Magic: The Gathering Arena - Catch All

I found out where all the vamps hang out and it's in Rivals of Ixalan & Ixalan. Although it's not strictly a vampire card, I love me some of that Vanquisher's Banner. It's slow and playing predominantly black there's no way to ramp into this quickly.. or is there?

Not really... not in black/black-white at least.

If you're going wide and don't mind including Green you might be able to use Song of Freyalise to power it out. But I'm in a mood where I'm trying to make that card work with everything so my advice may not be the most sound.

Interesting: why don’t I have this card in my green stompy stompers deck? Wildcard time!

The absolute worst thing in this game are people that take ten minutes to make a move. Especially when you're just trying to quickly get challenges done.

Hehe, prepare yourself for the rage DC. When a ragey kid realizes the game is lost, it's common practice to just close the client and allow their timeouts to slowly tick away. Happens particularly often in drafts.

I may have done that a couple of times early on, but that was before I knew that quitting the client wouldn't concede the match and would still have the timers run. Whenever that happens to me I tend to assume my opponent has either crashed out or just didn't realize closing the client wouldn't end the game. That seems the more likely scenario, and assuming so keeps me in a better mood even if I'm wrong.

Disconnections only last one turn. That's much more tolerable than people that need to review what all of their enchantments do, count their mana three times and examine every creature multiple times before attacking with their unblockable flyers when I have no cards in my hand and a single 1/1 on the board. Three turns in a row.

I've also never seen somebody not come back from a disconnect either. This game has massive connection issues so I would assume most disconnects are rage quits. The actual worst thing about this game is that I can't have a stream running on my laptop while playing without disconnecting multiple times a game. This would be a perfect stream watching game but I have to settle for listening to podcasts.

I did a Core 2019 draft. Oh god, was that a mistake. Three picks in I just decided to rare draft unless there was something that I've seen in meta decks. The latter never happened. I don't know if I just got particularly sh*tty packs or what but I would strongly advise everybody to stay away. They have basic lands! Like, seriously, what the f*ck?

Secondary complaint, I've twice now run into rat decks running "Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive" in casual matchmaking. How sh*tty is your life that that's what you do in casual matchmaking?

... most packs have basic lands in them. That’s how people get basic lands out in the physical world, and drafting online is supposed to be the same.

Drafting is for people who enjoy drafting. And Core 19 is a good format for learning.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

I did a Core 2019 draft. Oh god, was that a mistake. Three picks in I just decided to rare draft unless there was something that I've seen in meta decks. The latter never happened. I don't know if I just got particularly sh*tty packs or what but I would strongly advise everybody to stay away. They have basic lands! Like, seriously, what the f*ck?

Secondary complaint, I've twice now run into rat decks running "Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive" in casual matchmaking. How sh*tty is your life that that's what you do in casual matchmaking?

Sorry to hear about your cruddy Core 2019 limited experience. I'd like to try out sealed play but the entry cost seems kind of high to me, however I also haven't had time to dutifully grind out Gems in the other modes. Core 2019 is not the sexiest set but it sounds like you simply had a bad run of packs.

Haven't had a whole lot of time to play lately but the matches that I have played over the weekend have put me back into the win column. I've also started using the mic when Twitch streaming and have thankfully not felt too awkward despite my online mic rust. Using semi-quality dedicated microphone has been a big help.

As for my matches played, I am still taking the B/W Vampires through their paces. I hit a mirror match and naively ran into 2 Settle the Wreckages but still ended up winning. Well, I saw the second one coming but by that point I had slammed down my second Sanctum Seeker and turned everything I had sideways, knowing that the life-loss effect would resolve no matter what.

Another match was against a Selesnya token-y deck. Board got stalled out for several turns... except I was cranking out a Legion's Landing vamp at the end of each of my opponent's turns. Once I removed his lone flyer, I drew a Twilight Prophet & Forerunner of the Legion, used him to fish out my Vampire Sovereign and pretty much got into the driver's seat from that point on. Could swing in twice with the Sovereign to finish him off or go all in with the Sanctum Seeker guaranteed to cause a 16+ points loss of life. Annoyingly, my opponent ran through all of his time outs before conceding.

I love Sanctum Seeker! Such a key card for a go wide vampire strategy.

A couple days ago I spewed away all my currency losing at Dominaria drafts. I used to be really good at that format. Now I'm getting my butt kicked by the sorts of tempo decks that used to be bad in this set.

Spent a bit of time with Standard, and now I have exactly enough gold to draft again. Do I pull the trigger, or am I setting myself up for more aggravation?

I think I've found a flaw in their business model. When I'm winning I don't need to spend money. When I'm losing, spending money on this game feels like it would just be wasted...

I love drafting and usually can at least draft a deck that will get 3 to 4 wins minimum but just through the rng of the game everyone will have a run where you only get a win or two or worse. But drafting and best of one constructed events are the two best ways to grow your collection as a F2P player.

I will sink 20 bucks or so into the game every other month for gems but mostly I just roll over constructed events and drafts, at least before this week's addition of the ladder.

Still, if you are interested in grinding gold and getting rares/mythics, try and craft something like mono red steamkin or green stompy or even a white weenie (though four mythics for Benalia is pricey.)

From my experience, you can easily average 4 plus wins earning your gold back and a guaranteed rare.

I always have best of one constructed events going and then roll excess gold into best of one drafts.

The weekend events can be a good source of gold and cards as well but can be more collection intensive depending upon the format.

Vargen wrote:

A couple days ago I spewed away all my currency losing at Dominaria drafts. I used to be really good at that format. Now I'm getting my butt kicked by the sorts of tempo decks that used to be bad in this set.

Spent a bit of time with Standard, and now I have exactly enough gold to draft again. Do I pull the trigger, or am I setting myself up for more aggravation?

Each set has a very different meta. You can't just rely on "I'm good at Limited" these days. I would research "tier lists" for each set before you draft and maybe check out a few articles on those metas. Also, I tend to think about what removal is in each set during my turn. That usually means I'm frantically Googling around during my turn.

If you're trying to build meta decks, I would suggest not playing Limited. If you enjoy the format a lot and you can manage to average a 60% winrate or higher, then it's pretty good for building a collection.

Vargen wrote:

I think I've found a flaw in their business model. When I'm winning I don't need to spend money. When I'm losing, spending money on this game feels like it would just be wasted...

I'm the opposite. When I have success, all I want to do is refine my decks and spend more money to shore up any bad matchups I might have. When I lose, I also want to refine my decks...

So yeah, I'm hopelessly in love with this game.

I definitely did better than my average when Dominaria was at FNM. When Arena was in closed beta I won so much Dominaria that I stopped worrying about daily quests. Some of that was luck, but I do know the format. Knew the format. GRN season has either made me forget something important or the metagame has shifted in a way that's thrown me off.

I guess I blame the draft bots? Is that the go-to excuse these days?

Vargen wrote:

I guess I blame the draft bots? Is that the go-to excuse these days? :)

Supposedly less so now, as the latest patch gave the bots individual personalities so that they are not all the same clone. Under the previous AI the bots drastically undervalued Dimir in GoR which resulted in a really good chance to always draft a solid Dimir deck.

Word is bots only have personalities in Guilds draft. In Dominaria they're the same old bots. Which works better in a traditional set; sets with guilds tend to get weird because there are fewer viable lanes. I'm not looking forward to seeing how they handle Ixalan block.

Latest update is interesting. They moved the UI cheese around again, some of it feel cleaner and slicker, some of it not quite working for me yet, like the turn phases down in the lower-right corner.

The biggest change I've felt so far is the adjustment of the ranked ladder bracketing. They seem to want people to zip through Bronze now with less distinction between a, say, Bronze 1 player and a Bronze 3 as the difference is literally 3-4 wins. More upward mobility through the tiers is good and the improved visualization of ranking up/down is appreciated.

I'm still not sure why rank and sideboards can't have anything to do with one another. I mean I get why they want some events where the matchmaking is self-contained within the event, but it should still be possible to gain and lose rank progress while playing those games. Their communication isn't quite clear as to whether this is their current overall plan or if they're just testing the system with the best-of-one queues.

I watched a ranty YouTube critique of the December update release notes. The Arena team does need to clean up the comms a bit. They are like a verbose version of Bungie.

New life seems to have returned to my mono Green stompers deck. Completed my set of Nullhide Ferox which has come in handy many matches for taking control early. Not to mention you can hardly beat turn 2 Steel leaf Champion if we’re talking strong starts.

Capped off the night with a heart stopper of a win over a Teferi deck. Lost 2 Nullhides and a Steelleaf to settle the wreckage along with a bunch of momentum. Some blockers and Teferi come out. Squeaked our the last bit of damage thanks to lucky pulls of my Prey Upon and another Steelleaf champ.

Man, screw that planeswalker!

Squee, just finished a 6-3 draft run with a very solid mono blue deck. Started 6-0 and lost the last three straight primarily because of screw, 2 land starting hands but screwed out at 3 and 4 lands each game in the midgame and watched all of my tempo plays (Academy Journeymages/Time of Ice) just wilt away.

But the exciting thing was one of the games was against Noxious, and despite the screw I gave him a real battle. I rushed to his Twitch channel but if he had been streaming it he had already hosted another streamer, or maybe the game will end up on his Youtube channel.

In all my years of Hearthstone and Magic, I've never played against a top streamer!

After spewing away all my gold and gems I managed to grind out another draft entry and get a 7-2 run, so I'm enjoying the game again. I need to brew up a couple more constructed decks that I enjoy playing so that everything doesn't hinge on my limited runs.

Now I'm trying to decide if I want to hit some more Dominaria or if I should wait for Ixalan block sealed.

Badferret wrote:

In all my years of Hearthstone and Magic, I've never played against a top streamer!

Nice! The biggest name I've run into is Bengineering from Loading Ready Run, back in the closed-beta-no-NDA days. He had a dominant board position for most of the game, but I was able to kick a Fight with Fire to take him down. Then I got to go into his chat and confirm that I'd had it in hand for the whole game and it wasn't a lucky topdeck.

Hope everybody's enjoying Allegiance!

What is everybody playing right now?

I'm trying so hard to hold onto Wildcards until the meta shakes out a bit, but I couldn't resist trying Ali's "Birthing Pod" list after opening two copies of Vannifar. I'm not sure how the list will hold up over time, but it's been a blast.

I'd never heard of Ali until I saw a link to his Rainbow Lich deck. Now I want to try everything he comes up with.

Yeah, Ali Eldrazi comes up with some pretty sweet brews. Between him and Saffron Olive you can usually find something off-the-wall to play if you aren't inspired yourself. Jeff Hoogland is another good source for constructed decks. His streaming business model involves viewers paying him to play and critique their decks, and he puts the viable ones up on his YouTube channel.

I'm still trying to decide what I want to play. I had a R/G Experimental Frenzy deck that I'd hoped would get some love. It got some good improvements to the mana base, but none of the actual Gruul cards are jumping out at me yet. I'm also flirting with some sort of Aristocrats build, but my current build is Golgari and I'm not sure whether to branch into white or red.

I tried a couple of RNA Sealed event and basically flushed my gems down the drain. I won one game total in two events. The draft I did is going better; I'm still in it at 2-1. I think the experience I got definitely helped though. I just went 3-1 at a paper prerelease with a combination of a solid pool, a bit of luck, and some decent piloting.

I missed my paper prerelease because of weather, but have been enjoying Allegiance on Arena. I’ve also been really enjoying watching Hoogland’s content on Twitch as well. His channel is heavily moderated so the behavior from most other Twitch chats is nearly nonexistent and whenever anything does pop up it is quickly dealt with.

I’m currently working on a Mardu Humans build with the Hero of Precinct One, Fireblade Artist, Judith, and Heroic Reinforcements. I keep sliding different numbers of Tithe Taker between the main and sideboards, and waffling on whether the stat boost from playing one of more glass of the guildpact versus just playing more two mana threats is the better path.

I've been having a lot of fun with a Gate deck, using Gateway Colossus and Gatebreaker Ram. Supporting those are Rhythm of the Wild and Domri Rade to give those creatures Riot, and Circuitous Route and Growth Spiral for mana ramping. Gates Ablaze takes out most early creatures, and Thud can finish the game by throwing an enormous creature at your opponent.

I'll go look up Hoogland and Saffron Olive. Thanks for the recommendation.

Jasonofindy wrote:

I’m currently working on a Mardu Humans build with the Hero of Precinct One, Fireblade Artist, Judith, and Heroic Reinforcements. I keep sliding different numbers of Tithe Taker between the main and sideboards, and waffling on whether the stat boost from playing one of more glass of the guildpact versus just playing more two mana threats is the better path.

Mardu Humans is looking like hot stuff, but I didn't crack any Judith's so I'm holding off for now. I haven't run into Glass of the Guildpact yet--Looks like it could set up some surprise turns. It seems like nobody is running artifacts these days.

Mr Eko wrote:

I've been having a lot of fun with a Gate deck, using Gateway Colossus and Gatebreaker Ram. Supporting those are Rhythm of the Wild and Domri Rade to give those creatures Riot, and Circuitous Route and Growth Spiral for mana ramping. Gates Ablaze takes out most early creatures, and Thud can finish the game by throwing an enormous creature at your opponent.

Just ran into this deck for the first time, playing with my modified mono red deck. I still might have been able to out aggro the deck even with an early Gates Ablaze wiping my board, but the variant I ran up against had several sources of life gain.

Finally got back to the 2-1 draft and finished 3-2, with both the win and the loss being fun games. After the draft was such a train wreck I'm just happy to have a winning record and get a few gems back.

I still had a code from my paper prerelease so I decided to go ahead and do the draft before bed. I ended up with seven copies of this thing:

IMAGE(http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=457248&type=card)

I also got a couple decent sacrifice outlets, an Instant that pumps my whole team, and one copy of that enchantment that deals 1 damage to the defending player when a creature with power 1 or less attacks. I have no idea if this deck is any good. But it is awesome...

I have an extra one of the codes for a free draft from the pre-releases. PM me for it.
(Edit: Gone)

I've mostly been playing a mid-rangish Rb deck that seems to play pretty well (Chainwhirler and Phoenix are still real well positioned - a lot of otherwise good decks are soft to one or both of them.)