Other than the welcome bundle (which was worth it) purely ftp. I guess in purist terms a true Tier 1 deck is out as the mana base Barr a few Singleton rares in the colours you want is a stretch. I do have 2 Watery Graves in my Dimir Deck but I have been focusing on various golgari builds. Now witness one having a full set of ritual in soot and 2 carnage tyrants it still at best Tier 2.

That’s a lot of wildcard rares and I also cashed in a mythic too but as free to play what mainly happens is consistency sucks. Anyone gan get a good draw and a golgari build with mana and a Lanowar elf can usually put you ahead turn 1. But the meta is so varied (not a bad thing in itself) but a pimped aggro deck running all the mythics and rares can be just difficult with a slow start.

At the end of the day as ftp I usually in a play session have at least one game worthy of a GG win or lose. Just focus on decks for quest and don’t expect your best build to be more than about 50.5 % win rate and you can’t go too far wrong.

The only 2 decks I have that are even anywhere close is the golgari (various builds including a Vraska token version with 2 Vraska, one being the award for being in the closed beta. And the Dimir with a full set of thief of sanity but missing some key surveil cards. At least the mana base with 2 Watery Graves is semi decent). SD

EDIT: I have also decided to try and limit my week day plays to the hour which is usually enough to grind the quest. It does pay to build based on the colours unless it’s a kill x creatures or play y lands type. It can really help to experiment in building using this approach.

When I play the decks that are a bit more pimped out it’s usually trying to play as well as possible. The Dimir deck for example can be tricky to play well and even the different golgari builds I run do have a lot of decisions going on. SD

I wonder if, when and how they solve the 5th-card issue.. holding back money until then, but I'd like to play something stronger than my pimped precon in the near future.

Think I have 1-2 copies of every relevant Golgari card by now.

is there any calculation whats better draft or constructed for progress?

Yeah some people have figured that out but I can’t remember the results . It’s one of the drafts if memory serves

It’s draft foramount, but constructed gives you wildcards. If you’re focused on a particular deck the I believe construced will be more precise.

Almost all the top decks rely heavily on GRN, so Competitive draft GRN is easily the best format for developing decks.

If you want to build specific decks I think is better to go Constructed and buy packs... those provide WC in the long run, Draft grows your collection faster but in an erratic fashion.
I personally grind my gold on CC and then draft with the gold rewards + Quests, If I´m missing one or two cards in one specific deck... I just buy packs for the WC progression.
If I where FTP I would be inclined to just buy packs for the WCs, make one solid competitive deck and work my way on CC.
Draft will not provide you redundancy in your wanted Rares so it may not be the best way to build one specific deck

I wouldn't recommend draft for card acquisition ATM. Bots aren't passing rares like they used to and you'll miss the WCs from the packs to get specific cards you need.
I've actually found the 500 gold events (pauper, singleton, etc) to be great for getting random rares and I've gotten more value out of those because of the guaranteed rare than packs or draft. Maybe I've just been luckier with those, but I've pulled more quality rares/mythics there.

One interesting thing I've noticed playing pauper is that I have very few commons (especially from ixalan block) because I haven't opened ixalan packs or done ixalan draft. All the commons I have from those sets are from the starter decks or WCs and I'm missing a bunch.

For now, since my collection is still very limited, I'm going to buy GRN packs and aquire the other cards I need with WCs (especially the lands).

It's worth to buy Ixalan packs because there are a lot of important rares and mythics. RIX is **** in my opinion, so I just craft those cards. I also buy Dominaria and only craft M19 cards if I need them. GRN is strong overall, but you can get it by drafting or free packs. GRN is still worth buying due to the power level.

Most things have been said already, but to provide my PoV:

It's not really Constructed vs Draft. The usual comparisons are direct boosters vs Draft (1) and Ladder vs Constructed Event vs Special Events (Momir, Pauper, Singleton, Streamer-Special) (2).

The answer to (1) is:
Draft if you enjoy it and if you want more overall cards for your collection (from the Draft set!).
Direct boosters if you have one specific deck in mind for Constructed that you want to play asap. Reason: wildcards.

The answer to (2) is:
Special Events are great because you get at least 1 Rare and 1 Uncommon even if you bust completely. In that case you pay 400g for those two cards. Some events are more fun than others though and there will always be people claiming they go 5-x every run, which you won't.

Between Ladder and Constructed Event there's a threshold somewhere for each individual deck at which point Constructed Event will overtake Ladder. This is hard to grasp and nothing official, so I have to define it myself. The point is, in Ladder you get matched (partly) based on the perceived strength of your deck. That can be heavily (dis-)advantageous for you face a lot of the same. Once your (perceived!) deck strength reaches a certain level, you can expect easier games in Constructed Event which doesn't use this (rigged) matchmaking, so that obviously becomes better at that point for you get ICRs on top of gold win-rewards.

Is constructed best of 1 matchmaking based on ladder ranking or the strength of your deck?

I think it's based on game wins, so 0-0s should preferably play each other, then it will choose whoever is closest to your wins/loses that's available.

I'll say that, through draft, I've opened the vault 3 times already since the wipe.