Magic the Gathering Arena

[MadMaxHellfire]

is magic still on its "big expansion - small one - small one" 3-months-step tight schedule? if the next big block is still far to come, i might attempt to play again, if i can for free.
i was sort of a decent player back in my day, i sent the pro-tour winner roc hermes berzerk because i bitchslapped him with all my cheap decks.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

is magic still on its "big expansion - small one - small one" 3-months-step tight schedule? if the next big block is still far to come, i might attempt to play again, if i can for free.
i was sort of a decent player back in my day, i sent the pro-tour winner roc hermes berzerk because i bitchslapped him with all my cheap decks.

They don't really do blocks any more, just big expansions and USUALLY not immediately connected although that's not a hard and fast rule. Next expansion launches in a couple days on Arena though. It is also arguably worth starting now if you're interested rather than later simply because if you start now you'll get whatever the freebie starter cards are at the moment and then should get whatever next year's freebie starter cards are when rotation hits. The way they handle that is if you already have the cards that would be in the freebie starter decks then you don't get extra copies, but if you don't have them then you get them. It'll probably be easier for you to play after rotation (Obviously) but not really a bad idea to start now and just pick up shit that carries through rotation if you want to play standard.

 

[Dr1f7]

kinda pissed that I got the mastery pass when the set came out and I think I've completed just about every daily quest yet it looks like I still won't even get to level 70
that's over 10 levels short of completing even when playing somewhat consistently
also all of the cosmetics in the pass are for cards only playable in draft but by the time you unlock them the next set is out and you can't even draft with them anymore



Based Yu-Gi-Oh! gives like 80 days to complete their pass and I can complete it in 30 days playing very casually

 

[lukaszek]

kinda pissed that I got the mastery pass when the set came out and I think I've completed just about every daily quest yet it looks like I still won't even get to level 70
that's over 10 levels short of completing even when playing somewhat consistently

I did exactly the same and Im 82/3

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

kinda pissed that I got the mastery pass when the set came out and I think I've completed just about every daily quest yet it looks like I still won't even get to level 70
that's over 10 levels short of completing even when playing somewhat consistently

I did exactly the same and Im 82/3

I also did the same and I'm at 79. Will be able to hit the final level and 80 tomorrow/tonight with mild poopsocking but there's definitely some wiggle room for some reason, fairly sure I didn't let any weekly XP go to waste or miss dailies. Wouldn't think it's just the 25xp packs stacking up but lord knows. Definitely agree they're cutting this one way too close though, I guess it's because they didn't massively fuck anything up this time around so we didn't get a "We're sorry, take a few free levels" gimme.

 

[lukaszek]

kinda pissed that I got the mastery pass when the set came out and I think I've completed just about every daily quest yet it looks like I still won't even get to level 70
that's over 10 levels short of completing even when playing somewhat consistently

I did exactly the same and Im 82/3

I also did the same and I'm at 79. Will be able to hit the final level and 80 tomorrow/tonight with mild poopsocking but there's definitely some wiggle room for some reason, fairly sure I didn't let any weekly XP go to waste or miss dailies. Wouldn't think it's just the 25xp packs stacking up but lord knows. Definitely agree they're cutting this one way too close though, I guess it's because they didn't massively fuck anything up this time around so we didn't get a "We're sorry, take a few free levels" gimme.

I think there was one event giving 2 lvls or so.

Speaking of easy to miss events, there is 'starter deck duel'. Its not advertised, you need to seek it.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

-36 mb launcher. oh well, a bit on the large side but it's just few seconds.
-150 more for the complete launcher. i'm lost for words.
-almost 2 gb more for the tutorial. this is bordering insane.
-6 gb more. WHAT THE FLYING FUCK! IT'S JUST STILL PICS!


edit: two games in, i realized there's no mind games in here. if you have an instant, the game pauses, if you don't, it doesn't. the opponent always knows if you can disrupt his plans, and with a little experience he also knows how. no more having your opponent wait a while despite you not having any counter, or having him stall for whole turns when with nothing but crap in your hand you activate "cursed scroll", declare "ball lightning" or "fireblast", witness the horror on his face and then he stops attacking.

edit: four games in, first crash. not good. not good.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

edit: two games in, i realized there's no mind games in here. if you have an instant, the game pauses, if you don't, it doesn't. the opponent always knows if you can disrupt his plans, and with a little experience he also knows how. no more having your opponent wait a while despite you not having any counter, or having him stall for whole turns when with nothing but crap in your hand you activate "cursed scroll", declare "ball lightning" or "fireblast", witness the horror on his face and then he stops attacking.

You can enable full control if you want to bluff having instants and want it to hold on you so you manually pass priority.

 

[lukaszek]

edit: four games in, first crash. not good. not good.

nvidia card? try hard limiting fps in nvidia panel.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

You can enable full control if you want to bluff having instants and want it to hold on you so you manually pass priority.

between ui lag, game lag and brain lag, a single turn would take two hours and a hundred clicks.

 

[anvi]

Bluffing is a big part of it. Just use spacebar to move steps instead of F8 or whatever. Experienced players get a feel for it and if they feel the steps on their turn having no interaction from you, they will know you have nothing. If they see you having to press spacebar every time they do something, they know you are waiting with something. Every time I ever thought my opponent wasn't paying attention to this, they were and I got fucked for underestimating them.

It's pretty cool but I hate the game in general.

 

[Dr1f7]

finished the mastery pass at 68, couldn't even hit 70
and even then, I forced myself to play many times when I really didn't want to just for pass xp
yup that's the last time I get the pass for this game

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

not enough starting cards to tinker a bit with (no "tinker" either, which was my favourite card ever), no way to know which set to invest in without directly pestering some other human being, truly bad search engine and overall ui (despite the whole game being basically an eternal cg total conversion), extremely lacking in game modes, grindy as hell pass. and, of course, no trading and selling cards.
this thing is a receptacle of all mtg's downsides and issues, with all electronic ccgs' downsides and issues.


so, what are the viable strategies in standard (which, as i can tell, should be the new "type 2" name)? sleigh? green tide? white weenie? counterspell? land break? buried alive?
considered the absence of "tinker", the best card ever, i could fancy a black deck, maybe a black/blue control, or a red if it's cool and not goblin based (despite having noticed "goblin grenade" is now valid).

edit: never mind, i thought bot battles gave money instead it's probably only 1 per day (or, worst case, per season, which would mean tomorrow i'm uninstalling), no idea how to unlock more game modes and the only one available is with those ultraretarded bicolor decks made with the only purpose of irritating people to no end.

 

[lukaszek]

so, what are the viable strategies in standard (which, as i can tell, should be the new "type 2" name)? sleigh? green tide? white weenie? counterspell? land break? buried alive?
considered the absence of "tinker", the best card ever, i could fancy a black deck, maybe a black/blue control, or a red if it's cool and not goblin based (despite having noticed "goblin grenade" is now valid).

afaik blue djinn is cheapest deck right now

You are in luck with black, as in mono black is strong. However you will need plenty of wildcards for staples

 

[lukaszek]

fyi, judging by my small sample of 5 jump in tokens, you finally see packs that you didnt pick before. Each of those 5 times. Meaning that they likely fixed it.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

staples

which are? apparently base set is not valid in standard o_O apparently, terror and dark ritual don't exist anymore. and black moon is racist.

 

[lukaszek]

staples

which are? apparently base set is not valid in standard o_O apparently, terror and dark ritual don't exist anymore. and black moon is racist.

staples

which are? apparently base set is not valid in standard o_O apparently, terror and dark ritual don't exist anymore. and black moon is racist.

quick random meta deck search: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/5543506#paper
made of staples... From what Ive red people are tired of mono black, its same card list with different numbers. Also exchange few creatures towards doom blades, phyrexian arena and now you call yourself midrange

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it looks like the most boring meta ever.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

finished the mastery pass at 68, couldn't even hit 70
and even then, I forced myself to play many times when I really didn't want to just for pass xp
yup that's the last time I get the pass for this game

At least you retroactively get all the shit, so you could just base your decision on if you wanna get the pass based on what you get up to around the end of the season. I've been thinking of moving over to that rather than picking it up immediately every time since I've been cutting it close these last few sets but I also like getting the extra packs and cards as I'm playing so eh. I'll probably just keep doing it immediately until it burns me.

fyi, judging by my small sample of 5 jump in tokens, you finally see packs that you didnt pick before. Each of those 5 times. Meaning that they likely fixed it.

That'd be nice. I did a few jump in with the last set and then quickly got back to packs I'd seen but I noticed we got some tokens for freebies so I figured I'd do them on this set at some point. I was getting tons of duplicates from the midweek Magic but I assumed that might not count since it's phantom rather than regular.

Come to think of it I should look up when begdrafts open on the new set. Got a smidge of limited rank this month from doing a high roller Innistrad draft earlier so I don't need it to get a welfare pack, but I want to hold off my orgy of pack buying until I do at least a few drafts depending on how much I like the set. April 28th to May 12th, alright. Doubt I'll poopsock myself up a rank during that weekend but now I know it'll be roughly mid-May when I start cracking packs.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it's always lovely when your starting deck is matched against people who play nothing but rares.

 

[Dr1f7]

it's always lovely when your starting deck is matched against people who play nothing but rares.

ranked (and really all of the constructed formats) is all netdecks from bronze to highest mythic and it's always gonna be like that
mono-blue tempo is fun because you can just say no to all the 'good stuff' piles while beating them over the head with a flying creature
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/standard-mono-blue-tempo-mid#paper
deck is like 4-6 rares, you don't need the sideboard if you play bo1, and you can drop 'march of swirling mist' and replace it with anything really

you might like the jump-in format, I think it's pretty fun. you pick two halves of preconstructed decks and slam them together.
draft is usually p fun too

there's also Yu-Gi-Oh! and the new pokemon tcgl that I've been having fun with

 

[ind33d]

Just spend $100 and get a pauper deck on MTGO. What the fuck kind of drugs would someone have to be on to play MTG Arena

 

[Gerrard]

(no "tinker" either, which was my favourite card ever),

Which has been banned in every format besides Vintage soon after its release.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

if for "soon after" you mean "years later" then yes, you're right. i got a foil one for free, that's how much it was valued when its set came out. people were killing each other for tempest blue charms, diamond moxes and the tolarian academy (which got actually banned everywhere in a week or two) whose deck would had stopped the drawing engine if it had used tinker, and the next artifact heavy popular deck was the wildfire with whom people were convinced the abysmal whatsitsname turbine was better than the mana vault, still it was a red deck, so no tinker.
pretty much no one used it in its block or in the following, i actually never saw it played.

 

[ind33d]

Magic was clearly intended to be played in best of 3 sealed for money like draw poker with titties. How it turned into a furfag whale pit boggles the mind