Magic the Gathering Arena

[Poseidon00]

Everything about Shandalar is cool. The character creation, the enemy classes, the dungeons, the Grand Wizards, etc. Quite a shame they never did any more with it.

Battlegrounds isn't related to Magic the Gathering at all really but it is a fun little action game that has a unique formula that keeps it fast paced and frantic but also strategic, again, shame that kind of game wasn't made again.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

In my continuing quest to be a horrible netdecking piece of shit I made Izzet drakes and it might be the most fun netdeck I've played. Lots of digging through your deck, making big threats, and the best moments of all are when you're in a standoff and gradually growing your drakes for a single turn swing in for lethal as you're protecting your tender tender face. The only matchup where I want to kill myself is against Esper control since the game's going to go 20+ minutes and even though I still may win if they briefly run out of removal/counters (Although the most enjoyable was playing a Niv Mizzet and the Esper player immediately scooping) it's tedious as hell. It can be obnoxious when someone plays krasis-krasis-krasis in succession but at least there's still a game being played there rather than waiting for your opponent to run out of absorbs and wraths so you can dive down your 20/4 drake against a dozen contempts and cast downs with his ultimate win condition of his opponent dying of old age.

GOD I hate Esper control.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

fuck you and your spell pierce and dive down and bullshit

My favorite part of the game is ixalan's binding on drakes to troll the izzets

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Jason Liang]

can't dive down planeswalkers tho

 

[v1rus]

In my continuing quest to be a horrible netdecking piece of shit I made Izzet drakes and it might be the most fun netdeck I've played. Lots of digging through your deck, making big threats, and the best moments of all are when you're in a standoff and gradually growing your drakes for a single turn swing in for lethal as you're protecting your tender tender face. The only matchup where I want to kill myself is against Esper control since the game's going to go 20+ minutes and even though I still may win if they briefly run out of removal/counters (Although the most enjoyable was playing a Niv Mizzet and the Esper player immediately scooping) it's tedious as hell. It can be obnoxious when someone plays krasis-krasis-krasis in succession but at least there's still a game being played there rather than waiting for your opponent to run out of absorbs and wraths so you can dive down your 20/4 drake against a dozen contempts and cast downs with his ultimate win condition of his opponent dying of old age.

GOD I hate Esper control.

Netdecking ftw.

(Not really, but until I build a decent collection, and learn the game fully, netdecking only, it is. Splashing is obligatory tho.)

I also luv Izzet Drakes, but i found Izzet Phoenixes to be even more fun, in every form and way. Its prolly a weaker deck tho, way less consistent, and those 4 Mythic WCs can hurt.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[spectre]

I remembee Arclight Phoenix was at one point a nightmare matchup for WUR control before Ravnica Alliance when everyone dropped Settle the Wreckage and Seal Aways. Then they went all hurr durr must drop Parun asap.
Not sure how it handles nowadays. I remember it could race RDW on a good day, Shocks and recurring, uncounterable 3/2 flyers look fine vs. Mono U, on the other hand Hydroid Krasis looks like a bitch to get past,
and the control deck to beat is Esperal which usually rocks a bunch of Vraska's Contempts and Consecrate/Consume isn't out of the question.

I remember I threw a bunch of rare wildcards at the pseudo-dredge, self mill narcoamoeba variant. It was quite fun to play, but damn it got slapped around like a red-headed stepchild.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

(Not really, but until I build a decent collection, and learn the game fully, netdecking only, it is. Splashing is obligatory tho.)

Yeah, that's the thing. Since my collection's pretty reedy I lean toward netdecking just so my wildcards are being used to make decks I can still reasonably win games with. Although I'm getting enough random cards now I can fuck around with making my shitty Dimir deck too, of course.
Haven't got the arclights to try it myself but I've played against it a few times and it's a cool deck. In fact basically every deck that runs them seems neat. They're probably worse with cry of the carnarium existing though. It isn't SUPER common except for esper control but it'd ruin your day as an arclight deck fairly well.

 

[v1rus]

They're probably worse with cry of the carnarium existing though. It isn't SUPER common except for esper control but it'd ruin your day as an arclight deck fairly well.

Meh, with all those Vraskas Contempt and Lava Coils, i dont even notice the occasional cry

Keeping a shock in your hand to ping an arclight when an opponent tries to exile him is fun af tho

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Scruffy]

i see lava coils all the time

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

yarrrrr mayteee

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

I was watching old mtg trailers and found this:



Why can't we have cool sci fi horror shit like this why's the theme gotta be dumb city shit and evil clowns?

 

[spectre]

Migh be some kind of a knee-jerk reaction, whenever they do an artifact-centered or colorless set (like with Eldrazi), broken things get printed.

Would love to see a re-run of Innstrad, that block really drew me back into the game. Sadly, until they resolve the Ravnica storyline, we're stuck with what we have.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Absolutely demolished my common and uncommon WCs to make a gates deck, and it's pretty fun. Doesn't feel as competitive as a lot of popular decks but there's a fair amount of flying by the seat of your pants and drawing a fuckton and hoping for the best. The only thing that makes it nearly unplayable is it's an absolute goddamn fucking misery against Esper control. It's not even like it's unwinnable, I won my last match against one by baiting/forcing removal one at a time until mass manipulation landed and I jacked his Teferi, got the emblem, banished all his blue mana with tons of draws 'cause gates deck and then rammed the rest of his deck up his asshole with Explosion for lethal, but it also took a miserably long fucking time to reach that point. Might just be I've been unlucky but it feels like I hit Esper control more than any other single deck in ranked so I've gone back to the RDW ghetto just so I can clobber them and even if I lose at least the goddamn game's over in a tolerable amount of time. Counterspells/hand hate/etc doesn't annoy me nearly as much provided they're playing ANYTHING that can be considered a win condition beyond just Teferi, but most of them just run 4x Teferi and it drives me up the goddamn wall. I mean shit, mono blue runs a lot of counters and doesn't send me into a froth as soon as I see turn 1 island/1 drop. Pretty sure I'm reaching the point where every post I make in this thread will be bitching about Esper control.

In unrelated news, socking away gold for Spark packs now. Still a fair amount of stuff in Allegiance I'd like to get but I may as well save for Spark since lord knows how much I'll want out of that and getting a decent stack of packs out of the gate would be nice.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

^^ in RNA draft you can force gate decks every time and it's probably the best performer. Something to do with bots not drafting gates and ram and colossus and gates ablaze being really easy to get. I think it's the most fun archetype to play in that draft cuz you can fit in a bunch of fun blue and white control spells

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I heard that apparently the bots used to be quite a bit worse at draft picking so you could actually catch some shock/checklands outside of first picks on packs. I probably should try it out some more but I'm a big sucker for wildcards so that's why I've been leaning way more heavily on straight up packs.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Yeah I've gotten a bunch of rare lands on like 3rd pick.. I always snatch em up regardless of whether they work with my draft. Wildcards are nice tho

Bots only take cards that work with whatever 2 color guild they decide to play so crazy shit like planeswalkers can pass through a few bots without being picked up. It's also the reason why gate decks work so well in RNA because they have low priority and bots won't pick em up unless it's specifically the guild they've went with

 

[Scruffy]

fun blue and white control spells

fun for whom?

 

[Scruffy]

so, have you guys seen this?

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Yeah, maybe good for grinding out quick games. As far as I know, the shuffler doesn't work that way in ranked or events though so it would only be viable in unranked

 

[Scruffy]

Yeah, maybe good for grinding out quick games. As far as I know, the shuffler doesn't work that way in ranked or events though so it would only be viable in unranked

works like that in bo1 ranked afaik