Okay, maybe I already knew that, but listen to my story and you'll understand.

My friends and I always spend release weekends together. We all buy a box or two of the set and just draft, pack wars all weekend long. A lot of fun right? Well it was!

But that really isn't part of the story. I just had to set you up. We fast forward to Saturday night and another friend joins for the first time during the festivities. His name is Kevin, but we'll be calling him Jim for anonymity. So Jim tells us he has something really cool to show all of us and it's magic related.

We're all expecting A.) A sweet foil gatecrash pull or B.) A new combo he came up with.

Well we were all wrong. He pulls out a substantial amount of Return to Ravnica product unopened. Throws one to each of us and tells us to open them. Well with closer examination Jim had labeled each pack with a card name. Upon opening the packs and pulling the named card 13/13 times we all got a little suspicious.

Jim tells us about this app he recently discovered available on the Iphone. It's a box mapper... and it works.

The app is able to determine every rare in a box with as little as 4 open packs.

Now, I'm not an idiot, I know that mapping boxes has happened in the past, but I thought Wizards had mostly bit this in the butt.

Part of it may have been my own ignorance or maybe just some forced naivety, but I never imagined that mapping boxes was this easy.

Kevin is a good guy, and said he didn't attempt this process to scam anyone, but wanted to see if it worked. I believe him. But I have to say it was a moral dilemma I, myself had after coming across this new information.

Should I try to make a quick buck?

I thought long and hard about it, because easy money is tempting, but i decided instead to type this up. One as a warning to others and two to prevent myself from falling to scamming ways.

I have to say seeing a map done this easy with readily accessible technology that anyone has access to, soured me on purchasing packs of cards. Taking the randomness out of opening the packs just doesn't make it fun.

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Originally posted by Myy:
what is the app?

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Originally posted by AGO:
Here

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Originally posted by valorale:
My guess is yes as nothing is truly random. Though to figure out the foil mapping would probably require a very large sample size. The guy who made the video explained it takes about 5-15 boxes to figure out the map. With Foils I imagine it has to be several hundred boxes at least.

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Originally posted by MagicPatty:
Wow, this app means wizards needs to throw some change-ups. Where I play, a draft is 15 bucks, or 5 bucks if you have three packs, as this lets us make good use of packs that we've won. I could see where someone could just map out where the Pack Rat is, the Desecration Demon, and the other Pack Rat, then just bring those to draft with. That's a big problem. Not to mention that I'll NEVER buy a pack again from anyone or anywhere unless I open the box it came in.

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Just tell the store to not let the players pick their packs for their draft. That's what my local card shop does.

The box gets opened, the packs are dumped out on the table
and then randomized before being put back into the box for sale.

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Originally posted by mtglover:
Just tell the store to not let the players pick their packs for their draft. That's what my local card shop does.

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It's not that theyre picking their packs out of the box... which to my understanding, you can't really map that way anyhow, but rather, they allow us to bring in packs that we've won in previous drafts to use.
Many of us have purchased a booster box in order to make our next 12 drafts cost just 5.00 and bring the packs in. It saves about 30 bucks in the span of those 12 drafts, which you can rest assured you will play in over about a month or less even.
The issue is that I can buy a box, take it home and open the money packs. Technically, what's to stop me from mapping out the packs with bomby same-color rares and taking them in to use for my draft?

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Originally posted by MagicPatty:
It's not that theyre picking their packs out of the box... which to my understanding, you can't really map that way anyhow, but rather, they allow us to bring in packs that we've won in previous drafts to use.
Many of us have purchased a booster box in order to make our next 12 drafts cost just 5.00 and bring the packs in. It saves about 30 bucks in the span of those 12 drafts, which you can rest assured you will play in over about a month or less even.
The issue is that I can buy a box, take it home and open the money packs. Technically, what's to stop me from mapping out the packs with bomby same-color rares and taking them in to use for my draft?

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Originally posted by MagicPatty:
It's not that theyre picking their packs out of the box... which to my understanding, you can't really map that way anyhow, but rather, they allow us to bring in packs that we've won in previous drafts to use.
Many of us have purchased a booster box in order to make our next 12 drafts cost just 5.00 and bring the packs in. It saves about 30 bucks in the span of those 12 drafts, which you can rest assured you will play in over about a month or less even.
The issue is that I can buy a box, take it home and open the money packs. Technically, what's to stop me from mapping out the packs with bomby same-color rares and taking them in to use for my draft?

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Originally posted by CubFan81:
If everything is above board, then the players who are bringing their own packs wouldn't mind having them shuffled in with the others. If you have a draft table of 8, and 4 guys bring their own packs. Take their 12 packs, and 12 packs from the store display. Shuffle them up a bit in a bag or box or whatever and hand them back out after players are seated.

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A reasonable solution, however one could still complain... If I go to my LGS and enter a draft I expect the packs to be unmapped, and each have a chance at having a money mythic. Why should my entrance packs that are legit get mixed in with someone elses crap packs, giving them a chance at my value card? ...I know, this is nitpicking. It just feels like wizards needs to really shake things up in their distribution / randomization.

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Originally posted by MagicPatty:
It's not that theyre picking their packs out of the box... which to my understanding, you can't really map that way anyhow, but rather, they allow us to bring in packs that we've won in previous drafts to use.
Many of us have purchased a booster box in order to make our next 12 drafts cost just 5.00 and bring the packs in. It saves about 30 bucks in the span of those 12 drafts, which you can rest assured you will play in over about a month or less even.
The issue is that I can buy a box, take it home and open the money packs. Technically, what's to stop me from mapping out the packs with bomby same-color rares and taking them in to use for my draft?

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Originally posted by paris:
Shouldn't it be easy for Wizards to fix this problem if they really wanted to? Somewhere in the packing process they just pick some random numbers (seeded using the time or the temperature or something), and use those random numbers to randomize the assignment of packs to boxes.

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Originally posted by marlo213:
Nothing, knowledge is power. I guess just don't be too obvious and hope the dude to your left isn't going black

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Originally posted by mcelraca:
Should I try to make a quick buck?

I thought long and hard about it, because easy money is tempting, but i decided instead to type this up. One as a warning to others and two to prevent myself from falling to scamming ways.

I'll continue to play the game, just like i continue to enjoy the holidays every year, but a little bit of the magic is gone. (no pun intended)

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I hope most people know about mapped packs by now. For people with avenues to dump sealed packs, I imagine people do this.

fwiw, I like wrestling even though it's staged. People still like cracking packs.

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Originally posted by marlo213:
Nothing, knowledge is power. I guess just don't be too obvious and hope the dude to your left isn't going black

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Didn't this dude just ask an "ethics" question?

Just goes to show that most ethics questions have clear answers. And are only questions for those with questionable ethics.

Btw, if you crack 3 pack rats, why in the heck would it matter if the person on your right is going black or not? The person passing you two packs is more important than the person you're passing to.

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Originally posted by paragondave:
like your soul.

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Originally posted by choco man:
I hope most people know about mapped packs by now. For people with avenues to dump sealed packs, I imagine people do this.

fwiw, I like wrestling even though it's staged. People still like cracking packs.

Didn't this dude just ask an "ethics" question?

Just goes to show that most ethics questions have clear answers. And are only questions for those with questionable ethics.

Btw, if you crack 3 pack rats, why in the heck would it matter if the person on your right is going black or not? The person passing you two packs is more important than the person you're passing to.

awesome

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