Magic: The Gathering Arena - Catch All

Had so much fun with the cheap drafts yesterday, I kept going with a competitive draft today and got to 6 match wins!

I had a nice BW zombie beat down deck, with the white being a splash for the 3/3 one turn buffing angel, the can't attack/block enchantment and the new wrath of god card. For zombies, just a ton of the 2/2, the 4/2 menace zombies and the one that pings for 2 on attack along with the zombie lord card that gives other zombies +1/+1 and deathtouch.

Would love a code if anyone has a spare.

Thank you,
Chad

Finally tried this out today, played through the tutorial five games and then did a draft (went 3-3). Yep it is Magic, probably the best computer implementation so far. Part of me just feels it is very fiddly and I don't know how they solve that just due to the structure of the rules. This is the same problem with all Magic games when compared to something like Hearthstone.

During the draft it wasn't clear if you could leave and come back. Can I leave in the middle of drafting and just pick back up later? Can I leave between games and pick up later? If so that overcomes a big challenge with MTGO drafts where you have to dedicate a straight 3 hours to it.

Also I swear I ran into a bug twice where after I declared blockers I did not get a chance to play instants. Maybe I just missed something though.

I will keep playing, remains to be seen how punishing the monetization model is. Since this is a beta I'll have to dig up what they plan to do at go live with your cards and purchases.

You can come and go with drafts at any point, even while drafting. During the actual draft, you are picking against the AI, just like in hearthstone.

Card collections won't survive the end of beta but any money you spend on gems will roll over into that gem amount when the game goes live.

Will you get the gems you bought or dollars/euros credit in your account? All I've bought is the $5 for $5 worth of packs and ~$45 worth of gems one-time welcome bundle. I don't know that we have a guarantee that that bundle will still exist after the wipe.

I mean it likely will, but I'm not certain.

Vargen wrote:

Will you get the gems you bought or dollars/euros credit in your account? All I've bought is the $5 for $5 worth of packs and ~$45 worth of gems one-time welcome bundle. I don't know that we have a guarantee that that bundle will still exist after the wipe.

I mean it likely will, but I'm not certain.

The FAQ makes it sound like you get the in-game currency and packs all over again.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/mtgaren...
Under "Q. How much do gems cost?"

Yes I found that yesterday too and that is how it reads to me as well - you'll get gems refunded to gems and packs refunded to packs. I guess things like prize winnings just go poof.

Badferret wrote:

You can come and go with drafts at any point, even while drafting. During the actual draft, you are picking against the AI, just like in hearthstone.

Thanks, that works much better for me, I think it is worth the trade off of losing out on some of the layers of draft strategy since you are not drafting against real people or playing against players that drafted from the same set of cards.

I think the Competitive Draft events are against real people, aren't they? I do know that's where you go for best-2-out-of-3 matches. I haven't tried them yet; I'm still running my gold through Quick Draft in order to build up a reserve of gems.

All of the games played against others in drafts are against real players but you are never picking cards against real players while actually drafting in either competitive or quick.

The AI does a decent job during the draft and you will see colors close out and dumb rares for limited will often wheel until the last picks.

Really, drafts in MTGA are almost a hybrid of sealed and drafts. The actual playing feels just like sealed while the drafting is a good approximation of the real thing but with less stakes or hate drafting since you know you won't be going up against the exact cards you're passing on.

The "not playing people in your own pod" is pretty much a non-issue. Look at the overwhelming popularity of Draft Leagues on Magic Online. People like to talk about the purity of the draft experience, but not having to wait half an hour for somebody else's game to finish and being able to play the rest of your games tomorrow trumps that most of the time.

And even in in-pod play, hate drafting isn't a thing. Oh sure, you'll hate draft a thing because it makes you feel good when you do. But when you figure the chances that you'll A: actually play against the player that would have taken the card and B: they'll draw the card even if you do... math says it's rarely actually a factor. Unless you're playing a 3v3 team draft, it's pretty much never worth it to hate draft over taking a card for your deck.

Wipe incoming with next week's conversion to open beta

https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...

Squee, sealed!

They timed the wipe for the Standard rotation so that they don't have to deal with old cards until next year. Clever. Otherwise the first year of their new non-rotating format would just be an extension of old standard, which isn't really exciting at all.

Open Beta started today, FYI.

If you go to the store and enter the code PlayRavnica you can get a free pack of Guilds of Ravnica.

You can also play Guilds of Ravnica sealed events. They're a little pricey, but hey, prerelease hasn't even happened yet. I'm sure there will be some cheaper events sometime.

There's also a free 60-card singleton event that's giving random uncommon and rare cards as prizes.

My luck stays the same in the digital format as it did in regular play. 25 lands in deck and get stuck with only 3 after 12+ rounds two games in a row.

I would like to thank the people I'm getting matched against for making me feel like I'm good at Magic despite the fact that it's been over 20 years since I last played. I imagine that will change quickly once I'm against people that aren't using the reconstructed decks.

I'm having a ton of fun with this. I also hope they keep bringing back Singleton events on a regular basis.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

I would like to thank the people I'm getting matched against for making me feel like I'm good at Magic despite the fact that it's been over 20 years since I last played. I imagine that will change quickly once I'm against people that aren't using the reconstructed decks.

I don't know the details, but apparently the matchmaker takes deck strength into account in addition to player metrics. I know I watched one streamer during the closed beta who claimed to have figured out a bit about it. He was working on a funky token/clone deck. Somebody suggested the top-tier token-producing planeswalker, and he nixed it on the grounds that including that card would mean he'd be matched against mono-red all day.

Renji wrote:

I'm having a ton of fun with this. I also hope they keep bringing back Singleton events on a regular basis.

Yeah, I've been enjoying Singleton a lot. It helps that it's easier to build a somewhat decent Singleton deck with the initial cards the game throws at you. It's a good way to get started.

In the past the developers have said they're wary of keeping Singleton around all the time because they don't want it to get solved. I think there's also internal pressure at WotC to eventually do Brawl as their singleton Standard, and they don't want to create the expectation that the current Singleton format will stick around.

There were codes at the pre-releases for a free Sealed on Arena. I've got an extra one. PM me if you want it.

Edit: Gone!

I'm going to miss Singleton, too.

I faded from the closed beta around the time they started messing with match-making based on deck strength. I'm looking forward to seeing how my janky piles do when Singleton rolls off tomorrow.

Vargen wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

I would like to thank the people I'm getting matched against for making me feel like I'm good at Magic despite the fact that it's been over 20 years since I last played. I imagine that will change quickly once I'm against people that aren't using the reconstructed decks.

I don't know the details, but apparently the matchmaker takes deck strength into account in addition to player metrics.

After my last couple of games, I can confirm that this is absolutely not true.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Vargen wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

I would like to thank the people I'm getting matched against for making me feel like I'm good at Magic despite the fact that it's been over 20 years since I last played. I imagine that will change quickly once I'm against people that aren't using the reconstructed decks.

I don't know the details, but apparently the matchmaker takes deck strength into account in addition to player metrics.

After my last couple of games, I can confirm that this is absolutely not true.

I doubt it works well. I have no idea how you could even begin to actually calculate that without a lot of data, and there's no way they have anything approaching enough with the new formats. Maybe they'll get better once they have a couple of weeks worth of MTGO competitive leagues to pull from. Assuming they know how to calculate it. Magic is a hard problem to solve; that's what makes it such a good game.

Also the "play until x wins or y losses" events do matchmaking solely by record in the event.

This game has hooks in me. I'm one of those people that spent a sizable chunk of money in closed beta, so I put together a couple of good decks in the first week after the wipe. For the first time ever, I'm actually following the MTG Standard meta and playing the strongest decks in the format. It's a blast. I've only had time to run through 4 Constructed Events, but I've earned more gold than I've spent...something that I never managed in MTGO.

Also, casual match-making seems reasonable. I do just as well with just-for-fun Singleton piles on the casual ladder as I do with my net-decks.

For me, MTGA is finally the hitting sweet spot for digital Magic. It's not perfect, but I'm really digging the overall experience.

The best part is that I don't think I'll need to spend any more money to "keep up". As long as I do my 4 wins on most days, I should be able to crack 100+ packs on release day of the next set and keep on chugging.

It feels good to be excited about Magic again.

With a coworker getting into this I decided to give Arena another shot after barely touching it in closed (6-8 total matches back then maybe).

I entered in my code for being in the previous beta but don’t even remember what it entailed. Will have to recheck and try out that other code up thread.

Will try to grind using precons as much as possible this weekend

Maclintok wrote:

Will try to grind using precons as much as possible this weekend

If you want a change of pace from the precons, I recommend the singleton constructed event. They had one up the first weekend after the Open Beta wipe and I found it really easy to get into with the limited card pool.

I've also had a lot of fun by spending some Uncommon Wild Cards on the card Song of Freyalise and squeezing them into the black/green Saproling Swarm preconstructed deck.

Vargen wrote:

If you want a change of pace from the precons, I recommend the singleton constructed event.

One further note: if you do buy into the Singleton event, make sure your deck can beat a deck that consists of 20 Swamps and 40 Rat Colonies. That isn't hard to do, but if the last event is any indication you do have to be ready for it.

Edit: never mind

Vargen wrote:
Maclintok wrote:

Will try to grind using precons as much as possible this weekend

If you want a change of pace from the precons, I recommend the singleton constructed event. They had one up the first weekend after the Open Beta wipe and I found it really easy to get into with the limited card pool.

I've also had a lot of fun by spending some Uncommon Wild Cards on the card Song of Freyalise and squeezing them into the black/green Saproling Swarm preconstructed deck.

Oh the Singleton event is on this weekend? Splendid.

Had a lot of fun playing ladder over the weekend. The green mono precon is no slouch albeit kind of dull. I was silly and missed my wins daily and a pack reward. I still had enough card to make a basement budget Zombies deck which also won me a handful of matches.

I threw them 5 bucks. Now I have enough gems to enter a limited event. Overall I miss Magic and wonder why I didn’t play more during Closed.