MTG thread

Burren said:

You have a legendary who buffs angels, but you have no other angels. You have the saga that buffs Knights, but no other knights. Are you just relying on counters to keep the board clear and having one or two (ballista?) damage dealers?

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Lyras angel text doesn't matter, she's a 5/5 flying first strike lifelink is the important part. History of Benalia makes 4 power of dudes for 3 mana, and potentially attacks for a ton of damage if unanswered by opposing control plans etc, or just trades with two creates against an aggro deck.

Ballista is a hedge vs aggro that also doubles as a finisher on turn infinity when you have a ton of mana. Also plays nice with Raff getting to cast it at instant speed for shenanigans.

Deck is a midrange value pile made up of cards that are individually super powerful, with some Raff synergies to tie it all together and allow it to play largely at instant speed on the opponents turn.

Here is my very average vamp deck on arena. I use it to get my daily/weekly rewards, wins are about 60%, depending on opening hand. Yes sometimes still flood out, but sometimes if I cut and land or two I desert out.

Mana flood/screw is one of the few things that keeps paper MTG from being Chess, and is low key one of the reasons the game has lasted for over 20 years at this point while every competitor that has tried to "fix" that part of the game has flamed out. Card games need some form of RNG to keep the casuals (who pay the bills) engaged. Otherwise the best player would always win and Wizard's house of cards that is built on casual events like FNM and prereleases comes tumbling down.

It may not be the greatest thing in 1-game sets in Arena though.

The mana problems with MTG are definitely exacerbated by everything being a best of 1 format. I have no idea why they are pushing that so hard, but it fucking sucks.

Best of 3 rounds with a sideboard goes a long, long way to evening out the draw RNG and such, and makes the mana system in magic seem way less archaic.

ronne said:

Lyras angel text doesn't matter, she's a 5/5 flying first strike lifelink is the important part. History of Benalia makes 4 power of dudes for 3 mana, and potentially attacks for a ton of damage if unanswered by opposing control plans etc, or just trades with two creates against an aggro deck.

Ballista is a hedge vs aggro that also doubles as a finisher on turn infinity when you have a ton of mana. Also plays nice with Raff getting to cast it at instant speed for shenanigans.

Deck is a midrange value pile made up of cards that are individually super powerful, with some Raff synergies to tie it all together and allow it to play largely at instant speed on the opponents turn.

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Gotcha. Makes sense now. I think I'm just wired to build decks a certain way and it's got nothing to do with winning tournaments. All of my play is casual and fun and I like themes and synergies. Appreciate the insight.

Best of one is a shitty format in Hearthstone as well. It's maybe the worst part of that game. To then go and export it to Magic the Gathering is baffling.

Im wondering if this best of one is just temporary or if they are really planning it to just be best of 1.

Deathwing said:

The amount of people playing at low ranks with decks they shouldn't have is really demoralizing.

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Seems like it's REALLY hard to rank up, like you have to grind a lot of games. So you get games with rank 3 players as a rank 1 and they destroy you. Game is literally unplayable because of this.

In Hearthstone ranking up is a couple of wins and if you get a streak it's faster.

Deathwing said:

Was reading the analysis here



That the game is at least 2x more expensive than Hearthstone even with similar-costing packs. I might continue to play in the downtime between PoE leagues, but that's kind of a bummer if true. Their matchmaking system blows, I more times than not get matched with opponents outside of my metallic ranking, let alone sub ranking. So, expensive + slow progress = frustrating.

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That would be very disappointing. HS itself is vastly more expensive then most of the other digital card games out right now on top of that, so Magic being worse is... well, bad.

If I just want to play some MtG on the cheap I can go and throw 10-15 bucks at MTGO, buy a mess of cards that I find to be interesting, and go rock out in the casual room as much as I want. Playing games because you want to play is an entirely different beast than playing to complete chores or rank up. I'm not convinced that Arena has anything positive going for it other than being a way of playing top tier Standard decks for less money than is currently available. Teferi jumped after the weekend GP but he's still the same one Mythic wildcard to craft. Beyond that I'm having a hard time coming up with anything.

MTG Arena has a long way to go before it is able to convince me to return to Magic as anything other than a mega casual.

Arbitrary said:

Best of one is a shitty format in Hearthstone as well. It's maybe the worst part of that game. To then go and export it to Magic the Gathering is baffling.

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It's the difference between someone setting a trend and following one. The #1 solution of product managers everywhere is to do whatever the competition is doing. It's usually not smart.

If arena doesnt get BO3 soon im uninstalling this cancer, magic as a best of one with mana variance alone is insufferable. That and no dusting mechanic will ruin this game before it even goes live.

Quick Constructed offers gold and card rewards, so that offers something after the dailies. The problem there is it gives you random cards instead of wildcards so you still end up with shit you didn't want or need.

Glad to see people just getting into the game now can already see the issues with the economy. Was starting to think maybe I was too close to it (the game and beta) and wasn't seeing things clearly anymore.

We've been bitching about the issue for months, and they just don't seem to want to budge. It's been quite frustrating to hear them say 'hey, we're listening guys, thanks!' and then continue to leave the economy in the same overall spot (they shuffle things around to try and change perception, but the net result has been mostly the same). The only solution that makes any sense, is some bean counter exec is afraid that if MTGA is too cheap, they'll simply lose paper and MTGO players to it. They are ignoring how much of a market there is out there for digital ccgs that could easily make up for the profits they'd lose while increasing their overall profit.

p.s. to the guy that got 4 mythic WC in a row.. yea... fuck you :-( but seriously, rare WC are more of a bottleneck then mythic WCs. For how many you need for a deck, you actually get mythic WCs relatively fast. Like, you get 2 rare WC for every 1 mythic WC, but you need more then 2x the rares in most competitive decks (often due to the mana base). Like, a hazoret red deck might have 4-6 mythics but 12-18 rares, and it's somewhat on the cheaper end of things.

Man0warr said:

What looks odd about it to you? I can explain it some. Most of the deck revolves around Raff Capashen and only playing spells on your opponents turns.

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See, I was considering a similar decklist, except my flagship card I was eyeballing Daring Archaeologist and Weatherlight for the shenanigans alongside Danitha Capashen, Paragon. I was mostly trying to decide what artifacts to use there (Blackblade Reforged was mighty tempting), and then just go for monowhite turn sideways.deck. I've been so out of touch with MtG I can't even remember what's in what set for the past ten years, nearly. There used to be a time I had sets memorized. ;.;

Raff still feels like the breakout card of Dominaria, though, hands down. His effect makes me think back to when Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir was in Time Spiral Standard.