Magic the Gathering Arena

[new fucking guy]

Supposedly, the unspoken reason for FoTD getting the bananna wasn't its power level, but that it increased the match time.
Not unlike Nexus, it seems that slow play is the only proven way to make WotC step in.

Eh, I don't buy it. Even nexus was only banned in bo1 on arena, and it was a much bigger problem in paper, being a box promo and all. It only matters when it gets really ridiculous, like KCI.

 

[anvi]

This game is weird. I made a netdeck and it loses all the time... But I changed it quite a lot and now it wins a lot. Is that common for netdecks? They rely so heavily on the sideboard or something? It is an Esper Control deck which I've been dying to play, but it just gets owned by any fast creature deck (which is like 90% of what people play). Pretty proud of my different version at least, it is helping me make progress in ranked which I am using as a benchmark for whether it would work well in the standard event.

 

[new fucking guy]

Is that common for netdecks? They rely so heavily on the sideboard or something?

would you believe me if I told you that you netdecked a bad deck?
magic is complicated. you can win with a shitty deck. you can keep losing with a t1-PTwinner-op-goatyay deck because people aren't playing whatever it's supposed to beat. metagaming is quite the art. best advice I can give is, try to separate the sheer potence of a card/a deck/whatever from how it interacts with threats and opportunities present in the meta.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/extended-09-threats-and-opportunities-2009-01-08

 

[Damned Registrations]

Just started getting into this a few days ago, randomly got Oko for free, not sure I want to make a deck around him though. Currently dicking around with a not-grigori deck since I haven't got any actual grigori cards but it was the first colour pair I tried to throw together and it seemed to work fairly well. Season of Growth + Feral Bite/Thrash + creatures with deathtouch is some decent synergy for literally zero budget. I'm still silver ranked so I'm mostly playing against jank obviously but it's got a good win rate except against that fucking orzhov token shit. Not sure how to build around that. Also I started looking at stuff to use wildcards on and apparently the new set has almost no creature enchants at all? So that's kinda lame.

Haven't played MTG in quite a while, seems to be some fundamental rule changes, not sure if they're just in arena or in paper too. Like combat damage being on the stack is no longer a thing? I can't deal damage and then bounce my creature to save it? Also legendaries don't nuke eachother? I vaguely remember the 'until end of turn'/'before untap step' jank thing being fixed a while ago.

 

[Doktor Best]

Is that common for netdecks? They rely so heavily on the sideboard or something?

would you believe me if I told you that you netdecked a bad deck?
magic is complicated. you can win with a shitty deck. you can keep losing with a t1-PTwinner-op-goatyay deck because people aren't playing whatever it's supposed to beat. metagaming is quite the art. best advice I can give is, try to separate the sheer potence of a card/a deck/whatever from how it interacts with threats and opportunities present in the meta.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/extended-09-threats-and-opportunities-2009-01-08

Another thing to remind is how different BO1 and BO3 is. Tournament decks are built around BO3 and usually answer specific threats in their sideboard, which isnt available in BO1.

 

[new fucking guy]

Another thing to remind is how different BO1 and BO3 is. Tournament decks are built around BO3 and usually answer specific threats in their sideboard, which isnt available in BO1.

that doesn't really matter unless your only plan against some deck is to win two games after sideboard. main board is already built to win as many game1s as possible. only thing to note about bo1 are decks with ridiculous game1, as they'll be more popular. when nexus was a thing you'd win the vast majority of game1s, and then you'd just have to figure out how to beat 8 discard spells and unmoored egos. obviously banned in bo1 for that reason

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

This game is weird. I made a netdeck and it loses all the time... But I changed it quite a lot and now it wins a lot. Is that common for netdecks?

Depends a lot on the deck and your ability to play it as well as your general play style. And like others have mentioned, if you're playing BO1 and it's a deck geared for BO3 that can change things too. A BO3 deck can have a decent middle of the road approach with the idea that you can sideboard into a strong deck against almost any opponent, whereas BO1 you need everything in one go (Which usually favors playing a deck that focuses entirely on your own gameplan, rather than reacting to your opponent). Which also means aggressive decks are more favored in BO1 because they're "Focus on your own plan" by nature and benefit from the BO1 format since a single good opening hand can steal the match, whereas in BO3 you just sideboard in removal/sweepers and then aggressive decks tend to get shit all over so they might win game 1, then you crush 'em games 2 and 3.

Just started getting into this a few days ago, randomly got Oko for free, not sure I want to make a deck around him though. Currently dicking around with a not-grigori deck since I haven't got any actual grigori cards but it was the first colour pair I tried to throw together and it seemed to work fairly well. Season of Growth + Feral Bite/Thrash + creatures with deathtouch is some decent synergy for literally zero budget. I'm still silver ranked so I'm mostly playing against jank obviously but it's got a good win rate except against that fucking orzhov token shit. Not sure how to build around that. Also I started looking at stuff to use wildcards on and apparently the new set has almost no creature enchants at all? So that's kinda lame.

Haven't played MTG in quite a while, seems to be some fundamental rule changes, not sure if they're just in arena or in paper too. Like combat damage being on the stack is no longer a thing? I can't deal damage and then bounce my creature to save it? Also legendaries don't nuke eachother? I vaguely remember the 'until end of turn'/'before untap step' jank thing being fixed a while ago.

Grigori? Golgari? But you're talking about thrash, which is gruul. And Oko's simic colors. I'm confused.

Anyway, there are a few ways you could go. Orzhov tokens isn't much of a deck so it shouldn't trouble you for long, but depending on your colors legion's end should be decent (Can sweep up tokens like crazy, can exile cmc2 or less orzhov units so they don't shit out the tokens) and flame sweep is decent (Will damage your own dudes as well, but if you're gruul they've probably got fat enough asses to take it unless you're running ramp critters (Barring goose)). Legion's end is a rare which is a pain, but flame sweep's just uncommon (And instant speed, very nice). Oko is obscenely strong against all decks so generally speaking you should be playing him assuming you're running blue and green, but if you haven't got all the rarelands and want to stick with two colors and you haven't got enough else to back up that color combo it's understandable. Nissa is really strong (And just rare) since it sounds like you're 100% playing green, a playset of Nissa would generally do you good. Find/finality is... Tolerable as a sweeper if you're playing black, though it's expensive (And rare). If you're playing red/green Domri's ambush is a good time. Creature enchantments are pretty sparse at the moment, yeah. Combat damage isn't on the stack any more, and the current legend rule is only one copy of a legendary in-play per-player, but they pick which one to keep. So you can play a planeswalker, use the walker, then play another copy of the planeswalker, destroy the one you just used, then use this new one.

 

[Damned Registrations]

But you're talking about thrash, which is gruul. And Oko's simic colors. I'm confused.

The Thrash half of the card is green or red, so I'm just running it as a GG instant speed feral bite, which is pretty fucking solid even without the other half of the card. I'm running the GW version of that cycle as well due to lack of any decent shit to target my creatures with. I've only got the one copy of each right now anyways. Oko I just mentioned since he's OP as fuck and I got lucky to have one out of like my third pack, I'm not running any blue at all. Though I might do a whole new deck around him if it's interesting enough. I haven't seen most of the newest set tbh, only did a single draft so far. Food tokens seem amusing. And the one simic deck I played against did some weird thing with proliferate being able to copy the 'doesn't untap for a turn' effect? Well, I'll have the other 5 guilds in a couple more games so I'll see what bones I have to work with there. My other mythic rare so far is cauldron of eternity which seems fine (probably good cheese with whatever giant timmy card they've got right now) in a dimir deck but worthless otherwise and not really worth using without a 4 of to make the cheese combo happen.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

But you're talking about thrash, which is gruul. And Oko's simic colors. I'm confused.

The Thrash half of the card is green or red, so I'm just running it as a GG instant speed feral bite, which is pretty fucking solid even without the other half of the card. I'm running the GW version of that cycle as well due to lack of any decent shit to target my creatures with. I've only got the one copy of each right now anyways. Oko I just mentioned since he's OP as fuck and I got lucky to have one out of like my third pack, I'm not running any blue at all. Though I might do a whole new deck around him if it's interesting enough. I haven't seen most of the newest set tbh, only did a single draft so far. Food tokens seem amusing. And the one simic deck I played against did some weird thing with proliferate being able to copy the 'doesn't untap for a turn' effect? Well, I'll have the other 5 guilds in a couple more games so I'll see what bones I have to work with there. My other mythic rare so far is cauldron of eternity which seems fine (probably good cheese with whatever giant timmy card they've got right now) in a dimir deck but worthless otherwise and not really worth using without a 4 of to make the cheese combo happen.

Oh, I gotcha. I forgot about the color requirements on thrash. Food tokens are pretty annoying, though it's unlikely they'll show up/be used in anything else in upcoming sets. In simic's case (And sometimes sultai) food's there to keep geese working as birds of paradise, so Oko can endlessly make 3/3 tokens to beat your opponent up, and ESPECIALLY to make unstoppable wicked wolf-rape machines. Those 3 are the primary food generators and consumers. The other fun use of food is witch's oven and cauldron familiar, and just constantly keep shoving cats into ovens and baking them into bread to play the cat again. Not as consistently powerful as Oko/wolf but rarity-wise much more manageable (Oven is uncommon, familiar is either common or uncommon) and a lot of fun. Especially combined with mayhem devil and/or Ayara and/or cruel celebrant and/or corpse knight.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well I got my other 5 guild starters now. Looking over what they added (and didn't) I think I'll stick with my golgari deck, except now I can add some actual golgari cards, which will fill some holes it had like enchantment removal and token sweeping and just generally giving me better quality toys to work with. The simic starter deck seems pretty awful tbh, proliferate is a 'win more' mechanic if there ever was one, and adapt is just too slow to handle even the light amount of removal you find in pretty much all decks these days. Maybe I'll change my mind after doing more drafts and getting the newer simic stuff, or getting enough wildcards to start shopping for more than a few niche things. I also spotted an uncommon giant that dishes out damage = graveyard creatures that screams reanimator cheese, but I definitely can't afford that shit.

 

[spectre]

This game is weird. I made a netdeck and it loses all the time... But I changed it quite a lot and now it wins a lot. Is that common for netdecks? They rely so heavily on the sideboard or something? It is an Esper Control deck which I've been dying to play, but it just gets owned by any fast creature deck (which is like 90% of what people play). Pretty proud of my different version at least, it is helping me make progress in ranked which I am using as a benchmark for whether it would work well in the standard event.

Sometimes netdecks are just shit. For example, the Arena Boys stuff from channelfireball should come with a big disclaimer "only usable in play mode", because you won't win anything with that pile in ranked ever.
Same goes for a good bunch of streamer decks. I've seen them being very happy with themselves while beating a bunch of jank in unranked.
It always helps if you post decklists, so we can see what's what. No telling if that esper is actually the good version.

Believe it or not, when you copy a deck with a sideboard, the sideboard bit is actually important. Since you identified the weak matchup that occurs frequently (aggro) the next logical step is to board in the anti-aggro cards, make a separate copy of this deck and run with it.
This is usually the first step I do with netdecked control - up the count on the boardwipes to 5-6 and point removal to 8. People want fast games when grinding, so you should expect to see a lot of aggro (Golos Field skewed that a bit, but I expect things to get back to status quo after the ban). Apply the same logic when choosing to mulligan, since you don't know what you'll be playing against, mulligan against your nightmare matchup.
You're in a good spot in WUB colors, because you have access to all the right answer cards, and it's only a matter of swapping one or two card slots around. Oko being a cunt? There's Elderspell. The problem is Nissa, Fires of Invention or Bolas? Up the count on Despark.
Graveyard strategy? Add Ashiok. The field is nothing but Gruul and Fires of Invention? You sleeve up Mortifies.
You can sometimes predict the meta for today and pick the right version for the deck. For example, WotC was sending out emails today with the mythic championship decklist, so expect to see at least three or four of those around.
Same things happen if a popular streamer just posted a new video.

 

[Doktor Best]

Another thing to remind is how different BO1 and BO3 is. Tournament decks are built around BO3 and usually answer specific threats in their sideboard, which isnt available in BO1.

that doesn't really matter unless your only plan against some deck is to win two games after sideboard. main board is already built to win as many game1s as possible. only thing to note about bo1 are decks with ridiculous game1, as they'll be more popular. when nexus was a thing you'd win the vast majority of game1s, and then you'd just have to figure out how to beat 8 discard spells and unmoored egos. obviously banned in bo1 for that reason

Normally that would be true but atleast in the current meta, most BO3 netdecks ran field of the dead hate. That strategy doesnt translate that well to BO1.

 

[anvi]

The problem I find is that all the netdecks are BO3 and I only play BO1. The decks I find that are more fun seem like BO1 decks, but because they didn't win anything, I can't tell if they are worth spending wildcards on. So I just went with a tournament deck and it sucks. But at least I have the cards I always wanted and it can make a lot of other decks. Stuff like Teferi seems like an essential card if you make anything control-ish.

It is hard though because if you build with lots of removal, I can handle aggro, but then control/fotd destroys me. If I build a more control deck, aggro decks are hard to handle, and mill. My deck that wins the most is the homebrew control deck I made in first week. I guess I will try to improve that with the new stuff I got. Game is pretty depressing sometimes. I have done a few of the 5k gold drafts and I fucking hate it. I get shit cards every time and the opponent gets planeswalkers and uber rares. I never get any of that! I get a few rares and they are always weak ones that I don't even want. So I barely improve my collection and the matches are hell against much better rng. Doesn't really matter how well you play when your opponent drafts Oko, makes 2 foods and then uses the spell which brings out a 7/7. Yeah I had a removal for the creature but I could never get to his PW. Lucky motherfucker I am playing now has Mad Ratter + Gadwick and Niv! The shitty combo I got was Ironcrag Pyromancer + a bunch of Opt, buy only 1 ironcrag... and only about 5 draw cards. The rest was junk.

I think for me it is more fun to play the standard event and load up on gold and then just buy boosters and eventually I can play the standard event with a more interesting deck. If I keep working on my control decks I think eventually I will have on that beats the winrate of the Cavalcade deck.

 

[anvi]

I just whooped some guys ass so hard :D I made an anti-Field of the dead deck, and the first 2 decks I played against were FOTD, both lost but one especially hard. I think even more people are playing it because they know it is going away. If anyone wants to punish someone with that deck, I can post my list.

 

[anvi]

My new control netdeck that started with 3 losses has had an 8 game winning streak It got me up to Gold rank 2. I must have just got really unlucky with my first few games because I'm not playing it any differently, it just wins a whole lot more than seemed possible at first. Although I tried it in Standard Event but it isn't quite ready for that yet. I really struggle against the combo that uses the creature that you can bring back by saccing some food, and the artifact which sacs creatures and creates food. That repeats over and over and can chip away at me and I can't really do anything to stop it. Try to kill the creature and they sacrifice it. And even if you do kill it, it comes back. My homebrew I made in the first week is the best thing against that deck because it has the Kaya planeswalker which can exile stuff from the graveyard. My new deck is a better deck but it doesn't have any GY exiling :/

Also I just played a guy with a modified version of that deck which was especially strong. It uses a powerful combo "God-Eternal Bontu + Mayhem Devil". The mayhem devil says deal 1 damage to opponent every time you sacrifice a permanent. Then he summons the God Eternal which lets you sacrifice any number of your permanents, so he sacced the devil, a bunch of foods, and then all his lands... Did about 15 damage to me in one go and killed me. I'd call him a treacherous bastard but I appreciated the combo and it was also the first time I've seen it so he gets bonus points for originality. *tips fedora*

 

[Doktor Best]

That combo is the thing i waa trying to make work in my rakdos midrange deck when rotation hit. If you also have Torbran on board you deal 3 damage per sac since devils mayhem is a red black card so that damage should be sufficient for anyone. I tried going with fires of invention since its more save to play the last two combo pieces in one turn and they are pretty manaheavy. It struggled against FOTD though so i will wait until tomorrow with further brewing.

 

[Damned Registrations]

So I ran into my first 'adventure' deck today, with the dude dropping the innkeeper and a charm ASAP and then another charm and reviving the innkeeper with an adventure, and for like the first 5 turns I was thinking "Oh god what is this cancer who thought copying spells for free with a 2 mana artifact was balanced" but then I crushed him by blowing up both artifacts and removing nearly everything on his board. Am... am I the cancer?

More likely my deck is just good for the meta of the rank I'm in, but what do you think of what I've got so far:

Spoiler

1 Blacklance Paragon (ELD) 79
2 Status // Statue (GRN) 230
1 Assassin's Trophy (GRN) 152
2 Orzhov Enforcer (RNA) 79
1 Piper of the Swarm (ELD) 100
4 Season of Growth (M20) 191
3 Gnarlback Rhino (M20) 300
2 Leyline Prowler (WAR) 202
4 Vampire of the Dire Moon (M20) 120
4 Rabid Bite (M20) 190
1 Foulmire Knight (ELD) 90
2 Knight of the Ebon Legion (M20) 105
2 Voracious Hydra (M20) 200
1 Thrash // Threat (RNA) 229
1 Assure // Assemble (GRN) 221
4 Kaya's Ghostform (WAR) 94
4 Band Together (WAR) 153
4 Jungle Hollow (M20) 248
4 Golgari Guildgate (GRN) 248
5 Swamp (ELD) 261
7 Forest (ELD) 269
1 Overgrown Tomb (GRN) 253

Obviously an ideal deck isn't full of random 1's and 2's but I'm honestly not sure what I should trim or add here so I don't want to start spending wildcards yet, especially when it comes to rares. Also if I can get a season or two down the lack of consistency is less of an issue since I get to scry quite a bit. Also this export thing is crap at least put the lands at the bottom ffs.

 

[spectre]

I think I saw Gargos, Vicious Watcher in one of the starters. I think he'd fit right in.
I would definitely add more ramp into this. Paradise Druids are pretty handy, so you will be crafting them at some point anyways.
With ramp, you might also want to include Casualties of War (again, in the starters). It's pretty devastating when it hits a bunch of stuff. Voracious Hydras will also thank you for it.
Also, you should also have at least one Midnight Rapist from the starter decks. You want a few of those so that trading with a deathtoucher is no longer a good deal.

But you wanted to be trimming stuff. I'd start with the conditional stuff that does nothing without having creatures on board, like Kaya's Ghostform, Rabid Bite and Band Together. Especially Band together is something that should stay in limited
(I think you should have Titanic Brawls somewhere in your collection, cheaper is always better). Follow up by cutting shit you can't fully use because of mana: Thrash//Threat, Assure//Assemble.
Finally, I'd cut some of the 1 drops, maybe add some recursion instead. If your shit doesn't come back from the dead on a regular basis, something's wrong with your BG. ,

I understand if you don't want to throw wildcards at it, but Murderous Riders should give you good mileage and I think it's guaranteed to stay a format staple.
When it comes to recursion, stuff like Blood for Bones is always fun to try together with the eternal blocker - Sanitarium Skeleton and Plaguecrafter (versatile non-targeting removal is always nice, although hexproof isn't that bad these days).
I'm specifically mentioning Plaguecrafter and Riders because at some point you'll start facing planeswankers, and its nice to have an answer. Especially the three mana 'wankers will start annoying you quite soon.
They all love Vraska, Golgari Queen, but that's a mythic craft, and you would probably want to get something like Questing Beast first.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I used to run Gargos, but he's very slow for the deck- if I've got 6 mana on the board I've probably already got at least one season or rhino out as well, so I may as well keep playing removal or 1 drop self targets and drawing cards.

I was thinking of shifting the deck towards making fatties with +1 counters and using fight instead of bite/band/thrash which are all one sided. That seems to be what you're recommending. I think I can try most of those changes without buying anything so I'll give it a shot.

Planeswalkers have been a bit of a pain for me, I usually have such dominant board control I can just punch them but if I don't my only real answer is assasin's trophy which is just a singleton. What really seems to fuck me over is burn decks. Sometimes I can stabilize if I get the right draws to keep board control (since even burn decks are usually enabled with creatures these days it seems) but sometimes they just keep me from getting anything on the board and the whole thing falls apart. The paradise druids seem like a good way to keep something on the board but they don't do anything helpful with all my removal cards.

 

[anvi]

That combo is the thing i waa trying to make work in my rakdos midrange deck when rotation hit. If you also have Torbran on board you deal 3 damage per sac since devils mayhem is a red black card so that damage should be sufficient for anyone. I tried going with fires of invention since its more save to play the last two combo pieces in one turn and they are pretty manaheavy. It struggled against FOTD though so i will wait until tomorrow with further brewing.

That would insane, especially if you have a lot of foods to sacrifice, and lands.

"Oh god what is this cancer who thought copying spells for free with a 2 mana artifact was balanced" but then I crushed him by blowing up both artifacts and removing nearly everything on his board. Am... am I the cancer?

That deck is definitely cancer and totally op. I have some artifact removal but my last opponent discarded my entire hand with that card which says "Opponent discards 2 cards", but it triggered twice because of the lucky charm so I discarded 4 :/ I never recovered from that. He hit me with some other huge thing after.

It is just like the one with the saccing creature, a big problem for me because unless I can kill the arties fast, I am fucked. The deck I fear the most though is the blue counterspell deck, that is the most cancerous deck in my opinion because it is just so un-fun to play against. Last match he started first so got the creature out, then hit me with a discard when I only had 1 land, and countered my first 6 spells in a row, so his creature became about 6/6 before I finally managed to get a spell through to target the creature. By that point he bounced it to his hand and then flashed it back the same turn, killed me on turn 7 ish and I only managed to cast 1 spell. Just not fun at all... Can WOTC card designers really not think up better deck ideas than this?

 

[Damned Registrations]

I just noticed that the standard ranked Bo3 thing is available to me now, and unlike the shitty version that was there before that needed like 4 wins just to break even on entry, this only needs 2 and seems plausible to go infinite in or close to it.

Is that mode a separate ranking pool or is it going to get harder as I raise my rank with the free standard matches I've been playing? It seems like it should be separate or I could tank my season rank on purpose to fight weak decks in Bo3 for a profit, but I've seen stranger things.

Edit: Your profile doesn't even keep track of your wins and losses? Wtf?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[anvi]

If anyone wants that deck to punish the field of the dead before it goes away, this is roughly it from memory:

Revenge of the Ravens.... If you have 2 of those in play and the FOTD guy doesn't understand the card and he attacks with 10 creatures, you will take 0 damage and he will take 20 damage GG. I use 4 of those but also have a few Ill-Gotten Inheritance which is a bit shit by itself, but once you have the ravens to defend you, it chips away at the enemy and you are constantly gaining life. And before he has a chance to deal with it, you can sac them for a few big hits.

The remaining cards are good removal and a few finishers. For removal I like Legion's End because if he gets a hoard of zombies out before the ravens are in place, that one spell will kill them all. Kaya's Wrath obviously too, and Murderous Rider which I try to save for PWs. And for a finisher I have 1 Liliana Dreadhorde and 1 eternal creature. I also put 1 Dance of the Manse in there in case he kills all the ravens Shame that deck will be pointless after 25th or whatever. But it is uber against Cavalcade decks too. It is generally a crappy deck though, just fun to make FOTD players lose for a change.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I ran into a FotD deck earlier but the guy playing it was retarded; he kept animating his lands so I could kill them. I'm assuming he was trying to do some kind of creature untapping or bouncing gimmick but it was honestly kind of comical how badly he was playing into my hand. He even got Nissa on the board at one point and I was worried he was going to drop some X=20 bullshit on me but he didn't really do jack shit and I took it down right away.

 

[spectre]

are we going to keep silent about how food tokens are just reskinned superior pirate treasures?

More like clues, which were also superior because carddraw.

And for a finisher I have 1 Liliana Dreadhorde and 1 eternal creature.

Ultimating to take away all their shit seems like a fitting end for a deck that just shits out permanents. Bit of a shite if they Agent of Treachery and do a number on you instead.
I've been guilty of doing it a few times.

Is that mode a separate ranking pool or is it going to get harder as I raise my rank with the free standard matches I've been playing? It seems like it should be separate or I could tank my season rank on purpose to fight weak decks in Bo3 for a profit, but I've seen stranger things.

Edit: Your profile doesn't even keep track of your wins and losses? Wtf?

You need a separate tracker program like mtg pro to do that. Yeah, they're pretty behind on the features. Can't even make a friend list cause they're busy patching Unity memory leaks.
That's what happens when overload a shitty engine with shitty fx.

You should have a button to toggle all play modes at the main screen. If you can't find it, I'll make you a screencap.
There are generally two separate ranks - one for constructed, one for limited. The Ranked Bo3 has the same rank as Bo1, so it's up to you. If you have the collection to sideboard and the time to burn, Bo3 is obviously the superior choice to play.
It's pretty easy to reach Gold, but once you do, you'll see a sharp increase in netdecks. Once you get out of gold, you can only derank by waiting until the end of the season.

You might have ranked mixed up with Standard Event. The events with entry fees have no ranking. IIRC you'll be matched with people with a similar number of wins in that event run.