Magic the Gathering Arena: Bawlers' Guildhall

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lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

I started trying this out yesterday and I'm a bit lost on a couple of things. How do you know the rarity of cards without looking them up? Why did I stop earning XP after playing for a while and does that even matter? I don't seem to be getting any rewards for winning any more. I unlocked the red/green gruul deck by doing the tutorial and it said that I could unlock a new deck today but the timer seems to have locked itself out at 0:00 and it says I'll get a new one tomorrow so I'm confused.

I made a deck based around proliferation and giving my monsters tokens but didn't spend any of my craft tokens yet and it seems to be doing okay. Without spending anything is it better for me to just kick around in standard. Is there any benefit to playing the ladder over this? Sorry if these are all explained in the OP, I did read it but again I'm a little lost with some of this stuff.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2020 22:44

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 22:13

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Thanks guys, that answers everything pretty much except for the thing where I can't play for a new deck. Any idea why that would be? The timer ran out.

[edit] I spent all my gold on packs so I don't have enough to join anything. Guess I'll wait until tomorrow.

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# ¿ Mar 17, 2020 23:36

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

The clock reset when I got my new daily quests so I got a white/blue deck. I made a blue deck with it and what I had that draws lots of cards. It's kinda fun. I've enough to join an event now I think but I'll wait for a bit more and play around with what I have. Still haven't spent any of my wildcards yet. It seems like a bad idea until you unlock all the free stuff in case some of the free decks have.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2020 12:30

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Brawl is a 4 player free for all with commanders.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2020 13:42

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

As soon as I hit silver rank I am getting destroyed so I switched back to play and I can win sometimes. I tried an event as well, lost three matches in a row to some really good decks I would never have been able to win against. I think I'll leave them alone for a while. I might try a draft, at least the playing field is level there right?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2020 23:18

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Another newbie question for you nice folks, could someone give me some info on the seasons and stuff. Like is it a bad idea to open certain types of packs because they can't be used any more or something like that? How often does this happen? Do people have to constantly rebuild their decks every X weeks/months?

# ¿ Mar 20, 2020 12:43

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Okay so the Theros ones are the ones that will be around longest from what's available right now?

# ¿ Mar 20, 2020 13:33

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Tried a couple of drafts just now. It's pretty fun. My first draw on the first one was a mythic land which was a bit disappointing. I can't seem to get passed three wins though. Anyone got any tips for drafting?

# ¿ Mar 20, 2020 23:25

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Just beat my first theros draft with blue white aura deck. I got so caught up I thought I had one win less than I did. poo poo is fun.

Also unrelatedly got a dimir surveil deck and I really like it. Is there a good source for improving the free decks.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 00:19

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

thespaceinvader posted:

1: basically look out of silly mistakes. It's relatively rare that the early game plays more than algorithmically (curving out is ideal) but in the later game it's easy to miss mistakes when you're playing. A nd obviously watch out for any dumb errors, it's easy to lose a game because of a misplay.

2: Lots.

3: Patiently by F2P or by paying lots of money for it. A lot of the best drafters have twitch streams and patreons and it's a business expense. it's also perhaps worth noting that there are people, as I understand it, who simply don't bother playing out decks they think aren't very good, and resign, so they will advance much more quickly in ranking, potentially.

It can be super hard to judge whether you lost becase you drafted a bad deck from a good set of packs, drafted as good a deck as you could from a bad set of packs, drew badly with it, drew against very strong/weak opponents, or whether you actually made mistakes that you could rectify though. This thread can help a lot with the first couple of bits, much less with the latter, beyond pointing out combos/interactions to look out for of which you might not have been aware.

I'd be game to take a vague look over some matches and see if I can spot any obvious errors but I'm not the best at doing so given that I'm still not great at draft myself. My winrate in Theros (my best format by a mile and the most complete dataset I have) is 47% at present, and I have a couple of drafts in the pipeline tomorrow to (hopefully) improve it.

My best performing archetype by FAR is red/white heroes (62% over 50 games), but that's not the best in the format by a long way, it's just a wheelhouse in which I'm super comfortable.

If you go into the relevant event and build a deck from within its deck selection screen it should default to that format.

E:

Congrats, yeah, drafting is super fun, and the games are also super fun when they go well. You're doign way better than me, I didn't get my first 7-win draft til this set, so it took me like 4 months.

There aren;t any resources for improving the starter decks that I know of - they're mostly pretty aggressively mediocre, and I'd honestly be surprised if many people still have them saved to check how to improve them - maybe chuck up the decklist and see what people suggest.

I added the dismal backwaters and one other card but I can't remember what it was but here it is.

Deck
1 Disinformation Campaign (GRN) 167
2 Artful Takedown (GRN) 151
2 House Guildmage (GRN) 177
2 Deadly Visit (GRN) 68
2 Whispering Snitch (GRN) 90
2 Whisper Agent (GRN) 220
1 Thought Erasure (GRN) 206
2 Dimir Spybug (GRN) 166
2 Nightveil Predator (GRN) 191
2 Notion Rain (GRN) 193
2 Tyrant's Scorn (WAR) 225
2 Discovery // Dispersal (GRN) 223
1 Etrata, the Silencer (GRN) 170
1 Thief of Sanity (GRN) 205
1 Doom Whisperer (GRN) 69
1 Blood Operative (GRN) 63
1 Connive // Concoct (GRN) 222
1 Mission Briefing (GRN) 44
2 Thoughtbound Phantasm (GRN) 55
2 Nightveil Sprite (GRN) 48
2 Unexplained Disappearance (GRN) 56
1 Citywatch Sphinx (GRN) 33
1 Watery Grave (GRN) 259
4 Dimir Guildgate (GRN) 245
7 Island (GRN) 261
8 Swamp (GRN) 262
4 Dismal Backwater (M20) 245
1 Price of Fame (GRN) 83

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 09:09

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

thespaceinvader posted:

P1P1 should be Final Death. So should P2P1 probably.

Generally: well built decks are LEAN as heck. You don't tend to see 2-ofs and 1-ofs except for really expensive bombs, and frequently even then you''ll see multiple copies because in most matches you still only actually draw half to a quarter of your deck, and because you want to be able to deal with removal - Fires of Invention is a key example, it's a relatively cheap card you cannot benefit from having more than one of in play except as protection against removal, but almost every deck runs 4 in the maindeck (and the ones that keep one in the sideboard almost certainly do so because they hav Fae of Wishes to get it back out and essentially act as 4 more backup copies if necessary), simply because you NEED to have it in play on turn 4, so you need to maximise your chance of drawing it BY turn 4. Surveil smooths this out a lot so you can get away with fewer copies of your bombs, but in general what you probably want to do is think about what works well and what works poorly, take out the bad things, and add more of the good things. In particular, Etrata is a key bomb you absolutely want all 4 copies of, to maximise your chance of redrawing her so you can keep using her, but the starter deck only comes with a single copy.

I set this as an exercise rather than just telling you what to do because honestly, I don't remember Surveil decks all that well - I found them among the more interesting starter decks though..

The only thing I would suggest additionally is to look through Theros and find some Escape cards that work well within the deck (though unfortunately for this deck concept the Surveil keyword isn't used elsewhere, even on cards using the mechanic like Eat to Extinction), because with it being Surveil into graveyard rather than Scry to bottom of deck, you really want to have a few cards where chucking them into the discard helps, rather than being essentially neutral.

You could also look at Narcomoeba and Creeping Chill from that perspective. Potentially also some really expensive difficult to cast creatures and things like Blood for Bones or Bond of Revival, because again having easy access to your yard means you can use those mechanics without relying on your opponent to kill your creatures for you. The obvious candidate for that is Agent of Treachery.

Thanks for all the advice. I just unlocked five decks that I'm going to play around with for a while. I am gonna hold off on spending wildcards until the new season kicks off and then I'll revisit. Blue/Black is my favourite combo so far though.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 11:48

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Okay I changed my mind about Dimir. Izzet Syndicate is hilarious and tricksy. Often I've come to the brink of death to all of a sudden pull it out by cascading tons of spells. So many triggers. I am out of free decks now but it's super nice that they give you them to get a taste of what things can do.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2020 16:30

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Seems like the servers have poo poo themselves.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2020 21:05

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

As a newbie I'm just wondering about enchantments, they seem a bit overpowered due to being quite difficult to remove compared to almost everything else.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2020 09:07

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Are these new 50 bux things worth getting?

# ¿ Apr 3, 2020 10:51

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

I was telling my wife about the godzilla card and then the pangolin. She said she ate pangolin once and that's my pangolin story.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2020 11:00

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

thespaceinvader posted:

Only if you desperately want the cosmetics; IIRC the packs aren't great value compared to bulk buying them direct, the levels will come anyway if you meet your dailies (I'm over 100 starting from 0 with two weeks still to go), and the sealed entries aren't as good value as just buying into them without everything else. The cards are craftable so they're definitely not worth your resources.

Better to just get the mastery pass when it comes out unless you're really desperate for the shinies.

Thanks, that's what i thought. I'm planning on trying the mastery this time. I started a couple of weeks ago and I'm at 20something so I figured it'd be worth it.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2020 11:04

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

What's the difference with traditional draft and ranked draft? Don't you get the same amount of cards for each draft? I thought the only difference was bo1 vs bo3.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2020 14:17

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

What's a decent amount of wildcards to have before considering spending them on a deck. I'm still using my jank decks with the extra cards I've picked up along the way. I've no idea how much a decent competitive deck would be.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2020 14:25

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

I played against a petitioner deck recently and managed to win.

I am holding out until the new set arrives. I was just curious how many rares and mythic on average a dect deck would use.

The biggest issue with the starter decks is the randomness. You have very little of four of the same cards so getting the ones you need when you need them is based of luck.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2020 15:11

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Thanks that's the kind of info I wanted. It gives me something to aim for at the least.

Picking the deck I want to play will be the hard part.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2020 15:25

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

I've no intention on spending all my wild cards right now. I'm still having fun with my jank. I'm running a cobbled together grixis deck at the moment relying on taplands and luck.

I just wanted to get an idea on the amounts a good deck typically use. I don't want some cookie cutter anyway.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2020 19:09

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Would you lose the mutation on something like Etrata the silencer after she hits?

# ¿ Apr 13, 2020 13:51

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Jabor posted:

One of them includes a bunch of mastery pass levels, which is literally worthless if you don't plan on buying the mastery pass (and is only worth a few uncommon icrs if you do buy it and then play a bunch...), so don't get that one.

The other one is a bunch of boosters at worse rates than if you'd get from draft, so if you think you'll enjoy drafting this set and want to do a lot of it then don't get that one either.

The first one includes the mastery pass FYI. It still seems over priced though.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2020 06:45

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

The most annoying matches I find are catoven and especially white life gain but only because the loving triggers take so long to resolve.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2020 10:04

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

What's a good way for a newbie to start out in the new release. Draft? Will there be a playikoria code?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2020 22:54

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Maintenance has started I think.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2020 16:03

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Eej posted:

Ah, the Pod Drafting Experience�

e: that guy had 5 packs lined up about a minute later

Can you explain what's happening here for a newbie please.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2020 16:55

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Part way through my first player draft. Got a companion creature that forces you to take odd cmc cards but it gives everything double damage. Everything. It's good. I'm at 4 wins 2 losses with jank.

https://scryfall.com/card/iko/228/obosh-the-preypiercer

lemonadesweetheart fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Apr 16, 2020

# ¿ Apr 16, 2020 18:54

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Queued to log in. Teach me for putting my son to bed.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2020 19:43

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

If anyone has spare codes I'd appreciate it. I live in the middle of nowhere.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2020 16:55

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Auspicious Starrix is good.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2020 13:11

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

This is probably just bias but I'm getting the shittiest hands lately. It seems like the majority of the time I'm getting two lands or less on my first hand with the recommended lands in deck. I hope it's just a bad beat and not something screwy with their algorithms.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 07:41

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Most of the dual colour starting decks aren't awful. Just add things as you get them from the daily wins and save up your gold until you can get a draft or two to get more cards. Just use gold for drafting or for crazy things like when they sell gems like the deal the other day. Make sure you do the colour quest to completion and just keep playing daily to unlock more decks. Save all your wild cards until you commit to a specific set you want.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 09:10

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

All the decks I played against so far where mono-black in the singleton.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2020 10:08

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Even if you don't spend wildcards on it Brawl can be incredibly fun. I'd also recommend the Singleton going on right now.

Also if anyone wants to give some codes later I'd be very appreciative and say thanks and stuff.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2020 13:15

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Bust Rodd posted:

Golgari Players, has this ever happened to you?! You got Izoni, Thousand-Eyed in your hand, and you're looking at like maybe 3-4 bugs and just not feeling like the value is where you want it?

Look no further!

Commander
1 Izoni, Thousand-Eyed (GRN) 180

Companion
1 Umori, the Collector (IKO) 231

Deck
1 Fiend Artisan (IKO) 220
1 Cavalier of Thorns (M20) 167
1 Skull Prophet (IKO) 206
1 Glowspore Shaman (GRN) 173
1 Nightmare Shepherd (THB) 108
1 Temple of Malady (M20) 254
1 Golgari Guildgate (GRN) 249
1 Field of Ruin (XLN) 254
1 Meteor Golem (M20) 232
1 Steelbane Hydra (ELD) 322
1 Kogla, the Titan Ape (IKO) 162
1 Gemrazer (IKO) 155
1 Cavalier of Night (M20) 94
1 Thrashing Brontodon (M20) 197
1 Dirge Bat (IKO) 84
1 Murderous Rider (ELD) 97
1 Woe Strider (THB) 123
1 Boneyard Lurker (IKO) 178
1 Jungle Hollow (IKO) 249
1 Overgrown Tomb (GRN) 253
1 Deathless Knight (ELD) 208
1 Castle Garenbrig (ELD) 240
1 Castle Locthwain (ELD) 241
1 Gilded Goose (ELD) 160
1 Humble Naturalist (IKO) 160
1 Ilysian Caryatid (THB) 174
1 Incubation Druid (RNA) 131
1 Priest of Forgotten Gods (RNA) 83
1 Renata, Called to the Hunt (THB) 196
1 Command Tower (ELD) 333
1 Bonders' Enclave (IKO) 245
1 Midnight Reaper (GRN) 77
1 Rankle, Master of Pranks (ELD) 101
1 God-Eternal Bontu (WAR) 92
1 Vilis, Broker of Blood (M20) 122
1 Beast Whisperer (GRN) 123
1 Dread Presence (M20) 96
1 Underrealm Lich (GRN) 211
1 Crashing Drawbridge (ELD) 217
1 Order of Midnight (ELD) 99
1 Beanstalk Giant (ELD) 149
1 Witch's Cottage (ELD) 249
6 Swamp (UND) 92
7 Forest (UND) 96
1 Nylea, Keen-Eyed (THB) 185
1 Migratory Greathorn (IKO) 165
1 Auspicious Starrix (IKO) 144
1 Massacre Girl (WAR) 99

Sideboard
1 Umori, the Collector (IKO) 231

The deck doesn't seem very flexible but it has removal, a few draw engines, and a nice Golgari style long game.

Budget Standard players take note this deck is like $10 without the lands lmao, and even cheaper on Arena.

This is missing Chevill!

# ¿ Apr 24, 2020 16:36

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

I've been having some fun with a bant mutate deck but i'm having some issues with mana fixing. What would be some good lands to invest in to help out with it? Are fabled passages and evolving wilds the only ones? I'm running some triomes but none are specific to bant, some shocklands and taplands but it's a bit slow to get going.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 14:53

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

Thanks for that. I think it's finally time to spend some of my wildcards.

Mutating onto Dream Trawler is hilarous late game but my main reason for doing bant was to get vigilance on my paradise druids.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 15:23

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 22:13

lemonadesweetheart: May 27, 2010

It had one item earlier. Maybe you have it already? It was alt cover for the bb guy from theros that exiles stuff for life.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2020 19:43

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