Magic the Gathering Arena

[Jason Liang]

it mostly gives you more resources for constructed in a year, by banking some resources for post-rotation next year. If all you do is draft it doesn't matter.

It's like having a second kid, or having a 401k.

 

[spectre]

I suppose it would make sense to have one alt and only go 4 wins/day on both accounts for lower diminishing returns, or go all the way with 30 wins per day if you feel like playing fucking magic.
Would make sense, you could spend your wildcards more strategically this way, but honestly, I don't see myself grinding fucking shocklands one more time.

For long-term planning, I think I need a better picture of what it's all supposed to look like post rotation. Will historic be a casual-joke format, what kinds of events will there be, will boosters be priced the same, will wildcards hold the same value, will I be able to use reprints in standards?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Jason Liang]

I suppose it would make sense to have one alt and only go 4 wins/day on both accounts for lower diminishing returns, or go all the way with 30 wins per day if you feel like playing fucking magic.
Would make sense, you could spend your wildcards more strategically this way, but honestly, I don't see myself grinding fucking shocklands one more time.

For long-term planning, I think I need a better picture of what it's all supposed to look like post rotation. Will historic be a casual-joke format, what kinds of events will there be, will boosters be priced the same, will wildcards hold the same value, will I be able to use reprints in standards?

Yes but you wouldn't get the shocklands for the alt. You'd build it through drafting until shocklands rotate out.

 

[Scruffy]

i'm p. sure i read somewhere that historic won't even be ranked, you'll literally just play for no reward at all, at least at the beginning

 

[spectre]

Yeah, don't have too high hopes for that format.

 

[Jason Liang]

But pretty much every card you've collected up until now will rotate next year, so you'll basically be starting a new account anyway from that perspective.

It seems to me that it might be a little bit more work but you'll get more cards for less work than you would have otherwise, just spread over two accounts. It should work out if you specialize the two accounts so that there is minimal overlap between them.

Cause honestly you're not going to play enough to collect every card (at least I'm not) but this way you'll have more different decks to play in standard and more resources to burn on older non-standard sets as they drop.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Jason Liang]

So I started a second account. The intro hasn't changed much but you do start off with some nice rares from 2020 and Ravnica, including two of the vampire knights, two of the hydra lords, and a Mass Manipulation. The green deck is pretty good so far, based around Season of Growth. I think we're supposed to get these cards added to our main account at some point?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I think we're supposed to get these cards added to our main account at some point?

They've said they're going to do it, but they're inept and it probably won't happen until around/after rotation. I don't know if we'll get vault progress/gems for dupes or not though, since even though there are a fair stack of cards I'd like to go into my collection I'd be going over the playable max on some shit too.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Bad pic but lol @ this surprise lethal draft deck:

Triple uncaged fury 20 -> 0 in one turn they never see it coming

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

The secret to perfect runs in the Ixalan treasure event is play esper or dimir control and be a complete jackass. I found everyone was playing expensive decks to leverage the constant mana, but turn 1 thot erasure, early access to Teferi/Ugin, and basically always having counterspell available is mighty fine. And with mana being a non-issue due to the treasures, there's a premium on cards themselves, so card draw and counters are great. Went 6-1, the one loss being when I foolishly took a gruul deck in because I had a red/green quest.

Not sure how miserable the "Non-meta" event is going to be. They did expand the banlist so flash/reef shouldn't dominate it as much but we shall see. Might be an excuse for milljank.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

non-meta event is just gonna be a bunch of calamity spitfire decks mark my words

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

non-meta event is just gonna be a bunch of calamity spitfire decks mark my words

Good call, I always forget about that deck until it shows up.

 

[spectre]

I think this was the fastest event I ever completed. Turns out a Tier 3 reanimator becomes a beast here going: Duress, Chart the Course, Bond of Revival.
Two wankers immediately conceded, half of the games were RDW. The only semi-interesting thing I saw was the guy plopping two Mayhem Debils which prevented me from sacrificing treasures
and was the only game I lost fair and square (the other was RDW going first, immediately into two Steam Kin, followed by another).

While I don't enjoy playing with precons, the previous event at least had some flavor to it. They should have gone for something like "all your lands become unclaimed territories".

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

While I don't enjoy playing with precons, the previous event at least had some flavor to it. They should have gone for something like "all your lands become unclaimed territories".

Or hell, make a set of precon decks just using the Ixalan cards. I guess that'd make things difficult for other "Plane-cation" themed events down the line, but non-meta doesn't really sound like a plane either so it's not like they're sticking to that theme very hard anyway. Still, I'm fairly fond of precon stuff.

Mayhem devil's cool in the Ixalan event as is 4 mana WAR Karn, since that shuts down your opponent's treasures (And lets you pull in cards from sideboard so you can leverage your bountiful mana) but eh.

 

[you know what time it is]

I prefer precon as well, levels the playing field. This time I just grinded out a quick 6-1 with a R/B sacrifice deck, with only loss being a 50-resolves-a-turn mono W dullness, just couldn't bother playing against it.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

speaking of 50 resolves a turn mono white...

meet my new prison deck mwahahaha:

 

[Scruffy]

frankly, this is getting old and boring. 26 lands, and 40% of the times i can't move past 3, even while i draw extra cards. amateurs programmers or shitty algorithms, i don't know which, but this is not fun.

 

[you know what time it is]

Yeah I get that they won't change printed mechanics, but tuning that shit up in vidiya so you don't get screwed/flooded regularly is a no-brainer. No need to announce it either, keep it on the dl, so purists won't get butthurt and tryhards won't have a new thing to abuse.

Otherwise it's just a roulette, I think out of about 20 ranked games I had in a past few weeks, 3 of them I lost or won based on plays, also about 4 of them were poor draws and the rest were decided by screws/floods (both for me and my opponent).

 

[you know what time it is]

Finally got out of gold to mid-plat and the deck that allowed this was a fairly old and mostly unchanged surveil dimir deck. Especially good results were against simic flash, field of the dead and elementals, sucked the most ass against feather (in bo3 it would be a different story, but nobody got time for that shit). RDW is 50/50 which was entirely decided by how many cheap creatures I drew early (and I run about twelve of them). Honestly surprised how well it worked out so far, at this rate I might actually hit diamond this season. MonoU can be problematic, but I'm yet to play against one, also azorious flyers could be brutal, but I haven't met one of them either, so here's hoping.

 

[lobsterfrogman]

(in bo3 it would be a different story, but nobody got time for that shit)

You rank up faster in bo3. A win in bo1 gives you 1 "point" and a win in bo3 gives you 2 "points" regardless whether it was 2:0 or 2:1. Which means you get away with "free" losses. (Yes, you also get robbed of your win if you lose 1:2, but the idea of ranking up requires >50% win rate, so it should be net profit).

 

[spectre]

You should be seeing fewer RDW crap in Bo3 which is just added value. I tried to push out of Gold today in BO1, and all I got was RDW (one faggot netdecked a version with the black splash but never brought any black - I know this because he Frenzied down to 2/3 of the deck. You're not supposed to bring that shit to Bo1 you wanker). Brought out a Scapeshit which rolls over it, but still got tired mid Gold 2. Fifteen games vs. that shit.

Not sure why you esteemed cunts keep getting mana screwed. Sure, it happens from time to time, 10% of my games maybe, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.
I still have a screenshot of that one time I mulliganed into a 6 land hand in a 19 land deck, but that was pre-WAR.

Just change your shit in line with the math in these two articles; if you need a quest compass, I'll be happy to help you with a tl;dr.
https://www.channelfireball.com/art...-cast-your-spells-a-guilds-of-ravnica-update/
https://www.channelfireball.com/art...you-need-to-consistently-hit-your-land-drops/

The math checks out for me, I only play Ranked and Constructed Events.

 

[Jason Liang]

I'm not bothered so much by me getting mana screwed, but I hate knowing that over half of my wins is coming from the opponent getting mana screwed/ flooded

 

[spectre]

Well, if they can't into deckbuilding...

Though that's a moot point in ranked, most of this shit are netdecks down to a single card, and the tournament lists tend to have the mana sources down.