-100k gold, and only if u are a god like Kai budde it can be worth play draft changing ur gold for gems so GL with ur F2P, this game is making for P2W.

I'll see how well i do right before the set after next releases. if i still need a ton of cards i'll give up and spend some cash. im curious to see how i do tho. will update once its over.

[Berserkr]

Why do you folks feel the need to post on every single thread when you get some crackpot idea

[Teric]

Anyhow, personally I've built a collection from constantly playing Bo1 Historic Event, although this obviously works for Standard, Exploration, and Alchemy. It lets you build a very broad collection, and personally feels safer than drafting. Granted, you need to be confident you can consistently go atleast 5-3 to go infinite on it, so it may not be for you. Still, you can go infinite easier than something like Quick Drafts, since it takes less wins.

If you want completion on a specific set, Drafting is likely far better.