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Came back to Arena for first time in a while - thought my kid might want to play Jumpstart. I took "Into the Skies"/"Well Read", and figured I'd do OK when I saw my cards. Cheap flyers, Curiosity, and a couple random overcosted-big-flyer rares. Only removal was a couple Capture Spheres, but figured that'd be fine. Turns out the format is way faster/stronger than I thought, and it took me a ton of games to get 2 wins; blowout loss after hopeless loss after instant loss. Finally won against 2 "walls and no-removal" decks in a row. The book-islands are kind of cool though. jmzero fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 20:07
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Wacky Delly posted:This event is great. Lets me use this dumb Peer into the Abyss deck without using wildcards. Yep, this has been great - and most people seem to have got into the spirit of the thing and are playing jank. I've been running "Phyrexian Obliterator + a pile of fight effects". Mega stupid - and basically can't win against lots of "real" decks - but it's hilarious against random Timmy mutate/dinosaur/hydra nonsense. It also does pretty well against Goblins, which a few people are trying. It takes a lot of attackers to threaten you when you have 2 Obliterators out, and Pounce + Back For More in hand. I've had turns where I nuke like 20 permanents. Also, Chevill is just a super fun card.
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Jul 25, 2020 05:08
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Carillon posted:While we're complaining about cards I'd like to bitch about Ugin. It just sucks all the remaining fun out of the game to me. Yeah.. there's lots of games where I've been way behind against an interesting-looking deck, and then just Oogey'd them out of existence. Does feel fun-policey sometimes, and the drawback of the card - costing 8 - just isn't that big of a hurdle right now (you can often even get to Ugin + counter backup mana if you're in a dedicated ramp deck). I don't think Ugin is wrecking the competitive meta, but he definitely poops on the casual meta in Arena. I'll admit I do enjoy it when someone's spamming "Good Game" because they have 50 things out while you have 3 life left and no cards.. and then Ugin shows up and you just win anyway.
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Jul 30, 2020 00:15
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Zero VGS posted:I just want to grief everyone in Standard with bogles. gently caress your interaction I'm playing solo. Lots of people are running a mutate deck that's essentially bogles. Use Paradise Druid as the base, which means you're hexproof until you either make 100 things with Auspicious Starrix, or can win in a single attack. It's not super great (especially not great against sweepers, but at least there's not a ton of edicts) but gets you the same sort of feel as Bogles.
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Jul 31, 2020 23:34
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The Klowner posted:pros: I think you're underselling that second point. If you just want to play games with your janky standard deck, you can do that 24/7 on Arena for free - and it'll match you against other bad players playing stupid garbage. You could technically, theoretically do the same on MODO, but it was always difficult to find a game (unless you were in the "competitive testing" rooms and had an in-meta deck). People in "free" games were perpetually quitting/raging because your deck was too bad/good/"uncreative"/blue/weird. Automatic, skill/deck-based matchmaking (and a steady drip of daily rewards for playing) means casual play is viable on Arena in a way it never was on MODO. And your daily rewards are enough to open a pack or do a draft once in a while. I play as much Magic as I want, and it's free. Arena also has some big advantages for streamers/stream-viewers. I come in and out of Magic every few years, and the plugin that shows cards in streams is a godsend when you've been away for a while. Once Arena supports some more stream-friendly formats (eg. an expanded "historic cube"), I think we'll see fewer and fewer MODO streams.
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Aug 1, 2020 23:35
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Jabor posted:Building a "good deck" is really fun, if you're happy with just "good" and don't need it to be "the best ever that's going to win top-level tournaments". The other thing I'll note is that there's no reason to ride the upgrade treadmill if you don't have some other goal beyond "having fun playing Magic" (eg. climbing the ranked ladder or something). Assuming you're just playing some games, Arena is match-made well enough that you're going to win about half your games no matter what you play. If I wanted a better deck, I'd spend my wild-cards building mono-red. But I don't want to play games with mono-red; it has the worst enjoyment pattern: your wins are quick, your losses tend to drag, and lots of times you end up with no decisions. Or I could spend rares on dual lands. Those would make my decks a bit faster (and sometimes more consistent) but otherwise function just the same. Instead, I play Evolving Wilds and the like - and it makes no difference in the end because I end up playing against decks that are a step slower, just like mine is. Dual lands are simultaneously some of the best value (if you want to make good decks) and worst value (if you want to dick around). I spent my last wildcards on Chevill and Fiend Artisan, because they make for fun games that play different. I'll soon forget about that and go on to the next dumb thing. I'd rather have jank versions of 10 decks than a "proper" version of 2. (This is one thing I kind of miss from MODO; in MODO there was a real trading economy, so you could get jank rares for super cheap. That's super cool, and I built some fun decks back in the day - the problem was finding a game. That's where Arena casual really excels.) jmzero fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Aug 5, 2020 |
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Aug 5, 2020 20:08
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Tezzeract posted:Is Play Queue more jank friendly? I don't remember the starters being very competitive on it. If you play a chunk of games, you'll win about 50% with the starter decks. You might lose a few to start (possibly badly). The matchmaker appears to use a "player rating" + "deck strength" sort of metric, so it might take some games to adjust. Like, I came back this month after a year or two out, and for a while I won like 95% of my games (with starter decks, against actual new players). Then that stabilized at 50%, and it's done a good job of keeping me there - whether I'm playing "3/4 of a reasonably competitive looking ramp deck", "every dog card in my collection", or "starter with 4 rares swapped in".
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Aug 5, 2020 21:12
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Shooting Blanks posted:Vintage would actually be a motherfucker to include due to the sheer number of mechanics, and how to deal with wildcards for things like Black Lotus. There's lots of old mechanics that would be annoying to implement - not so much for rules usually (they worked through this stuff for MODO fine, and probably can leverage a lot of the card mappings) but because they'd require UI changes. Like, they'd have to tweak the interface for attacking to support Banding. I mean, they also need to create an "auto-yield" interface at some point (and fix blocking) but those aren't new problems, just magnified by wacky board states in old formats. But they also don't need any Banding to have a solid Vintage Cube - or even for a playable "Almost Vintage" format. Few of the cards people actually play in Vintage have wacky rules/mechanics; I'm sure someone loves their Opalesence/Humility or Turbo-Draw Parallax Wave decks, but most of us can live without any of those. I can't imagine they won't do this eventually, probably by building out "Masters" style sets to get the cards people actually care about via packs/drafts etc like any other set (and making this a separate format from what's currently "Historic"). (Benalish Hero + Phyrexian Obliterator does sound kind of awesome though)
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Aug 12, 2020 18:48
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endlessmonotony posted:If you want to play Standard right now, here's a helpful tip - don't! What's the colorless card that's ruining Standard right now? Fabled Passage? Ugin? Turdcoil Serpent?
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Aug 19, 2020 21:50
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I thought people were being too hard on the "bot draft" mode... but I just tried one for M21, and it was mega dumb. I don't know what the bot is picking, but if I had just been playing 24-pack-sealed I don't think I could have made a better Conclave Mentor deck. 4 mentors, and everything else I could want (in terms of common/uncommons anyway). Like, I had to cut an Angelic Ascension and was on the fence about cutting the 3rd Basri's Acolyte because I had so much nonsense. Went 7-1, with lots of turn 4-5 kills/concessions. Only loss was to double (?!?) Traitorous Greed borrowing 18 power. Maybe just weird luck - but nothing about the draft felt realistic/not-crazy. I bot drafted other sets years ago; don't remember it being this dumb.
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Aug 20, 2020 23:31
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house of the dad posted:Field is a problem. It should be banned. it's a card that shouldn't have been printed in the first place. I assume it wouldn't actually work good (because it never does), but it seems like Necromentia should be good in the Field mirror.
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Aug 21, 2020 02:43
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Bugsy posted:It was on "sale" along with several of the previous secret lair sleeves yesterday. I've been F2P for a while, but I bought in for some sleeves. I'm not overly stoked about the borderless cars (or the Godzilla alts) - but I'd def pay for these slimes:  Lone Goat posted:Also it lets you look at all the cool art. Really happy with "predator" forest and "well-read" islands, but all the swamps I have are bland. Any real good ones available in Arena? Right now I'm using the WotS ones with the glowing sphere thing.
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Aug 24, 2020 20:24
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fadam posted:(New Nahiri) Seems kind of medium idk. My bet is they print some very strong equipment with cheap casting cost and high equip cost. Otherwise I don't see how this adds up to enough. The Jace seems pretty meh too. He's annoying to get rid of and could put out a lot of scrying, but he also doesn't really demand an answer in a lot of matchups; like, aggro decks will not shed too many tears about a 5 CMC super-Mazemind-Tome. I think I'd usually rather have 4-Teferi. But if the format is slower or has some Superfriend support, he could be good.
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Aug 26, 2020 19:19
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VictualSquid posted:And it ended with the true draft experience. By which I mean I spent 20 minutes thinking I can win if I draw anything but a land followed by 10 minutes thinking I win if I draw a land, giving my my 3 losses in "quick" succession. I've enjoyed Eldraine drafts; I like how different the archetypes feel, and I like the grindy attrition battles that seem to come up often... but the drafts (and games) can also be very swingy. Moreso than other sets, it feels like your draft often hinges on how many of the key uncommons show up around you and in what order. You can draft a very reasonable GB+food deck that's well built - but it'll mostly get whomped by bad one that has more Deathless Riders or Trail of Crumbs or whatever. Having more bombs at uncommon is cool in some ways (and fun when you get them), but means more bomb dominated games. And screw Lochmere Serpent - absolutely amazing card, but 3 games in that draft it was in the bottom 4 cards of my library (and it only managed to single-handedly win 2 of those).
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Sep 3, 2020 16:15
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BizarroAzrael posted:Was Yargle "a thing"? If they did this with Fblthip I'd understand. For a while streamers tried to force Yargle into drafts - kind of a memey thing. And these cards are great; I'd absolutely buy these styles in Arena (at least for the cards I use). The art on Explore is perfect... and I like that Anger of the Gods would do just enough damage to kill the original Yargle.
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Sep 3, 2020 18:42
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ex post facho posted:go mill baby love da mill Crap. Mill is fun when it's almost viable - but if it's actually good that makes for a painful format. Obviously I'll play it, though, especially if there's enough flash to make Slitherwisp work in it. On other topic - this seems like a super medium 4-3 deck, right?  No super bad cards, decent removal, but no real bombs beyond Twinblade. Went 7-1. Coming in, I would have valued Heroic Intervention as sort of a C+, but it pretty much instantly won 3 games (and "just" saved a creature a couple more times). Maybe just luck, but it seems like the fantasy blowout scenarios come up much more often than I would have expected.
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Sep 9, 2020 06:09
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Time posted:The magic has been good but the production has not :/ I just watched the Manfield game. Seth gets some "local hotties in your area" desktop notification, then Gusts Snoop instead of Chieftain meaning an instant loss. Then opponent Seizes away Gust instead of Disdainful Stroke, meaning that the Muxus in his hand - that Seth can see from his own Thoughtseize, so he obviously will play around - is now dead (and he finishes losing over the next few turns). Bizarre.
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Sep 10, 2020 21:36
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Time posted:it should be noted that even coco only had 12 copies in the top 8. pretty good tournament overall, like 5 distinct decks in top 8 and of the jund decks there were some really divergent builds that play and play against way differently Yeah - these games in the top 8 have been pretty good to watch, good variety from game to game, and the winners final games were straight-up excellent. Tons of super tough decisions.
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Sep 12, 2020 23:46
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Shrecknet posted:LegendVD managed to end up getting a draw in a game he technically won by add 460+ Scute Swarm triggers to the stack. I believe it. I've run into a few people running the 11 * Anointed Procession deck. It's bizarre that the server chokes on such small numbers of items (in this case, a couple thousand copies of some creature), or that they don't just bound these to 200 or something if there's some part of the chain that can't deal with this many items.
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Sep 18, 2020 03:20
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Shooting Blanks posted:It would be really interesting to see how the current standard meta would stack up to previous standard metas from, say, 5 years ago or 7 years ago. What's crazy to me is that standard still feels so strong after 45 bans. Like, imagine UG decks with Growth Spiral, Once Upon A Time, Veil of Summer, f'ing Okko, Field of the Dead, and Agent of Treachery all available. Plus Teferi if you add white. Oh and Wilderness Rec maybe. Not sure what exactly the best deck would be, but there's a ton of power there.
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Sep 20, 2020 19:24
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flatluigi posted:can we retire this post now that half the cards people list rotated out Whoops - didn't realize I was looking at an old ban list. Or making a cliche comment.
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Sep 20, 2020 20:35
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Funso Banjo posted:This month is awesome, everyone is playing bad decks in historic, trying to force new cards into their decks. The best place to farm right now is Ikoria Quick Draft; I never drafted Ikoria while it was out, but God I've had some easy runs this week (while the good drafters are all playing the new set). The downside is my rating is inflated, so I get stomped when I do real drafts (Zendikar seems hard).
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Sep 22, 2020 23:54
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resting bort face posted:What does this thread think about roping against opponents playing Omnath/Uro/Scute Swarm in the casual play queue? It seems like they've broken (or reset?) their deck strength matchmaking in Play queue - it used to do better at avoiding huge mismatches, now it seems pretty random.
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Sep 24, 2020 02:27
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Kept 3 lands, and next 9 draws were lands (12 of first 16 cards were lands, with 16 lands in 40 card deck). My quick Excel'ing suggests that draw sequence is a 0.0018% event. (http://imgur.com/a/E9EBSW9 somehow I apparently can't make that a timg?) Won the game - opponent had no answer to Auspicious Starrix beatdown. Quick Play queues man; it's great.
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Sep 25, 2020 17:44
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Mooseontheloose posted:how did something like scute swarm make it through play testing? It's not a problem balance wise, but the software breaks at very medium numbers of Scutes (especially if there's a Yorvo in play, God). Like, I can understand developers not being ready for bizarre combos - but with Scute Swarm, getting 50 of them is a normal play pattern they should have been ready for. Oh, and the SCG tournament (on now) is super dumb. It's pretty much just Omnath, and the commentary is 80% groaning. I'm glad they're likely banning Uro, but I don't think it'll be enough. jmzero fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 21:43
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Leperflesh posted:I imagine this idea is super stupid for several reasons I'm not considering, and probably if it had even a chance of reducing WotC's revenue from Arena it's a total nonstarter anyway. I'm just spitballing. The closest thing I could imagine working would be a way for cards (usually "less played" ones) to "go on sale" on the Featured store tab - and sell them for "downshifted wildcards", or multiples for a single wildcard or whatever. Or just gold/gems, but they seem to have been resistant to that. The motivation for WotC here would be to keep people engaged and checking the store daily (the same reason they sometimes give away a few gems, or cheap packs). It would also provide another sink for wildcards, and perhaps encourage people to try new decks, which might prompt further purchases to complete. But I'm not sure it'd be a net positive for them. Honestly I'm impressed at how restrained they've been with monetizing Arena; they're not ultra-F2P-friendly or something, but they could be so, so much worse. Mrenda posted:Just some system for playing around without having to commit your rare wildcards permanently. They have done "build a deck with anything" limited time events before - and I hope they do more of these, they make for super fun/varied games. jmzero fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 21:57
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Mooseontheloose posted:I mean I suppose that's true in the same way playing a 8/8 creature with no downside on say turn four doesn't do anything until it kills you. Even a vanilla creature does stuff other than swing for damage (block, clear planeswalkers). But also, your example is mostly correct. Like, Gigantosaurus is pretty much the creature you describe (bigger even, and often out on turn 3 or 4), and it didn't see much play because it didn't do enough to affect the board.
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Sep 29, 2020 21:56
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Mike N Eich posted:If it wasn't for Omnath I'd say Zendikar Rising really helps mix play up in Magic. I feel like I have *way* more decisions to make in a game than I used to due to the MDFCs which really help the game out. It feels really weird to feel good about hands that have only 1 land in them, but it can often be the right call if you have a couple double faced cards. Yeah - I'd vote to have MDFCs be an evergreen mechanic, and I'd be happy with them appearing in every set (at about the same rate as they do in ZNR). Lots of Magic-like games have had mechanics like this - you can always play cards either as mana or as a spell/creature. Those games don't have mana screw/flood, but they also have less deck-building decisions. MDFC's do a good job of letting players add consistency while balancing that decision against power/speed. They also do a good job of preserving "color commitments" in deck-building (ie. they still impose a cost on adding more colors). Best new mechanic in a long time.
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Oct 7, 2020 18:53
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Bust Rodd posted:I really don’t understand why people are acting like Adventure decks become unplayable if clover is banned and not merely still one of the best archetypes with the best interaction and value creatures in the format... It wouldn't be absolutely unplayable or something, but it'd be a huge hit. One of the reasons I find the deck unsatisfying to run (pre-Omnath and now) is that it feels like winning/losing so often comes down to how many clovers you draw. When you don't draw any the deck is not great - I have to think it's Tier 2 or 3. Naturally Bonecrusher and Borrower would still get played - but if people still ran Innkeepers, I think it'd be part of a very different Gruul shell or something.
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Oct 9, 2020 17:27
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Bust Rodd posted:Like the landfall triggers in this current block are actually insanely weak and boring, compared to all the other awesome bomb landfall triggers... except for Omnath, who basically got all the awesome Landfall triggers for himself while every other landfall card in the set is basically a P/T boost or Ruin crab. It’s very weird. I would MUCH rather play in an environment with lots of good landfall creatures instead of this where Omnath and Cobra are the only ones worth running. With a few bans, I think Felidar Retreat could be a real thing. But in general I agree; I would have appreciated some weirder ones, even if they were only good enough for limited.
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Oct 11, 2020 15:06
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thespaceinvader posted:Balancing a card to be played in two to three copies fairly often, and only one copy most of the time, seems like it's asking for trouble. It's weird because for a while they seemed to have learned their lesson about safety valves on repeatable effects. For some time, it seemed like even fairly innocuous-looking triggered abilities usually had small costs inserted - like "whenever Y, you may pay 1 to X" or "whenever Y, lose 1 life and do X". Let players get value, but preserve some kind of "scaling" so that it doesn't overwhelm the rest of the design. Lucky Clover having no such cost really did feel like a reversion to an old kind of mistake. Anywho, I'm sad that a fun design had to go, but it was definitely the right call.
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Oct 13, 2020 18:23
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DMW45 posted:What do y'all think? I had OK luck with a similar-ish Uro draw-2 deck a while back, but hadn't come back to it post ban/Zendikar. Looks fun, and I admire your willingness to commit so hard to theme. I'm often too wishy-washy in deckbuilding, and dilute the core plan with random "good stuff".
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Oct 13, 2020 22:49
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witchy posted:Constructed mythic is mostly getting reps in on the ranked ladder. You can netdeck any tier 1 list and grind up even with mediocre win rates. Limited mythic is generally harder to get. You can still grind it to some extent by saving up a lot of gold or bulk buying gems for entry but it's much less consistent than jamming constructed with an optimized deck that does most of the work for you. The irony being that while hitting mythic in limted is harder the tournaments you qualify for are in constructed so if you want to compete it's probably better to just grind ladder to learn the meta and how to pilot your deck I usually only do quick draft, and I don't often get matched up against top-ranked mythic players (say, top 200). But when I do, their decks always seem bonkers, with multiple on-theme rares and generally super-consistent high power level. I'm sure they're better drafters and know the bots better and what not.. but does the ranking system do anything (other than "keep charging entry fees") to prevent people from just dropping out of drafts until they get a bonkers deck?
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Oct 16, 2020 17:03
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Usually it feels like I have two sets of standard decks - real decks and the goofy decks I use in Play queue. Now it feels like it's just one pile. Like, my mono-green deck looks a lot more "real" than the thread-inspired Ageless Insight pile, or the GB Foodventures I'm messing with... but I think they all have similar win rates. I'm sure some more solid tiers will crop up over time, but standard feels more open than any standard I remember.
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Oct 18, 2020 18:12
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VictualSquid posted:My main problem with landfall is that cobra turns still take forever. Yeah - they really need an "Always yield to this ability" option - and not only should it yield, it should suppress (or drastically speed up) the animations and the effect-card-transition thing. After that, they should have a permanent "suppress animations for this card" option. I don't mind seeing the Realm-Cloaked Giant slap-wrath-thing once in a blue moon, but I'd be a happier person if I could permanently turn off Fabled Passage, Uro-face, and Brazen Borrower's dipshit grin.
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Oct 20, 2020 20:19
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wolfman101 posted:I had been thinking for a while there had to be a way to make a deck with Vito and Life Goes On work. Vito + Life Goes on is either an 8 or a 16 point swing in life totals for four mana. I tried putting it in a ramp deck and an aggro deck. Ramp was okay, aggro was bad. Finally, it seems to work best in a midrange deck with no ramp. This is a FTP deck so I think there are a few changes that could be made. Maybe a couple turntimbers and swap a pickax for a second troll. Vito combos are more spectacular in historic, where you can play Revival/Revenge or Exquisite Blood.
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Oct 21, 2020 23:16
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Grifter posted:P1P1: Maul vs. Roost. What do you think? Man, that's a nice problem to have. I'd take the Maul, with the power tiebreak decided on flexibility. It's amazing in any deck that has white. Meanwhile, you can easily get pushed off good-Roost-value if other people are on the kicker plan (which they seem to be often).
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Oct 23, 2020 18:16
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thespaceinvader posted:Bot drafting is better if you're bad at it, you need about a 60% winrate to make premier drafting work IIRC, and gives you twice as many entries for your gold, and the rewards are the same or close to the same for the first two or three wins. But the rewards are way worse if you are good at it since the number of packs scales so much better in premier. The other thing to note is that the caliber of play is lower in quick draft (which is good when you're starting) and it gives you time to read all the cards or consult with a draft guide to help you evaluate a pick (also very important when getting started).
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Oct 25, 2020 15:05
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Technowolf posted:Looking for comments on my latest ZNR draft: I would have taken Nahiri's Binding over Angelheart Protector P1P3. Angelhearts won't normally be hard to pick up later if you want them. I would have taken another Blight Priest over Kitesail Cleric P3P3. You should be pushing all-in on these cleric interactions as they all make each other better. I would definitely be running the last Kor Celebrant and Angelheart (remove the Mesa Lynx's). Kor Celebrant is exactly what you want in this deck, and Angelheart is... a cleric. Edit: And maybe go down one land for a Subtle Strike? Anywho, overall, I think you should do pretty well here. jmzero fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Oct 29, 2020 |
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Oct 29, 2020 07:14
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Bland posted:Circle of Loyalty, Cauldron of Eternity, and some kind of mirror or something idk Lol - until these posts, I had thought the black part of this cycle was Bolas's Citadel (seemed reasonable... expensive colored artifact with big splashy effect). I was on Magic break when these sets came out. I thought Bolas had invaded fairy world or something.
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Oct 29, 2020 20:14
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