What are you playing? Ranked, Traditional Ranked? Normal matchmaking, Constructed events?
If you are playing the best of 1 unranked then yes, there is some matchmaking based on deck going on. At some point it was confirmed that they were attempting to match based on Deck "strength" but what that actually means has been vague and ill understood.
What are you playing? Ranked, Traditional Ranked? Normal matchmaking, Constructed events?
If you are playing the best of 1 unranked then yes, there is some matchmaking based on deck going on. At some point it was confirmed that they were attempting to match based on Deck "strength" but what that actually means has been vague and ill understood.
Bo1 Ranked... :\ Figures.
This game is so unlike actual Magic it really does it a disservice.
I do know that the gate deck is heavy on uncommons... which also means that fewer wildcards are required to make the deck on average. Does your newer deck use fewer rares/mythics or fewer cards you crafted with wildcards? Those are the two measures I can think of that would let wizards distinguish between precons and actual competitive decks.
I do know that the gate deck is heavy on uncommons... which also means that fewer wildcards are required to make the deck on average. Does your newer deck use fewer rares/mythics or fewer cards you crafted with wildcards? Those are the two measures I can think of that would let wizards distinguish between precons and actual competitive decks.
I bet this is it. R/W deck is a lot "cheaper" to build in rarity terms than the other one. Man that is some lame ass rigging of the matchmaking. No wonder gate decks are so popular in Arena - you get matched up in potentially "easier" games.
It really seems so - these are my four planeswalker decks, redeemed by codes and slowly upgraded from packs - I used some wildcards, but only two/three a deck. I thought that they are good, because I have 40% win rate (in Bo1 unranked - I don't play anything else now), but probably they are just considered weak by game and matched accordingly
By direct admission of the Arena team (through patchnotes) the matchmaking takes into account both your rank and the "power level" of the deck, yet, they didn't expand on what they mean by that.
It is possible that it has something to do with the rarity count as well as the win-rate or win-history of specific decks.
By direct admission of the Arena team (through patchnotes) the matchmaking takes into account both your rank and the "power level" of the deck, yet, they didn't expand on what they mean by that.
It is possible that it has something to do with the rarity count as well as the win-rate or win-history of specific decks.
I suspect it's down to card level, not deck level. In other words, not strictly a rarity count. I think the card(s) have some kind of grade or value associated with them. Lower commons have a lower value, Mythics have a higher value, sure. But I think jank commons all the way to mythics have a lower value than their non-jank brothers and sisters at the same rarity level.
I forget which deck I did the experiment with, green stompy I think. I don't have my notes handy. But I digress, I found I was constantly being paired up with a specific arch type every time I played that deck. I eventually acquired a few new Planeswalkers from pack wins and decided to add them to my deck to try and improve the match ups. My first experiment was to swap out one card for a PW (I only had one). The change in opponent was immediate. Instead of the usual opponents, IIRC, I began to be paired up with U-Mill and Nexus decks. Holy-heck... the power level jump from swapping one card was insane and completely unexpected. I knew it would change what I went against but the power shift was way beyond what I expected.
So I swapped the PW for another, different PW, and the power shift dropped a tad and the decks became jankier. More like multi-color anti-mill decks with high card counts. Presumably, I was seeing the Anti-Nexus decks. Removed the PW and reverted the deck to its original configuration and I was right back to where I started, going against the same decks as before.
This seems to hold true with all my decks. If I take my Red Aggro deck and add/remove cards one at a time, I'll see my opponent arch-types change. Most times, very little, but once in a while I'll hit a "jackpot" and my matchups will change drastically, usually for the worst.
I also realize this is purely anecdotal so take it at whatever value you want.
By direct admission of the Arena team (through patchnotes) the matchmaking takes into account both your rank and the "power level" of the deck, yet, they didn't expand on what they mean by that.
It is possible that it has something to do with the rarity count as well as the win-rate or win-history of specific decks.
I suspect it's down to card level, not deck level. In other words, not strictly a rarity count. I think the card(s) have some kind of grade or value associated with them. Lower commons have a lower value, Mythics have a higher value, sure. But I think jank commons all the way to mythics have a lower value than their non-jank brothers and sisters at the same rarity level.
I forget which deck I did the experiment with, green stompy I think. I don't have my notes handy. But I digress, I found I was constantly being paired up with a specific arch type every time I played that deck. I eventually acquired a few new Planeswalkers from pack wins and decided to add them to my deck to try and improve the match ups. My first experiment was to swap out one card for a PW (I only had one). The change in opponent was immediate. Instead of the usual opponents, IIRC, I began to be paired up with U-Mill and Nexus decks. Holy-heck... the power level jump from swapping one card was insane and completely unexpected. I knew it would change what I went against but the power shift was way beyond what I expected.
So I swapped the PW for another, different PW, and the power shift dropped a tad and the decks became jankier. More like multi-color anti-mill decks with high card counts. Presumably, I was seeing the Anti-Nexus decks. Removed the PW and reverted the deck to its original configuration and I was right back to where I started, going against the same decks as before.
This seems to hold true with all my decks. If I take my Red Aggro deck and add/remove cards one at a time, I'll see my opponent arch-types change. Most times, very little, but once in a while I'll hit a "jackpot" and my matchups will change drastically, usually for the worst.
I also realize this is purely anecdotal so take it at whatever value you want.
Nope, I had that happens well in best of one. I swapped to a tested deck I had on cockatrice in arena that used cavalcade of calamity. Fun deck, and it kept putting me up against really bad decks. Then th ed next day it was back to mono red and oddly a midrange enchantment deck.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
I noticed this feeling of matchmaking also this week. With my BW midrange deck I play against burn like 70% of the matches. If I play with mono white aggro I seem to be getting A LOT of mirror matches. Playing with gates seems to attrack merfolk for some reason..
Edit: uhm... wtf happened to my account? User-28329972 with 1 post and no avatar..?
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Legacy:
- Elves
- Mono Black Reanimator
- UR Delver
- Grixis Delver
I typically have big streaks of say, six or seven wins then six losses to drop all the way back to gold 4... maybe they match you up if you are winning alot? It happens very consistently and its incredibly frustrating.
Right now I'm playing a 250 swamp deck to see what the matchmaker does. Played monoblue, gruul aggro, monowhite.
So tried a deck which was one of every multicolour uncommon in standard. Got mardu aggro (never seen this) and then monoblue again.
EDH RRGrenzo plays your deck, GGYeva's mono green control, WW9-tails trys desperately for monowhite not to suck RWBUTymna and Kraum's saboteur tribal, UWG Kestia's Enchantress Aggro, RUB Jeleva casts big dumb spells, RGB Vaevictis' big critters can kill your critters hard
I typically have big streaks of say, six or seven wins then six losses to drop all the way back to gold 4... maybe they match you up if you are winning alot? It happens very consistently and its incredibly frustrating.
Right now I'm playing a 250 swamp deck to see what the matchmaker does. Played monoblue, gruul aggro, monowhite.
So tried a deck which was one of every multicolour uncommon in standard. Got mardu aggro (never seen this) and then monoblue again.
Doesn't really seem to be considering the deck.
From what I can tell the system is dynamic in how it functions, so saying a card is powerful is largely a factor of wins vs losses. That means the ones who are most likely to get to diamond and mythic levels are the ones playing the decks that either are overwhelmingly powerful, or are playing a bunch of different decks in some kind of hilarious menagerie and win with the Billy Hill music running in the background, largely as other people are trying to figure out what the heck just happened.
At the same time, after being a part of the talks with Jeff Finnigan and getting hooked into game design pod casts, I believe the designers are really designing two sets of cards, with one set being template cards they have stocked up in a filing cabinet. Basically, common -> Uncommon -> Rare for limited, and uncommon -> rare -> mythic for constructed. So the designers can potentially assign "power points" to certain cards based on how close they match the ideal build of a specific deck archetype. However, because of the sheer size of the sets it is impossible that they catch every build, and while they might have most high end builds covered, brewers will always find a way to break the system.
That's why people have to spend money in Arena to actually play in constructed events on an effective time table. The constructed tier cards are gated by the rare wild cards and mythic wild cards. They can also make it so that when someone would normally get a high point card, they get a mythic or rare wild card instead, meaning they have the potential to waste the wild card on a lower powered card. That's why wild cards are not particularly good in a game that gets a lot of new players and part of the reason they have wild cards: to get more money. They aren't really there for our benefit, they are there because they give the freedom to shoot oneself in the foot.
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!
First tests showed no effect, but now I'm playing temur ramp garbage and barely any tier stuff coming up at all. Maybe its a time of day thing.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH RRGrenzo plays your deck, GGYeva's mono green control, WW9-tails trys desperately for monowhite not to suck RWBUTymna and Kraum's saboteur tribal, UWG Kestia's Enchantress Aggro, RUB Jeleva casts big dumb spells, RGB Vaevictis' big critters can kill your critters hard
At some point it was confirmed that they were attempting to match based on Deck "strength" but what that actually means has been vague and ill understood.
Agreed, I redeemed a Planeswalker intro deck, and somehow I was paired against Sultai Midrange with Krasis/Vivien etc, twice in a row. I lost both those, obviously, but all I have seen via playing the intro decks is Sultai, Mono blue tempo, and that Rakdos deck doing the rounds in top8s. Not sure how a UW intro deck with some lame creatures and lamer planeswalker "match" up to these...but anyhow.
there is match making rigging going on for sure. a simple way to test tihs for yourself. make a complete control deck like izzet or something with lots of counters. you will see nexus of fate and other control decks. then make a mono creature deck with rythm of the wild. you will see nothing but other creature decks. i refuse to spend any money until this garbage is fixed
I just switched from Gruul Midrange to Mono-Red aggro. I see WAY more mono-red aggro, as a mirror match now. Additionally, I have noticed big swings in opponents when working on my Gruul deck. If I made enough changes to it, while also importing a new list as text, I would receive MANY new opponents. I though Merfolk were long dead! Until I put a "new" decklist in that is.
I had 3 mono-red opponents in a row just recently in bo1 ranked. Many more besides that. My games are like 60-75% mono red right now. In addition, I keep seeing the Electro-static Wall version of the deck. This is probably due to the fact that it's better against the mirror, which you keep running up against in mono-red.
I am absolutely disgusted with Wizards right now. They have denied the shuffler problem (see the threads in this forum pertaining to it), not admitted the match making going on in bo1 at the very least, and once I figured out a work around to the shuffler problem, the got rid of it on this most recent patch 3/27/19. BTW, they didn't mention the changes in the patch notes. They made the bo1 hand decider even worse by giving it a 3rd hand to choose from, and also choosing from 3 hands even after a mulligan as well.
Hope this changes soon. I'll be writing to Wizards soon and you should too. They do try to cater towards their customers, eventually, after a ton of them have an outcry.
I just switched from Gruul Midrange to Mono-Red aggro. I see WAY more mono-red aggro, as a mirror match now. Additionally, I have noticed big swings in opponents when working on my Gruul deck. If I made enough changes to it, while also importing a new list as text, I would receive MANY new opponents. I though Merfolk were long dead! Until I put a "new" decklist in that is.
I had 3 mono-red opponents in a row just recently in bo1 ranked. Many more besides that. My games are like 60-75% mono red right now. In addition, I keep seeing the Electro-static Wall version of the deck. This is probably due to the fact that it's better against the mirror, which you keep running up against in mono-red.
I am absolutely disgusted with Wizards right now. They have denied the shuffler problem (see the threads in this forum pertaining to it), not admitted the match making going on in bo1 at the very least, and once I figured out a work around to the shuffler problem, the got rid of it on this most recent patch 3/27/19. BTW, they didn't mention the changes in the patch notes. They made the bo1 hand decider even worse by giving it a 3rd hand to choose from, and also choosing from 3 hands even after a mulligan as well.
Hope this changes soon. I'll be writing to Wizards soon and you should too. They do try to cater towards their customers, eventually, after a ton of them have an outcry.
Yeah, I've really barely been playing this game anymore due to a lot of these reasons. Any deck I make I am paired with incessant mirror matches and it's impossible to make a deck to 'counter' the meta as a result of the matchmaking changing anytime you do. The generic meta itself is super boring - mono-red and mono-blue decks that are just superpowered, uninteractive garbage. The mana-clumping if you don't mulligan does not seem to be resolved at all. If I don't mulligan I still see the same patterns described by the million game analysis. I just don't see a reason to play much since I'm not interested in just grinding out mono-red wins, and there's no other modes to play.
I'm right there with you. I'm playing much less Arena these days. I had a couple of glorious weeks where I could take a pre-randomized text file of cards, import it, and get to play REAL games of Magic. Then they fixed that work around and it's back to the land pockets and multiple copies of the same card. IT WAS SO AMAZING to be able to play Arena with a truly random deck. Now I've had the taste and it's gone, playing Arena just sucks.
I wonder if Wizards will ever fix this. I'm pretty skeptical as they still haven't done it yet, nor even admitted there is a problem. It's gotten so bad I've considered starting to play Hearthstone or something else entirely, something I haven't done in my 8 years straight of playing Magic.
Switch to R/W aggro, see 70% Gate decks.
I'm sure just norrrrrrrrrrmal variation though... Mmmmmhmmmm.
If you are playing the best of 1 unranked then yes, there is some matchmaking based on deck going on. At some point it was confirmed that they were attempting to match based on Deck "strength" but what that actually means has been vague and ill understood.
Bo1 Ranked... :\ Figures.
This game is so unlike actual Magic it really does it a disservice.
I bet this is it. R/W deck is a lot "cheaper" to build in rarity terms than the other one. Man that is some lame ass rigging of the matchmaking. No wonder gate decks are so popular in Arena - you get matched up in potentially "easier" games.
1 Ral, Izzet Viceroy
2 Ral's Dispersal
3 Ral's Staticaster
3 Precision Bolt
1 Niv-Mizzet, Parun
1 Erratic Cyclops
2 Goblin Electromancer
3 Wee Dragonauts
2 Chemister's Insight
2 Direct Current
2 Sonic Assault
1 Firemind's Research
1 Quasiduplicate
4 Crackling Drake
2 Risk Factor
2 Beacon Bolt
1 Electrodominance
1 Quench
4 Izzet Guildgate
10 Mountain
9 Island
1 Vraska, Golgari Queen
2 Vraska's Stoneglare
3 Attendant of Vraska
3 Kraul Raider
1 Beast Whisperer
1 Lotleth Giant
2 Spinal Centipede
2 Ironshell Beetle
1 Swarm Guildmage
3 Dead Weight
3 Prey Upon
1 Vicious Rumors
2 Undercity Uprising
2 Golgari Locket
2 Grappling Sundew
2 Assassin's Trophy
1 Status // Statue
1 Mammoth Spider
1 Undercity Scavenger
4 Golgari Guildgate
1 Guildmages' Forum
8 Swamp
8 Forest
1 Dovin, Grand Arbiter
2 Dovin's Dismissal
2 Dovin's Automaton
2 Elite Arrester
3 Unbreakable Formation
4 Concordia Pegasus
2 Spirit of the Spires
2 Windstorm Drake
2 Azorius Knight-Arbiter
1 Arrester's Zeal
2 Summary Judgment
1 Code of Constraint
1 Sphinx's Insight
1 Azorius Locket
1 Senate Guildmage
3 Lawmage's Binding
2 Bring to Trial
1 Glass of the Guildpact
1 Sphinx of New Prahv
1 Depose // Deploy
1 Plaza of Harmony
4 Azorius Guildgate
8 Island
10 Plains
1 Domri, Chaos Bringer
2 Domri's Nodorog
3 Charging War Boar
3 Ragefire
1 Glass of the Guildpact
1 Sylvan Brushstrider
2 Frenzied Arynx
3 Zhur-Taa Goblin
2 Burn Bright
1 Stony Strength
2 Rhythm of the Wild
1 Mammoth Spider
1 Gruul Locket
1 Gruul Beastmaster
2 Savage Smash
1 Ravager Wurm
2 Sunder Shaman
1 Flames of the Raze-Boar
1 Rampaging Monument
1 Gruul Spellbreaker
1 Titanic Brawl
1 Thrash // Threat
1 Immolation Shaman
1 Stomping Ground
2 Guildmages' Forum
8 Mountain
9 Forest
It is possible that it has something to do with the rarity count as well as the win-rate or win-history of specific decks.
I suspect it's down to card level, not deck level. In other words, not strictly a rarity count. I think the card(s) have some kind of grade or value associated with them. Lower commons have a lower value, Mythics have a higher value, sure. But I think jank commons all the way to mythics have a lower value than their non-jank brothers and sisters at the same rarity level.
I forget which deck I did the experiment with, green stompy I think. I don't have my notes handy. But I digress, I found I was constantly being paired up with a specific arch type every time I played that deck. I eventually acquired a few new Planeswalkers from pack wins and decided to add them to my deck to try and improve the match ups. My first experiment was to swap out one card for a PW (I only had one). The change in opponent was immediate. Instead of the usual opponents, IIRC, I began to be paired up with U-Mill and Nexus decks. Holy-heck... the power level jump from swapping one card was insane and completely unexpected. I knew it would change what I went against but the power shift was way beyond what I expected.
So I swapped the PW for another, different PW, and the power shift dropped a tad and the decks became jankier. More like multi-color anti-mill decks with high card counts. Presumably, I was seeing the Anti-Nexus decks. Removed the PW and reverted the deck to its original configuration and I was right back to where I started, going against the same decks as before.
This seems to hold true with all my decks. If I take my Red Aggro deck and add/remove cards one at a time, I'll see my opponent arch-types change. Most times, very little, but once in a while I'll hit a "jackpot" and my matchups will change drastically, usually for the worst.
I also realize this is purely anecdotal so take it at whatever value you want.
Nope, I had that happens well in best of one. I swapped to a tested deck I had on cockatrice in arena that used cavalcade of calamity. Fun deck, and it kept putting me up against really bad decks. Then th ed next day it was back to mono red and oddly a midrange enchantment deck.
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!
Edit: uhm... wtf happened to my account? User-28329972 with 1 post and no avatar..?
- Elves
- Mono Black Reanimator
- UR Delver
- Grixis Delver
Are you somewhere under EU jurisdiction?
Right now I'm playing a 250 swamp deck to see what the matchmaker does. Played monoblue, gruul aggro, monowhite.
So tried a deck which was one of every multicolour uncommon in standard. Got mardu aggro (never seen this) and then monoblue again.
Doesn't really seem to be considering the deck.
RRGrenzo plays your deck, GGYeva's mono green control, WW9-tails trys desperately for monowhite not to suck
RWBUTymna and Kraum's saboteur tribal, UWG Kestia's Enchantress Aggro, RUB Jeleva casts big dumb spells, RGB Vaevictis' big critters can kill your critters hard
Arena Standard
UUUU Tempo, since before it was cool
Various Wx decks running Fountain of Renewal and Day of Glory
Anything I can cram Chaos Wand in to
From what I can tell the system is dynamic in how it functions, so saying a card is powerful is largely a factor of wins vs losses. That means the ones who are most likely to get to diamond and mythic levels are the ones playing the decks that either are overwhelmingly powerful, or are playing a bunch of different decks in some kind of hilarious menagerie and win with the Billy Hill music running in the background, largely as other people are trying to figure out what the heck just happened.
At the same time, after being a part of the talks with Jeff Finnigan and getting hooked into game design pod casts, I believe the designers are really designing two sets of cards, with one set being template cards they have stocked up in a filing cabinet. Basically, common -> Uncommon -> Rare for limited, and uncommon -> rare -> mythic for constructed. So the designers can potentially assign "power points" to certain cards based on how close they match the ideal build of a specific deck archetype. However, because of the sheer size of the sets it is impossible that they catch every build, and while they might have most high end builds covered, brewers will always find a way to break the system.
That's why people have to spend money in Arena to actually play in constructed events on an effective time table. The constructed tier cards are gated by the rare wild cards and mythic wild cards. They can also make it so that when someone would normally get a high point card, they get a mythic or rare wild card instead, meaning they have the potential to waste the wild card on a lower powered card. That's why wild cards are not particularly good in a game that gets a lot of new players and part of the reason they have wild cards: to get more money. They aren't really there for our benefit, they are there because they give the freedom to shoot oneself in the foot.
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!
RRGrenzo plays your deck, GGYeva's mono green control, WW9-tails trys desperately for monowhite not to suck
RWBUTymna and Kraum's saboteur tribal, UWG Kestia's Enchantress Aggro, RUB Jeleva casts big dumb spells, RGB Vaevictis' big critters can kill your critters hard
Arena Standard
UUUU Tempo, since before it was cool
Various Wx decks running Fountain of Renewal and Day of Glory
Anything I can cram Chaos Wand in to
Agreed, I redeemed a Planeswalker intro deck, and somehow I was paired against Sultai Midrange with Krasis/Vivien etc, twice in a row. I lost both those, obviously, but all I have seen via playing the intro decks is Sultai, Mono blue tempo, and that Rakdos deck doing the rounds in top8s. Not sure how a UW intro deck with some lame creatures and lamer planeswalker "match" up to these...but anyhow.
Great thnx! I put in a request.
- Elves
- Mono Black Reanimator
- UR Delver
- Grixis Delver
I just switched from Gruul Midrange to Mono-Red aggro. I see WAY more mono-red aggro, as a mirror match now. Additionally, I have noticed big swings in opponents when working on my Gruul deck. If I made enough changes to it, while also importing a new list as text, I would receive MANY new opponents. I though Merfolk were long dead! Until I put a "new" decklist in that is.
I had 3 mono-red opponents in a row just recently in bo1 ranked. Many more besides that. My games are like 60-75% mono red right now. In addition, I keep seeing the Electro-static Wall version of the deck. This is probably due to the fact that it's better against the mirror, which you keep running up against in mono-red.
I am absolutely disgusted with Wizards right now. They have denied the shuffler problem (see the threads in this forum pertaining to it), not admitted the match making going on in bo1 at the very least, and once I figured out a work around to the shuffler problem, the got rid of it on this most recent patch 3/27/19. BTW, they didn't mention the changes in the patch notes. They made the bo1 hand decider even worse by giving it a 3rd hand to choose from, and also choosing from 3 hands even after a mulligan as well.
Hope this changes soon. I'll be writing to Wizards soon and you should too. They do try to cater towards their customers, eventually, after a ton of them have an outcry.
Yeah, I've really barely been playing this game anymore due to a lot of these reasons. Any deck I make I am paired with incessant mirror matches and it's impossible to make a deck to 'counter' the meta as a result of the matchmaking changing anytime you do. The generic meta itself is super boring - mono-red and mono-blue decks that are just superpowered, uninteractive garbage. The mana-clumping if you don't mulligan does not seem to be resolved at all. If I don't mulligan I still see the same patterns described by the million game analysis. I just don't see a reason to play much since I'm not interested in just grinding out mono-red wins, and there's no other modes to play.
I wonder if Wizards will ever fix this. I'm pretty skeptical as they still haven't done it yet, nor even admitted there is a problem. It's gotten so bad I've considered starting to play Hearthstone or something else entirely, something I haven't done in my 8 years straight of playing Magic.