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Magic the Gathering Arena

whydoibother

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Codex Year of the Donut
Lw0J7ke.jpg


I wonder what could it be?
 

spectre

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Well, the welcome bundle is about the only thing that's worth buying there. I'd get it if you want to draft a bit,
because gems for packs is a pretty shitty deal. Thankfully, the M19 draft should be replaced by something else soon, because it's a pretty crappy set imo.

If you're looking for discard shenanigans, I like to pair Journey to Eternity with Burglar Rats for instant speed discard.
Treasure Map with Heartless Pillage to get extra draws from treasures.
Bounce at instant speed then discard with Blink of an Eye.

If you want to play something close to mono black, three cards are key to making it stick together, imo,
Cabal Strongholds give you a serious mana ramp (though they only take off at five+ mana drops), Agruel's Blood Fast to exchange resources and
Dread Shades for putting all that mana to use. Mono Black also likes Karnowski, the Silver Golem, especially if you have a bunch of artifacts lying around.

I had good fun just going mono B pirates + discard (Fell Flagship is such a neat toy, I got two randomly, wouldn't really use wildcards on it)
Angrath is the guy to go to for discard, though BR colors probably will have to wait until the next set is realeased to properly take off.
So far Draw X discard Y is mostly used to self-mill for Narcoamoebas and Arclight Phoenixes.
 

Jason Liang

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lukaszek

My advice is to first craft a cheap U/R Izzet drake deck to play for daily awards, its very cheap on mythics and rares.

U/B Pirates have the best discard theme going on with Fell Flagship (as spectre suggested), Raider's Wake and Deadeye Tormentor. Siren's Lure also seems to be a card that would be up your alley. Add in some Dimir tech like Thought Erasure and you are good to go. Eldest Reborn is a typical win condition since you force them to discard their Niv Mizzet or Teferi.

Forcing your opponent to draw is an extremely niche Magic strategy. Mill is generally a terrible win-condition, and cards that "punish" opponents drawing are quite rare (although they exist). You might also be interested in "punisher" cards like Risk Factor, Demanding Dragon or Sword-Point Diplomacy.

Do you mean cards like~

Image.ashx


You might be interested in Howling Mine effects like

Image.ashx
 
Last edited:

spectre

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Yeah, Pepsischmuck(?), Primal Death; Ritual of Soot; Plaguecrafter... Add shit like Vicious Rumors and Fraying Omnipotence and you can build something to remind you of Pox.
You can even build around Lich's Mastery, but that's a five color ordeal that needs a bunch of rares and junk mythics that aren't used anywhere else.
The only thing that's really missing is a decent drain life effect that can actually hit any target.

I may be biased towards M19, because it's got so much junk and reprints and no good dual lands, but there's also quite a number of hidden gems you won't be able to easily replace. I tried a few drafts from it, but it wasn't great.
Wasn't able to build a good deck nor get anything useful for constructed. Still, I'm not much of a drafter.
 

Jason Liang

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Jason Liang
originally I meant cards like


pure forced, instantaneous draw & discard. There are also spells with more interesting ratios, like 4/2, 2/4.
It was very satisfying deck, stay alive early with counterspells, dominate mid game with megrim and geths grimore

Image.ashx

Nice if you land this, especially against control. Note that with most of these end step Raid spells, they trigger almost immediately the turn they are cast (assuming you attacked that turn).

In this current environment, that 2 life trigger punishes jump-start pretty gud.

The environment was pretty hostile to Kitesails early on, but perhaps that's changed now?
 

spectre

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There's also Fell Specter to act as a walking Megrim. Yet another surprise find in M19, and a nice combo with Raider's Wake, but not very playable at 4 mana. Shame we can't be having Dark Rituals anymore.
 

Jason Liang

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Here is my current Drake deck if anyone wants something to brew off of.
2 Crackling Drake (GRN) 163
8 Island (RIX) 193
5 Mountain (RIX) 195
2 Niv-Mizzet, Parun (GRN) 192
1 Ral, Izzet Viceroy (GRN) GR5
3 Enigma Drake (M19) 216
1 Goblin Electromancer (GRN) 174
1 Adeliz, the Cinder Wind (DAR) 190
1 Opt (DAR) 60
1 Opt (XLN) 65
3 Chart a Course (XLN) 48
4 Radical Idea (GRN) 52
1 Quasiduplicate (GRN) 51
1 Wizard's Retort (DAR) 75
1 Chemister's Insight (GRN) 32
1 Maximize Velocity (GRN) 111
4 Lightning Strike (XLN) 149
1 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
2 Sulfur Falls (DAR) 247
4 Highland Lake (M19) 252
2 Izzet Guildgate (GRN) 251
1 Dive Down (XLN) 53
2 Disdainful Stroke (GRN) 37
1 Negate (RIX) 44
1 Search for Azcanta (XLN) 74
1 Karn, Scion of Urza (DAR) 1
1 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
1 Sarkhan, Fireblood (M19) 154
1 Rekindling Phoenix (RIX) 111
2 Beacon Bolt (GRN) 154

mtga035.jpg

welcome to Magic: The Gathering, the exciting card game of drake vs. drake combat!
You could replace most if not all of the rares and mythics for more Electromancers, Drakes, Lava Coils and Beacon Bolts. In fact I recommend running more Lava Coils and Beacon Bolts, I'm just too miserly to craft them with wildcards.

Mythics-wise, Karn is well worth crafting, Sarkhan can be replaced by an extra Chart a Course, and if you didn't get a reward Ral at least you'll eventually pull one from Guilds of Ravnica packs.You should have a Rekindling Phoenix from the precons.

Rares-wise, play as many of the rare dual lands as you want to invest in, Azcanta is similar to Karn goes into nearly any blue deck you build, Quasiduplicate is optional. You'll eventually pull Niv Mizzets from packs, I recommend playing 2-3 copies so it probably wouldn't hurt to wild card one to start off.

You can fiddle around with the removal and counter packages as you like, it's hard to go wrong with this archetype. The obvious improvement are Treasure Maps if you want to burn the rare wildcards, but I'm still hunting them out of Ixalan packs.
 

Projas

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
4 Arclight Phoenix (GRN) 91
4 Crackling Drake (GRN) 163
4 Goblin Electromancer (GRN) 174
2 Beacon Bolt (GRN) 154
4 Chart a Course (XLN) 48
3 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
2 Discovery // Dispersal (GRN) 223
4 Opt (XLN) 65
4 Radical Idea (GRN) 52
4 Shock (M19) 156
4 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
4 Sulfur Falls (DAR) 247
3 Tormenting Voice (M19) 164
1 Chemister's Insight (GRN) 32
6 Mountain (M19) 276
7 Island (DAR) 256

1 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
1 Banefire (M19) 130
3 Fiery Cannonade (XLN) 143
1 Fight with Fire (DAR) 119
2 Firemind's Research (GRN) 171
4 Niv-Mizzet, Parun (GRN) 192
1 Ral, Izzet Viceroy (GRN) 195
2 Shivan Fire (DAR) 142

If you wanna win with Izzet just play this tbh. I've been playing basically nothing but this deck lately and it's p. fun and really strong. Also super hard to get mana screwed because of how much draw you have.
 

Jason Liang

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Projas

I appreciate how awesome and powerful Arclight Phoenixes are, and would play them if I had a full playset, but I also feel that the opportunity cost of optimizing a deck to triggering them is more significant than it appears. Also the reward of optimizing Izzet towards casting and protecting Niv Mizzet is proving to be even greater than optimizing towards Arclights. They are actually opposing extremes ~ Niv Mizzet dominates if you stick one but needs to be protected from removal, whereas Arclights are slower but don't need protection at all (although that makes them weak to Vraska's Contempt and Lava Coil).

Besides, the Arclights make the deck much more costly in terms of wildcards.

And dammit, if I'm playing blue I'm going to jam some counterspells in the main deck!
 

Projas

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Yo. Punch in GAMEAWARDS for free stuffies.

vuupmfil3s221.jpg


Some top tier stuff tbh. Every card except Ghalta is commonly used in some of the best decks in the meta. Shame I already had everything though :negative:
 

spectre

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Whee, a Galta I'll never use.
Still, saves me a rare WC on Azcanta and Contempt. I already have the rest of this shit.

btw whats up with white vampires in mtg? They fear moon or something? Kind of like the idea behind white/black vampire starter but something in me dies every time i look at it
I think that's leftover from when they first tried to seriously make enemy colors have something going for them. IIRC they made a white-black guild of vampires or some shit, desperately looking for some kind of overlap between black and white in form of life drain.
Vampires were also heavily featured in red, so it seems they're not very color-bound. I think the idea was to make black less associated with ebil emo stuff...or whatever. We also got nigger elves back then.
 

Jason Liang

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mtga039.jpg

But where's Jhoira? Can't start the rape without Jhoira

mtga037.jpg

The 23rd card was my 4th land

mtga036.jpg

Best result in 4 tries. Sorry guys

In other Arena news, Rekindling Phoenix is sad that everyone now own a playset of Lava Coils and two Vraska Contempts. In an interview, RP admitted that she thought of suicide- but she would just come back the next turn.
 

Jason Liang

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i like this red-blue control deck. Its a nice base to gradually keep replacing cards to be slightly better, slightly more annoying to go against. Burned some wildcards as I couldnt wait to have set of 4 goblin electromancer, guttersnipe and electrostatic field
That's a pretty nice budget deck version. Feels wonder to zap them for damage while countering their play.
 

spectre

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UR is pretty nice at the moment, lets you upgrade it in a bunch of ways, you can go all drakes, or take the arclight phoenix route, maybe a bit of both. You can even reuse a lot of the pieces for WUR control.
I like going Turbo Pieron myself:

2 Sarkhan, Fireblood (M19) 154
3 Treasure Map (XLN) 250
2 Banefire (M19) 130
4 Ionize (GRN) 179
4 Syncopate (DAR) 67
4 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
3 Niv-Mizzet, Parun (GRN) 192
4 Fiery Cannonade (XLN) 143
2 Opt (DAR) 60
3 Crackling Drake (GRN) 163
2 Sailor of Means (XLN) 73
2 Dive Down (XLN) 53
1 Maximize Velocity (GRN) 111
1 Evolving Wilds (RIX) 186
4 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
3 Sulfur Falls (DAR) 247
2 Highland Lake (M19) 252
7 Island (M19) 268
7 Mountain (M19) 276

Didn't really want to build one myself, but somehow I got 3x Ionize from the packs last Sunday, so the game kinda forced my hand.
So far it can do 7 wins in constructed with no problem (mono G curving out into something I can't burn can is bad), so I'll be thinking about making it Bo3 worthy.

You really need those 4x Fiery Cannonades if you want a viable deck. Thankfully they're uncommon.
 

Jason Liang

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Sullivan splashed white for Deafening Clarions, but regardless if you want to beat weenie aggro decks you need some kind of sweeper. Even if Cannonades are the best you get in pure red/ blue.
 

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