Magic: The Gathering Arena - Catch All

Cool story, Vargen! I used to play MTGO and Dragon Age Origins late at night while I held our first baby. She's 11 now. o.O

My son and I recently did a Commander Legends league thing where we built sealed decks and then evolved our decks with additional packs over time. Yesterday my wife proposed doing the same thing with Strixhaven.

Thanks for the code, Eldon! Going to give it to my older son tonight, along with a couple of premade decks so that we can play against each other on the couch:)

If you only follow one MTG video creator and don't have time for Loading Ready Run's stuff, you really should check out MTG Remy:

As an update, (now that we're on a new page and all) I picked up two more prerelease packs and have 5 remaining codes. If you've already asked me for one, but have multiple accounts to redeem them for, feel free to PM me for more. Otherwise, still no grinders please. I'll likely trash any remaining codes next weekend (05-01-2021).

EDIT: GONE!

I have zero expectations that anybody cares and this might be a tad humble braggish but I thought I would take a stab at a state of BO1 standard meta after making it back to Mythic today.

First, I shut down last season with about 5 days to go after reaching #69, my highest ever rank. I ended up at #298 after not playing those last days, to give you a data point on rank decay.

Last season I thought that Mono White Lifegain (especially after adding a couple of Blade Historians) was the best positioned deck outside of the Ultimatum decks. It had a dominate record against Mono Red, and at least in my experience the Lifegain variant was favored against non-life Mono White decks. Of course, just like any current standard creature deck, it's pretty much scoop time against an on curve Shadow's Verdict but I have always found control/combo decks a slog on ladder, as every time you get the mirror, a little piece of your soul is lost.

Fast forward to this season, and my Mono White Lifegain deck did fine through Platinum but hit a brick wall in Diamond because of this slot machine:

Winota has always been a fun card, but currently on the BO1 ladder, I would guess that 40% of people are playing it. And again, while I don't think I could stomach trying to ladder with it, the deck unfortunately is well positioned against Mono White. At least right now, it feels like a lot of the Mono Red players are playing Boros Winota, so I needed a new deck.

So, I turned to what I feared the most last season as Mono White Life. Mono Black Auras.

It is by no means a tier 1 or even 1.5 deck, but on the BO1 ladder it is very well positioned right now.

My particular version, which I extrapolated from an opponent that was already in Mythic on the second day runs four copies of Lurrus in the main, but the secret sauce is Bloodsky Berserker and three copies of Aphemea.

Now, you might see that last card and think that is doesn't synergize with Lurrus, but I would counter that you only can bring back one card a turn with Lurrus and eating a few of your enchantments is usually fine and the payoff is worth it. Because Aphemea absolutely punishes rogues.

As for Bloodsky, sometimes all it does is eat a Bonecrusher stomp, but once it gets rolling it can quickly end the game, especially if you throw on a Demonic Embrace to swing for lethal out of nowhere, a turn before the Ultimatum deck can go off. Plus, in creature match ups, it's pretty easy to bring it back and double spell with Lurrus if a game goes long.

As the deck is relatively budget friendly, try it out. It takes a bit to learn how to pilot it well. You want to not rush out your Hateful Eidolons until you either are guaranteed value or have a Village Rites handy because they are also stomp magnets.

MTGA Assistant tells me that I'm 21-10 vs Winota and 15-1 vs Mono Red. I'm only 4-10 vs Ultimatums but, I think I started 0-7 against them before I started figuring out how to approach the match up. Still the worst match up by far, but as I mentioned elsewhere, probably all creature decks except maybe Mono Red and Winota are going to struggle with Ultimatum.

Would love any tips or observations that anyone else has. Plus any recommendations for what to play in the Bo3 qualifier tournament in a couple of weeks.

The next big tournament is sealed, so you should have been practicing that.

Kidding aside, I haven't really followed constructed since Mayhem Devil was a thing. And I didn't really follow it then; I came up with a pet deck that happened to be a week and a half ahead of the competitive meta. These days most of my constructed involves taking aggro decks into the Brawl queues so I can complete quests quickly.

But I do like to hear people's reports on what's going on in Standard land.

I'm over here in the limited queues trying to figure out what my problem is. I'm doing pretty well over all, but I'm doing well with decks that I think are marginal while the decks that I think are great keep getting dumpstered. A lot of that is variance, but I don't think that's all of it. I still feel like something's off with my deck evaluation.

Vargen wrote:

The next big tournament is sealed, so you should have been practicing that.

Not the $2000 buck tourney, the monthly Qualifier tourney for the top 1200 mythic.

My first love was limited. Still wish they would add the OG MTGO monthly sealed format to Arena but that probably wouldn't make them enough money.

Haven't logged in quite a bit. Can't tell if that's because I'm irritated with faceless MTG (seriously, my salt quotient is 100x compared to in-person) or if I'm just not that interested in their model of buybuybuy to gitgud. There's not enough casual, for-funsies modes. For me.

Also, in-person is right around the corner in my neck of the woods, so I'm paying more attention to tweaking my paper decks.

How about everyone else?

And do we have a paper Magic or general card game thread?

Top_Shelf wrote:

And do we have a paper Magic or general card game thread?

We do.

My wife has been happily spewing gems drafting, and half paying attention while she minds our infant. I haven't been doing as much of that because I will hyper-focus on the Magic game and don't want to do that right now.

Jumpstart and Cube draft are both up now, so I hope to carve out some time to play both of those a bit.

Imho we don't need more than one MTG thread, given the light traffic.

In-person is somewhat back at my LGS, but I haven't gone yet. They've been doing Sealed only, to cut down on proximity, but giving a big discount. One of these days I may bite. I'm vaxxed, plus they're requiring masks, so it's reasonably safe.

Vargen wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

And do we have a paper Magic or general card game thread?

We do.

My wife has been happily spewing gems drafting, and half paying attention while she minds our infant. I haven't been doing as much of that because I will hyper-focus on the Magic game and don't want to do that right now.

Jumpstart and Cube draft are both up now, so I hope to carve out some time to play both of those a bit.

Thanks for the link. Apparently I was posting in that thread! lol at me.

I can't ever seem to get drafting right. I'm horrible at it and really only enjoy live drafts because of the fun of playing with friends. Also cool when folks pull something they are really excited about for Standard.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Imho we don't need more than one MTG thread, given the light traffic.

I agree, but it seems weird to ignore the “catch-all” thread and instead talk about paper in the one that ostensibly has the narrower focus.

My wife and I are looking to go back to our lgs and do some Modern Horizons 2 prerelease events, now that we’re vaccinated. They’ve seemed pretty reasonable about how they’ve run things in-store, but we’ve been sticking with “buy some prerelease kits and play at home” until now. Also the premier sets have been on Arena so we at least haven’t been missing out on that front.

After being up for 3 months Magic Legends announced they're shutting down in Oct.

I poked at the beta for Magic Legends a couple times and had intentions of going back to it at some point. From what I could tell they had one genius idea, the draw-from-a-deck instead of typical ability cooldowns, and the rest of it was merely fine. And apparently it didn’t hold together all that well in the endgame. I hope the death of the game doesn’t kill that one good idea.

Agree that was a good idea. It's also a case of false advertising... The turn from MMO to essentially a mobile ARPG is bizarre and would love to know what caused that cluster of a business decision.

From what I can tell they didn't change focus; they changed how they were describing what they had.

I was in a closed alpha/beta session back when they were still calling it a MMO. It technically is a Massively Multiplayer Online game, but the MMO label was doing it a disservice. I'll echo some of the feedback I gave them then, and note that I was but one voice among many saying this:

The term MMO makes me think of World of Warcraft-style games. In particular, it makes me think I'm going to get to explore Ravnica and Zendikar like I have Azeroth and Tatooine. Magic Legends doesn't scratch that itch at all. The action gameplay, top-down perspective, and overall feel of the game remind me a lot more of Diablo or Path of Exile. Calling this thing a MMO creates false expectations and leads to disappointment. But as an ARPG I think it shows* a lot of promise.

*at the time of the closed testing. It would seem this promise wasn't realized, but the arrival of my firstborn 3 months ago kept me from finding out firsthand.

Vargen wrote:

From what I can tell they didn't change focus; they changed how they were describing what they had.

I was in a closed alpha/beta session back when they were still calling it a MMO. It technically is a Massively Multiplayer Online game, but the MMO label was doing it a disservice. I'll echo some of the feedback I gave them then, and note that I was but one voice among many saying this:

The term MMO makes me think of World of Warcraft-style games. In particular, it makes me think I'm going to get to explore Ravnica and Zendikar like I have Azeroth and Tatooine. Magic Legends doesn't scratch that itch at all. The action gameplay, top-down perspective, and overall feel of the game remind me a lot more of Diablo or Path of Exile. Calling this thing a MMO creates false expectations and leads to disappointment. But as an ARPG I think it shows* a lot of promise.

*at the time of the closed testing. It would seem this promise wasn't realized, but the arrival of my firstborn 3 months ago kept me from finding out firsthand.

It wasn't...

As you pointed out it's more like Diablo/PoE which are ARPGs. There's nothing MMO about the game and the UI and a lot of the mechanics are almost full rips of other mobile games that are out there. If they didn't change direction they were guilty of false advertising. Which is annoying we need more wins in the MMO sphere not stuff like this.

I would totally play (or at least try out for several months) a true old school MMO set across MTG planes.

Anyone else getting excited for this D&D MTG crossover set? I may even buy physical cards at launch, something I haven’t done in decades. they’ve definitely amped up the nostalgia factor for me, and the dungeon mechanic seems cool, even if it may not have much effect on the big money game or tournament stuff. I’m predicting this set will be a big hit.

ranalin wrote:

There's nothing MMO about the game

I mean, it is massively multiplayer and it is online. And it's made by Cryptic, whose MMO lineage predates the term's shift to meaning "WoW clone." So I can kinda forgive the initial announcement.

I think this new Forgotten Realms set looks neat. I love the special art treatments, but I'm skeptical about how well they'll hold up rendered on Arena. I do hope they come up with a satisfying die rolling visual. They've done some stuff with coin flips that have been awesome (Mirror March) and some stuff that's been majorly disappointing (Rakdos the Showstopper).

Vargen wrote:
ranalin wrote:

There's nothing MMO about the game

I mean, it is massively multiplayer and it is online. And it's made by Cryptic, whose MMO lineage predates the term's shift to meaning "WoW clone." So I can kinda forgive the initial announcement.

I think this new Forgotten Realms set looks neat. I love the special art treatments, but I'm skeptical about how well they'll hold up rendered on Arena. I do hope they come up with a satisfying die rolling visual. They've done some stuff with coin flips that have been awesome (Mirror March) and some stuff that's been majorly disappointing (Rakdos the Showstopper).

It's lobbied gameplay like other ARPGs out there. Who makes it means f*ck all. The fact that it is Cryptic makes this whole thing more sad because of their pedigree. I had hoped that they would emulate Lost Ark, but they kept it super shallow and don't come close at all to a massively multiplayer game.

They're own description for it now is 'Online Action RPG'

The only redeeming piece of the game was the spell deck system. The rest is just lacking in every way.

ranalin wrote:

Who makes it means f*ck all

"MMO" has changed its meaning, and the company making Magic Legends used to make MMOs back when the term was broad enough to include games like it. Which would neatly and understandably explain the misuse of the term in early marketing. I did not mean to imply any argument as to the game's quality or lack thereof.

So, how about that Demilich?

IMAGE(https://media.wizards.com/2021/afr/en_arwsn33HJz.png)

Looks like it'll be whatever in Standard, but in Historic it gets to play alongside Faithless Looting and Brainstorm...

Vargen wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Who makes it means f*ck all

"MMO" has changed its meaning, and the company making Magic Legends used to make MMOs back when the term was broad enough to include games like it. Which would neatly and understandably explain the misuse of the term in early marketing. I did not mean to imply any argument as to the game's quality or lack thereof.

I'm sorry but this is incorrect. The definition has not changed. The marketing of MMOs has. There's a long line of games who ran away from the MMO term when that's what they are, and others who have used it and it not apply. This is one example of it not applying.

TIL the Ultima Online developers were incorrect when they coined the term “MMO.”

Been lurking and messing around for couple months.

Are there any game modes where it's just strictly the new sets that come out besides Sealed or Drafts? Looking for something where people might be playing more basic non OP decks where by turn 3 you are not already pretty much beat.

Don't want to pour $$$ into these options. Getting really bored of playing standard ranked. I created an inexpensive deck that can stand up in standard but it's wearing thin.

I think the most fun I had recently is when they had a side game going where you combined 2 basic decks.

Even when I pay sealed/draft I get slaughtered. Maybe my drafting skills + synergies are lacking but it feels like I run into people who apparently drafted an entirely perfect new deck set.

You're describing why I haven't been logging in. Not sure where a casual like me fits in.

Have you tried direct games?

Gladiator isn't casual, but it being an eternal singleton 100 card format does mean I tend to be able to keep my decks running with fewer wild cards, since nothing rotates and you only need one copy of a card. If you're interested check out the discord https://discord.gg/ypRnqGwWr9

There's Standard 2020 which is the past four sets. Still going to be pretty high-powered, but not quite so bad. I mostly just stick to draft these days, and while it's still early days, I'm unfortunately not very into this new set. The mechanics and balance just haven't produced a lot of interesting games thus far.

I think you mean Standard 2022, which is all the sets that will still be around after this Fall's rotation. It's up a little early this year. I guess they realize that everyone is kind of sick of Throne of Eldraine dominating the format.

There's also the Brawl queue. I believe that does matchmaking based on which commander you're running, so if you don't want to face optimized meta decks don't use a top-tier commander. That's what I tend to do when I want to grind out some quests without hopping into a new draft.

Top_Shelf wrote:

You're describing why I haven't been logging in. Not sure where a casual like me fits in.

Have you tried direct games?

Nope. Which I assume partly means this.

Renji wrote:

Gladiator isn't casual, but it being an eternal singleton 100 card format does mean I tend to be able to keep my decks running with fewer wild cards, since nothing rotates and you only need one copy of a card. If you're interested check out the discord https://discord.gg/ypRnqGwWr9

Thank you I'll have a look.

But I guess what's going on here is the community bridging the gap via direct games? Can't promise that I'm invested enough to jump through some hoops to get the game play I want but good to know there's sub communities that are supporting alternate game styles.