Strangely, I couldn't help but notice that mana drain at mythic (which goes in every blue deck and is playable in legacy) started preselling at the same price as sensei's top which is banned in legacy and printed at rare (is this solely because it goes in any commander deck? does nobody care about or play legacy anymore? Doesn't top already have more printings). Force of negation and phyrexian altar, both at rare, also started preselling higher than mana drain. I realize FoN sees play in modern (which more people play than legacy), but even taking that into account, shouldn't mana drain still be selling higher when it's in the same set at mythic? Like many people looking for patterns to explain the numbers, I find the market both very fascinating and very confusing
Mana Drain is banned in Legacy and weak to unplayable in Vintage.
Rest in Peace prevents your death triggers ("Whenever x dies"). Nihil Spellbomb is a good alternative. Rite of Oblivion, Vindicate, or something similar in the sideboard (over Disenchant/Fracture) fights opposing hate without needing to know what it will be. You don't want to face an unanswerable Hushbringer (don't tell anyone about Sanctifier en-Vec).
Hidden Stockpile, I think, will prevent you from getting hated out. I don't know where to put it, but it looks really strong with this setup.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't the Body Double be unable to return itself when it dies as a Vesperlark since the ability is targeted?
Body Double is already in the graveyard when its ability goes on the stack and a target is chosen, so it's a legal target. You're thinking of cards that sacrifice as a cost and target a card in the graveyard. Doomed Necromancer can't target itself because targets are chosen before costs are paid, so Necromancer isn't in the graveyard yet.
From the original rulebook: "If a card contradicts the rules, the card takes precedence." Where I lived, there was no common source beyond rulebooks and rumors for rulings. Winter Orb turned off when tapped because it was in the rulebook and Basalt Monolith worked because it made sense. We didn't know that the king of Magic said Winter Orb didn't turn off if it was a tapped creature, or that Jade Statue had haste for a while. Artifacts were confusing. If you look at old tournament reports, you'll find inconsistent and short-lived rulings. By Antiquities, you perhaps naturally learned that tapped artifact creatures could use abilities due to Clay Statue and Dragon Engine. You wanted to use them on offense, so you did. The unique formatting of "doesn't untap" artifacts in Alpha may reveal designer intent that these were not ordinary abilities.
I can't make sense of the "Why?" of the '95 rulings for Basalt Monolith, so I don't know if they're satisfactory. That page also has similar Mana Vault and Brass Man rulings. "Page 22" refers to the Revised rulebook and "Snark" was a WotC guy's handle.
Rulings Summary: General (6/6/94)
Continuous effects of artifacts only work when they are untapped. [Page 22]
Continuous effects of creatures work whether or not they are tapped.
[Page 26] Artifact creatures count as creatures for this ruling.
[WotC Rules Team]
Rulings Summary: Cards (07/05/95)
Basalt Monolith:
Untapping this card is a fast effect and can be done at any time fast
effects can be done. [Snark]
The untapping of a Monolith is not an activation cost. [D'Angelo 02/01/95]
+ The Basalt Monolith cannot be untapped with mana from a Basalt Monolith.
[WotC Rules Team 06/15/95] This is a relaxing of the rule which used to
also disallow untapping a Monolith with a Mana Vault or untapping a
Mana Vault with a Monolith. This is a REVERSAL of page 79 of Duelist
Magazine #3.
These are expanded from early '94 rulings, which began being unofficially collected in January: MTG Rulings Summary: General (2/22/94)
Continuous effects of artifacts only work when they are untapped. [Rulebook]
Continuous effects of creatures work whether or not they are tapped. [bethmo]
MTG Rulings Summary: Cards (2/22/94)
Basalt Monolith:
Untapping this card is an Instant and may be done any time an Instant can
be done. [Snark]
---A ruling on Jade Statue from that summary:
It it neither a mono nor a poly artifact. It if effectively a poly artifact that can only be used once per player's turn (during the attack phase) and which may become tapped (if you declare it in an attack). [bethmo].
---There were no changes to the 2/22/94 Basalt Monolith ruling in early April, the final set of First Edition rulings. The late April rulings, the first using Revised rules, changed it to this:
Basalt Monolith:
Untapping this card is a fast effect. [Snark]
Rulings Summary: Cards (9/19/94)
Basalt Monolith:
Untapping this card is a fast effect and can be done at any time fast
effects can be done. [Snark]
The Basalt Monolith cannot be untapped with mana from a Basalt Monolith or
Mana Vault. This ruling is recommended in order to stop the abuse of
repeatedly tapping and untapping these artifacts.
[WotC Rules Team 7/27/94] Many homes also have a house rule limiting
the Basalt Monolith to only one untapping per turn (or even one per
round of turns) in order to eliminate this problem.
Goldfishing , I had trouble connecting everything while drawing the right mix of land and spells. That could be a non-issue with Arena's shuffler. Biomathemetician, Sarulf's Packmate, and Decisive Denial looked weakest, while Kairi looked to ignore the premise of the deck, so I targeted them for replacement.
Since the deck relies on 4 and 5 mana spells and copies things, maybe some beef would work. Topiary Stomper and Esika's Chariot came in over Bio and Packmate. The deck is still producing mixes with no creatures, no big stuff, or a lazy Stomper. Tangled Florahedron replaces Headquarters, Glasspool Mimic over Kairi. Same problem. 3 Shigeki, Jukai Visionary and 2 Lair of the Hydra (more options for Orvar to copy a land) over Decisive Denial and 1 Boseiju. Things were clunky, but now the deck was running and wanted to find its core, so I was happy.
Now I can see land over Mimic or working in more big stuff like Kairi or Workshop Warchief, but the Shigeki's especially worked well for me in making Orvar and Equation shine, from blocking and ramping to digging and recovery. I wish I had more land and interaction, but the deck has a lot of parts. If the functions of Denial are needed, I would look to trim some protection spells for Blizzard Brawl, Florahedron for snow lands, and Mimic for Malevolent Hermit or Jwari Disruption. The idea is to get some efficiency or versatility to support the inflexible frame. Winterthorn Blessing would also be an option instead of Brawl.
I considered Jaspera Sentinel, Elvish Warmaster, and Gala Greeters instead of Bio, Packwolf, and Headquarters or Denial. The goal is to use cheaper creatures and more mana to make it easier to use a combination when drawn. Ultimately, I like cats and dinosaurs.
An icon labelled "Craft" appears in the Deck Editor, at the top right of your collection. Click it to go into craft mode, then click the card you want (a confirmation box prevents accidental purchases).
I'm not a Wizards employee, I just forgot to add links! Except for the evil shuffler link, all those are posts by Arena developers, mostly Chris Clay (the evil shuffler guy is even a developer now).
I agree with you about how hard it is to find info, I've just given up expecting it from playing Magic Online. Last year they made a statement about needing to be more transparent and organized on some unused tumblr at the end of a post about something completely different. They have pages they're legally required to keep updated that are often just totally wrong. On Arena, this info isn't only on a forum, it's sometimes buried hundreds of pages into a thread, and the dev tracker isn't that helpful because many of the posts aren't from developers or about development.
From January 26, 1994, the first version of the Official WotC Tournament Rules:
Decks may be constructed from cards from the Limited (black border) series and from the Unlimited (white border) series. Use of cards from any of the expansion sets (i.e. Arabian Nights, etc) are permitted with the Referee's prior consent. Under no circumstances will cards from the Collector's Edition factory sets be permitted in tournament decks. They are easily distinguished from legal play cards by their square corners. Use of Collector's Edition factory set cards in a tournament deck will be interpreted by the Referee as a Declaration of Forfeiture (see Floor Rules, #9).
EDIT: Tom Wylie, Wizards Net Rep, in December 1994:
Alpha cards are not banned in Convocation play. However, Judges should be careful for obvious methods of trying to cheat by using alpha cards. One or two alpha cards can probably slide, but having alpha lands and non-alpha spells (or vice versa) is clearly marking the overall deck.
While the idea of someone having one or two alphas in their deck isn't all that thrilling, the two alternatives (ban alpha cards, or say that decks have to be 0% or 100% alpha) are even less appealling to us.
Tom Wylie, March 1995:
The optional rule for Type I tournaments allows the judge to eliminate this form of marking by requiring that decks be all or no alphas. Yes, playing with an alpha deck means that you can't play with expansion cards, Volcanic Islands, and so on. It is up to the judge of the event to decide whether elminating this form of deck marking is worth forcing people to make this kind of decision. In Type II tournaments, alpha cards are simply banned, since the format exists in part for new players, who should not be at a disadvantage simply because they don't have any alpha lands to mark their deck with.
May 1999 Rule Summary:
D.8.2 - If a deck contains Alpha printing cards, it must consist entirely of them. You should also inform the head judge that your deck is so constructed. [Tournament Rules 10/01/96]
In the year 2000, In the year 2000:
MAGIC: THE GATHERING DCI Floor Rules
1999–2000 Tournament Season
Effective June 1, 2000:
102. Authorized Cards
Alpha cards (cards from the first print run of the basic set) may be used in decks containing non-Alpha cards only if all cards are placed in opaque sleeves, and only if the sleeves could not be considered marked.
If sleeves are not used, Alpha cards may only be used in decks that consist of Alpha cards exclusively.
--
Later floor rules and universal tournament rules list the same basic rule under a "marked cards" section.
1. Yes. Ragavan will enter during the declare attackers step, and Hero's Blade will trigger and may be attached during the same step.
2. No. Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit triggers once because she only triggers when nontokens enter, otherwise she would trigger 3 times.
3. No. After Saheeli's -2 resolves, state-based actions are checked before either player gets priority, and will put one of the Rhyseses (your choice) into your graveyard.
4. Yes. Artifact Zurgo enters, even if briefly, triggering Anafenza. Corrected by Argus Panoptes below. If you cast a new, nontoken Zurgo, the ability would trigger.
5. Yes. Beginning of Combat, after the main phase and before declare attackers, is the last chance to bolt Kari Zav before she attacks. The first thing you do during decare attackers is attack, triggering Kari Zev, then players get priority.
6. Yes. Sensei's bushido-granting ability works even if Sensei dies or the training counter is removed. It has no conditions once it resolves, and isn't linked to another ability that defines what the training does.
Shuffler
Enabled "Smooth Shuffling" for the Play queue.
Important Note: This is for the "Play" queue only. It does not apply to Ranked Traditional Play, Traditional Ranked, or any other events and/or formats.
More Information on Smooth Shuffling: We are currently testing changes to the shuffler algorithm to decrease the number of games with extreme examples of "mana flood" or "mana screw" (drawing too many or too few lands). While players may still find themselves in these scenarios, the shuffler changes are intended to mitigate the rarest scenarios, such as drawing 8+ Land cards in a row. As noted above, we are only testing these changes in the "Play" queue, and it does not apply to any Ranked or Traditional formats. We are using this opportunity to gather more data and to fine tune these changes, as well as allow for player feedback. All shuffles are still randomly generated, The difference is we now look deeper into the decks to determine a pool of shuffles to randomly choose from. We are planning to iterate on this fairly rapidly. and will provide more information as these changes develop and solidify.
For all best of one play queues, we have increased the number of deck shuffles and starting hands we consider to three (up from two).
For all best of one play queues, we now apply the starting hand approach to mulligan hands as well.
More Information on Starting Hands: Our goal with this change is to ensure you're still on "even shuffler ground" with your starting hand, even when you mulligan. As with the other shuffler change, we are using this opportunity to gather more data and to fine tune these changes, as well as gather player feedback.
Alternate Land Art
Feb 15, 2019
Currently, the only way to select which basic land art to use is to import the deck, selecting the set and number of the basic land you want to use.
I can't speak to specific plans, but we've definitely heard clearly from players that you'd like a better way to accomplish this.
Shuffler
Jan 15, 2019
1. Please play nice here people.
2. When players report that true variance in the shuffler doesn't feel correct they aren't wrong. This is more than just a math problem, overcoming all of our inherent biases around how variance should work is incredibly difficult. However, while the feels say somethings wrong, all the math has supported everything is correct.
3. The shuffler and coin flips treat everyone equally. There are no systems in place to adjust either per player.
4. The only system in place right now to stray from a single randomized shuffler is the bo1 opening hand system, but even there the choice is between two fully randomized decks.
5. When we do a shuffle we shuffle the full deck, the card you draw is already known on the backend. It is not generated at the time you draw it.
6. Digital Shufflers are a long solved problem, we're not breaking any new ground here. If you paper experience differs significantly from digital the most logical conclusion is you're not shuffling correctly. Many posts in this thread show this to be true. You need at least 7 riffle shuffles to get to random in paper. This does not mean that playing randomized decks in paper feels better. If your playgroup is fine with playing semi-randomized decks because it feels better than go nuts! Just don't try it at an official event.
7. At this point in the Open Beta we've had billions of shuffles over hundreds of millions of games. These are massive data sets which show us everything is working correctly. Even so, there are going to be some people who have landed in the far ends of the bell curve of probability. It's why we've had people lose the coin flip 26 times in a row and we've had people win it 26 times in a row. It's why people have draw many many creatures in a row or many many lands in a row. When you look at the math, the size of players taking issue with the shuffler is actually far smaller that one would expect. Each player is sharing their own experience, and if they're an outlier I'm not surprised they think the system is rigged.
8. We're looking at possible ways to snip off the ends of the bell curve while still maintaining the sanctity of the game, and this is a very very hard problem. The irony is not lost on us that to fix perception of the shuffler we'd need to put systems in place around it, when that's what players are saying we're doing now.
Since people are asking, and it's no great secret. To shuffle decks in MTG Arena we use Fisher-Yates, pulling numbers from a Merseene Twister (MT199937), which is seeded with 256 cryptographically secure randomized bits. We use the same approach for coin tosses, only we're looking for a 1 or a 2 rather than a whole deck of cards.
In the new world, we start the match-making process by placing players into buckets based on their rank. Tiers don't matter here, just the rank you're at (Bronze, Silver, Etc). You can think of this as a progression of difficulty that you also see in tabletop Magic: from Kitchen Table up through your LGS, to PTQ, to the Pro-Tour. We want MTG Arena to serve all of these tiers of skill, and this is the way we believe best addresses the climb. By bucketing by rank we give players a chance to improve over time, rather than forcing them to start at potentially a pro-tour level of play.
After we group players together by rank we then sort them based on their W/L record. As far as I can tell no one is worried about this.
The final metric we look at is MMR. And to be perfectly clear: our matchmaking rating does not force players to a 50% win rate. Stronger players will have a higher win-rate in our system. It is a loose check to see if the two players are within a certain skill range that we deliberately set to be large enough to not require an "equal match". Do great in DOM draft, but then suck it up hard in XLN/RIX and this will pair you with other people in the same boat. We believe this is a fair system where everyone will still have to earn their wins.
All of these metrics will also expand out based on time in the queue. There will be matches across ranks in some cases, just as at times there are matches with different win/loss records and distant MMRs.
All of this said, if you believe matchmaking in Limited should always be Swiss, then it's unlikely I've said anything to sway your opinion. If you want to go toe-to-toe with any Magic player in the world, we have Traditional Draft as the place for you to show your skill without climbing up the Ranks. Traditional Draft remains solely based on W/L record. As always we'll be watching how this plays out in reality, as we've only been able to do sims to this point, and continue to make adjustments.
[I]f you ever wait more than 2-3 minutes something has likely gone wrong. Right now the longest match time we've seen is 100s. There is a chance as the very first people hit a rank they may have to wait longer, but this should even out.
In looking over everything I realized we didn't mention in the primary post that we now have a window of 60s during which you will be unable to match against the person you just played. We'll watch how this current window works to prevent repeat matches, while still keeping queue times brisk and adjust as needed.
In this system when you switch decks it will be looking for similarly skilled players to you, that happened to be playing their own decks around your level.
I can say that when we're assigning deck weights we look at the strength of the card far more than the rarity. Rarity, in general, is an indicator but there are many rares/mythics that have lower values than an uncommon like lightning strike for example.
There are no plans to show any information on deck strength to players. The goal is for players to build the deck they want to play and find a match that's appropriate. Getting more stats into the Profile tab is something we'd like to see.
My Account was Hacked!
Jan 10, 2019
GDPR changed the way information is collected, and how we use and store PII(Personally Identifiable Information). Initially we collect as little as possible as in the new world we only collect what we absolutely need, and what we collect is usually enough to restore a lost account. Once you've made purchases we have more PII on your account, which we can use to restore it if it was lost for some reason. One of the myriad of reasons we have no trading is it helps make all the work of hacking accounts just not worth it as well.
Duplicate Protection
Jan 15, 2019
No plans to expanded duplicate protection out to uncommons or commons at this time. We've said from the beginning that adding in duplicate protection was going to require some balance changes, we're pretty happy where this has settled. Time, data, and players will really tell us what needs to adjust further.
Hidden Stockpile, I think, will prevent you from getting hated out. I don't know where to put it, but it looks really strong with this setup.
Body Double is already in the graveyard when its ability goes on the stack and a target is chosen, so it's a legal target. You're thinking of cards that sacrifice as a cost and target a card in the graveyard. Doomed Necromancer can't target itself because targets are chosen before costs are paid, so Necromancer isn't in the graveyard yet.
I can't make sense of the "Why?" of the '95 rulings for Basalt Monolith, so I don't know if they're satisfactory. That page also has similar Mana Vault and Brass Man rulings. "Page 22" refers to the Revised rulebook and "Snark" was a WotC guy's handle.
Rulings Summary: General (6/6/94)
Continuous effects of artifacts only work when they are untapped. [Page 22]
Continuous effects of creatures work whether or not they are tapped.
[Page 26] Artifact creatures count as creatures for this ruling.
[WotC Rules Team]
Rulings Summary: Cards (07/05/95)
Basalt Monolith:
Untapping this card is a fast effect and can be done at any time fast
effects can be done. [Snark]
The untapping of a Monolith is not an activation cost. [D'Angelo 02/01/95]
+ The Basalt Monolith cannot be untapped with mana from a Basalt Monolith.
[WotC Rules Team 06/15/95] This is a relaxing of the rule which used to
also disallow untapping a Monolith with a Mana Vault or untapping a
Mana Vault with a Monolith. This is a REVERSAL of page 79 of Duelist
Magazine #3.
These are expanded from early '94 rulings, which began being unofficially collected in January:
MTG Rulings Summary: General (2/22/94)
Continuous effects of artifacts only work when they are untapped. [Rulebook]
Continuous effects of creatures work whether or not they are tapped. [bethmo]
MTG Rulings Summary: Cards (2/22/94)
Basalt Monolith:
Untapping this card is an Instant and may be done any time an Instant can
be done. [Snark]
---A ruling on Jade Statue from that summary:
It it neither a mono nor a poly artifact. It if effectively a poly artifact that can only be used once per player's turn (during the attack phase) and which may become tapped (if you declare it in an attack). [bethmo].
---There were no changes to the 2/22/94 Basalt Monolith ruling in early April, the final set of First Edition rulings. The late April rulings, the first using Revised rules, changed it to this:
Basalt Monolith:
Untapping this card is a fast effect. [Snark]
Rulings Summary: Cards (9/19/94)
Basalt Monolith:
Untapping this card is a fast effect and can be done at any time fast
effects can be done. [Snark]
The Basalt Monolith cannot be untapped with mana from a Basalt Monolith or
Mana Vault. This ruling is recommended in order to stop the abuse of
repeatedly tapping and untapping these artifacts.
[WotC Rules Team 7/27/94] Many homes also have a house rule limiting
the Basalt Monolith to only one untapping per turn (or even one per
round of turns) in order to eliminate this problem.
This was my process. I hope it's helpful.
Goldfishing , I had trouble connecting everything while drawing the right mix of land and spells. That could be a non-issue with Arena's shuffler. Biomathemetician, Sarulf's Packmate, and Decisive Denial looked weakest, while Kairi looked to ignore the premise of the deck, so I targeted them for replacement.
My first try involved Stormchaser Drake, Ledger Shredder, and Crash Through, swapping green protection for blue (Slip out the Back, You See a Guard Approach, and March of Swirling Mist), and being open to refactoring the mana for Blizzard Brawl. Maybe something is there, but while I intended to use March to protect Orvar, trigger it and Drake, and mess with the opponent, the deck wanted to drop its core (Fynn, Orvar, and Equation, as I see it) for the new "protect the queen" style, so that was scrapped. I also eliminated an Illuminator Virtuoso + Homestead Courage and Sejiri Shelter build for the same reason.
Since the deck relies on 4 and 5 mana spells and copies things, maybe some beef would work. Topiary Stomper and Esika's Chariot came in over Bio and Packmate. The deck is still producing mixes with no creatures, no big stuff, or a lazy Stomper. Tangled Florahedron replaces Headquarters, Glasspool Mimic over Kairi. Same problem. 3 Shigeki, Jukai Visionary and 2 Lair of the Hydra (more options for Orvar to copy a land) over Decisive Denial and 1 Boseiju. Things were clunky, but now the deck was running and wanted to find its core, so I was happy.
Now I can see land over Mimic or working in more big stuff like Kairi or Workshop Warchief, but the Shigeki's especially worked well for me in making Orvar and Equation shine, from blocking and ramping to digging and recovery. I wish I had more land and interaction, but the deck has a lot of parts. If the functions of Denial are needed, I would look to trim some protection spells for Blizzard Brawl, Florahedron for snow lands, and Mimic for Malevolent Hermit or Jwari Disruption. The idea is to get some efficiency or versatility to support the inflexible frame. Winterthorn Blessing would also be an option instead of Brawl.
I considered Jaspera Sentinel, Elvish Warmaster, and Gala Greeters instead of Bio, Packwolf, and Headquarters or Denial. The goal is to use cheaper creatures and more mana to make it easier to use a combination when drawn. Ultimately, I like cats and dinosaurs.
Gone for good, here forever.
If that's unhelpful, I'll post pictures.
I agree with you about how hard it is to find info, I've just given up expecting it from playing Magic Online. Last year they made a statement about needing to be more transparent and organized on some unused tumblr at the end of a post about something completely different. They have pages they're legally required to keep updated that are often just totally wrong. On Arena, this info isn't only on a forum, it's sometimes buried hundreds of pages into a thread, and the dev tracker isn't that helpful because many of the posts aren't from developers or about development.
Decks may be constructed from cards from the Limited (black border) series and from the Unlimited (white border) series. Use of cards from any of the expansion sets (i.e. Arabian Nights, etc) are permitted with the Referee's prior consent. Under no circumstances will cards from the Collector's Edition factory sets be permitted in tournament decks. They are easily distinguished from legal play cards by their square corners. Use of Collector's Edition factory set cards in a tournament deck will be interpreted by the Referee as a Declaration of Forfeiture (see Floor Rules, #9).
EDIT: Tom Wylie, Wizards Net Rep, in December 1994:
Alpha cards are not banned in Convocation play. However, Judges should be careful for obvious methods of trying to cheat by using alpha cards. One or two alpha cards can probably slide, but having alpha lands and non-alpha spells (or vice versa) is clearly marking the overall deck.
While the idea of someone having one or two alphas in their deck isn't all that thrilling, the two alternatives (ban alpha cards, or say that decks have to be 0% or 100% alpha) are even less appealling to us.
Tom Wylie, March 1995:
The optional rule for Type I tournaments allows the judge to eliminate this form of marking by requiring that decks be all or no alphas. Yes, playing with an alpha deck means that you can't play with expansion cards, Volcanic Islands, and so on. It is up to the judge of the event to decide whether elminating this form of deck marking is worth forcing people to make this kind of decision. In Type II tournaments, alpha cards are simply banned, since the format exists in part for new players, who should not be at a disadvantage simply because they don't have any alpha lands to mark their deck with.
May 1999 Rule Summary:
D.8.2 - If a deck contains Alpha printing cards, it must consist entirely of them. You should also inform the head judge that your deck is so constructed. [Tournament Rules 10/01/96]
In the year 2000, In the year 2000:
MAGIC: THE GATHERING DCI Floor Rules
1999–2000 Tournament Season
Effective June 1, 2000:
102. Authorized Cards
Alpha cards (cards from the first print run of the basic set) may be used in decks containing non-Alpha cards only if all cards are placed in opaque sleeves, and only if the sleeves could not be considered marked.
If sleeves are not used, Alpha cards may only be used in decks that consist of Alpha cards exclusively.
--
Later floor rules and universal tournament rules list the same basic rule under a "marked cards" section.
2. No. Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit triggers once because she only triggers when nontokens enter, otherwise she would trigger 3 times.
3. No. After Saheeli's -2 resolves, state-based actions are checked before either player gets priority, and will put one of the Rhyseses (your choice) into your graveyard.
4.
Yes. Artifact Zurgo enters, even if briefly, triggering Anafenza.Corrected by Argus Panoptes below. If you cast a new, nontoken Zurgo, the ability would trigger.5. Yes. Beginning of Combat, after the main phase and before declare attackers, is the last chance to bolt Kari Zav before she attacks. The first thing you do during decare attackers is attack, triggering Kari Zev, then players get priority.
6. Yes. Sensei's bushido-granting ability works even if Sensei dies or the training counter is removed. It has no conditions once it resolves, and isn't linked to another ability that defines what the training does.
Latest Patch Notes
Feb 14, 2019
0.12.00.00 - Major
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/46580
-Shuffler changes for "Play."
Enabled "Smooth Shuffling" for the Play queue.
Important Note: This is for the "Play" queue only. It does not apply to Ranked Traditional Play, Traditional Ranked, or any other events and/or formats.
More Information on Smooth Shuffling: We are currently testing changes to the shuffler algorithm to decrease the number of games with extreme examples of "mana flood" or "mana screw" (drawing too many or too few lands). While players may still find themselves in these scenarios, the shuffler changes are intended to mitigate the rarest scenarios, such as drawing 8+ Land cards in a row. As noted above, we are only testing these changes in the "Play" queue, and it does not apply to any Ranked or Traditional formats. We are using this opportunity to gather more data and to fine tune these changes, as well as allow for player feedback. All shuffles are still randomly generated, The difference is we now look deeper into the decks to determine a pool of shuffles to randomly choose from. We are planning to iterate on this fairly rapidly. and will provide more information as these changes develop and solidify.
For all best of one play queues, we have increased the number of deck shuffles and starting hands we consider to three (up from two).
For all best of one play queues, we now apply the starting hand approach to mulligan hands as well.
More Information on Starting Hands: Our goal with this change is to ensure you're still on "even shuffler ground" with your starting hand, even when you mulligan. As with the other shuffler change, we are using this opportunity to gather more data and to fine tune these changes, as well as gather player feedback.
Feb 20, 2019
0.12.01.00 - Minor
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/52931
-Fixed long matchmaking times
-Fixed frequent disconnections, being monitored
Alternate Land Art
Feb 15, 2019
Currently, the only way to select which basic land art to use is to import the deck, selecting the set and number of the basic land you want to use.
I can't speak to specific plans, but we've definitely heard clearly from players that you'd like a better way to accomplish this.
Deck Builder: Advanced Search Terms
Feb 14, 2019
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/46567
Debunking the Evil Shuffler -Unofficial
Aug 6, 2018
https://blog.mtgatracker.com/debunking-the-evil-shuffler
Shuffler
Jan 15, 2019
1. Please play nice here people.
2. When players report that true variance in the shuffler doesn't feel correct they aren't wrong. This is more than just a math problem, overcoming all of our inherent biases around how variance should work is incredibly difficult. However, while the feels say somethings wrong, all the math has supported everything is correct.
3. The shuffler and coin flips treat everyone equally. There are no systems in place to adjust either per player.
4. The only system in place right now to stray from a single randomized shuffler is the bo1 opening hand system, but even there the choice is between two fully randomized decks.
5. When we do a shuffle we shuffle the full deck, the card you draw is already known on the backend. It is not generated at the time you draw it.
6. Digital Shufflers are a long solved problem, we're not breaking any new ground here. If you paper experience differs significantly from digital the most logical conclusion is you're not shuffling correctly. Many posts in this thread show this to be true. You need at least 7 riffle shuffles to get to random in paper. This does not mean that playing randomized decks in paper feels better. If your playgroup is fine with playing semi-randomized decks because it feels better than go nuts! Just don't try it at an official event.
7. At this point in the Open Beta we've had billions of shuffles over hundreds of millions of games. These are massive data sets which show us everything is working correctly. Even so, there are going to be some people who have landed in the far ends of the bell curve of probability. It's why we've had people lose the coin flip 26 times in a row and we've had people win it 26 times in a row. It's why people have draw many many creatures in a row or many many lands in a row. When you look at the math, the size of players taking issue with the shuffler is actually far smaller that one would expect. Each player is sharing their own experience, and if they're an outlier I'm not surprised they think the system is rigged.
8. We're looking at possible ways to snip off the ends of the bell curve while still maintaining the sanctity of the game, and this is a very very hard problem. The irony is not lost on us that to fix perception of the shuffler we'd need to put systems in place around it, when that's what players are saying we're doing now.
Since people are asking, and it's no great secret. To shuffle decks in MTG Arena we use Fisher-Yates, pulling numbers from a Merseene Twister (MT199937), which is seeded with 256 cryptographically secure randomized bits. We use the same approach for coin tosses, only we're looking for a 1 or a 2 rather than a whole deck of cards.
Matchmaking
Dec 14, 2018
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/43383
In the new world, we start the match-making process by placing players into buckets based on their rank. Tiers don't matter here, just the rank you're at (Bronze, Silver, Etc). You can think of this as a progression of difficulty that you also see in tabletop Magic: from Kitchen Table up through your LGS, to PTQ, to the Pro-Tour. We want MTG Arena to serve all of these tiers of skill, and this is the way we believe best addresses the climb. By bucketing by rank we give players a chance to improve over time, rather than forcing them to start at potentially a pro-tour level of play.
After we group players together by rank we then sort them based on their W/L record. As far as I can tell no one is worried about this.
The final metric we look at is MMR. And to be perfectly clear: our matchmaking rating does not force players to a 50% win rate. Stronger players will have a higher win-rate in our system. It is a loose check to see if the two players are within a certain skill range that we deliberately set to be large enough to not require an "equal match". Do great in DOM draft, but then suck it up hard in XLN/RIX and this will pair you with other people in the same boat. We believe this is a fair system where everyone will still have to earn their wins.
All of these metrics will also expand out based on time in the queue. There will be matches across ranks in some cases, just as at times there are matches with different win/loss records and distant MMRs.
All of this said, if you believe matchmaking in Limited should always be Swiss, then it's unlikely I've said anything to sway your opinion. If you want to go toe-to-toe with any Magic player in the world, we have Traditional Draft as the place for you to show your skill without climbing up the Ranks. Traditional Draft remains solely based on W/L record. As always we'll be watching how this plays out in reality, as we've only been able to do sims to this point, and continue to make adjustments.
[I]f you ever wait more than 2-3 minutes something has likely gone wrong. Right now the longest match time we've seen is 100s. There is a chance as the very first people hit a rank they may have to wait longer, but this should even out.
In looking over everything I realized we didn't mention in the primary post that we now have a window of 60s during which you will be unable to match against the person you just played. We'll watch how this current window works to prevent repeat matches, while still keeping queue times brisk and adjust as needed.
In this system when you switch decks it will be looking for similarly skilled players to you, that happened to be playing their own decks around your level.
I can say that when we're assigning deck weights we look at the strength of the card far more than the rarity. Rarity, in general, is an indicator but there are many rares/mythics that have lower values than an uncommon like lightning strike for example.
There are no plans to show any information on deck strength to players. The goal is for players to build the deck they want to play and find a match that's appropriate. Getting more stats into the Profile tab is something we'd like to see.
My Account was Hacked!
Jan 10, 2019
GDPR changed the way information is collected, and how we use and store PII(Personally Identifiable Information). Initially we collect as little as possible as in the new world we only collect what we absolutely need, and what we collect is usually enough to restore a lost account. Once you've made purchases we have more PII on your account, which we can use to restore it if it was lost for some reason. One of the myriad of reasons we have no trading is it helps make all the work of hacking accounts just not worth it as well.
Duplicate Protection
Jan 15, 2019
No plans to expanded duplicate protection out to uncommons or commons at this time. We've said from the beginning that adding in duplicate protection was going to require some balance changes, we're pretty happy where this has settled. Time, data, and players will really tell us what needs to adjust further.
January State of the Beta
Duplicate Protection (Overview)
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/44955
Event Reward Changes
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/44953
Preseason 2
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/46022