Magic: The Gathering Arena - Catch All

I'm disappointed that I'm not going to get to explore Ravnica and Zendikar the way I got to explore Kalimdor and Lorderon. I think a lot of people are.

That said, I like what I've seen of the card-based ability system, where your controller buttons are your hand of cards and when you use one you draw a different one to replace it. It seems like a great way to inject a fun bit of variance into the old ARPG gameplay formula.

I agree. And it looks like they are going for the card abilities being over the top and balancing them by not having access to them all the time.

fangblackbone wrote:

Cryptic is making Diablo Eternal?

Or are you trying to say there is no difference between Tencent and Perfect World/Cryptic?

This new Legends game has almost the same UI as Diablo Eternal.

I've said that since they got bought out by PW, Cryptic has been sh*t. Primarily because they swallowed the whole BS lootbox system they used in other PW games. Which Tencent has done before but not all the time with their Western games.

If you're making a Magic: the Gathering adaptation and you don't have loot boxes in there somewhere then you aren't being true to the property.

The latest development update - https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...

I'm very excited for Cube Sealed coming next month, as well as the continued hints that they're actively working on drafts against other players rather than bots. (Can you tell that most of my time with the game is spent playing limited?)

They've also mentioned 8-player draft pods in the context of their social features, so hopefully that means we can do a stand-alone draft with friends.

Ooh, they're going to temporarily let you do quests in friend matches. That might get me back in the habit of grinding.

What’s the deal with Magic: Mana Strike? Is it any good?

If anybody hasn't heard, Brawler's Guildhall is free for the next month, so it's not just for Wednesdays anymore

And I might actually have some time to play when other people are around now, so here's my code:

Dryden#29821

One of the weirdest results of the Coronavirus pandemic

Statement on Space Godzilla
https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...

Mr Eko wrote:

One of the weirdest results of the Coronavirus pandemic

Statement on Space Godzilla
https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...

Kinda curious if the conspiracy nuts will latch onto WoTC, because the set also has this card.

I’ve really enjoyed the new cube sealed mode. All the deckbuilding fun of limited, but with a power level that I find much more enjoyable. Added bonus for me is that all the reward ICRs are from rotated sets.

I've been interested in that cube, but not 3000 gold interested. Not with such meager rewards.

I got really discouraged with Arena a while back because I just could not get a handle on Theros drafts. In-person drafts at the LGS have gone just as well as they always do; there's just something about the bot drafting that throws me off with this set. I tried dipping my toe back in yesterday and went 1-3.

Maybe the free Brawl will get me back into the gold grind habit. I did like that back when I was in the routine. I'd log on because I felt obligated to do the daily quests and 20 minutes later I'd walk away happy that I'd played a little Magic...

8 player live human drafting was announced today as launching with Ikoria on Thursday. It will be available in a 3 round Bo3 format which will replace the currently existing traditional (bot) draft and as a 7 round Bo1 format which will be ranked and will live beside the currently existing ranked bot draft which will still be available. The old ranked bot draft will be renamed quick draft and the new human ranked draft will be named premiere draft.

Premiere draft and Traditional draft will always be of the current set. Quick draft will be on two week rotations with M20, Ikoria, and War of the Spark announced as the next six weeks starting on Friday.

Too bad it's not tied into the friends list like they implied earlier. GWJ draft parties will just have to wait.

Or we could learn how to use one of the drafting websites that are out there and play with direct challenge.

I'm a little disappointed that the drafts are more expensive, but you can now buy into best-of-three drafts with gold, so that probably makes up for it.

How are you guys enjoying the new set?

For me it's a bit up and down. I'm having fun building decks with the new cards but play mode is full of mono red and flasha and they stomp all my janky builds. So I started playing ranked again and dug myself out of bronze league with my janky builds which has been fun. Seems like all the tryhards are already in gold or beyond.

So far I like a deck that uses Lukka to dig out an Agent of Treachery which I bounce with a Charming Prince. And a human deck with the General, Chevill and the cat that lets my fetch the humans back from the graveyard.

I opened four Unpredictable Cyclones so I tried to do something with it. I crafted another two Godzillas and four Omnious Seas and threw together a bunch of other cycling cards. It's a meme deck but it was fun enough to build. It's been a while that I found something I just wanted to make happen in Magic and didn't care too much about winning.

Altogether I enjoy the companion mechanic more than I would have thought. It's fun to go through all the cards and try to think about some way to use them. But I doubt that any of the decks will make it into competitive play. It's not enough of an upside I think and it's too easy to hate on.

By the way, one of today's daily deals is they'll sell you 500 gems for the low low price of 400 gems.

Yes, it's a "here, have a bonus if you come interact with our store system" but hey, free currency.

If you figure it by % of a draft, it's actually a little bit better of a deal to buy the 500 gems for the 2000 gold price.

I'm having a blast with Bant Ramp to Gyruda with Spark Doubles and End-Raze Forerunners to fetch.

I've also been really enjoying both sealed and the premier draft.

Absolutely loving drafting this set. I got lucky on a few games and was able to play 3-4 in a row. It's a lot deeper than I was expecting, with a tonne of fantastic interactions. Mutate is really surprising me, because I went in expecting to be constantly 2-for-1'd, but the effects on mutate cards are often incredibly good.

Standard has been difficult. I feel like oven cat variants got a lot of new tools to play with, but I'm struggling to get the cards I need for it despite grinding away on the mastery pass. Ah the woes of the F2P model. Even when I've paid a bit, it's still a grind.

IMAGE(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/469428977749065728/701356783171534878/unknown.png?width=799&height=170)

This looks absolutely disgusting, but I also want to try the combo out with the new Mothra card.

I'm digging the new set for draft, although it seems super swingy. In most sets I can easily see the 2-3 viable archetypes for draft. I try to go in with NO spoilers, and no meta analysis and work it out myself for a few drafts. It's my favorite part of the game.

Anyway, I'm now going to do the google search to get other peoples opinions. Mine is: you have to commit so early, it's very hard to make anything clever work.

Have you been drafting against the bots or other players? I'm only like 3 drafts in and I'm having a difficult time not feeling clever. Cycling and Mutate both give you a bunch of tough sequencing decisions.

I've been enjoying the pod drafts, but sometimes I'm finding the human drafters to be less on point than the AI bots I've been used to. Last night I got passed a checkpoint officer as the LAST pick in pack 2...that's like a B card. White was so wide open I had my pick of any card I wanted.

The increased cost of the premium draft also has me moving away from Rare drafting to actually trying to pick the best card available, which feels wrong, but also winds up with me having better decks over all. I have to say I do find the timers fairly strict, and would like a bit more time to read through things to make my picks, but overall I've been enjoying the experience. I'd also gotten a bit relient on the LSV set review overlay using untapped.gg, so it's gotten me to be a bit more mindful of my choices.

I haven't been playing a ton of standard, I prefer to wait for the meta to settle a bit before starting to burn wildcards. I have been playing something similar to the cat oven deck with the wolf that A_Unicorn posted above, and it is indeed fun. I'm normally not the biggest fan of that archetype, but quests need to be completed!

I've had a lot of fun with the Ikoria player drafts. Decks I've built around companions, Yorion and Kaheera, were well worth their restrictions. Even just having them as creatures was quite powerful.

Some combos I though were good
Porcuparrot + Bootnipper = kill any of you opponent's creatures each turn.
2 Rooting Molochs = you can use one to recur the other from the graveyard.

As with any new set, you can redeem the code PLAYIKORIA for 3 packs.

This is a hard draft format. There's so much going on, both during the draft and games. I've played some pretty wild games, but also punted lots from forgetting details about cards (Blitz Leech removes counters! The mentor cycle can only put its ability counters on non-humans!) In standard, I've been having a lot of fun playing that RB Lurrus sac deck (I was on Rakdos sac last standard, so I didn't even need to spend many wildcards for it) and it's good fun. Companions are just obscene across all formats.

Some screenshots of my more successful draft decks below (there were definitely a couple of stinkers in between these):

Spoiler:

Having a basically guaranteed board-affecting 3-for-1 every game with Lutri is gross:
IMAGE(https://scontent.fykz1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/93353224_226708741730095_172480887265427456_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&_nc_sid=b96e70&_nc_ohc=vmSXH7YZd-YAX-84I-j&_nc_ht=scontent.fykz1-1.fna&oh=561261fe7bc7a0595c0e80aa57415b99&oe=5EC7025D)
Opened the Vivien pack 2 and took it as my first green card and things worked out:
IMAGE(https://scontent.fykz1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/94486475_895151644333331_3104927636049100800_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_sid=b96e70&_nc_ohc=AsCs5nOIBjoAX8Pq2ZU&_nc_ht=scontent.fykz1-1.fna&oh=f1a484a2a9bf5809c4b3919cfd9df86c&oe=5EC80A19)
Opened Gyruda pack 1 and Keruga pack 2 and had to make a choice on the spot, and I'm not sure if it was the right one:
IMAGE(https://scontent.fykz1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/94269496_711521809654665_688661189453938688_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_sid=b96e70&_nc_ohc=x9n0MGPPpdAAX9ClrVl&_nc_ht=scontent.fykz1-2.fna&oh=f861180c689752c9c248490e18671bcf&oe=5ECA3389)

Nice decks.

I've been beating myself up all day over a draft I had yesterday where I thought I had an unbeatable Simic deck....and then proceeded to go 1-3.

I had a number of bombs - Voracious Greatshark, Shark Typhoon, Wingspan Mentor, and Parcelbeast, and some really solid removal, ramp, and mutate options. I'm still reeling from what went wrong, but I do know that in every single game I lost, I flooded HARD. I don't know if this has been happening to anyone else, but I feel like I'm flooding a lot more in Ikoria than I have been in other draft formats. I use untapped.gg and I see the "33% chance to draw a land" marker at the bottom and its just land, land, land. In this last draft I even had two migratory greathorns which should in theory THIN my deck of lands and I'm still flooding.

I know with all the ramp, cycle and mutate I can cut some lands, and I do generally cut at least one, but I'm worried about cutting more since I still need those initial lands to get going and if I cut too much I'll just be getting screwed instead of flooding. Having a really hard time perfecting the manabase in this format.

Maybe I should just play some more Hearthstone...

I've seen 14 land decks flood out in this format. Granted, that was with like 18 cards that cycle for 1 or 2, but it was still weird to see.

Also sometimes that's just Magic.

Did you save the deck? Now that 40-card direct challenges are a thing you can always challenge a friend if you feel like you didn't get enough reps with a sweet limited deck.

Anyone go for the money this weekend?

I threw Wizards 50 bucks but my best run was 6-3 (after starting 6-1) after switching back to my Lurrus Rakdos sac deck. I wish I had played that for all of my runs but instead I switched last minute and went with that stupid Winota/ramp deck, which even when I ramped into Winota turn 3, it felt like I was always wiffing on Agent.

Ah well, finished at 806 Mythic, so have the qualifier tournament in a few weeks to look forward to.

I did one run with Jeskai Lukka Fires, which is not the best deck for best-of-one but is still a good time. Started 4-1 before losing two quick ones to the Winota deck. Was interesting. I'm not normally a competitive player but I had the gems to burn and the godzilla lands are neat, so I figured why not?

The decks I seem to like to play are not winning decks. So I have only been playing a few weeks for fun and didn't even try to go for any prize money.

On the plus side I may be able to make my vampire deck soon.

Banned and Restricted list updated today.

Goodbye Fires and Agent.

Companions now have a 3 cost sorcery speed tax to move to your hand.

I actually still think that Lurrus is viable for Rakdos Sac, as Priest often give you free mana to float.

I saw someone point out that the change doesn't do much to Yorion, who has been one of the dominant companions in newer formats. Though banning Fires does add another 5 mana to Yorion's cost so...

I do think it's interesting that they went with a mana tax rather than removing the card advantage. Though keeping the card advantage makes the tax easier to swallow.