Magic the Gathering Arena

[spectre]

Hows this game?

Standard's pretty much business as usual. You like ramp and reclamation?
Sure, some of it might be gone once rotation hits, but there are actually decent alternatives to explore with historic getting a fuckton of new cards and Jumpstart as a limited-lite mode for beginners for just 2k shekels.

Speaking of Vito, I was taking a shower last night and was thinking about how there could be some fun with death pings, either in mono black or Orzhov. Because as I was scrubbing my balls I was pondering if it would be better as a historic deck or a standard deck, as one does. Probably the biggest thing in favor of historic is gaining access to Blood Artist, but in standard you do still have access to Bastion of Remembrance and standard MIGHT be a little more forgiving of a durdling deck like this. General gist of course is combining ping/heals with creature deaths (Largely with artist and bastion) probably with the fucking cat/oven combo (Because it's black and fits too well to ignore) with Vito sprinkled in there to essentially double all your bullshit, and then the 3cmc Bloodthirst Aerialist for a growing threat with evasion. Pings can probably close out games on their own sometimes but the aerialist feels like it just slots in easily as another threat. Whisper Squad might not be bad either. Piper of the Swarm may also be acceptable for pooping out tokens to sacrifice, little iffy on that. Feel like skeletons and Dreadhorde Invasion could keep the sac fodder up, along with the cat.

Spoiler

Deck
4 Blood Artist (JMP) 206
16 Swamp (M21) 311
4 Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose (M21) 127
4 Cauldron Familiar (ELD) 81
4 Witch's Oven (ELD) 237
4 Bastion of Remembrance (IKO) 73
4 Reassembling Skeleton (M19) 116
4 Phyrexian Arena (8ED) 152
3 Phyrexian Tower (JMP) 493
3 Castle Locthwain (ELD) 241
3 Order of Midnight (ELD) 99
4 Bloodthirsty Aerialist (M20) 91
3 Dreadhorde Invasion (WAR) 86

In my opinion, Vito is wasted potential for just pinging with the cat oven. It also eats up lots of deck space (though I may be biased against it, the novelty wore off a long time ago and I'm bored out of my skull by it).
You want lifegain in bigger chunks to really make him shine, something akin to what WB Sorin does by giving lifelink to everyone. Not saying WB is the way to go (might be if you want to try it in standard, cruel celebrant is your Blood Artist),
but if something's out there that can give you obscene amounts of life, I dare say it's worth a shot. Wildgrowth Walker with the explore package is something that springs to my mind almost immediately.
With the current list, best thing you can do is probably sac an invasion token every turn for food then eat it with vito around for easy 3 damage.

I'm not sold on Order of Midnight and Ass Skeletons. If you want recursion, slap a Lurrus on this thing, not as a companion, but maindeck. You also most definitely want some actual interaction in there. Blacklance Paragon is something that can
fit in in a lot of ways (recurable with lurrus, kills a guy, gains life for vito). Other stuff that work with Vito that I'd put on a watchlist is Sovereign's Bite (this one gets really nasty with Vito and is close to playable on its own, as long as you're being aggressive),
Dread Presence should work as well and Tendrils of Corruption can be a nasty surprise. Twillight Prophet is a rather forgotten card, but can offer solid, repeatable lifedrain.
And if you want to try your hand in major jank country, I'd recommend Arterial Flow with Sangromancer. But speaking seriously, the vampire theme can be worth your time here, e.g. the 3cmc Sorin also gives you more than one way of draining decent chunks of life.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Hows this game?

I'm new to the mystical world of Magic, but it's really really fun. The deepest CCG out there (only others I played were Hearthstone/Elder Scrolls Legends and Pokemon/YGO as a kid) and just has a ton of options/variance you can go for. Digitally, I can't go back to HS since MtG allowing for much more interactivity on turns really makes the game have layers of more depth to it and some of the combos you can do are crazy. I actually thought I'd get bored after three days or so but I've been playing near daily since around the beginning of June.

My only complaints are planeswalkers and how the higher up in ranking you go the more you'll run into the same netdecks which is true of every CCG I suppose. Still, running into some whacky shit or making things work for you is awesome and there's a lot of flavor/theme you can add to the decks. I fought one guy who had a deck that was pretty much all about sacrificing/milling monsters and then bringing them back from the dead constantly or turning them into demons, it's like you were fighting some crazy bitch ass necromancer/warlock in a card game. Really cool stuff.

But this game will make you pissed. At least it does to me. Sometimes you're the one doing the big dick comeback from out of nowhere and sometimes you're the one on the bad end of a highlight reel.

Make spiders a better tribal.

 

[anvi]

Spiders used to be good in ancient mtg, there was a little 1/2 which had reach and deathtouch. Best defender ever.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

There aren't enough spiders either.

If I can't make a 60 card deck of nothing but spiders of varying shapes, sizes, colors and creeds then take a break from giving us these faggy elves and goblins and give us some BIG BOYS.

Sporeweb Weaver is not enough to pacify me. Every set should have five spiders. Preferably black or green or both.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Multi-headed Cow give up already. Go historic, add desecrated tomb. Before you know it you would want to expand with titan nest
decide in the end that you want something like this(made it before jumpstart)

Triomes? TRIOMES!? Three+ colors is even more offensive than wh*te! But yeah, historic does seem like the place to be. Going standard would push toward Orzhov a lot more (Cruel celebrant because you can't run artist any more, maybe 4cmc Sorin since he works with Vito and can pull shit out of the yard, etc) while going historic means the deck looks like it might have some gas going mono-black.

In my opinion, Vito is wasted potential for just pinging with the cat oven. It also eats up lots of deck space (though I may be biased against it, the novelty wore off a long time ago and I'm bored out of my skull by it).
You want lifegain in bigger chunks to really make him shine, something akin to what WB Sorin does by giving lifelink to everyone. Not saying WB is the way to go (might be if you want to try it in standard, cruel celebrant is your Blood Artist),
but if something's out there that can give you obscene amounts of life, I dare say it's worth a shot. Wildgrowth Walker with the explore package is something that springs to my mind almost immediately.
With the current list, best thing you can do is probably sac an invasion token every turn for food then eat it with vito around for easy 3 damage.

I'm not sold on Order of Midnight and Ass Skeletons. If you want recursion, slap a Lurrus on this thing, not as a companion, but maindeck. You also most definitely want some actual interaction in there. Blacklance Paragon is something that can
fit in in a lot of ways (recurable with lurrus, kills a guy, gains life for vito). Other stuff that work with Vito that I'd put on a watchlist is Sovereign's Bite (this one gets really nasty with Vito and is close to playable on its own, as long as you're being aggressive),
Dread Presence should work as well and Tendrils of Corruption can be a nasty surprise. Twillight Prophet is a rather forgotten card, but can offer solid, repeatable lifedrain.
And if you want to try your hand in major jank country, I'd recommend Arterial Flow with Sangromancer. But speaking seriously, the vampire theme can be worth your time here, e.g. the 3cmc Sorin also gives you more than one way of draining decent chunks of life.

The thing with Vito in the deck is that he amplifies almost all the other ping-engines. Cat ETB is a ping that gets doubled by Vito, saccing with Artist gets doubled by Vito, saccing with Bastion gets doubled by Vito, etc. He's doubling a lot of 1-point pings rather than bigger swings but (I think) that should still add up to make it a not insignificant amount of burn to the face. Definitely in agreement on the color pairing for standard though, like I'm mentioning earlier in the reply. It's just that I thiiiiiink mono black would be better for historic. The food definitely could be used as a bolt to the face with Vito if need-be, but using the cat may end up being more damage because of the ETB+Vito+a sac trigger for every artist and bastion in play+Vito for every one of those.

Lurrus probably would be good, yeah. I do like the skeletons because they're essentially a free sac trigger with a tower in play (Sac skelly for BB, spend BB to return back to the battlefield, send sac damage to face all at instant speed so the untapped skelly can block, sac, return, untap on your untap step) and the order of midnight... Yeah. Lurrus should be strictly better. Only thing is that order of midnight could bring back Vito or an aerialist while Lurrus couldn't, but I would guess the most likely target would be bringing back artists which are 1cmc anyway. I'm not going too vampire-themed overall, hence stuff like the cat, it's just a lot of the cards built around this "Sacrifice, ping, gain life" bullshit are vampires. I am probably going to try an outright vampire tribal deck in the FNM event too though since I've been seriously considering finishing off my 3cmc Sorin collection to play 'em in historic. It's just that I thought Vito was cool ever since I saw his card for M21 and since Jumpstart added blood artist I've got murder in my eyes.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Blood Artist is such a savage card that adds up over time. Putting just two of these fuckers down can be devastating with every trade and it's hard for the opponent to swallow that they need to devote removal for a 0/1 which gives your scarier creatures less worry to lay down. He's also an amazing battery for Aerialists/Gorgers, adds more damage for Vito, and synergizes with Sorin's vamp sacrifice power to add some extra hits in when you need to close a game out. Hell, you can even throw him in as a blocker if it means you can ping the opponent down since he procs himself.

Blood Artist and Phyrexian Reclamation are probably my favorite cards they added in.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

what is this, historic all access was supposed to be whole week! I see 26h timer!

Am I to take day of or something?

What? I thought it was always just one day.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

kinda annoyed that with the whole banning artists thing we'll probably never get another chance to grab these full art lands:

wish I grabbed these when they were in the store a while back they're way better than Avon's "i took a picture of my backyard with my phone here's ur forest bro" lands

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

after testing some crap and playing through hordes of goblins, few things shined through:
- deathtouch works best in deathtouch zombies shell... but even then not rly strong
- phylactery lich works nicely in ozolith+shadowspear+dreadhorde invasion+phyrexian scriptures shell. Stonecoil serpent, crystaline giant for good measure along with obliterator and merchant... obviously
- everyone needs scholar of lost trove + rise of the dark realms reanimator deck in their life

And my findings on face pinging sacrifice deck are that while it does technically work, just playing Orzhov aggro vampires works a lot better. Could improve it more (Like bloodthirsty aerialist whiffed more than I thought, but it makes sense because even in full lifegain decks whiffs with it aren't super uncommon) but eh, lazy. I may craft the 3cmc Sorins for aggro vamps though just because that's a pretty good time. I probably should've put more thought into decks to test in the FNM event too.

kinda annoyed that with the whole banning artists thing we'll probably never get another chance to grab these full art lands:

But the Guay lands, Dawkins! And all the cool stuff in Jumpstart. Buncha good land available. Actually saying THAT reminded me about the nice zombie lands, so maybe I'll see about doing some zombie deck real quick in FNM.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

kinda annoyed that with the whole banning artists thing we'll probably never get another chance to grab these full art lands:

But the Guay lands, Dawkins! And all the cool stuff in Jumpstart. Buncha good land available. Actually saying THAT reminded me about the nice zombie lands, so maybe I'll see about doing some zombie deck real quick in FNM.

yeah but i want a cool set of full arts
speaking of zombies, made a new cyclone deck, this one historic based. here's turn 5:

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

lmao 1 mana cycle into genesis summon 20 zombies

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

My Goblin deck is nearly ready, it took an absurd number of Jumpstarting but I'm almost ready to unleash my appropriately named deck, "Cleve's LA Riots."

 

[RuySan]

Everytime I get one of those cat oven decks I lose the will to live. The oven should be banned, it just doesn't work in an online environment.

And the cunts who play with it are very much aware of it, because i'm sure every single one is multitasking while playing.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Still haven't gotten millman, Basri, and Garruk.

Been getting some cool shit though. Best hit recently was a Grim Lavamancer, gotten a few mythics like that new red dragon but Grim Lavamancer should make burn a bit more of a viable option and I'm going to want to play that at some point. I mean look at his card art and tell me you don't want to put on some prog rock and play a burn deck. You can't do it. Even if historic still doesn't have bolt.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Thac0]

Fucking Finally got all lands from Jump I cared about. Took me ages to get that enchantment land, probably 3000-5000 gems drained by the (((Wizards of Jerusalem))).
There is still some stuff that would be cool to get, like the Dragon, Phyrexia and Mill land and whatever the fuck the last Forest is. But I am done spending cash there.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Ive made a list of cards im missing across all historic sets. One that is winning is jumpstart... heh I thought Ill just buy m19/dominaria packs and be done but i dont rly have a clear winner. Maybe they do end up offering early bird discount on ankhmunamun with regular packs so I can get it and use wildcards to cherry pick

I'm hoping they'll do something to make it a little easier to keep up on the historic side of things. Although to be honest I guess I have to check my expectations a little. It's only in Arena where I'd be feeling like I should be striving toward a complete collection in standard, not to mention an eternal format.

Speaking of new sets, I'm curious if any of the new Zendikar shit will end up on Arena. Rosewater apparently said that some Zendikar packs will have blinged out "Artist signed (Printed)" non-standard cards randomly taking the place of a common in a pack. Given Arena's smaller pack sizes and the fact that probably a lot of those cards aren't going to be ported to Arena, they couldn't just do the same thing. Would be nice if in Zendikar boosters there was a chance your common slots could have a rare or mythic wildcard though. That extra incentive would probably make people want to crack packs like motherfuckers. Probably going to get none of it though, just like a lot of the alternate art randomly shows up in packs in paper but not in Arena.

 

[Thac0]

Really exited for the next rotation, there is so much potent stuff in the game right now that just gets crunched out by fast mana WAR combo decks or Teferi.

Selfless Savior+Luminous Broodmoth is such a fun combo and with Elspeth conquers death a true midrange deck is brewing there. But it folds too hard against actually competitive decks right now.
Basri Ket and Glorious Anthem is super explosive.
Stormwing Entitiy, Fairy Drake and that 2cmc flying counterspell and winged words.

So much stuff that is blast to play but gets stomped by Wilderness rec, rakdos sacrifice or Bant Ramp.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG