It is way to expensive for a mode where you can get ****ed over so easily and go 0-3. It's literally like 2 weeks of saving your *****ty gold to play draft and then get a bull***** draft selection and have 2 games where you just mana flood anyway and lose. Two weeks of saving for 12 minutes of play. Such a massive ******* rip off. Honestly Arena is awful. Draft is just one more awful piece of the ***** pie.
I should note that I'm currently 1-9 in Dominaria drafts, so I understand where you're coming from a hundred percent. The format just feels like no matter what you draft, everyone else you run into has bigger dudes, more efficient removal, combat tricks out the wazoo, and it's just straight up impossible to break even on wins, let alone break even on gems.
But this feels like a problem with DOM/DOM/DOM draft, not with Arena in general. In M19 and GRN draft I was consistently able to get to 4 and 5 wins without much problem, and 6 on occasion. Sure sometimes I tried forcing a deck when it wasn't there and scrubbed out, but more often than not you should be able to get close to breakeven if you know what limited archetypes are good (In DOM it's WB Historic, BG Saprolings, and UR Wizards) and pick up the cards to build one of them.
Also, the "two weeks of saving" makes me curious. 5000 gold for drafts shouldn't take that long to cobble together, with the quest system I can get almost 1200 a day with barely any effort, and that's with me not spending any money on gems outside of the welcome kit that I only just now have burned through all those gems. Two drafts a week while completely F2P should be easily doable if you have an hour or so to put towards the game a day.
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Let me rephrase your complaint, OP, please.
"MTG Arena is not a good game because I can't play it well, and, in consequence, I don't get bigger rewards. I think that the price payout in draft should be much higher for people who can't win even a single game." Is that correct?
Yeah, the M19 draft was fine I guess. I think my real issue with Arena drafting is that the cost seems way out of line with the experience. I dont get an hour a day to play, so it takes me longer to save I guess. But regardless: drafting in Arena is best of 1, so one *****ty mana flood game and you've already down to 0-1. And that drafting costs MORE than the cost of three packs (I know the packs have more cards, but its not like they have more rares) which is stupid. And youre not playing against people who draft from the same pool as you (which is kinda the whole point of "DRAFT"), so getting crap luck with the packs just means you and you alone are screwed over, your opponent may have had a much better pool.
Yeah, the M19 draft was fine I guess. I think my real issue with Arena drafting is that the cost seems way out of line with the experience. I dont get an hour a day to play, so it takes me longer to save I guess. But regardless: drafting in Arena is best of 1, so one *****ty mana flood game and you've already down to 0-1. And that drafting costs MORE than the cost of three packs (I know the packs have more cards, but its not like they have more rares) which is stupid. And youre not playing against people who draft from the same pool as you (which is kinda the whole point of "DRAFT"), so getting crap luck with the packs just means you and you alone are screwed over, your opponent may have had a much better pool.
Yeah, I get that certain limitations prevent them from implementing best-of-three games or sharing the same pool with the players you are up against, but the cost really feels unnecessarily high, especially for players who want to play but don't have time to grind gold every day. Personally I liked M19 even less than Dominaria (perhaps it's just me, but nearly everyone I played against used the same deck, WB lifegain, which made the whole thing pretty boring). Guilds is at the very least a bit more varied.
I had an epic struggle in winning in DOM drafts, especially if i didn't go an aggro UR route but on the other hand I keep getting 7-0 on GRN with Boros, which is very weird to me. I don't consider myself a very good limited player and I certainly don't draft cards for value in Arena, apart from the occasional planeswalker.
I've been doing GRN drafts the last week with gold and the $5 starter pack gems. I really don't see the point in not rare drafting unless it's a really weak bulk rare. I've been pulling 5-7 rares(and usually one being a mythic) off my drafts prior to prizing, and can usually still throw a deck together good enough to eek out two or 3 wins and get about 200-300 gems back along with the prize pack(s). That seems pretty fair for 5 packs worth of gold.
As a casual player (I don't spend actual money), it's a good system. I casually spend the week playing semi competitive games and win gold. Once I collect enough, I buy into a draft with my gold winnings. I usually get my ass handed to me, but I get cards I didn't have before, and occasionally I'll get some gems, which is the only way to get gems without paying real money for them. Sure it's slow, but I'm not in any rush. In fact, I haven't collect enough gems to really get into anything at the moment.
I know it's weird, but I like to see the new and inventive way some ppl put decks together and mow me down.
Noob question here, but I am not sure why many tell newISH players to save 5000 gold and draft instead of buying packs. For 5000 you get 5 packs while draft you get 3. Hmm?
Noob question here, but I am not sure why many tell newISH players to save 5000 gold and draft instead of buying packs. For 5000 you get 5 packs while draft you get 3. Hmm?
Draft packs are more valuable, seeing as they contain more cards (15 instead of 8) and also a possibility of "value drafting" for additional rares. In addition, you also get at least 1 booster pack as a reward after a draft, even if you lose every game.
In my opinion, and most people I've talked to, 3 draft pack + 1 normal booster as a minimum is better value than 5 normal boosters. It only gets better if you're able to win, of course.
Strong disagree. Buying packs are more valuable because wildcards are more valuable. Wildcards let you choose the cards you need to complete a good deck. Drafting is spending 5000 gold to try and get lucky with 3 random rare cards. Many times the choices are not worth the money. Buying packs nets you 5 random rare cards with the potential of wildcards.
Since most of the archetypes use cards in the commons and uncommons range, draft isn't a horrible way to get at least some of the cards needed. The pattern for myself has been random games until quests are done (playing a billion monkey barrels of merfolk for some reason when I play mono-red burn), and then do whatever else still nets more packs. The bigger question on draft is if it is worth it to even go past one win. I thought rewards were cumulative, but really it is just showing off what you get, so you might as well just call it after a win for the free pack unless you got a super deck.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Since most of the archetypes use cards in the commons and uncommons range, draft isn't a horrible way to get at least some of the cards needed. The pattern for myself has been random games until quests are done (playing a billion monkey barrels of merfolk for some reason when I play mono-red burn), and then do whatever else still nets more packs. The bigger question on draft is if it is worth it to even go past one win. I thought rewards were cumulative, but really it is just showing off what you get, so you might as well just call it after a win for the free pack unless you got a super deck.
The reasons are twofold: First and most obviously, more wins = more gems. Yes the difference between 0 and 1 win is bigger than any other jump, but it's not like at 5 or 6 wins you start getting less than 100 gems more. Secondly, more wins means a higher chance at a second pack from prizes (you're guaranteed 2 packs at 7 wins, any less and it's a percentage chance to get the second) so that increases your rewards even more.
And even if you don't ascribe to all of that, for 5000 coins or 750 gems, I'd want to play more than a single game - at least then it's games that I'm playing. If that isn't what you're after, I can't help you.
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Since most of the archetypes use cards in the commons and uncommons range, draft isn't a horrible way to get at least some of the cards needed. The pattern for myself has been random games until quests are done (playing a billion monkey barrels of merfolk for some reason when I play mono-red burn), and then do whatever else still nets more packs. The bigger question on draft is if it is worth it to even go past one win. I thought rewards were cumulative, but really it is just showing off what you get, so you might as well just call it after a win for the free pack unless you got a super deck.
The reasons are twofold: First and most obviously, more wins = more gems. Yes the difference between 0 and 1 win is bigger than any other jump, but it's not like at 5 or 6 wins you start getting less than 100 gems more. Secondly, more wins means a higher chance at a second pack from prizes (you're guaranteed 2 packs at 7 wins, any less and it's a percentage chance to get the second) so that increases your rewards even more.
And even if you don't ascribe to all of that, for 5000 coins or 750 gems, I'd want to play more than a single game - at least then it's games that I'm playing. If that isn't what you're after, I can't help you.
So the gems are cumulative but the packs aren't? I'm a bit confused here at what you are trying to say, because the only point where the winnings look like they grant a bigger reward is if someone makes it all the way to the final spot on the draft. Are you counting what is being earned on the side? The only reason to play draft is to escape the rank deck issue that happens in the free play mode, where certain decks appear in each rank and the second you make a new rank you get put up against people with far more complete decks. If someone really loves to draft and throw money at the screen the more power to them, but if you expect me to exalt the glory of the 750 gem money sink the game has I'm not that guy.
I'm trying the beta and I see good things and bad things. Unfortunately, the majority of the bad things are simply the design choices made for marketing reasons and they go well outside the scope of anything to do with fun game design. I don't know how to explain this to people any better, but there is a reason that we have a secondary market in paper. It's because the company went into a mode of promoting competitions with top end cards, deliberately producing tons of filler cards at common to pad out draft and limited, and they have gotten to the point where they don't even make precon products with decent cards in them. It is Wizards of the Coasts business model, everyone has complained about it, and it probably wont change until they stop making money with it.
Literally, these are the two things I want:
1) A direct way to buy common and uncommon wild cards. There's basically no reason to paywall these things and they should be something people can just get. If I walk into a store, there are bulk bins of commons everywhere and players often can get them for less than a quarter a piece or even for free. Uncommons have a huge variance, but they aren't a whole lot different.
2) Increased mythic wild card drops. One per 24 is an insult. Someone is paying 50 dollars for 45 packs and potentially 100 dollars for 90 packs. Only a precious few mythic cards even have a value above the 10 dollar mark in paper, so why are people being charged more for one in a digital card game with rotation? At least make them one per 12 or one per 18 if you really want to keep them that rare.
3) Make better starter decks. I don't care what they do in paper, do NOT make planeswalker level decks as the starters in a freaking digital card game. For one, if someone starts in late, they are going to be only getting cards from the latest set on a limited timer. They aren't going to necessarily pop back and try to pack war their way into standard, especially if a set doesn't even contain a relevant land cycle. Also, older sets are by their nature WORSE to open than the latest because of rotation.
Edit: And yes, I know that this is hardcore criticism of the game here, but keep in mind I am playing it and enjoying it as a game in absence of the card availability issues. The tier deck problem is basically out of scope for anyone designing the digital version of the game. If someone designs a mechanic like Energy with no way to interact with it and they tell the development team (which is probably code for "tell the manager or the project lead and have him tell the project team), to make the next update to the game, it's going to have that broken mechanic. But the game has to be at least worth the dollars someone is going to put into the gems to buy the packs if the game has any hope of surviving here.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Re: Prizes - so I decided to look at the prize structure again to make sure I was getting things right, and it turns out I wasn't. No the prize isn't cumulative. For reference, I'll post the draft prize schedule here in terms of how much more you get with each win.
0 Wins: 50 Gems, 20% chance of 2 packs.
1 Win: +50 Gems, +2% drop rate
2 Wins: +100 Gems, +2% drop rate
3 Wins: +100 Gems, +2% drop rate
4 Wins: +150 Gems, +4% drop rate
5 Wins: +200 Gems, +5% drop rate
6 Wins: +200 Gems, +5% drop rate
7 Wins: +100 Gems, Guaranteed 2 packs.
This hopefully illustrates that the more wins you get, the faster the rate of gem acquisition with 2, 4 and 5-wins being the thresholds for each win being more valuable than ones before it. (6 wins also has value in that you win more gems than it cost to play, allowing you to go infinite but it's not like the others I listed.) I'm certainly not saying exalt it; but I am saying that if you're going to draft, getting a single win and dropping is the equivalent of setting your money aflame.
Re: Secondary Market - I think you have to recognize that Magic was the first game of its kind; or at the very least the first of its kind of have the kind of popularity in the US it did. Back in 1993 there was no infrastructure, there was no model to base important decisions off of, Deckmaster and later Wizards had to figure things out on their own. The secondary market almost certainly didn't spawn due to cash-grabbing techniques and unplayable chaff at lower rarities - I was only 4 years old in '93 when the game came out but I'd wager the secondary market for MTG was shaped largely by the secondary market for the next closest thing out there at the time: Sports cards. A lot of the same aspects are there in terms of what makes a collectible a collectible, and without any idea of how things would turn out 25 years down the road I figure a lot of the same steps were taken. Sell rare cards at a premium, sell desirable cards at a premium, hype up new packs by advertising the awesome rookie card you might find. The company saw that "sell sealed product to vendors and let them hassle over pricing the individual cards" was what worked, and they adopted it. A quarter-century later the world has changed, but the supply chain and logistical workings of getting cards in decks has become so ground in that I'm not sure Wizards COULD fundamentally change it, even if they want to. If you want to blame someone for the skyrocketing prices, blame Investment Magic.
Re: Wild cards - This is a lot tougher. I say this, for the record, as someone who is constantly needing uncommon wildcards and would throw money at them in a heartbeat if the price wasn't obscene. But I'm not sure that making them just freely available to buy is the right way of going about it, for two reasons. First, if they sell common and uncommon wildcards for cash, I imagine it's only a matter of time before they sell rare and mythic wildcards for cash, which makes things even MORE pay-to-win. Second, Wizards has clearly shown that they've chosen to be slow and conservative with things that affect the in-game economy. The 5th card problem and the slowroll of a fix is taking as long as it is because they have to simulate how it'll make things work for the player and ensure it doesn't ruin the economy weeks or even months or a year down the line. One only has to look at Artifact's most recent correction (and the tens of thousands of dollars that literally evaporated overnight, good job Valve) to understand why they've taken this tack, and personally I respect that. We may just have different opinions on this, but the drop rate on WCs doesn't feel like it's starving me and I'd rather err on too conservative.
(It's also worth noting that drop rates for the rare/mythic wildcards DO follow the gambler's fallacy and the drop rate increases the more packs you go without one - this was publicly stated with the open beta launch, but only on the mothership site, not in-game.)
Ultimately, the game's launch has very much been buoyed by one of the most open and most enjoyable standard formats I've seen in a good 4-5 years. It's gotten people playing (250 million games in 11 weeks can't be wrong!) and it's gotten people paying. We might get a glimpse of how much they've been paying when Hasbro releases its 10-K filing to the SEC in February.
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Not to mention playing draft means you have to play a miserable draft experience. Like losing one of your games due to never drawing your second color of mana after 15 turns? Here ya go! No Best of threes either theres one game down! Like playing against someone who was able to somehow draft 4 Dimir Spybugs and an all-surveil dimir deck? cool thats game 2. Enjoy mana flooding? Enjoy being offered the absolute worst rares? cool, cool, got ya covered. Here's a player who ropes each turn. Fun. Draft takes all the completely repulsive elements of Magic Arena and puts them all in one very expensive mode.
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But this feels like a problem with DOM/DOM/DOM draft, not with Arena in general. In M19 and GRN draft I was consistently able to get to 4 and 5 wins without much problem, and 6 on occasion. Sure sometimes I tried forcing a deck when it wasn't there and scrubbed out, but more often than not you should be able to get close to breakeven if you know what limited archetypes are good (In DOM it's WB Historic, BG Saprolings, and UR Wizards) and pick up the cards to build one of them.
Also, the "two weeks of saving" makes me curious. 5000 gold for drafts shouldn't take that long to cobble together, with the quest system I can get almost 1200 a day with barely any effort, and that's with me not spending any money on gems outside of the welcome kit that I only just now have burned through all those gems. Two drafts a week while completely F2P should be easily doable if you have an hour or so to put towards the game a day.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
"MTG Arena is not a good game because I can't play it well, and, in consequence, I don't get bigger rewards. I think that the price payout in draft should be much higher for people who can't win even a single game." Is that correct?
Spirits
Yeah, I get that certain limitations prevent them from implementing best-of-three games or sharing the same pool with the players you are up against, but the cost really feels unnecessarily high, especially for players who want to play but don't have time to grind gold every day. Personally I liked M19 even less than Dominaria (perhaps it's just me, but nearly everyone I played against used the same deck, WB lifegain, which made the whole thing pretty boring). Guilds is at the very least a bit more varied.
Marath, Will of the Wild
Friendly Kess Twin Combo
Tatyova - Sir Bounce A Lot
Gonti's Luxury Pie
Prime (Eldrazi) Speaker Zegana (Retired)
The process of getting gold is fine for casual drafting I find.
Spirits
I know it's weird, but I like to see the new and inventive way some ppl put decks together and mow me down.
Strong disagree. Buying packs are more valuable because wildcards are more valuable. Wildcards let you choose the cards you need to complete a good deck. Drafting is spending 5000 gold to try and get lucky with 3 random rare cards. Many times the choices are not worth the money. Buying packs nets you 5 random rare cards with the potential of wildcards.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The reasons are twofold: First and most obviously, more wins = more gems. Yes the difference between 0 and 1 win is bigger than any other jump, but it's not like at 5 or 6 wins you start getting less than 100 gems more. Secondly, more wins means a higher chance at a second pack from prizes (you're guaranteed 2 packs at 7 wins, any less and it's a percentage chance to get the second) so that increases your rewards even more.
And even if you don't ascribe to all of that, for 5000 coins or 750 gems, I'd want to play more than a single game - at least then it's games that I'm playing. If that isn't what you're after, I can't help you.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
So the gems are cumulative but the packs aren't? I'm a bit confused here at what you are trying to say, because the only point where the winnings look like they grant a bigger reward is if someone makes it all the way to the final spot on the draft. Are you counting what is being earned on the side? The only reason to play draft is to escape the rank deck issue that happens in the free play mode, where certain decks appear in each rank and the second you make a new rank you get put up against people with far more complete decks. If someone really loves to draft and throw money at the screen the more power to them, but if you expect me to exalt the glory of the 750 gem money sink the game has I'm not that guy.
I'm trying the beta and I see good things and bad things. Unfortunately, the majority of the bad things are simply the design choices made for marketing reasons and they go well outside the scope of anything to do with fun game design. I don't know how to explain this to people any better, but there is a reason that we have a secondary market in paper. It's because the company went into a mode of promoting competitions with top end cards, deliberately producing tons of filler cards at common to pad out draft and limited, and they have gotten to the point where they don't even make precon products with decent cards in them. It is Wizards of the Coasts business model, everyone has complained about it, and it probably wont change until they stop making money with it.
Literally, these are the two things I want:
1) A direct way to buy common and uncommon wild cards. There's basically no reason to paywall these things and they should be something people can just get. If I walk into a store, there are bulk bins of commons everywhere and players often can get them for less than a quarter a piece or even for free. Uncommons have a huge variance, but they aren't a whole lot different.
2) Increased mythic wild card drops. One per 24 is an insult. Someone is paying 50 dollars for 45 packs and potentially 100 dollars for 90 packs. Only a precious few mythic cards even have a value above the 10 dollar mark in paper, so why are people being charged more for one in a digital card game with rotation? At least make them one per 12 or one per 18 if you really want to keep them that rare.
3) Make better starter decks. I don't care what they do in paper, do NOT make planeswalker level decks as the starters in a freaking digital card game. For one, if someone starts in late, they are going to be only getting cards from the latest set on a limited timer. They aren't going to necessarily pop back and try to pack war their way into standard, especially if a set doesn't even contain a relevant land cycle. Also, older sets are by their nature WORSE to open than the latest because of rotation.
Edit: And yes, I know that this is hardcore criticism of the game here, but keep in mind I am playing it and enjoying it as a game in absence of the card availability issues. The tier deck problem is basically out of scope for anyone designing the digital version of the game. If someone designs a mechanic like Energy with no way to interact with it and they tell the development team (which is probably code for "tell the manager or the project lead and have him tell the project team), to make the next update to the game, it's going to have that broken mechanic. But the game has to be at least worth the dollars someone is going to put into the gems to buy the packs if the game has any hope of surviving here.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
0 Wins: 50 Gems, 20% chance of 2 packs.
1 Win: +50 Gems, +2% drop rate
2 Wins: +100 Gems, +2% drop rate
3 Wins: +100 Gems, +2% drop rate
4 Wins: +150 Gems, +4% drop rate
5 Wins: +200 Gems, +5% drop rate
6 Wins: +200 Gems, +5% drop rate
7 Wins: +100 Gems, Guaranteed 2 packs.
This hopefully illustrates that the more wins you get, the faster the rate of gem acquisition with 2, 4 and 5-wins being the thresholds for each win being more valuable than ones before it. (6 wins also has value in that you win more gems than it cost to play, allowing you to go infinite but it's not like the others I listed.) I'm certainly not saying exalt it; but I am saying that if you're going to draft, getting a single win and dropping is the equivalent of setting your money aflame.
Re: Secondary Market - I think you have to recognize that Magic was the first game of its kind; or at the very least the first of its kind of have the kind of popularity in the US it did. Back in 1993 there was no infrastructure, there was no model to base important decisions off of, Deckmaster and later Wizards had to figure things out on their own. The secondary market almost certainly didn't spawn due to cash-grabbing techniques and unplayable chaff at lower rarities - I was only 4 years old in '93 when the game came out but I'd wager the secondary market for MTG was shaped largely by the secondary market for the next closest thing out there at the time: Sports cards. A lot of the same aspects are there in terms of what makes a collectible a collectible, and without any idea of how things would turn out 25 years down the road I figure a lot of the same steps were taken. Sell rare cards at a premium, sell desirable cards at a premium, hype up new packs by advertising the awesome rookie card you might find. The company saw that "sell sealed product to vendors and let them hassle over pricing the individual cards" was what worked, and they adopted it. A quarter-century later the world has changed, but the supply chain and logistical workings of getting cards in decks has become so ground in that I'm not sure Wizards COULD fundamentally change it, even if they want to. If you want to blame someone for the skyrocketing prices, blame Investment Magic.
Re: Wild cards - This is a lot tougher. I say this, for the record, as someone who is constantly needing uncommon wildcards and would throw money at them in a heartbeat if the price wasn't obscene. But I'm not sure that making them just freely available to buy is the right way of going about it, for two reasons. First, if they sell common and uncommon wildcards for cash, I imagine it's only a matter of time before they sell rare and mythic wildcards for cash, which makes things even MORE pay-to-win. Second, Wizards has clearly shown that they've chosen to be slow and conservative with things that affect the in-game economy. The 5th card problem and the slowroll of a fix is taking as long as it is because they have to simulate how it'll make things work for the player and ensure it doesn't ruin the economy weeks or even months or a year down the line. One only has to look at Artifact's most recent correction (and the tens of thousands of dollars that literally evaporated overnight, good job Valve) to understand why they've taken this tack, and personally I respect that. We may just have different opinions on this, but the drop rate on WCs doesn't feel like it's starving me and I'd rather err on too conservative.
(It's also worth noting that drop rates for the rare/mythic wildcards DO follow the gambler's fallacy and the drop rate increases the more packs you go without one - this was publicly stated with the open beta launch, but only on the mothership site, not in-game.)
Ultimately, the game's launch has very much been buoyed by one of the most open and most enjoyable standard formats I've seen in a good 4-5 years. It's gotten people playing (250 million games in 11 weeks can't be wrong!) and it's gotten people paying. We might get a glimpse of how much they've been paying when Hasbro releases its 10-K filing to the SEC in February.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP