Magic the Gathering Arena: Bawlers' Guildhall

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waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

I'm quite new to Arena but as I'm grinding out getting daily reward gold, I've got a quick question.

I am bad at drafting but enjoy it anyway, and would like to maybe get a little better at it eventually. To this end should I just gather up gold until I hit 5k and then mash that Quick Draft button, or are there reasons that I should be saving up to 10k instead for a Premier Draft?

Also related, are there any good resources you all recommend for not sucking at draft? I've only done a couple quick drafts of M21 and did pretty good (6-3) and not so good (3-3). I'm probably gonna attempt a Premier one just to see what it's like but in general I don't feel like I am really even sure what I should be paying attention to to get better at things.

Actually, as a another follow up question, for the purposes of grinding out daily rewards gold, if I don't have many good cards, are there recommendations for decks to build that will win or lose very quickly, so I can churn through those daily games?

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 03:47

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:32

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Thanks for all the replies everybody. Very low sample size so far but I've been using the unmodified RG precon today and it's been feeling pretty quick for a handful of wins. Have enough gold to do another quick draft when I can make the time for it.

I look forward to continuing to play a bot draft every once in a while to see if I can become less bad over time. I'll probably start popping in my 17lands links after doing these in the future to get some helpful criticism too!

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 22:35

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Well I was dumb and forgot to turn on 17lands until after I'd picked all my cards but still in the interest of hopefully getting some feedback if not as much would have been preferable, the results of my most recent M21 quickdraft:
Pool: https://www.17lands.com/pool/a956639bb06642548802ffe1c4389b46
Deck: https://www.17lands.com/deck/a956639bb06642548802ffe1c4389b46/0

I didn't feel great about it but apparently it was ok because I ended up 7-1. In any case, I would love to hear the thoughts of people better at this.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2020 02:16

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Grifter posted:

I think this looks pretty good!

- It's not in one of the best archetypes in the format but you definitely understood the point of the R/G four power matters and got synergy into your deck.
- Were you able to leverage Garruk's Uprising and Furious Rise in your games? What about slapping a Short Sword on a Drowsing D and going to town?
- I normally think Garruk's Gorehorn is pretty crappy but I like your usage of it here with ways to give it trample.
- Similarly, I think Gnarled Sage is only really good in G/U but here you've got the Uprising and Setessan Training to trigger it. I'm just trying to emphasize that you did a good job picking up pieces that synergize with one another and that brought lesser cards up to the next level.
- I like your curve here.

Next time definitely capture your draft, that's a huge part of the discussions people can have with 17lands data. I'm curious about the off color uncommons you've got (B/W, R/W) which makes me think maybe you picked them early and then switched into RG.

I got both uprising and rise out in one game and just steamrolled over him with a giant radha in the end. In addition to using Short Sword and Setessan, also used the Furor on a Drowsing Dino to pretty good effect.

I put in the gorehorn because I wanted something bigger to play and figured that by the time I could use it, it'd usually be getting me something extra, either by trampling, or activating one of those other things, etc. In practice, I played it once, it didn't have trample, and it just traded with some big thing the other guy had, clearing the way for my smaller stuff to finish the game.

The sage didn't feel great, I only played it once and didn't use it's abilities beyond having 4 power to activate Rise. It wasn't useless, and I don't remember picking it over something obviously more useful (drat my lack of logs!) but oh well.

I don't really know much about being super intentional about setting a curve, I'm mostly brainlessly aping what I saw in some M21 draft videos, where they just tried to get a bunch of decent 2 and 3 drops and quickly tapering off above that. I'm glad that it worked out here though.

RE: the other two-color ones, I got Radha as pick 1 or 2 and so was kind of inclined towards those quite early. The houndmaster I took early but then abandoned white, and the patrician was a strange late pick where I just didn't see anything else good and figured why not have another patrician in my constructed pool.

thespaceinvader posted:

Yeah, that;s a very solid deck. Not everything has to be ram packed with bombs and wild synergy, sometimes, especially for M21, just a good curve of playables is plenty.

I probably would have cut a land for Sure Strike if it's Bo1 though.

I'm really interested in hearing more about how to make the choice on cutting a land and when it makes sense to do so. Sure strike does seem like it's a nice trick though and I think I was worried about not having enough critters so I chose hobblefiend over it in the end, but dropping a land and just using both wasn't something I had really thought about.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2020 17:27

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

All right I scrounged up enough gold for another M21 quick draft today and this time remembered to turn on 17lands before actually picking cards, so I am hoping you all can help me spot places where I may have mis-stepped:

Draft: https://www.17lands.com/draft/c937fed5bbce45c48973c05eed27f85a
Pool: https://www.17lands.com/pool/c937fed5bbce45c48973c05eed27f85a
Deck: https://www.17lands.com/deck/c937fed5bbce45c48973c05eed27f85a/0

Started off with a loss so was expecting I was gonna wipe out 0-3 but managed to finish up 7-2 in the end with what felt like some lucky topdecks saving me in a couple. I suspect that as I face more competent opponents it will be harder for me to keep up winning as much.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 01:33

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Thanks for the feedback - you all are definitely right, I just put blinders on and didn't take multiple opportunities to shift into the better choices in green. I'll have to be much better about keeping switching in mind!

Regarding Swift Response - is it that it is bad generally, or just that I was stupid here for picking it over better alternatives?

Lone Goat posted:

looking at the bot ratings and it has Ol Drowsy as the EIGHTH best green common, which is ridiculous

so when people suggest for new players to draft against bots, this is why i say it'll only cause them bad habits

What are things that I could watch out for to guard against reinforcing terrible habits? At this point I'm assuming I'm still making noob mistakes enough with bots that it may be more useful to just draft more (even against bots) than it would be to draft half as often against people. At what point does it make sense to change over? How would I determine if I'm past that?

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 03:15

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Zero VGS posted:

I would have killed him on turn 3 without him doing double-Thoughtseize but those certainly didn't help

edit: decklist, I'm too cheap to craft more Dreadhorde. As-is it's 2 uncommon and 1 rare. Could make it all common.

What would you replace the Dreadhorde with if you were going to make it all common/uncommon? I guess by extension, what would you replace the Thud with if you wanted to go all Common?

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 03:17

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

The Fool posted:

Since no-one else has mentioned it, the color challenges get you a fair number of cards, even if the decks themselves aren't great

I don't know how it matches people based on deck or anything but I'm still solidly above 50% win rate with the Gruul precon which is more than I can say for most anything I've tried to put together myself so far.

In other words I suck at constructed, but that's fine for me since I just want daily golds.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2020 01:14

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

With the usual disclaimers about how I am bad at drafting and worse don't know the first thing about THB drafting, I am curious to hear ideas on how I might be able to improve things with this pool: https://www.17lands.com/deck/06185be565334bdeabf292e1e0d8bbb7

Perhaps the real lesson here is "don't ignore the low part of the curve until way way too late"? Also don't do foolish things like grab an impossibly inflexible card like Haktos P1P1 and let that lead you astray.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2020 03:59

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Gridlocked posted:

https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/09/mtg-arena-zendikar-rising-free-to-play-guide/

There's also a view in https://mtgatool.com/ that sort of does this for you with a bit less manual input.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2020 05:39

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

I was amused in losing to somebody in this FNM with Curiosity on Glint-horn Buccaneer, + Ghostly Pilferer. I was initially very confused and it seemed like maybe they had all five colors (I saw a Gilded Goose and a Fblthp played, a Fiend Artisan discarded before I realized what was happening, and they had a Hallowed Fountain at some point) in this deck but on turn 4 they had all these on the board and I was like "ohhhhh I see what's going on now" and scooped. Maybe the white was for hallowblade?

# ¿ Dec 12, 2020 04:29

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

I started with Arena a few months ago and between being so-so with drafting, grinding relentlessly for daily/weekly/etc. rewards, and a mastery pass, I've managed to collect most of ZNR. This surprised me a little but hopefully I can keep it up for future sets as they come through...

However my question right now is this: what can or should I be doing if I want to try and expand my collection for stuff besides the current/future set/s?

The occasional rotation in of other sets for draft seems unreliable and my lack of being able to practice those (since I'm cheap and mainly draft when I get enough gold from rewards) is evidenced by how badly I do at them when they are around. In spite of this, is drafting those when available still the best best? For stuff outside of Standard it feels like I'm pretty much never going to collect much of those except for if I specifically cash wildcards to build some particular list.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2021 03:47

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Oh yeah I missed that part in my initial post - I think mostly I'm wondering how one gets from where I'm at to trying out historic decks.

Definitely helpful responses though, thanks! Not really trying to catch 'em all, so might craft up a historic deck post KHM to see how it goes.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2021 04:54

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

wei posted:

[*]The Three Seasons - these last two want a very significant portion of the deck to be snow

Is three seasons good? What's a threshold proportion of snow where this starts looking better?

I drafted https://www.17lands.com/deck/2bb5a4ab119c411e97a1c327f3c252d0 yesterday but haven't played a game yet and am wondering if maybe seasons should be in here.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 17:22

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

wei posted:

I'm on the fence with Three Seasons, only got to play with it once but it's borderline okay in your deck. Your best targets are probably the Priests or Svella. I'm not sure if it actually makes the cut over the other things in your deck.

I assume you haven't adjusted the auto-lands manabase but you should get to 9G sources, 3 Forests for 2 Islands and a Swamp since the U spells are the least important in the early game. Running Horizon Seeker and the chunky 5/5 over the Hawk and Yeti should reduce the need for early U sources further.

Also a big fan of Cosmos Elixir myself, it looks kinda janky at first glance but played with it after listening to Chordo and it's performed well. Aggro in this format tends to rely on chip damage in my experience and it's hard to beat 2hp/turn.

You have assumed correctly; I hadn't messed with the lands yet but agree that the colors need adjusting.

Those suggestions seem like they're pretty sound (at least as how I'm imagining things without actually having the deck up in front of me) so I'll probably give that a shot later.

Thanks to all who have given thoughts on this, as well, I definitely appreciate the insight.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 21:37

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

fridge corn posted:

What is the optimal use of gems anyway? I think I'd rather spend those gems doing more drafts?

Yeah this game already has a pretty high dopamine hit per phone click ratio why not up it a bit more? It's not like £17.49 (not sure what that is in USD) is too much to spend each time a new set comes out

I remember reading somewhere that for some currencies you can give yourself a discount by setting the game to USD because store prices aren't set properly by conversion but instead by just swapping the symbol.

# ¿ May 11, 2021 16:01

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Insurrectionist posted:

lol despite being >60% winrate in STX over more than 60 drafts, I'm 4 - 9 in DOM draft today. Two good decks and one okay one, just getting completely countered at every opportunity. Brutal stuff.

For some reason they're not showing on 17lands for me, anyone else having this issue? Usually it updates instantly - I've used it to check what was in a pack when it comes around again and I forgot to jot it down.

This happens sometimes and usually it back fills correctly after like a day of a new event.

I checked in the 17L discord and that's what the main dev said is happening here probably.

quote:

They probably bucked the naming convention on the event in the logs again. I won't be able to get to it for like 12 hours or so. Assuming that's the issue, everyone's data should backfill just fine

# ¿ Jun 18, 2021 21:23

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

babypolis posted:

AFR drafting in a nutshell:

just play red and black

A mnemonic shared with me a day or two ago for AFR

Mooseontheloose posted:

Always
Force
Rakdos

# ¿ Jul 25, 2021 04:54

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

little munchkin posted:

for anyone interested in doing the freekaladesh flashback drafts, here is my thorough, exhaustive guide to the format:

draft as many copies of this card as you can:

Well, my free draft with AKR was terrible but thanks to your advice I managed to 6-3 in KLR playing 5 goggles so, thanks!

# ¿ Aug 16, 2021 00:32

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

denimgorilla posted:

Then I swapped to Kaldheim quick draft and ended up with these three options:

I wouldn't describe myself as a Kaldheim expert by any means, but I'd probably go Boros from those, maybe minus hagi mob and minus 1 plains, plus runed crown and valor.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2021 23:52

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

InterrupterJones posted:

I don't know where else to brag about this (embarrassing I know) but I'm pretty sure I just beat Arne Huschenbeth on the standard ladder. It was the tangrams tag and he was ranked #27. He was on Jeskai Mutate which was much cooler than my stock Rogues build, but it still felt like a good matchup on my side.

Either way it bumped me up to #223. Six days left, which may not be enough to hold for top 1200, but that match was probably the highlight of this month for me.

Nice! For what it's worth, I think "tangrams" is David Inglis, another mtg pro but not Arne who, after poking around the twitters and the twitch, it looks like plays arena as "tabananga".

# ¿ Aug 18, 2021 15:23

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Tricky Ed posted:

Just going to let everyone know that using a chromebook (that is too old for the android client) to VPN to your work PC across the country in order to play MTGA on remote desktop is not a good experience for you or the people you play. I literally couldn't resolve an Inscription of Abundance before the rope got me.

It does make me wish for a simple client without all the animations the current one has, though. I could've probably gotten more than 7fps if it didn't have to continually re-render all the glowy stuff it does in the UI.

I played on an old chromebook using geforce now for a bit, and while it wasn't amazing it was playable for me.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2021 20:53

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Bugsy posted:

Anyone else get 400 gems when logging in? No clue where it came from.

Did you put in that free 1000xp code and have mastery pass bought already and happened to be exactly level 49 which gives 400 gems when you hit that level in the mastery pass?

# ¿ Oct 21, 2021 02:50

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

brugroffil posted:

Is there a good guide on the "best" jumpstart packs?

The contents of the packs are published so if you're looking for specific things to collect, you could go by that. It's not really a great format for trying to spike since the rewards aren't much, so I wouldn't worry too much about trying to find the "best" ones from that perspective.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/mtg-arena-jump-in

# ¿ Dec 1, 2021 03:10

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

wei posted:

Same here, I have 250k saved up for this but hopefully I won't need that many entries. Between this and the December MIQ I'm glad we finally have high stakes draft events.

do you all usually enter bo1 or bo3 for these?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2021 16:28

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

hmm not feeling great about this decathlon pool. liesa is great but white is not there.

https://sealeddeck.tech/FOmiCeSrsm

# ¿ Dec 18, 2021 20:19

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

so DBL looks like it has double rares per pack (1 from each set)? and 4 total uncommons (2 from each set). how powerful are these drafts going to be?

# ¿ Dec 25, 2021 20:46

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

imagine dungeons posted:

I know you’re talking HB but she was a powerhouse in standard brawl when she was in. My favorite deck to just cruise to some wins. Karmic retribution for anyone playing an Esika deck.

Magda still is in standard? did other dwarves go away maybe?

# ¿ Jan 5, 2022 03:39

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

imagine dungeons posted:

I haven’t even seen anything indicating that it will even be on Arena. All the announcements I can find only reference paper. Draft sim shows a release date of 1/28 on arena but no actual mention of a source. Maybe there’s a tweet that I’m missing.

I hope it does show up because… why not?

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/mtg-arena-announcements-december-22-2021

but not the details sought unfortunately

# ¿ Jan 9, 2022 16:35

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Zero VGS posted:

OK, I did find one budget deck that seems to kick all kinds of rear end in Historic... mono-u tempo caveman

That tier 1 Selensya infinite life thing beats the poo poo out of me most of the time, but pretty much anything else if you just mulligan for Spectral Sailor and Curiosity, you win

Steadily climbing up in platinum now, somehow the win rate seems much higher than even supposedly tier 1 stuff like Rakdos Arcanist

can you share a list?

# ¿ Jan 11, 2022 23:33

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Zero VGS posted:

Oh sorry I figured it was a meme (200-IQ Mono Blue, and/or Caveman Tempo) by this point:

If you want common/uncommon only, substitute Brazen Borrower for Into the Roil or Dive Down, Sea-Dasher Octopus for Brineborn Cutthroat (although Mutating a Sea-Dasher on your one-drop at end of opponent's turn is like the best play in the game, so it's worth crafting at least 1-2 if you like the deck), and Castle Vantress for Jwari Disruption or Island. The deck mostly needs luck and/or mulligan skills. Most of the time you flash out a Spectral Sailor, throw a Curiosity on it, and lock the opponent down for the remainder of the game.

Couch Life posted:

Next time export it so other people can copy/paste it in. Here's the decklist for easy import. Can confirm, a version of this was the first deck I had in Arena and it was great.

Deck
4 Curious Obsession (RIX) 35
16 Island (VOW) 399
4 Curiosity (JMP) 147
4 Siren Stormtamer (XLN) 79
4 Spectral Sailor (M20) 76
3 Spell Pierce (XLN) 81
2 Essence Capture (RNA) 37
4 Lofty Denial (M21) 56
4 Brazen Borrower (ELD) 39
3 Lookout's Dispersal (XLN) 62
4 Sea-Dasher Octopus (IKO) 66
4 Wizard's Retort (JMP) 198
4 Castle Vantress (ELD) 242

Thank you both! I understand what you mean now - I played one of these in one of the MWM artisan events and had a great time, might make a few upgrades using this as a template now.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2022 03:29

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

this is from back in November but it's jund without cat oven / food package so maybe what you're looking for?

https://twitter.com/Samsoni1MTG/status/1465596736219410436?t=u2kIFsLJoOZJLsGbgMn1bg

# ¿ Jan 15, 2022 07:26

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Insurrectionist posted:

Just had an absolutely bizarre bug happen to me.

Guess I can't ask for a refund for this bug at least!

You can definitely ask. I ask win or lose when I hit bugs because it is a pittance for them to compensate me for being part of the QA team.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2022 16:13

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

babypolis posted:

more the fact that its a mill deck at 7-2 in a major tournament, and seems to a self brew

Yasooka went undefeated in the alchemy portion with that deck right? It feels almost misleading to call it a mill deck; it's more like a Izzet Calamity control deck that happens to use mill as the finisher. Feels like it has more in common with the calamity+body decks than it does with what I imagine when I hear mill (like crabs and cacophany and stuff).

# ¿ Mar 13, 2022 02:11

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

Zero VGS posted:

I exclusively played BO1 historic "turn 2 win Minion of the Mighty" and took it from Plat 4 to Diamond 2 in the last few days.

Powerful combos are good when I'm the one doing them and my average match time is like 60 seconds. I will be livid if WotC nerfs this combo for being too braindead like they did with Tibalt's Trickery. Especially because if the nerf Minion I know I'm not getting the associated dragon WCs back.

This sounds hilarious -- what's the list? I wonder if I have enough of the dragons already to try it out

# ¿ Mar 22, 2022 00:52

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

brugroffil posted:

why are you getting a creature T1 though

When I had Rigo in opening hand with lands to cast, I'd play on 1 and 2 and usually make up the cards in Rigo triggers later.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2022 06:03

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:32

waloo: Mar 15, 2002; Your Oedipus complex will prove your undoing.

kertap posted:

I had to create a second account because something got messed up with my white color challenge and I couldn’t finish it and when I contacted support they gave me all the two color decks but I messed that up too by quitting the app before I got them all.

I don't think you can mess that up by quitting, the collection stuff isn't just locally stored. check your collection as you probably got all of the cards for the decks you were supposed to.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2022 05:45

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