Magic: The Gathering Arena - Catch All

OK white mages... if you throw out the "Good Game" emote when I have lethal on board, but you don't concede and you have four untapped mana, then all you have done is remind me that this card exists:

IMAGE(http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=435186&type=card)

And you've told me you probably have it in-hand.

Seriously. If you hadn't tried to bait me into attacking with everything so you could toss out Settle the Wreckage, I probably would have forgotten about it and played right into it.

First time trying to get into card games, I have read a bit about both Magic and Artifact. Artifact is not released yet, but it's coming soon. Question is - which game should I pick and invest time and money into?

Can you buy, sell and trade cards in both of these games? Is there any marketplace for it? How hard is it to learn either of these?

New post about lovely topic - Artifact Card game released tonight and in last we will see what game it is and how to play it - for now I have no Idea about rules even, what can I sayabout trading? How to make most powerfull deck to Artifact?
Artifact cards are value and rare, so I'll try to find Cards on some trusted marketplace like these... Ooowwww!!.... That is so cute :* Let's try and tell me something about Artifact cards and decks
https://odealo.com/games/artifact/pc...
That is not main site with ARTifact cards but still I like it

I don't know much about how Artifact plays. Richard Garfield is involved though so I will definitely give it a try. I think it's supposed to cost $20 up front. It comes from Valve, who are the kings of player-to-player Team Fortress 2 item sales and who have had a working trading card market in Steam for years now. Which is to say, I would be VERY surprised if it didn't have individual card trading and sales.

Arena has no up-front cost. There are ways to earn and win both in-game currencies without spending any money. There is also no card trading and no secondary market whatsoever. Unlike games like Hearthstone or Eternal, you don't destroy unwanted cards to craft new ones. Instead you earn Wild Cards by opening booster packs (and can find them randomly inside said packs) which you can redeem for any card of the same rarity. Magic is a complex game, but Arena is a great way to learn. The tutorial is pretty short, but to my eyes it's pretty well done. I have known how to play Magic since 1994, but I also have a masters degree in instructional design and if I had submitted Arena's tutorial for a grade I would expect an A-. (I rate most video game tutorials somewhere between C+ and B+.)

If you're looking to invest a lot of money into a card game and play the market, then you're better off with physical Magic cards. If you're looking to go hardcore into the competitive scene and win money, then I'd say go with Artifact based on how much money Valve throws at Dota 2 prizes.

If you're looking to dip in for free and have some fun, then Arena is the way to go.

And if you just want to play against the computer a couple of times a day for free, go download Eternal. It's pretty close to Magic in its design, has a functional PvE mode, and is already available on phones.

Vargen wrote:

Unlike games like Hearthstone or Eternal, you don't destroy unwanted cards to craft new ones. Instead you earn Wild Cards by opening booster packs (and can find them randomly inside said packs) which you can redeem for any card of the same rarity.

Have been eyeing Arena as a replacement for Hearthstone, which haven't played for a while and have to say this appeals. The dusting of cards in Hearthstone to get a fraction of the cost of a card of same rarity back, always niggled me.

I've never played Magic so also good to hear there's an A- tutorial included.

Bubblefuzz wrote:
Vargen wrote:

Unlike games like Hearthstone or Eternal, you don't destroy unwanted cards to craft new ones. Instead you earn Wild Cards by opening booster packs (and can find them randomly inside said packs) which you can redeem for any card of the same rarity.

Have been eyeing Arena as a replacement for Hearthstone, which haven't played for a while and have to say this appeals. The dusting of cards in Hearthstone to get a fraction of the cost of a card of same rarity back, always niggled me.

I've never played Magic so also good to hear there's an A- tutorial included.

Yeah, don't get too excited. I love Arena, but their "wildcard" system is way worse than HS dusting. Wildcards are super infrequent and any extra cards you open don't turn into dust. There is a hidden "vault" system, but it's basically never going to happen for most players. It takes hundreds of extra cards to complete and you only get a few wildcards from it.

Bottom line: any card you open in Magic Arena that you already have 4 copies of is completely worthless. No dust, no nothing. This makes it super painful to open packs and get a Mythic that you already have 4 of.

As someone with 2000+ hours in HS and 200+ in Magic, the economy in Magic is much less generous. Which is saying a lot since HS isn't very generous.

I'm hopeful WotC will make some changes as they're still technically in beta.

Ah right, cheers. I did figure as soon as I posted that it wouldn't be as good as I first read it.

Famaro wrote:

Can you buy, sell and trade cards in both of these games? Is there any marketplace for it? How hard is it to learn either of these?

Artifact is meant to be an actual digital TCG that uses the Steam Marketplace to buy and sell individual cards. I don't know that I've heard anything about direct trading but that functionality has existed in Steam for a long time. They have said that there will be the ability to loan out decks to friends. They've bent over backwards saying they don't want the cost of a competitive deck to be as high as it is in Magic.

There's been a lot of kvetching about the economy model even though no details have been released. The initial cost is $20 which gets you the free base cards (four not great heroes and some item cards (can't remember how many), ten packs and two (I think random) reconstructed decks. Obviously, additional packs will cost money. The card packs are supposed to be $2 hence the $20 upfront cost. The thing I'm most eager to hear about is the cost of limited will be. If limited has a reward structure, I'm sure there will be an associated cost.

As for how hard it is to learn, Artifact might seem overwhelming but, once you watch some of it, it's not actually that complicated. Here's a link to the vod for one of the PAX streams if you want to see some actual gameplay.

For me personally, I'm waiting to see what the cost of limited will be in Artifact (I really don't like constructed). If it's on par with or less than MTGA, I'm probably going to completely switch to Artifact. If not, I'll actually dump some money into MTGA. So far, I've just been doing free-to-play while I get back into things since I hadn't played since before fifth edition came out.

I would say you don't have to make this decision yet. Try Magic Arena out, it has a pretty generous free ramp up through the tutorial and your first few drafts or whatever you want to do. Magic is more fiddly than Hearthstone and a bit tedious, you might find it is not for you. So try it out for a bit to see if you even like it before you worry about 'where am I going to invest'. Same with Artifact whenever that eventually comes out.

I like the idea of card trading a lot; seems like a realization of something that digital TCGs have had potential for since forever. This mechanic alone will get me to try Artifact, even though the gameplay of Magic Arena is actually the perfect game.

Selling a card I don't want to get a card I do want is an awesome idea. I just hope the economy stays stable. I've seen too many game economies warped by bots.

Free wrote:

I'm hopeful WotC will make some changes as they're still technically in beta.

Nothing "technically" about it. This is a beta that is still under active development, not a "beta" that exists purely for marketing. For example, next month they hope to include a feature where you can type in another person's username and challenge them to a duel. And this is an online-only game.

They're on record as saying that the Vault is going away as soon as they can design and implement a replacement. I believe they want to make it like Duels of the Planeswalkers where you just never open a surplus copy of anything, but they haven't figured out how to not make that overwhelm their servers with database queries.

Free wrote:

I like the idea of card trading a lot; seems like a realization of something that digital TCGs have had potential for since forever. This mechanic alone will get me to try Artifact, even though the gameplay of Magic Arena is actually the perfect game.

Selling a card I don't want to get a card I do want is an awesome idea. I just hope the economy stays stable. I've seen too many game economies warped by bots.

Magic the Gathering Online does that. Not only can you trade and sell cards, but if you get a full recent set you can pay a $25 fee and have Wizards delete it from your account and mail you the physical cards. The problem is the MtGO client is kind of awful. It works well enough once you know what you're doing, but it's not really pleasant or easy to learn. The online economy seems to work just fine though. Yeah, a lot of the traffic is handled by bots, but they don't really warp the economy so much as they make it very efficient because trading has no overhead. So that removes a lot of the short-term play that you'd get from something like World of Warcraft's auction house, but you can still play the market in the longer-term by predicting how the metagame will shift.

I have no idea how Valve will handle their market for Artifact. I just think about the prices of some Counterstrike skins and Team Fortress hats and shudder a little inside.

Didn't know about that MTGO feature with offline cards. That's cool as hell and would love to see something similar for MTGA. I doubt I'll ever be fully into paper, but that would go a long way to making me more interested.

MTGO just looks terrible and I really don't like how it plays. Call me a filthy casual, but I couldn't stomach it.

I'm all in on Arena (to include spending real $$), but there are so many great digital card games out there that it really comes down to personal preference.

For me, match-making based on deck strength in the casual queue is a unique perk that puts Arena on top. My Merfolk pile with no crafted rares or mythics does just as well as my Tier-1 net decks, so I can play almost anything and get some good games.

I just spent my last Mythic wildcards putting together something similar to this five color abomination. I played a handful of casual games tonight and hit infinite turns pretty regularly. It was joyful.

I didn’t plan for it but thru some of my complimentary packs luck and targeted wildcards use I find myself steadily building up a mono Black Zombies deck. Based on what I’ve seen on Merchant’s channel the lion’s share of the zombie tribal cards are in Core 2019 set.

That sound about right to you? Asking because I’m feeling spendy and plan to go on a pack opening spree.

If you're feeling spendy, please don't spend money on Mono Black. It's just not good.

Try and craft Black stuff that's good in many different multi-color decks. Off the top of my head:

- Doom Whisperer
- Ritual of Soot
- Vraska's Contempt
- Eldest Reborn (this one is Uncommon so it's easy to craft and very strong in many decks)\
- Ravenous Chupacabra (also Uncommon IIRC)

Also, in terms of set strength, Core 19 isn't great. I'd be spending money on Dominaria and Ravnica first.

I've heard that one strategy is to open packs that might have rare dual lands in them, then spend the wild cards on the stuff you need from other sets. That sounds like a solid strategy to me. I just roll all my currency into drafts and grab cards I want when I see them, but I'm here for the drafts and the constructed grind is just a bonus.

Free wrote:

If you're feeling spendy, please don't spend money on Mono Black. It's just not good.

If you stick to the casual best-of-one queue then the deck-strength matchmaking should help keep the games fun. Especially if you stick to a monocolor deck. Apparently the system ranks card strength by the number of players who have crafted them. A lot of people craft the rare dual lands early, so going multicolor can put you up against stronger decks if you have a decent mana base. I know my Naya deck got paired against much stronger decks than various similar RG and RW builds did, and I suspect the higher density of rare dual lands was a big part of that.

Thanks guys. Jumped on a couple of Free's recommendations (The Eldest Reborn, Ravenous Chupacabra), opened some more packs and tuned up my mono black Zombies and mono green generic stompy stompers decks. All I have ever done is the general ranked ladder matches. The matchmaking is fast and reasonably fair. Against some of the more elaborate 2- or even 3-color decks my simple sub-budget mono decks can hold their own. And it's still fun running into other tribal decks. Stuffed a couple Merfolk and Zombie decks tonight.

Crafting the rare dual lands right off the bat seems smart. Will keep that in mind when I start thinking about adopting new deck archetypes.

The best cards to craft or spend money on are the ones you have fun with. If you love playing zombies, go for it! Some people’s fun is optimizing win rate. Other people might like particular mechanics or theme or playing the thing that is not as common.

I've been loving it so far, built an Izzet drake deck lately and it's super fun

Yeah, I'm surprised how much I like it.

Been playing about a week. Just built most of mono Red last night. Will probably build both mon Blue tempo and Izzet drake over the next weeks.

LeapingGnome wrote:

The best cards to craft or spend money on are the ones you have fun with. If you love playing zombies, go for it! Some people’s fun is optimizing win rate. Other people might like particular mechanics or theme or playing the thing that is not as common.

Hear, hear. I’m still early in my Arena card collection so I have to balance the fun with having some consistency with winning and hitting those daily/weekly quests. At the moment my mono Green Stompies is my consistent and I’ll switch to Black Zombies when I need to cast X Black spells or take a breather. Went 5 in a row with the zombos last night and that helped me pay the Dominaria draft entry fee, so was feeling quite pleased with myself.

About that draft though... I entered too late. Drafted my deck and realized that I ought to play out my matches or else the mode would expire while I am work this morning. So I banged them out (when I should have been packing my tired butt to bed) and it wasn’t pretty: went 1-3. But I did get another The Eldest Reborn from my sole win as well as rare drafting a Silver Leaf Champion to complete my play set, so hurrah

Drafting is such a unique challenge. I definitely deviated from the BREAD formula a few times and paid the price. An extra couple removals ( real removals not Divest which I had too many of) and fewer unremarkable 2/2 crittters would have helped a lot. I also saw the power of evasion at work, which I also lacked.

Neozilla wrote:

I've been loving it so far, built an Izzet drake deck lately and it's super fun

Got any advice for fighting against this deck? It seems like that and mono-red are all I've been seeing lately.

Vargen wrote:
Neozilla wrote:

I've been loving it so far, built an Izzet drake deck lately and it's super fun

Got any advice for fighting against this deck? It seems like that and mono-red are all I've been seeing lately.

Exile the Phoenixes. Run smaller threats to force them to use their small amount of removal. If you have access to Red, run 4x Lava Coils. Run Flying creatures to block. Run counters if you can.

It's a top deck for a reason: you can run all the answers and still lose. Personally I think the biggest offender is Maximum Velocity (1 mana, give a minion +1/+1 and Haste, Jump Start). I've lost to a 14/5 just-casted Enigma Drake with Max Velocity so many more times than Phoenix spam. And this is after I predicted a Drake and used my counter on a Crackling Drake...

Neozilla, how do you like the drake deck? It definitely caught my eye as a fun one, and mostly full of common / uncommons. Prob won't be able to fully make it for a while though.

I really just need to suck it up and build a new deck. The Red/Green tokens deck I have is lots of fun, but it really needs actual Gruul cards to put the power level where it needs to be. When I go off with the token makers and Song of Freyalise it can be explosive as hell. If I can not die too quickly then I can usually get a good Experimental Frenzy/Wayward Swordtooth run going. But that's not quite enough to fill out an entire deck. I need the raw power that comes with a good selection of gold cards.

Maybe I'll see about putting UB Pirates together. That deck looks like fun.

I’ve started to tinker again in the deckbuilder. Made a bunch of changes to the stock BW lifegain deck last night and want to see if I have enough raw material for a Dimir deck...being so creature focused is my thing but even I need a change from time to time.

Speaking of which I finally lost to a simic Merfolk deck. Sad times.

The standard rotation in Arena works a little differently than it does in real life eh?

Maclintok wrote:

The standard rotation in Arena works a little differently than it does in real life eh?

We don't actually know yet. This time out they had the end-of-closed-beta wipe happen at the same time as rotation, and simultaneously removed the sets that were rotating out. Next year when rotation hits we know there are a few things happening:

You won't lose any of your cards.

There will be a way to still play with the cards that rotate out of Standard.

While I'm not certain, I could have sworn I heard on a Wizards stream that they are planning to bring Kaladesh and Amonkhet block cards back when rotation hits. That way their new non-rotating format will be more than just "that stale Standard format that you've been playing for months."

We don't know how the older sets will be made available when this happens. When they patched Kaladesh and Aether Revolt into the closed beta they just gave everyone 4x of the tournament staples and 1x of everything else, but I doubt they'll be that generous with the wide release.

We can expect rotation to happen about the same time as it does in paper, but not exactly. This time out the open beta started on the prerelease day and the new Standard kicked in then. In paper they still waited until the formal release day. On Magic Online the new Standard actually started with the patch ahead of the prerelease; so reprints became playable but the actual new cards weren't available until the prerelease events started.

So bottom line, the Arena rotation should work pretty much like the paper rotation, though the exact date will probably be off by about a week. While you won't be able to preorder new cards from retailers, you can save up wild cards for what you want.

Thanks for the explainer on that, Vargen.

Played my first ever Singleton match yesterday. Who was my opponent? A Rat Colony deck. I stomped it!

Well, it got dicey in the mid-game until my oppponent decided to swing in with everything and not caring that I would be willing to sacrifice most of my blockers and bring in a few more summons on my turn.

The next few matches were against actual decks

Maclintok wrote:

Played my first ever Singleton match yesterday. Who was my opponent? A Rat Colony deck. I stomped it!

Yay! The last time I did a singleton queue, 3 of the 4 decks I faced were Rat Colony. Fortunately I had tuned the deck to deal with those and I crushed all 3. One of them could have beaten me if they'd held back and gone wide, but they kept trading their rats for my stuff and eventually I started playing creatures big enough to eat them. Pro tip: Hunted Witness is just a one-mana 2-for-1 against that deck.

@Vargen: ooh yeah, Hunted Witness looks perfect for stuffing those rat colonies!

Here's a question for you all: If you were looking to bulk up for a Dimir deck and grabbing some key Vampire cards along the way, which one of the current sets do you think delivers the most bang for the buck?

Edit: by Dimir I was mostly thinking of discard antics. Seems like GRN fits the bill prett6 nicely here

GRN is basically it. Thought Erasure is a top tier card and so is Sinister Sabotage.

Doom Whisper is great. Spybug and Nightveil Sprite are also solid.

Disinformation Campaign has synergy, but it can also be terrible. Since you're letting your opponent choose the discard, you can find yourself facing a free Nullhide Ferox or more Arclight Phoenixes. It's also achingly slow so you'll end up losing to aggressive decks when you play it. Most Dimir decks are moving away from it, but it can be great in the correct matchups (mostly against control).