Magic the Gathering Arena

[Dawkinsfan69]

Liliana is obnoxious. She's the new teferi after rotation

 

[Scruffy]

monoblack looks like it could be a thing

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

i'm starting to believe that playing esper unranked is the best way to get 4 daily wins as quickly as possible. Turn 2 thought erasure? concede. 3feri? concede. 5feri? concede. liliana? concede. people just get so triggered and scoop once they find out what the deck is. get all wins in 15-20 mins

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

I think I may be onto something here with this new deck.. It's wrecking everything i go up against in unranked not sure how it'd do in ranked tho.

Token Tempo:

Spoiler

4 Callous Dismissal (WAR) 44
4 Arrester's Admonition (RNA) 31
4 Blink of an Eye (DAR) 46
4 Cast Down (DAR) 81
4 Dovin's Acuity (RNA) 168
1 Clear the Mind (RNA) 34

4 Curious Obsession (RIX) 35
4 Dreadhorde Invasion (WAR) 86
3 Murmuring Mystic (GRN) 45
2 Eternal Skylord (WAR) 49
2 Gideon, the Oathsworn (WAR) 265

4 Hallowed Fountain (RNA) 251
4 Glacial Fortress (XLN) 255
4 Drowned Catacomb (XLN) 253
4 Watery Grave (GRN) 259
2 Isolated Chapel (DAR) 241
3 Godless Shrine (RNA) 248
1 Swamp (RIX) 194
1 Plains (RIX) 192
1 Island (RIX) 193

Token generators like dreadhorde invasion + murmuring mystic combined with bounce spells + dovin's acuity. Super low mana curve but lots of card draw. I think 4x dovin's acuity may be a bit much though, not sure if I want to replace those with something. Clear the mind may be useless too idk.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

WotC finally giving some details on the whole "Mastery pass" shit.
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/57183

Some key points, linear XP rate. So it doesn't get more difficult to gain levels the higher level you go.
You gain XP for this system from your first 3 wins every day, daily quests, and "Special events" like certain events, promo codes, etc. So no massive poopsocking to grind levels, if you do the early juicier gold reward dailies you should be good.
The rewards on the "Free" tree cut off at level 72, while the paid tree goes up to 100. Could be a few ways to look at that, either reaching level 72 is the basic rate for getting your equivalent in weekly packs over the span of 3 months for the M20 set (Which means that to get to the level 100 goodies on the paid track you need extra XP from events, codes, or buying the +10 level pack) or you'll hit level 100 naturally over that span so you'll "Tap out" on your free packs earlier rather than having them dripfed at 3 packs a week like the current system. They DO claim that you can reach level 100 completely free to play, and given that this is on a timer and there's no grind to speak of (Since daily quests and first 3 daily wins each day isn't much room to grind) so that seems to indicate that you'll probably get your packs faster than the weekly system and then be left with a dry spell until the next set, though you'll still get the same total of free packs.
Even if you buy the mastery pass later it does retroactively give you all the goodies for your level, so you can wait until near the end of the set or after a few weeks and you're able to estimate what level you'll reach through normal advancement.

Rewards:

The following rewards are available to all players to earn as part of the Set Mastery system:

• x36 M20 booster packs
• x5 Set Mastery Orbs (each can be redeemed for card styles on the Set Mastery Tree).

For players who purchase the Mastery Pass, the rewards they can earn are expanded to include:

• The Elemental Cat, the Chandra, Flame’s Fury avatar, as Chandra Mastery Pass card sleeve
• 20 booster packs (x5 GRN, x5 RNA, x5 WAR, x5 M20)
• 2000 Gems
• 5000 Gold
• 20 Card Styles
• 25 Set Mastery Orbs (each can be redeemed for card styles on the Set Mastery Tree)
• 10 Mythic Rare ICRs
• 5 Planeswalker Cards from the Core Set 2020 Planeswalker Decks
• Uncommon and Rare Elemental Cat visual upgrades.
• Exquisite Chandra Card Sleeve (Exquisite = Card Sleeve with VFX)

Overall I'm tentatively happy. Assuming you can indeed reach level 100 and get all the rewards, you end up spending a total of 1400 gems for 20 boosters, 5,000 gems, 10 mythic ICRs, 5 planeswalker-deck planeswalkers from M20 (Which are usually weaker but can still be fun to fuck with, Dawkins' Gideon up there is a planeswalker deck card), and then some cosmetic garbage. Just buying packs packs with gems directly comes out to 200 gems per pack, whereas this is 70 gems per pack on top of all the other goodies. Obviously more favorable if you grab the "Explorer bundle" which is 3,400 gems for $15, which I might buy myself since that would give me enough gems to last through M20, the set after, and then only 300 gems short from the set after that which I'd hope I'd make up in drafts or something in the intervening 6ish months.

 

[Scruffy]

Yes, if this is how it works, it's fine, I'm ok with supporting the game

i still think pixel cats are fucking stupid

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[spectre]

It used to be like this once you crawled out of gold. When they started giving out rare cosmetics, all the tryhards moved up one rung. Might be that Diamond is what Platinum used to be, but alas, can't be arsed to check. I only have the stomach to grind ranked past gold, and only barely that.

Getting 1400 gems each release is no biggie. Sadly, I blew all my gems on drafts, so this may be a reason to get me the explorer bundle... or maybe not. Good thing it's retroactive.
Overall, seems fair, we'll see how quickly you can earn levels. Would be cool if at least this feature wouldn't have a daily limit.
Anybody did the NPE skill tree? Looks like progression speed might be similar.

i still think pixel cats are fucking stupid

Yeah, my first reflex was to ask can I turn this off? Nothing wrong with cats on principle, I personally can't stand all the flashy shit cluttering the screen.
Would be cool if we could purge the bollock animu sleeves somewhere in the settings because this shit sticks out like a sore thumb.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

More info on the mastery pass/tree/track/whatever, now that it's been seen in the wild due to streamer prerelease.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/c7uu8e/actual_xp_numbers_for_mastery_system/

Quick rundown: You earn approximately 1,000XP per day (Daily quests are worth 800, regardless of the gold in the quest, and your first win gives 100 and supposedly the following two wins either give 50 or 100 each) and it costs 1,000XP per level. So if you play every single day while the M20 mastery is live that should put you around level 90.
You can buy levels at 250 gems each.
So it looks like your free packs are basically the same as the regular weekly total and you should theoretically have some grace period days since the free stuff dries up at level 72, but you'll either have to pay or rely on extra XP from the "Events and promo codes" to get up to the level 100 prizes. That cools my interest in picking up the pass a fair amount, since I was mainly on board if you could reach level 100 "Without fuckery" and this qualifies as fuckery. Since you retroactively get your shit I guess you can decide if it's worth it just before the next set launches, but it loses some of the appeal (To me) then. Would've enjoyed getting a drip feed of packs and shit as I play over 3 months.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Well, I was expecting the levels to be soft capped at 40-50 with you needing to buy the rest with gems so I guess I'm pleasantly surprised that the soft cap is more around 70-80.

The rewards for the paid mastery pass seem pretty underwhelming though. 5 packs from each of a bunch of old sets isn't really exciting and they never seem to give card styles for any cards that I actually use outside of draft.

All that said I saw that the japanese liliana art sleeve is 4000 gold with the update! So I'll grab that right away. Also there's a japanese sleeve of some busty elf chick so yeah that's p. cool

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[spectre]

So, am I getting stuff wrong about the Eternal format, or they really want it DOA?

Name is kinda crappy. "Historic", wasn't that a keyword? If keywords arefine they could have gone for Flashback or Dredge, would be more fitting.

No Kaladesh and no Amkphtpkp for start? Geez, do they really need to ease people into ever fucking thing? Too much lube is a thing too.
And they supposedly have more sets parsed in. What a waste.

Apparently no constructed events for Historic? No drafting? That sucks. I can live without ranked (though this'll probably backfire unless they do some kind of MMR), but a glorified "play" mode does nothing for me.
These days I mostly just alternate drafts and constructed event.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

5 packs from each of a bunch of old sets isn't really exciting and they never seem to give card styles for any cards that I actually use outside of draft.

They are, admittedly, all sets that are lasting through rotation though. And the card styles are probably going to be all (Most?) M20 cards since it's the "M20 mastery tree", and since you pick what you unlock on that there may be cards you'd use in standard.

so you must buy package with 10 lvls to reach 100?

Depending how much XP we get from "Promo codes and events", correct. You can't reach 100 on daily quests and daily wins alone. We'll get 30 days/levels in July, 31 in August, and then the next set releases somewhere mid/late in September, say the 20th just to give it an early date for doom and gloom. So approximately 81 levels assuming you don't miss a day. Which even if they're generous with the promo codes and event XP I doubt they're going to put out 19 levels worth.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

So approximately 81 levels assuming you don't miss a day

and since most are not living in basement, I assume that fore mentioned freebie-soft limit of 72 is the real on to plan for.

I dont think im happy with shortening grind loop from 3 days to 1. At least it will be hard for me

Yeah, you can miss approximately 9 days in the next 3 months and still hit the freebie limit of 72. Maybe even more than that, because presumably you'd only be losing daily wins XP and can stock up on daily quests. Also depends on codes and events of course. Just hitting the free packs shouldn't be too difficult is what I'm getting at, they're only really fucking the people interested in spending money.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

anyone got some cool anti burn izzet deck? My problem is that I have too many cards and can't decide/strike balance.
Also I have this urge to include phoenixes for whatever reason

I don't have a deck, but I hope you played it some before the patch tomorrow and like 30 pieces of phoenix hate are added to standard.

Edit: Also decided not to preorder on M20. I still might earn those cuck tags since I might do the mastery pass at some point, but I'm not even going to buy the cheapo $15 bundle since I'm not even 100% sure I'm going to do the pass anyway. Plus I may cuck myself for the September set assuming WotC doesn't burn Arena to the ground in the meanwhile, but I think I'll just live with my wildcards to get through M20.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Meanwhile i preorder m20 and the new HS xpac

May even get battle pass too cuz at this point fuck it!

 

[Scruffy]

if the battle pass is retroactive, try farming for gems to buy it
that's what i'm going to do

 

[spectre]

As usual, shit's unplayable so quickly after maintenance, can't get into the game to test it myself, but apparently PlayM20 is working, and LevelUp gives you a handful of exp (together with the assorted packs and shekels).

 

[Scruffy]

Spoiler

PlayAllegiance 3 Ravnica Allegiance Packs
PlayRavnica 3 Guild of Ravnica Packs
PlayWarSpark 3 War of the Spark Packs
OneBillion 1 War of the Spark Pack

ParallaxPotion - Revitalize
SuperScry - Opt
FoilFungus - Deathbloom Thallid
ShinyGoblinPirate - Fanatical Firebrand
SparkleDruid - Druid of the Cowl

STARTERSTYLES
Luminous Bonds
Divination
Doomed Dissenter
Viashino Pyromancer
Llanowar Elves
Meteor Golem
Special Arena sleeve

OverTheMoon - Arlinn, Voice of the Pack
INNERDEMON - Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted
SHIELDSUP - Teyo, the Shieldmage
WRITTENINSTONE - Nahiri, Storm of Stone
EnlightenMe
MythicMagic
BroughtBack

updating with the latest:

LevelUp Gives two XP levels
PlayM20 3 M20 Boosters

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

why does new chandra look like a lesbian gym teacher?

 

[Scruffy]

a few more months and no more Teferi. No more curious fucking obsession and no more stormtamer and trickster.
no chainwhirler , firebrand or lavarunner

cries with happiness in janky

 

[Pope Amole II]

So, am I getting stuff wrong about the Eternal format, or they really want it DOA?

Ofc they do. People already own amonkhet & kaladesh. If these sets are legal once again, they can play mostly with cards from those, thus having to spend very little on the freshly released sets. That just won't do.