Magic the Gathering Arena

[anvi]

Thought Erasure does seem awesome. Although every time I use Duress it hits a deck with nothing but creatures :/ I have the worst luck. If I am up against a fast torbran/cavalcade deck and he plays his entire hand and gets me down to 3 health, I do a board wipe and his next turn will always draw a spell that does 3 damage. I am truly cursed.

 

[anvi]

I just got molested by a potent Reanimator deck. I'm so tempted to throw money at the game until I can buy it for myself but I can't bring myself to do it on principle. Anyway the deck, it is the usual UB reanimator, thought erasure and discovery to throw agent into his gy, then blood for bones to bring it out early and steals my land so I never got about 3 lands :/ No board wipe for me. But he also had "Cauldron's Gift" which discarded lots of cards, and could also be used to bring back the agent. I managed to get a board wipe at the last minute and save myself on a few life, and then he played Jace, and drew his final 2 cards which auto wins the game... Did it on about turn 7 :/

 

[Jason Liang]

Yeah, Jace with the win-condition has been showing up in the eternal formats as well since it's fast and pretty unstoppable.

Good card to pick up a foil playset in paper.

 

[anvi]

Which of these decks do you guys think would win the most?

https://aetherhub.com/Deck/Public/171065
I just got beat by this, he stole all my shit, I had to kill all my own PWs and shit :/ Then he used Glory of Finale and had about 30 angels and he countered my board wipes with a hand full of counterspells :/

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/2469140#paper
Mostly like the previous deck but it has 3 Teferi, and a Fae of Wishes, and also Cavalier of Gales which seems awesome.

https://deckstats.net/decks/123651/1417306-demir-selfmil-land-control/en
Self mill, reanimator

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Once again I'm playing Izzet because it and Dimir are consistently my favorite color combos. Still slumming it with 2 steam vents and 2 temples because I'm being a cheap bastard but I'll probably break down and craft the rest here soon, might buy that $10 bundle with 10 packs and 1000 gems for the hell of it even though it's not a particularly great deal just because that would keep me more comfortably in cats and foxes for the forseeable future. I'm already covered for the next set and the one after that, but the one after THAT I might want some gems since I don't play much limited. Deck's nothing unusual since it's Izzet drakes, but it's a good time.

Spoiler

Deck
4 Pteramander (RNA) 47
10 Island (ANA) 62
4 Opt (ELD) 59
4 Shock (M20) 160
9 Mountain (ANA) 64
2 Aether Gust (M20) 42
3 Negate (M20) 69
4 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
3 Sinister Sabotage (GRN) 54
2 Flame Sweep (M20) 139
1 The Royal Scions (ELD) 199
2 God-Eternal Kefnet (WAR) 53
4 Crackling Drake (GRN) 163
1 Expansion // Explosion (GRN) 224
2 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
1 Swiftwater Cliffs (M20) 252
2 Temple of Epiphany (M20) 253
1 Niv-Mizzet, Parun (GRN) 192
1 Ral, Izzet Viceroy (GRN) GR5

Gut feelings are having more flame sweeps may not be a bad idea since it nails geese and destroys most aggressive decks, aether gust is almost never a dead card since 99% of the time your opponent is playing green and if he's not, he's probably got red, Niv Mizzet is a 6 mana elk but I love that smug fucking dragon so I'm reluctant to cut him, and that's mainly it. You basically hope you draw some of your counters before Oko comes down because if not you'll have a hell of a time but that's par for the course. Fortunately there's a lot of aggro in ranked too which this does stack up well against. Fires decks are a similar situation where you need to be desperately looking for counters turn 1 just so you can cockblock fires/3feri so they don't run wild. Biggest pain in the ass is a lot of your card draw is sorcery speed (Playing crackling drakes, playing a walker) so holding up counters is reliant on how shifty you feel your opponent is being, but it's often wise to be cautious since then you'll play a fatass drake and end games quickly so time is usually on your side.

 

[Jason Liang]

Finally had time to play ten games yesterday, crafted a playset of Okos and threw together a deck with all my green/ blue planeswalkers, ramp and a set of Veils. Went 8-2. 2 people conceded as soon as I played Breeding Pool, 1 conceded on Oko, and the two losses were 1 mirror and 1 absurd land flood. Format is awesome.

Had a pretty sweet game against a Budget Clover mill opponent who managed to mill me for 48 before I killed him with 1 card left in my library. Saved by 2 Veils, but nice deck. Once I get more Eldraine, I might try this but self-mill with a ton of planeswalkers, seems broken.

 

[anvi]

white never wins

playing self mill around cauldron sounds like fun, I should do it at some point.

I cant help you with winning, I always focus on fun.

white decks are no fun

EDIT: cauldron deck got no board wipes in maindeck, relying on fae of wishes seem slow and ill be uneasy to play like that. My cauldron deck would feature some wipes and duress for sure. Also narset to both disable some decks and find board wipe if missing

Thanks, fae does seem slow. What board wipes do you use? I rely so much on Kaya's Wrath in my current deck, going to mono black or black/blue scares me. I guess there is ritual of soot for smaller stuff.

Finally had time to play ten games yesterday, crafted a playset of Okos and threw together a deck with all my green/ blue planeswalkers, ramp and a set of Veils. Went 8-2. 2 people conceded as soon as I played Breeding Pool, 1 conceded on Oko, and the two losses were 1 mirror and 1 absurd land flood. Format is awesome.

Had a pretty sweet game against a Budget Clover mill opponent who managed to mill me for 48 before I killed him with 1 card left in my library. Saved by 2 Veils, but nice deck. Once I get more Eldraine, I might try this but self-mill with a ton of planeswalkers, seems broken.

I lost to a mill deck yesterday, and had one game where I won with 0 cards left in library I never concede early but yesterday I nearly did on turn 1, I was going to screenshot to show you guys. I did a duress on turn one, opponents hand was 2 oko, 2 vivien, 2 nissa, and a conclave tribunal :/ I beat that deck about 55% but not when he draws that much at the start.

 

[anvi]

Just got beat by an amazing combo deck, best I've seen since I've been in MTGA. I would make it right now but it looks like it might not be that consistent.

His first two or three cards in play are Smothering Tithe, every time you draw a card you have to pay 2 mana or he gets a token that he can spend any time for any mana of his own. It is so powerful because if you pay you are really slowing yourself down. And if you don't pay, he has lots of mana very fast. He used it to counterspell anything I did play.
Then he plays Narset, and then he plays "Emergency Powers" which makes both players shuffle hand to library, and then draw 7. But with Narset in play, you discard your entire hand and draw nothing....! He also plays ObNixilis so when you draw 7 you take 7 damage. He also plays Teferi and Kasmina so anything you play costs 2 more. Also when you draw the 7 (or fail to), it triggers the Smothering Tithes so he basically ends up with infinite mana.
Then his finisher... He played Bolas, and used The Elderspell on his Narset, Teferi, ObNix, and Kasmina, and put those 4 counters on his Bolas for an instant ult and game over. I lost on about turn 5 and didn't get to play anything.

The best thing about it is that he had maybe 50 of the mana tokens from the Tithe in play so he had as much mana as he needed, could play his whole hand, and then use Emergency Powers to draw a whole new 7 cards and he could play all of those too. And meanwhile I had 0 cards to fight back with.

 

[Jason Liang]

It sounds like your decks are too slow
And also you should play with Duress and probably some removal

 

[anvi]

I've got tons of removal but it is all 3 or 4 cmc so it is easy to counter. I tried duress, it was ok but too often it found lands and creatures :/ I think my deck is fast enough because I usually beat mono red and green, but not strong late game. I often end up wiping his entire board by turn 6 ish but then I have no finishers. Got 3 PWs but they never survive more than a turn. I only really have 1 deck and it's not very good.

 

[anvi]

Scruffy which of your steal decks do you think wins the most? I like reanimator because you have a chance to mill yourself dry and use Jace's win. But that one you have with all the bounce looks brutal!

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Fuck's sake. The downside of playing Izzet drakes is it feels like I should have a fighting chance in every match, so there's no game where I just feel like it's a bad matchup and there was little I could do. Like last game I get matched against fires of invention. My deck's running 6 relatively hard counters (3 negate and 3 sabotage) for 90% of his deck, and 3 more soft counters (2 aether gust and 1 expansion) which can work as counters in a pinch and/or ways to buy time. On top of that I'm running 16 draw fixing/hand curating cards (4 opt, 4 crackling drake, 1 Izzet viceroy, 1 explosion, 1 royal scions, 3 sabotage, 2 temples) to try to tear through my deck to find counters to fires/a billion walkers. Then I start playing the game and draw 12 lands in the top 15 cards of my deck and don't get anything but a single sabotage to try to correct that. My opponent naturally doesn't miss any land drops and has a fires to play on 4 (Countered) and 5 (Not countered).

The worst part is when you get back to back games like that. All the opts and shit are to help prevent flood/screw but it still happens on occasion and feels so much fucking worse when your deck's suppose to have ways around it.

 

[Jason Liang]

So should we take bets on which card(s) will be banned? Will it be just Oko, or will Oko be joined by OUaT, Goose and/or Veil?

I think Oko for sure, and 60% chance for Once Upon a Time to be OUT.

Ironically Once Upon a Time is better in eternal formats than in Standard... nice fuel for Goyf. And having tried Oko for two days, it's a bit overblown. Oko is... a good defensive spell. Probably slows down the format by making a lot of creatures junk. But his power level is mediocre for a blue planeswalker, at least in Standard. Like OUaT, Oko has many more targets (i.e. artifacts) in older formats, upheaving thoe

 

[anvi]

When is the ban happening? I hate Oko, I can beat that deck more than I lose but it is such a pain to beat. Endless food keeps that wolf invincible and I have to exile it or force sac. And the endless 3/3 every other turn or every turn if he has the goose thing. It is such a pain and not fun because it is 90% of the matches I play in any mode. Although I would say Fires and Embercleave bothers me more. Fires because it is so obnoxious to have to play against someone with 30 PWs in their deck. I can win sometimes but it is just brutal having Bolas every turn. And Embercleave is just ridiculously overpowered. Putting that on a Torbran is crazy.

p.s. Look at the craziness of this match I just played. My daily quest was to attack with 30 creatures so I made a deck to hopefully do it one game, and I succeeded. But I was attacking with about 90 damage potential every turn, and every single turn he used Roots or another similar card to make no damage each turn. 8 turns in a row!!! And then he won by drawing his whole deck with Jace.

https://lensdump.com/i/inE8uT

Fuck's sake. The downside of playing Izzet drakes is it feels like I should have a fighting chance in every match, so there's no game where I just feel like it's a bad matchup and there was little I could do. Like last game I get matched against fires of invention. My deck's running 6 relatively hard counters (3 negate and 3 sabotage) for 90% of his deck, and 3 more soft counters (2 aether gust and 1 expansion) which can work as counters in a pinch and/or ways to buy time. On top of that I'm running 16 draw fixing/hand curating cards (4 opt, 4 crackling drake, 1 Izzet viceroy, 1 explosion, 1 royal scions, 3 sabotage, 2 temples) to try to tear through my deck to find counters to fires/a billion walkers. Then I start playing the game and draw 12 lands in the top 15 cards of my deck and don't get anything but a single sabotage to try to correct that. My opponent naturally doesn't miss any land drops and has a fires to play on 4 (Countered) and 5 (Not countered).

The worst part is when you get back to back games like that. All the opts and shit are to help prevent flood/screw but it still happens on occasion and feels so much fucking worse when your deck's suppose to have ways around it.

Welcome to my world! I get so fucked by luck in this game. I get raped by aggro for 3 turns because my only 3cmc cards are some prisons and murderous riders. Then I finally wipe the board clean on turn 4 with 3 health left. Now it is my time to shine, and then I draw 6 lands in a row.... And his next turn is a Shock.

 

[anvi]

What do you guys think would be the highest winning deck possible in bo1? I figured it would be Torbran + Embercleave which was number 1 on https://mtgarena.pro/decks/ yesterday. But today it isn't even top 3. Also my crappy control deck beats it 80% of the time. I really want a high % winner though so I can start making more gold from Standard Event.

 

[spectre]

Check the Bo1 meta from the same site:
https://mtgarena.pro/meta/
Then specifically, at the mono red thing: the 55% global winrate seems unspectacular, your game is most likely done in around 5 minutes, so when your control deck has eked out one win,
the aggro has already produced three, maybe four. If you hit a nice sequence of going first, the opponent being mana screwed, etc., you will up a rank, or get a good event run.

If you want higher numbers, you need skill and meta knowledge. And of course a bit of luck. Sometimes you will lose to a shit deck because of mana screw, or they draw exactly the right shit
to ride the tempo train.

But the top decks on that list should all be strong enough for your needs. The rest is up to you reading the meta and tweaking them (or abandon a deck and pick another one).

If you're specifically looking for a deck that's good for Standard Event, start noting what you're being paired against. First three games are a crapshoot - you can get people with starter decks, budget builts, wacky shit,
but on fourth win and beyond, you'll start seeing the meta top dogs - these are the decks to beat, so you should either play one of those (and know how it ticks so you can pick it apart in the mirror game),
or get a deck with good matchup against those.

So should we take bets on which card(s) will be banned? Will it be just Oko, or will Oko be joined by OUaT, Goose and/or Veil?
I think Oko for sure, and 60% chance for Once Upon a Time to be OUT.

I saw somewhere that 6/8 of the Top8 at the recent Mythic championshit is different permutations of the same Oko/Goose/Wolf/Nissa ramp engine. If WotC was waiting for a wake up call, I think something dominating 75% of the top meta
would be it, cause if this shit isn't meta warping, I don't know what is.

Once Upon a Time doesn't strike me as a problem card. It tends to fix the first turn quite nicely for a lot of decks (UG Flash, Adventures, GR), but the second and third copy is nowhere near as welcome.
Of course, it's a logical and automatic 4x in pretty much any green deck out there, but it's more of a consistency boost similar to Opt rather than something problematic.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Scruffy]

Scruffy which of your steal decks do you think wins the most? I like reanimator because you have a chance to mill yourself dry and use Jace's win. But that one you have with all the bounce looks brutal!

the blink deck wins the most, BUT you need to really really really learn how to pilot it, when to mulligan etc, and then games take forever as well

 

[spectre]

now to ask real question: can I chose alternative card art as a picture of my deck?

I tried this a while back, obviously the motion sickness ones didn't work. The stained glass 'wankers don't work as well.
Tried it again a few minutes before with the alt-adventures, but computer says no.

 

[anvi]

Wow I never knew the decks got harder as you progressed through the Standard Event! I thought it was just a random opponent each time. I find that I can rise the Ranked ladder to about Platinum 3 ish and then I start facing decks that whoop me more than I can win. I should probably copy one of those decks. I don't actually like most of the decks in this game but a few of them are awesome.

The decks I face regularly in order of common-ness are:

Oko + Nissa + that green wolf that becomes invincible with food. I face this most of the time. I win about 50%
The green pelt guy with the big giant, usually mixed with the luck artifact. I beat this like 95% of the time. It just really doesn't suit playing against my deck.
Torbran. I win this about 70%. I actually find it easier now that everyone switched to torbran, Cavalcade was faster and I only won that about 50-60%.
Blue counterspells that boost the flying creature. This deck screws me pretty hard. I win about 20%
Fires. This is a really hard fight for me, I win 50%.
Red with Green enchant that untaps all the lands at end of each turn. I win about 30%-40%, again, counterspells screw me pretty bad.
Colossus arti deck. I only played against this maybe 6 times, I won about 4 of those.
Doom Foretold. This is mirror match for me, I'm about 50/50. I play it better but have bad luck I also lack a few rares that would help but I am saving my wildcards for a slightly different control deck.

 

[anvi]

Scruffy which of your steal decks do you think wins the most? I like reanimator because you have a chance to mill yourself dry and use Jace's win. But that one you have with all the bounce looks brutal!

the blink deck wins the most, BUT you need to really really really learn how to pilot it, when to mulligan etc, and then games take forever as well

Thanks, sounds like my kind of deck, I'm gonna build it next! I trust it more than the netdecks. I have a control deck now which is quite good but I want more gold MOAR! I love getting to rank 6+ in standard event because I get rares that I really need. And more gold obviously, so I want a reliable deck for that. I'll also try to get as high as I can in ranked so at the season end the reward is fatter.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

I don't think they're gonna touch nissa, she's not that crazy. I hope they get rid of the fucking cat though. Not because it's overpowered, but because it's so boring to watch opponent spend a minute every turn killing and bringing it back.

I do wonder if banning oko will open up the meta or if we'll just start seeing a bunch of fires decks. It's nice to only play unranked and draft, so I never need to see this crap.

I really want a high % winner though so I can start making more gold from Standard Event.

Looks like either mono red or some oko thing for bo1. I'm not sure how good the people who play standard event are, but if you assume that both players know what their doing, know each-other's decks, and don't make mistakes, the rest of the game comes down to luck.

I think people overstate how much skill really matters in this game, especially in constructed and doubly in BO1. Yes, it takes some time to get to the point where you're making correct plays but once you and your opponents are at that level the most important decider of wins is basically who draws better and matchup. That's why when you look at win rates for "top" players they typically float around 60%, whereas in other games where rng doesn't play a large part top players have more like 90% win rates.

So anyway assuming people in constructed events aren't playing shit decks and know how to play the game it doesn't seem like a great way to make gold. Maybe there are bad players playing garbage decks in that format though :/

Of course, draft is obviously the much more skillful and gentleman's format

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Of course, draft is obviously the much more skillful and gentleman's format

yeah, everyone loves current mill festival

Well it's an archetype for eld that they intentionally designed. It's not like they put out the set and then after were like "oh shit! blue is mill in this format!", whoever created the set knew from the beginning that mill was going to be a draft archetype, just like knights/food/draw-two etc..

Yeah it's gonna piss people off though when they make such an annoying tactic like mill or land destruction or discard a central deck type in draft. But this isn't the first time they've forced some annoying mechanic. Like it or not though, you need to draft decks around it.