MTG: Arena

I really hope this isn't going to turn into another game that requires spending a ton of cash to get a decent deck. I've gotten 6 freebies so far and broken them down to make my own decks (plus trading a few wild cards for essentials) but all of my decks so far are pretty weak. 50% win rate. Only one game so far with a huge mana screw - which is lucky. I don't understand the ranks at all (5-8 games to gain a rank and 2-3 losses to lose a rank; what?) and having to pay real money to play anything other than the standard game....come on....

Burren said:

I really hope this isn't going to turn into another game that requires spending a ton of cash to get a decent deck. I've gotten 6 freebies so far and broken them down to make my own decks (plus trading a few wild cards for essentials) but all of my decks so far are pretty weak. 50% win rate. Only one game so far with a huge mana screw - which is lucky. I don't understand the ranks at all (5-8 games to gain a rank and 2-3 losses to lose a rank; what?) and having to pay real money to play anything other than the standard game....come on....

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You can spend $0 and have a competitive deck and even with the starter decks you can average a 60%+ win rate.

You will never be sitting at some 80-90%+ win rate over the long haul no matter what deck you build because every deck can be countered and every hand has an RNG element.

You get minimum ~1-1.4k gold from winning 4 times and doing dailies which is enough to fund ~10 packs, ~12+ multiple quick events or 2 drafts per week. For free. Seems pretty generous.

And ranks are completely irrelevant currently so don't pay attention to them.

zzeris said:

Well, I watch Noxious sometimes to see some fun decks. Watched his building strategy for collections yesterday and tried to do competitive matches with my best souped up intro deck after almost a month of playing. Yeah....went just like you'd imagine lol. What's the best budget deck right now? Izzet wizards, RDW, WW? I used up my rare and uncommon early wildcards to get some staples and build a solid singleton deck but have 3 mythic wildcards left to use.

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Probably a Red deck are a Blue tempo deck. Izzet decks tend to perform almost as well as they do but not are quite as good.

There are a lot of decks you can build with four rares and bunch of uncommon but unfortunately you have to spend money to acquire those uncommon.

They seem to have slowed down the rates of wildcard acquisition from closed beta as well.

Chimney said:

You can spend $0 and have a competitive deck and even with the starter decks you can average a 60%+ win rate.

You will never be sitting at some 80-90%+ win rate over the long haul no matter what deck you build because every deck can be countered and every hand has an RNG element.

You get minimum ~1-1.4k gold from winning 4 times and doing dailies which is enough to fund ~10 packs, ~12+ multiple quick events or 2 drafts per week. For free. Seems pretty generous.

And ranks are completely irrelevant currently so don't pay attention to them.

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I didn't see any corrolation to ranks and game play yet, so I guess they can be ignored for now.

I certainly didn't expect a crazy win rate like that. But, I would think I could easily swing 60-65%. Good to know that some of the different game modes can be explored without shelling out cash for gems.

I like the idea of Arena because I can play with my brother who's 1,500 miles away. But, I have no interest in spending money when I've already got 25 years worth of cards.

Burren said:

I didn't see any corrolation to ranks and game play yet, so I guess they can be ignored for now.

I certainly didn't expect a crazy win rate like that. But, I would think I could easily swing 60-65%. Good to know that some of the different game modes can be explored without shelling out cash for gems.

I like the idea of Arena because I can play with my brother who's 1,500 miles away. But, I have no interest in spending money when I've already got 25 years worth of cards.

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The only thing that matters for matching (which varies on game mode) is deck strength and wins. If you just want to grind then keeping your hand low on rares/mythics is the way to go about it and makes a lot of decks viable. The second you start tossing in big cards is when you'll start playing against obnoxious decks that make your slightly altered precons get pooped on in ladder.

Look into mono red, mono white, u/g merfolk (my main grind deck which has me around 70% according to mtga pro tracker), mono u tempo, b/w vamps without rare/mythics if you just want to bang out the wins and keep a consistent 60%+ in ladder.

And I understand the cost apprehension, but I also value the time I get to play as entertainment and spending $100 is less than a dollar per hour for me with how much I am on and spending that $100 once on gems will give you the opportunity to build a plethora of decks and if you enjoy draft and can get a 3+ win average keep you flush with gems for a long, long time.

In comparison I bought about $200 in booster box/bundle/deck builders this last week and if I didn't get super lucky with a couple of carnage tyrants, assassin's trophy's, vraskas contempt that almost broke me even on card cost once I flip still left me with zero competitive standard decks. I was able to build 8 pauper style decks to play with friends out of it, but that is mainly because they aren't very interested in MTGA.

Deathwing said:

Does this deck matching apply to all modes? If I enter a competitive event with a starter deck, I'll only get matched with similar decks even as my wins climb?

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The deck matching is only for the BO1 ladder. In the competitive queues you get placed against people with same/similar win loss record, deck strength is not considered.

Anyone having disconnects after games, or when building decks? It is especially annoying when sideboarding.

Kiroy said:

post about 5th card issue

https://mtgarena.community.gl/forums/threads/41925

and the reddit convo

Chris Clay speaks on the 5th Card Problem : MagicArena

I really don't envy the position they're in. They got around this in mtgo by allowing online set turn ins for IRL cards, so the digital 'item' actually had real world worth. It's going to be tough to figure this out without pissing off both the spenders and the f2p (or spend very little) folks. Gonna get really interesting when sets start to rotate out too.

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What's wrong with just rerolling fifth cards for another random of same rarity?

They didn't need to do much more than have the system fudge the numbers some so that you were a little less likely to get 5ths and much less likely to get several 5ths in a row but now they've launched and are looking at some much, much bigger changes.

Mono-Red with frenzy and steam-kin.....

Ridiculous turn 5 in standard with Mono R

Well, Artifact is coming out long before that fix. If that game is as interesting as Magic is for strategy, it will hurt Arena not having made a decision when it comes to a retroactive action or worse a rotation. I guess I will stop opening my Ravinca packs at this point. I know I will see 5th in that set. I suppose I will have to wild card the remaining dual lands.

They should have just allowed for a dusting system. There is a reason why almost every other online card game has one. If the system works, why be different? Its like a car riding on square wheels. Yes with enough torque you can force the car to move but the ride is uncomfortable as hell and a huge waste of power.