Magic the Gathering Arena

[Scruffy]

the extra lands you give sure add up eventually, but 2 mana to kill anything including planeswalkers is soooooo good...

 

[Jason Liang]

With Ass Trophies, my philosophy is if you're going to cast one, you might as well cast four. It's true that I've lost a few games where I accelerated them into something truly awful, usually against Boros (like a T3 Heroic Reinforcement or Siege Gang Commander), but that doesn't matter if I'm casting one or four. The best thing to do is support it with other cheap plays like Moment of Craving or Plaguecrafters instead of Chucacubras. Anyway, the card is good, almost never dead, instant speed so it helps you bait out counterspells, and worth casting as many times as you can cast it. It's also Golgari's best cheap enchantment removal and there's a ton of enchantments worth removing including Tribunals, Azcantas, Experimental Frenzies, Divine Visitations, even random Blanchwood Armors on Vine Mares/ Carnage Tyrants. In a deck that has the mana for Knight of Autumn, I'd do that instead.

There's also the situation where they've explored an Eldest Reborn or Vraska or Carnage Tyrant to the top of the library, that's a great time to start Trophying:D Anyway, it's about learning which situations to cast it and which situations you shoudn't cast it. For example, Trophy to stop them from casting Ghalta, or a case when they Tribunaled my Phyrexian Scriptures but I could have won the game anyway if I had Trophied the Tribunal on my upkeep (so that it would immediately tick to the board wipe). At this point, I've learned pretty much in each standard match up what cards to Trophy. So at this point Trophies are like a strategic resource so I want to draw as many as possible.

For Llanowar Eives, if they catch a Shock or Craving then so be it, but it's up to the opponent to answer them or else it's a Time Walk. Being a body isn't a liability right now, you need bodies to soak sac effects. The Rejudenator seems to be more of a Selesyna-type card (although I haven't seen it in Selesnya either), but more to the point it's too slow since the payoff is to accelerate a 4cc play on turn 3, not a 5cc play on turn 4. I don't think you can even compared 1cc Llanowar Elf with 3cc Rejudenator.

Arterial Flow should probably be a 2 of. It's a nice t3 play (with or without a Zealot) if I draw it in my opening hand, but I wouldn't want to draw several copies of it. This used to be Heartless Pillage but there's so much Red out there right now that every bit of potential freebie life gain helps. Interestingly I've used it as a kill spell a couple of times since people tend to block math down to 1 or 2 life. Against Izzet Drakes for example.

 

[spectre]

When it comes to LLanowar Elves, you don't really seem to have a turn three play that can really benefit from coming out 1 turn earlier, like mono green has in Steel Leaf Paladin and Jadelight Ranger. Most of your "shit gets real" cards are 4-5cmc.
But yeah, you're right, the alternatives are not very stellar, although it would ensure that you get the fourth land on board consistently, which is where the deck wants to be. Ideally I would get something for the price of Rampant Growth,
but IIRC the only one we have needs dino synergy.
There are those 1/3 druids that perform the same function to LLanowars. They have the upside of surviving Golden Showers without the need to ascend.
Just a thought. It all boils down to how badly your deck needs that acceleration. Fishing for Shocks is a noble duty, how about fishing for Bolts?

 

[Jason Liang]

Not to brag but I opened 5 packs of GRN today looking for more Knight of Autumns and Marches, and opened an Experimental Frenzy (#3), a March of the Multitudes (#2), a Mythic wild card, a Gruesome Menagerie (#1), and an Unmoored Ego (#2).

And I still want more stuff from GRN too...

Had some great matches this weekend, including one where I Eldest Reborn returned a Firebrand Fanatic to kill a would-be lethal Rekindling Phoenix token. Have to say that some of my favorite matches as Golgari has been against burn.

Been seeing some Lich's Mastery decks showing up. Had a match where I used Vraska Relic Seeker's ultimate to drop a Liched opponent from 21 life to 1 life, evidently that counted as 20 points of life loss:D Wish I'd taken a picture of that.

Been thinking about ditching black altogether and going straight Green with a splash of white for Knight of Autumns, Conclave Tribunals, Shalai. Would consider using Druids of the Cowl in that deck but Thorn Lieutenants would probably be a better card to play instead. I've been wanting to run Adventurous Impulse, and it would be be very easy to use Flower to splash white as well.

 

[Jason Liang]

It came down to the fifth and final game. On the play, Scott-Vargas took a mulligan to six. Elenbogen kept. Then Scott-Vargas took another mulligan. Then another. Starting with four cards, Scott-Vargas made a valiant effort.

MTG Arena - offering you the Pro experience on your laptop.

 

[Projas]

The direct challenge update is live now

Edit:

Now Available: Direct Challenge

• Play against your friends in Magic: The Gathering Arena! For more information on how this system works, please refer to our Direct Challenge "How To" Guide!

New Cards: Gift Pack 2018

• The 5 new creature cards from Gift Pack 2018 are now available in Magic: The Gathering Arena. The five cards will be considered part of Core Set 2019 for legality and rotation purposes. More Info.
  • While players can redeem Wildcards for these cards effective immediately, they will not be playable in Standard until the Gift Pack 2018 officially releases on November 16th, 00:00 UTC (November 15th, 4:00PM PT).
• Players who purchase a physical copy of the Gift Pack 2018 will receive a promotional code to redeem for these cards in Arena as well.
  • Account registration required. Code expires July 1, 2020. Arena may not be available in all regions and languages. Limit 1 code per account.

Deckbuilder

• We have made various visual improvements to the Deckbuilder.
  • This is not the "Deckbuilder 2.0" we have referenced. These are primarily visual updates to help match the rest of Magic: The Gathering Arena.
• The filter now allows you to sort by Expansion.

Home Page

• The static "Play" image has been replaced with a rotating carousel. This will highlight new features and content.
• Use the "Play" button in the bottom right corner of the screen to view our available Play Modes.

Learn More Page

• Magic: The Gathering Arena now has a "Learn More" page.
• You can access the Learn More page by clicking the question mark icon located on the top right of the game, next to "Adjust Options" and "Direct Challenge".
• The Learn More page will host a series of online references to assist those newer to Magic, including videos on deckbuilding,
• "Replay Tutorial" has been moved to the "Learn More" page (it was previously in the Options menu).

Network/Connectivity

• Various improvements to our server settings to prevent disconnects. For more information, click here.

Timers

• Players gain additional time after selecting targets for triggered abilities and copied spells. This should make cards like Thousand-Year Storm and Niv-Mizzet more timer-friendly to play.
• Sped up the Treasure "Sacrifice this artifact" ability, so players can now sacrifice multiple copies in a row more quickly.
• Reduced the minimum amount of time for an opponent's spell or ability on the stack from 1 second to 0.4 seconds.
• Reduced the time for Thousand-Year Storm's VFX block from 1 second to 0.25 seconds.

Gameplay

• In Best of Three (Bo3) matches, the player who wins the "roll" is now given the option to go first or second (i.e. play or draw).
  • In Best of One (Bo1) matches, whoever wins the "roll" still automatically goes first.
• Lands with multiple mana abilities (T: Add B, T: Add R) now use the mana wheel (the same as lands with a single ability that can produce multiple mana types, e.g.: T: Add B or R)
• The Scry interaction display is now faster for the opponent.
• Walk the Plank's VFX now resolves faster.
• Exiling cards from the battlefield has updated animations.
• Mana animations have been updated.
• Clarified the browser used when you "may cast" a spell (using effects like Chaos Wand or Etali). The browser header now says "Select Card to Cast", and the button is now clearly "Decline" when you don't have any cards selected.
• Attackers that "must attack" are no longer pre-declared when you go into combat. This means the "All Attack" button stays "All Attack" (rather than defaulting to "1 Attacker") with cards like the Legion Warboss token, Juggernaut, or similar creatures in play.
• When a spell is on the stack and visible to both players, the text on the card is now colored to match the targeting line. When a single spell or ability has multiple target groups, the targeting lines for each will be colored differently, and the rules text on the card is colored to match them. This makes it much easier to understand which creature is being targeted for which effect with Artful Takedown, for instance.
  • We chose the colors to work well with various forms of color blindness; if the colors don't look different enough for you, please let us know!
• Added information to the mulligan screen to clearly inform players of their opponent's mulligan decision (if they've kept, mulliganed to 6, etc.)
• Legendary Planeswalkers no longer stack; this makes it much easier to determine which to keep/sacrifice when playing a second copy.
  • Tokens created by Jace, Cunning Castaways’s -5 ability do not have the legendary supertype.
• Modal abilities that do not require a target now display the selected ability; players will now be able to see which mode was selected by cards such as Knight of Autumn while they are on the stack.
• When you have a decision to make and are alt-tabbed off, the Arena taskbar icon will flash to let you know

Bug Fixes

• The summoning sickness VFX should no longer linger after a creature dies.
• Card names in the hand should no longer disappear while the gameplay browser is open.
• Player life totals no longer display the wrong value between first-strike and normal combat damage.
• The Enrage VFX should now properly display.
• Mana VFX now play for spells/abilities on the stack.
• Fixed various improper text on hangers that referred to all Raid abilities as triggered abilities.
• Fixed an issue that could cause some cards with the Raid ability to not show the Raid VFX.
• Planeswalkers should no longer play multiple VO lines when they die.
• Non-token copies (such as Mirror Image) will no longer improperly say they are tokens.
• Dead Weight now properly enchants a creature even if the card effect kills it.
• Creatures that deal combat damage equal to their toughness should no longer display an incorrect value for their power during combat.
• Watermarks on tokens should now display at the proper size.
• Fixed a bug that, in an rare circumstance, could cause a superfluous browser to appear offering actions available in the player's graveyard.
• Creature cards should no longer become stuck on screen if they were played as a timer was ending.
• The Graveyard browser should no longer close after each selection for cards that require multiple selections (i.e. Bone Dragon)
• Fixed a bug that prevented Mistcaller from displaying an indicator showing that their effect is active
• Players can now properly use damage prevention effects to target items on the stack (with Healing Grace, for example).

Client

• Gameplay logs will now store for 3 days, down from 7 days. This is to reduce the amount of hard drive space used to save these files.

 

[Scruffy]

not right now, but should you feel like it:

Tradewind_Rider#53450

 

[Carceri]

Not sure, but I think I'm going to need a few more lands, in the first turns, for this hand to really work out:

 

[Berekän]

What's even funnier is that the program draws two hands and gives you the most balanced, so you had this same hand twice in a row, impressive.

 

[Jason Liang]

I'm not that fond of Feroxes but this was quite a nice pack ~

 

[Scruffy]

ahhh yes, saturday, let's draft

demanding dragon, lightning strike, vine mare, rhox oracle, rejuvenators, giant spiders, rabid bites, looking good

first game: 14 lands with 18 cards remaining in the deck
second game: 13 lands with 21 cards remaining in the deck

it's all normal, it can happen in true random, stop being conspiracy theorists

 

[Gerrard]

Reminder that if you give money to WotC you become a part of the decline.

 

[v1rus]

The bigges problem with the current card economy i have atm is this - you only need rares and mythics. Youbhave more than enough uncommom and common wildcads (spent money only on welcome bundle and i have more uncommon wildcards than id need to craft every uncommon in every meta decks) which means theres only one card i care about in every pack.

Fuck, typing on the phone sucks.

 

[Jason Liang]

The bigges problem with the current card economy i have atm is this - you only need rares and mythics. Youbhave more than enough uncommom and common wildcads (spent money only on welcome bundle and i have more uncommon wildcards than id need to craft every uncommon in every meta decks) which means theres only one card i care about in every pack.

Fuck, typing on the phone sucks.

It depends on the rate they start adding backlog sets like Amonkhet, Kaladesh and earlier. Right now, with only 5 sets of cards to collect, you hit that ceiling very quickly.

I haven't used many uncommon wildcards, but it's mostly because I've gotten a lot of uncommons from ICRs and I only have like 2.5 main decks and rarely need full sets of any uncommon for those decks. But there's a TON of uncommons that I eventually want to own full sets of for fun and shits and giggles.

 

[v1rus]

The bigges problem with the current card economy i have atm is this - you only need rares and mythics. Youbhave more than enough uncommom and common wildcads (spent money only on welcome bundle and i have more uncommon wildcards than id need to craft every uncommon in every meta decks) which means theres only one card i care about in every pack.

Fuck, typing on the phone sucks.

It depends on the rate they start adding backlog sets like Amonkhet, Kaladesh and earlier. Right now, with only 5 sets of cards to collect, you hit that ceiling very quickly.

I haven't used many uncommon wildcards, but it's mostly because I've gotten a lot of uncommons from ICRs and I only have like 2.5 main decks and rarely need full sets of any uncommon for those decks. But there's a TON of uncommons that I eventually want to own full sets of for fun and shits and giggles.

Thats what i find so darn problematic. At this time, for 2 months, I collected enough uncommons to craft each deck, from FIVE, different sets. Unless they start pumping 5 sets every two months (and lets be honest, chances are 2 sets every months (one new set, one old set), uncommons become redundant pretty fast. Not too mention commons.

Seems they screwed the economy up a bit - getting cards seems to be too easy. Or its jsut my ignorance of how Magic meta works. Perhaps when the new set comes, shitton of cards that havent seen play are gonna see it, while old ones fall to obscurity.

The way i perceive things is, naturally, deeply influenced by my long past with hearthstone.

 

[spectre]

That'd be the first time I see anyone complain about too fast rate of acquisition.
Not sure if it's really screwed up, in most f2p card games you will achieve some kind of bottleneck, For Eternal it were the legendaries, or whatever the highest tier rarity was called, in Faeria it was the upper two rarities.

I'd say you don't even need that many Mythics. I'm going f2p (the welcome bundle doesn't really count) and I got mostly everything I need other than a set of Arclights.
Perhaps I'll craft an additional Vraska for my jank needs, and two chances for Glory to build that Lich Mastery nonsense one day.

Anyways, competitive standard indeed doesn't need too many uncommons, once you get a set of drakes and chemisters insights, you can pass them around and make at least three different deck variants.
It does eat up a lot of dual lands, so that would be the main reason for the bottleneck. This will be only further reinforced in the next which should have another cycle of rare shocklands.

I'm still happy about getting common and uncommon wildcards. It's nice to have them around if you want to build some jank or a tribal deck.
If you look hard enough, there's quite a bunch of playable ones scattered all over the place (Buccaneers Bravado, Snubhorn Sentry), though this is niche stuff,
when you want to brew something for shits and giggles.

 

[v1rus]

That'd be the first time I see anyone complain about too fast rate of acquisition.

Dont get me wrong, Im loving it :D

But Im worried that the game is going to fail cause of it/they are gonna rework it (as Reddit paranoia says, "5th card fix is going to make rest of the economy worse")

 

[Jason Liang]

i don't expect these kind of games to stay online forever anymore

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Feels like the game can go either way. So far there's no fixed solution to:

• What happens when cards leave standard
• 5th card
• ports to other platforms
• how matchmaking works

These are super important in determining how many people will play the game. If this doesn't attract enough (like, >100,000 concurrent) players obviously matchmaking will suck dick and the game won't be fun.

also wary of how long they'll actually support the game, because so far this is their THIRD attempt at an official online card game and their millionth or so attempt if you count the mtg games made by other devs.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, it's as though Hasbro wants a digital product that competes with the other shit on the market... but they don't want it too successful. Y'know with proper development goals, communication management and all that.
So far we only get some kind of rumors that they're "planning" to do something, but nobody really knows anything.

They've coded in direct challenges so that people would shut their traps about it. That's that. People are making mini-tournaments with it, with no official support.
This is so fucking embarrassing, if I were the suit responsible for this project, I would immediately commit sudoku.

I get it, it's still beta, but I'd expect Hasbro to try and appear professional, cause at the moment it all begs the question "Is there a pilot on board of this plane?"
This is especially infuriating when you compare it to stuff like Faeria, where guys seem to have it all figured out when it comes to ranks, events, rewards and cosmetics.

I'm not too bothered about the 5th card problem, I keep my rares and some uncommons at 3x and wait for the ICR to fill the gap at some point (unless shit is absolutely critical).
If someone whaled so many shekels into drafting they get nothing from their packs, seems like a 1st world problem to me.

I agree about matchmaking though, or more specifically - rank and what it influences. At this point, it's just meaningless, one could even say that it's better to keep it low and your deck as underdeveloped as possible if you're only playing to get quick wins.
Not only that, it's not possible to go out of silver unless you grind your ass off with a top deck that can keep those absurd winning streaks... and why would you do that if you can play an event for an actual reward?

I don't mind them having some algorithm that weights your decks perceived power level, but would it really break the system if we could see the rating? Something like zero to five stars, I bet it would be sufficient for most people.
All it does at thge moment is breed inane conspiracy theories, until somebody figures it out and they'll change it again.

EDIT:
Ok, so I managed to dig up a dev post. They're hiring a bunch of guys, so most of the stuff seems due to being understaffed. Seems like their current priority is making the ranks system working, then a solution to the 5th card problem is down the pipeline with ETA being Q1 2019. Whoop de doop.
They will be scrapping the vault system for some kind of algorithm that prevents cards you have full sets from turning up.

 

[zerotol]

spekkio do you play arena? just playing vs someone with that name

 

[spekkio]

Nope, some other fag.

All I'm playing recently is my mod for Archimedean Dynasty.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Jason Liang]

I think you can still do a legit old school bounce + discard soft lock. Raider's Wake is a pretty terrific source of discard, at least.

Also Etrata would probabaly be up your alley.

 

[spectre]

gave it a go. Wanted to created blue/black deck on draw/discard but apparently its not possible with available sets... now i dont know what to think.

There's plenty of both draw and discard in the game, people play UB and UBR discard with Nico Bolo Lolo, or whatever the fuck his name was. You use Thought Erasure + Disinformation Campaign to grind their hand down.
You can even do mono black - going duress -> kitesail corsair -> heartless pillage means you're off to a pretty good start. Refill hand with Agruel's Blood Fast, beat down with Wanted Scoundrels.

Unless by "available sets" you mean the starter decks. You're not really meant to do any deckbuilding at the very beginning, just play with the starters for the first couple of days until you get all the preconstructed decks you can get from quests.
Then people tend to spend their initial wildcards on a monocolored budget grinder deck (monocolor so that you don't have to spend 8 rares up front on dual lands). RDW and mono U were the favorites, now mono W tends to be what the cool kids are into,
though with History of Analia and Veneric Loxodons it's not exactly budget. Once you can at least break even at Competitive Constructed, grind it for whatever's your poison - packs for wildcards to build specific decks, or limited to get chunks of cards.
That's how you roll if you want to stay F2P.

Oh, and punch in the "PlayRavnica" code at the store for some freebies.