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Magic: The Gathering Arena For the Magic: The Gathering Megathread see: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3817553 I’m making this thread because MTGA is bringing in a huge influx of new or returning players who have absolutely no intent of making pro-tournament, want to build a physical card collection, or necessarily want to discuss formats outside MTGA. What is Magic: The Gathering Arena (MTGA)? Download: https://magic.wizards.com/en/mtgarena (game is in open beta, don’t expect any more account wipes) !!!Enter the promo code "PlayRavnica" in the store inside the client to get 3 free packs.!!! MTGA is Wizards of the Coast take on the contemporary digital collectible card game. Other than being based on the same ruleset, MTGA has no real relation to the other Magic card games (Duels, MTG Online, etc.). The game itself does a good job at playing like MTG always has, and is more complicated that the other most popular digital card game such as Hearthstone because you need to build in resource (mana) into your deck and you can interact with the other player during their turn. There are five different colors to build "decks" from: Black, Blue, Red, White, and Green and they follow general archetypes: Black: creature removal, rats, skeletons, vampires Blue: counterspells, mermaids, wizards Red: Direct damage, goblins, wizards Green: Big creatures, buffs, ramp White: Weenies, Buffs, Removal Colorless: Artifacts The game is technically F2P but most of the enjoyment is generally found in the drafting formats (or probably will be until people build up collections). The thing that’s crazy about the drafting is that you draft against some crazy moon-AI and not real people, which throws additional variance into the cards you draft. The two most popular modes of drafting revolve around drafting from the latest expansion, Guilds of Ravinca. Note before you jump in the game that playing draft mode can be EXPENSIVE, particularly if you have no idea what you’re doing. The value proposition in the high draft cost is that you *keep* the cards that you draft for your permanent collection. People that play constructed will argue that trying to build competitive standards decks this way might not be that efficient because you’re only drafting from the latest expansion and when you draft you don’t draft wild cards, which let you craft any card depending on its rarity. The most popular drafting archetypes have been blue/black (surveil synergy), red/white (mob strength with “tricks” that enable value trades, or red/blue (counterspells, direct damage, and flying creatures). I’m sure this thread will make the people who have been posting in the magic megathread for the past decade frustrated but I think it could be good to have a separate thread for the open beta launch for the newbies.     More Stuff: IF YOU RUN OUT OF CARDS IN YOUR DECK YOU WILL INSTANTLY LOSE -- THIS PROBABLY WILL ONLY HAPPEN IF YOU MILL YOURSELF WITH SURVEIL A long guide on Magic, based on the paper version: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/level-one/level-one-full-course-2015-10-05 Tom Clancy is Dead posted:How to Arena Boco_T posted:Something for the OP as well as anyone reading on this page: milkman dad fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Oct 6, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 01:52
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Game has a mechanic where if you play with highly sought after cards (dual lands, certain planeswalkers, premium burn spells - basically tournament standard decks) you will get matched against other people running those decks. If you stick with taplands instead of shocklands and don't craft the bomb rares you can have a lot more fun playing casual magic against other people with casual decks. This is a hidden metric, so I don't think there are any clear consise numbers on what the thresholds are.
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Oct 5, 2018 02:06
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how much in the way of RNG mechanics does it have? the thing i hate about hearthstone is just how many mechanics are tied to "do this random thing". I haven't played MTG in 16 years, but from memory it had almost no RNG
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Oct 5, 2018 02:10
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Phrosphor posted:Game has a mechanic where if you play with highly sought after cards (dual lands, certain planeswalkers, premium burn spells - basically tournament standard decks) you will get matched against other people running those decks. If you stick with taplands instead of shocklands and don't craft the bomb rares you can have a lot more fun playing casual magic against other people with casual decks. Do you know if that matchmaking is on a per-deck basis? It doesn't forever label you a try-hard does it?
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Oct 5, 2018 02:10
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Doorknob Slobber posted:how much in the way of RNG mechanics does it have? the thing i hate about hearthstone is just how many mechanics are tied to "do this random thing". I haven't played MTG in 16 years, but from memory it had almost no RNG I can't recall any RNG. When you have discard mechanics it is either you choose the card to discard or your opponent chooses the card to discard, depending on how it was initiated. The most RNG dependent mechanic is drawing lands to generate mana. A common term is "mana screwed."
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Oct 5, 2018 02:14
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There are definitely cards that have you discard cards at random from your hand and stuff like that, but it's not an entirely common mechanic
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Oct 5, 2018 02:18
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Yeah, the most random thing in MTG is the draws. 70% is a very, very good win percentage because of that. A lot of games were designed to be less random about land, but honestly MTG wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting without it. milkman dad posted:Do you know if that matchmaking is on a per-deck basis? It doesn't forever label you a try-hard does it? It just matches whatever deck you're using on quick play, so you don't get labeled a tryhard if you craft rares. In the events/drafts, it's a free-for-all though. With my fairly lean GW tokens deck i have much harder games on Quick Play than i do in Constructed Event.
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Oct 5, 2018 02:21
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I made a Goblins deck, OP! It's a lot of fun! here's what it looks like I do not know what I'm doing 
Ligament fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 02:22
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Ligament posted:I made a Goblins deck, OP! It's a lot of fun! Soon you'll get the insanely good gobbos like siege-gang commander and chainwhirler.
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Oct 5, 2018 02:36
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You can get 3 free packs with the promo code "PlayRavnica"
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Oct 5, 2018 04:17
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whats a good deck to build towards to get started
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Oct 5, 2018 04:21
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Doorknob Slobber posted:whats a good deck to build towards to get started The Mono-Green deck you get post tutorial is a good start. It ramps up fast and lets you play big fat creatures early. If you want to improve on it, here's some stuff I'd recommend investing in with wildcards. Common: Llanowar Elves (This will ALWAYS be required to have 4 of) Bristling Boar (Not great but a cheap substitute for some high-end creatures) Rabid Bite (Good for removing pesky opposing creatures) Uncommon: Kraul Harpooner (Can be used as both a 2-drop creature of as a removal spell against flying), Blanchwood Armor (cheap but powerful buff that progressively gets stronger), Trashing Brontodon (cheap fatty that can remove annoying enchantments), Vine Mare (low in toughness, but makes up in high attack and hexproof) Rare: Pelt Collector (tiny minion that slowly gets bigger), Steel Leaf Champion (large early threat), Gigantosaurus (Super Chunky minion but there are better options), Ghalta Primal Hunger (Mega fatty that gets cheaper the more creatures you have) Mythic: Nullhide Ferox and Carnage Tyrant (Big fatties with hexproof)
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Oct 5, 2018 04:51
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Doorknob Slobber posted:whats a good deck to build towards to get started The game gives you starter decks and you can earn more as a daily play bonus. I spent most of my cards upfront crafting a "big green" deck and actually regret it. I feel the game is more fun when you play a more control archetype. Unfortunately most budget decks are going to be aggro based. For what it's worth, aggro does make it nice be able to learn the game (much like the zoo archetype in hearthstone was a cheap/easy deck to learn the game with). This deck doesn't seem to bad and is relatively cheap: https://mtgadecks.net/deck/1170
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Oct 5, 2018 04:52
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Looks like there was a huge hubbub about the dual color preconstructed decks for the New Player Experience. There's 10 decks, but you could only get a random 5 out of 10 and not all decks are equally valuable in terms of cards, naturally. Reddit complained. Now you can get all 10, so that's cool. I mean, they shouldn't have been this greedy in the first place, but whatever.
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Oct 5, 2018 13:37
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I'm currently rolling a white/black vampire deck that has been pretty fun. All the life link and flying means I can generally keep throwing punches while dissuading counter attcks. Plus a lot of removals.
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Oct 5, 2018 15:01
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milkman dad posted:The game gives you starter decks and you can earn more as a daily play bonus. I think the budget mono blue tempo deck is a more interesting deck than building out a stompier deck and is less WC-intensive. The best green creatures tend to be mythics/rares. It's really unfortunate(steel leaf, chainwhirler, thorn lieutenant), IMO, that the real value creatures tend to be rare+ This is the kind of deck i'm talking about : https://mtgarena.pro/decks/monobluetempo-2/ The main thing about playing that deck is resisting the urge to tap out, because open mana gives your opponent pause and lets you eat their cards while you out-draw them. You're just looking to attack past each other and you'll win because you can counter and bounce their stuff. It's simple, but it gives you some practice for control play. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 15:07
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is there no option to auto sort your hand? ie lands first then by mana cost/spell type
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Oct 5, 2018 15:32
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Are there any good tweaks to the starting black deck that you can do with the starting wildcards?
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Oct 5, 2018 17:14
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Davincie posted:is there no option to auto sort your hand? ie lands first then by mana cost/spell type I think you have to move them manually. I don’t know what it looks like as an opponent though because you want to be able to track which card was drawn.
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Oct 5, 2018 17:25
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How to Arena First, enter the code "PlayRavnica" in the store to get 3 free packs. You start off with 5 bad mono-colored preconstructed deck. Play one through the initial quests, and the next day you'll get a quest to play one game with a two color precon as a reward. This two color precon is much much better! The Blue White deck is pretty bad (still much better than the mono-colored decks), but the rest are decent starting places. You'll then get a quest to play 40 spells of the colors of that precon. Do it, and the next you'll be eligible for these quests again the next day with a new two color pair. Most of the precons can be minorly improved with cards from the initial starter decks and each other, as well as cards from playing limited or opening packs. They are a good place to start, but I'd recommend against spending wildcards on them. If you still want to, spend common and uncommon wildcards. Rare and mythic wildcards are the most important resource for building real decks, so if you care about that at all, don't spend them on this. If you went to a pre-release, there is a code in each pre-release pack that is good for one sealed event in Arena. If you want to spend money on Arena, the best value is the Welcome Bundle for $5. I would recommend using the gems on Guilds of Ravnica Sealed or bo3 (win two out of three games to win the match) Competitive Drafts. If you just want to buy packs instead, do 2/3 Guilds of Ravnica, 1/3 Dominaria. Bo3 formats are hidden to start, to see them click the button in the top right next to "Arena Play Modes". Some events take gold or gems to enter and some just take gems. The best way to convert gold to gems is through the bo1 (win once to win the match) Quick Draft event. You get enough gold for doing your quests and your first 4 daily wins to do about 1 and 1/2 of these a week. You can get more gold from the Competitive Constructed or Constructed Event queues, though I wouldn't recommend joining them with the precons. The first deck to craft is probably Mono Blue Fliers - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/standard-mono-blue-tempo-60563#online. It only costs 4 rares, and it is fully capable of taking down bo3 Competitive Constructed queues. The key to playing the deck is that your two good cards are Tempest Djinn and Curious Obsession. You almost never play an unprotected Tempest Djinn, or play a Curious Obsession without immediately getting a card off it and preferably having protection too. The other big option is one of the blitzy Mono Red (often called Red Deck Wins or RDW) variants. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/standard-mono-red-aggro-60582#online. You can start with the maindeck for the bo1 Constructed Event at 12 rares, of which 8, 4 copies each of Goblin Chainwhirler and Runaway Steam-Kin, are going to be multi-deck format staples. The sideboard for being bo3 capable will cost a few mythics for another format staple (Rekindling Phoenix) and a few deck-specific rares. The main advantage of this route is that it looks pretty likely that some build of Mono Red will be one of the better decks in the format, and once you have the initial cards there is more customizability to the strategy. You might even end up playing a lot of the cards in a Boros or Jeskai shell. It's also probably a bit more straightforward to play to a decent level. Make sure you finish your quests often enough that you aren't losing any, and cycle between constructed queues to build up a nest egg of gold and spending that on limited queues to get more cards to optimize collection building. Have fun though - play in free play with your modified precons sometimes so you aren't just grinding! You'll be matched up with other people playing non-tier decks. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 17:28
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Passing the turn with full control mode on turns it off again.  Is there a way to keep it on and also pass the turn that I'm missing? edit: Waffleopolis posted:Rare: Pelt Collector (tiny minion that slowly gets bigger) I'm sorry, a what now? 
odiv fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 17:38
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batteries! posted:Are there any good tweaks to the starting black deck that you can do with the starting wildcards? you should probably save your wildcards for something later, the starter decks are all significantly worse than the dual color decks you unlock a copy of every day until you get all 10
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Oct 5, 2018 18:14
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Doorknob Slobber posted:how much in the way of RNG mechanics does it have? the thing i hate about hearthstone is just how many mechanics are tied to "do this random thing". I haven't played MTG in 16 years, but from memory it had almost no RNG The main randomness seems to be what you draw. I haven't played magic in forever either, but I quickly remembered that some games you just get endless lands and some games you don't get enough. Usually if you mulligan your hand to assure some land but not too much things work out, but some games are just not winnable. There's not a lot of card effects that would be random in and of themselves since it's based on a paper card game and you can't do randomness that easily in that format.
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Oct 5, 2018 18:51
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To return to "promo support for FNM sucks now: https://twitter.com/Wizards_MagicEU/status/1048270351371841537?s=19 Nice frames but liked alternative art. But playable to be sure, although they doubled up on Dimir. I recall they did one for each guild over 10 months before, but only after Thermos launched.
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Oct 5, 2018 18:59
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Wrong thread! 
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Oct 5, 2018 19:01
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I want to be clear on the drafting stuff. I am just having fun clicking "Play" and picking a default deck (haven't unlocked them all yet), I don't care about anything competitive anytime soon. When I get more cards I'll mess with custom decks. I have been using my gold to draft from Guilds of Ravnica, before I found this screen where I can draft other packs. I assume those are other/older expansions? Should I also draft from the Core Set if I am starting fresh?
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Oct 5, 2018 19:07
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Wait do you mean the draft format or are you using it to mean "opening packs from"
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Oct 5, 2018 19:16
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NOT_A_VIRUS.EXE posted:I want to be clear on the drafting stuff. I am just having fun clicking "Play" and picking a default deck (haven't unlocked them all yet), I don't care about anything competitive anytime soon. When I get more cards I'll mess with custom decks. So, all of these sets have different cards in them(with a few in common), and generally you'll want to buy packs with the cards you're looking for. One important thing to note is that next year, Ixalan, Rivals, and Dominaria will be rotating out at about this time. That being said, until then, there are some powerful cards even in those sets. The set being drafted is determined by wotc, quick draft will be guilds of ravnica here in a week or so, then Dominaria two weeks after that.
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Oct 5, 2018 19:22
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Doorknob Slobber posted:how much in the way of RNG mechanics does it have? the thing i hate about hearthstone is just how many mechanics are tied to "do this random thing". I haven't played MTG in 16 years, but from memory it had almost no RNG As other people have mentioned, the main randomness (RNG) is in the order of your deck. It's not just your draw, there are a number of mechanics that interact with the top card or top n cards. There are a few other random effects, but they tend not to print them much anymore. The amount and colors of lands vs. spells you draw is where the main variance comes from to keep the games from playing out the same way each time and being stale. The lack of that is why Hearthstone et. all had to introduce more direct RNG mechanics. It's probably a bit too much variance, though. Which is why the bo1 formats on Arena cheat a bit and give you a better (weighted towards average) mix of lands and spells to make it more likely you get to play a functional game. It's also why formats with effects that reduce that variance a bit are the best. Currently it's pretty decent, with Explore, Surveil, and Jumpstart as keywords that help balance your lands and spells. There are also Kicker, Split Cards, and a fairly large number of mana sinks to provide cards that are good with both a little mana and a lot of mana. NOT_A_VIRUS.EXE posted:I want to be clear on the drafting stuff. I am just having fun clicking "Play" and picking a default deck (haven't unlocked them all yet), I don't care about anything competitive anytime soon. When I get more cards I'll mess with custom decks. Draft doesn't mean opening packs. It is a format where you take a single card from a pack at a time, and then pass them around the table (or simulated with AI in Arena) until all the cards are taken. You do this with 3 packs, and then build and play with a 40 card deck from the cards you chose. If you just want to open packs, I'd suggest a mix of 2/3 Guilds of Ravnica, 1/3 Dominaria right now, but any blend of those two is reasonable. Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan are a bit underpowered, and Core Set 2019 has a lot of cards for older formats that don't exist on Arena. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 19:52
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Thanks that clears it up.
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Oct 5, 2018 20:05
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P.S. Do you all like the detailed answers or would you prefer simpler ones?
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Oct 5, 2018 20:07
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I want the details son
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Oct 5, 2018 21:17
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Acronyms that aren't defined in the OP would be a good place to start if you're using them a lot when you're describing stuff. More information however is always better and good on you for giving some. Man I miss the +1/+1 black/green counter deck they gave before the wipe. A little bit of modding and that thing was a BEAST.
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Oct 5, 2018 21:27
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Phrosphor posted:Game has a mechanic where if you play with highly sought after cards (dual lands, certain planeswalkers, premium burn spells - basically tournament standard decks) you will get matched against other people running those decks. If you stick with taplands instead of shocklands and don't craft the bomb rares you can have a lot more fun playing casual magic against other people with casual decks. Yeah and it is by far the dumbest thing I've ever seen an online game do. "Oh you finally grinded enough to make a good deck? Okay, now enjoy playing only against red.dec and U/W Control forever" Like it actually made me play the beta way, way less once I learned it's a real feature and not a conspiracy theory
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Oct 5, 2018 21:46
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Someone sent this to me in a PM, might be good for the OP https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/level-one/level-one-full-course-2015-10-05
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Oct 5, 2018 21:49
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Justin Credible posted:Acronyms that aren't defined in the OP would be a good place to start if you're using them a lot when you're describing stuff. More information however is always better and good on you for giving some. Good point, and I'll edit. For now, bo1 = best of one, bo3 = best two out of three, RNG = randomness (reliance on a random number generator), and M19 = Core Set 2019. precision posted:Yeah and it is by far the dumbest thing I've ever seen an online game do. I feel totally opposite and think it's great. I can play good decks against the meta field or brew jank and play against stuff that doesn't totally destroy it. If I feel the jank might actually be good, I can enter Competitive Constructed events to play it against the meta. As a side note, the bo1 constructed formats have tended to polarize and devolve into Red Deck Wins (RDW) and creatureless Blue White (UW) control over time, at least so far. This is because those are the most extreme strategies, so they usually require specific answers and have cards that they are quite weak to. Without a sideboard, it's incredibly hard to beat both. The bo3 "Competitive Play" ladder has a metagame that is much more like Magic The Gathering Online (MTGO, the old way of playing Magic on a computer) but with more off-meta or incomplete decks, if you are playing something reasonably competitive. If you're playing something less competitive, the matchmaking algorithm will still try to find something around your level. The "Competitive Constructed" event is like MTGO constructed leagues but still a little bit weaker, at least after people get their initial collections together. It doesn't take deck strength into account. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 22:03
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precision posted:Yeah and it is by far the dumbest thing I've ever seen an online game do. You can just play the events because there's no deck-based matchmaking in there. I like quick play for playing comedy decks. quote:As a side note, the bo1 constructed formats tend to polarize and devolve into Red Deck Wins (RDW) and creatureless Blue White (UW) control, at least so far, because those are the most extreme strategies that require specific answers. Without a sideboard it's incredibly hard to beat both. The bo3 "Competitive Play" ladder has a metagame that is much more like Magic The Gathering Online (MTGO, the old way of playing Magic on a computer) but with more off-meta or incomplete decks, if you are playing something reasonably competitive. The "Competitive Constructed" event is like MTGO constructed leagues but still a little bit weaker, at least after people get their initial collections together. I'm finding i can win with midrange in bo1s, but there are particular decks that just have my number in a bad way. I could maindeck kraul harpooners to give the monoblue tempo decks a hard time, but it would worsen my matchups vs control. Finding the balance is pretty important. The reason i'm not doing bo3s yet is because some critical SB cards are rares. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Oct 5, 2018 |
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Oct 5, 2018 22:10
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for all the talk of the matchmaker setting you up with similar deck i run into the merfolk precon a LOT with my extremely bad low power goblin tribal deck thats just for funsies and basically cant win because arena seems to think its way better than it is
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Oct 5, 2018 22:53
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i can't believe theres still no chat, saying good game is no replacement for communication!
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Oct 5, 2018 22:59
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The only thing Magic Arena needs to do to get to number one in the digital card game space is add the Sorry emote that Hearthstone took away
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Oct 5, 2018 23:01
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