A quick gatherer search reveals, that there are about 50 of those cards in Modern alone, more than half of them nonblue. A large portion of that is green. And many of those cards have seen extensive Standard tournament play in their days. So it's not like that ability is lacking cards.
Control is not oppressing because of counterspells, those are usually a 1-for-1 trade, much like spot removal. What makes control work is card advantage, the ability to draw into more counterspells and stuff, and trade one card for many with mass removal.
I dont play modern, so I guess I'm talking only Standard. And yes, I agree card draw is a big control power advantage. I still think the amount of counters is a huge advantage too (there's, what, 30 different counters available in standard right now?) and I'd like to see ways to mitigate control without stripping it of power. I play control and find control games fun, but there is a point where it feels like versus control, if you begin the game on the wrong footing with your opening hand there's no way to come back and that's not really great. I'd like to see a way to stop blue from being able to dominate a game once it has a good manabase out and can keep draw and counters in hand at all time. I was thinking draw ability cards should all resolve at sorcery speed, but I think adding more uncounterable options into other colors might make blue decks have to find ways to deal with threats on the board, instead of just ways to prevent them.
There's only a few - Nezzy, Carny, and Veto that I can think of off the top of my head (and most belong to blue already), but there honestly should be a whole deck type based around uncounterable cards. Creatures, costed for it (like 4 mana for a 2/3 uncounterable maybe), removal spells, PW removal spells. Since Green already has it's toe in, I could see it being a green type. Something to at least wrench the oppressiveness of blue besides having to play tier 1 aggro. A more reliable way to remove a Teferi or handle mono-blue which seems to have an endless supply of cheap counters. Whenever I look at winning tournament decks (like here: https://aetherhub.com/Meta/TierOne/Standard/159), with the exception of mono-red aggro, all the decks include blue because blue can counter and shut down almost anything else. I like playing control myself, but it does get a bit oppressive and would love to see some ways to balance it out and let other colors have the ability to be competitive. I think an uncounterable series of spells could help. It would let you work green into decks to make more midrange playstyles available - g/w, g/b, g/r.
The clumping of cards, not just mana, still seems way more common than "randomness" would allow. I just played a game where my opponent had all four Wizard's Lightening spells in his hand on turn 4. And I regularly pull Thought Erasure after Thought Erasure in a row, yet don't see my large mana cards that frequently even though I have the same amount of them in the deck.
So War of the Spark introduced a metric ton of new, cheap PWs, but I'm not seeing any new ways to deal with them. I'm having games where an opponent can bring out a different PW starting on turn 3 and each turn after that, but PW removal seems pretty rare. What to do? Why did they not release anything like a PW sweeper? Is it intentional?
I gotta say, it's amazing how many people already have full War of the Spark sets one day after launch. I wouldn't have expected it, but I see more people playing with large amounts of the new cards than not. Running into tons of decks, at Gold rank, with multiple full 4 rare/mythic card sets. I opened about 20 packs and dont really have much, so I added a few cards to existing decks to play around with them, but I see a lot of whole new deck types. I dont know how they do it, but this game I guess is printing money off these people.
But i started playing arena 3 days ago and im only about 5 rares, and 1 common, and 3 uncommon off having the standard RDW list you get in paper meta.
I don't really see many chainwhirlers yet on arena, but I guess thats because im not at many rares. RDW, and Gruul Stompy seem to be pretty good in BO1.
Planning on making the red, and trying to get gold positive on bo1 until I can make mono U tempo and try bo3.
Hey what is the best way for a player in Arena to get 4 copies of at at least 50% of the cards by obtaining wildcards without spending actual money? I apperciate any helpful suggestions.
Play the constructed one where you can lose up to 3 times before you get booted. That's generally the best way to get cards. Or just keep getting your quests, and opening packs
Unfortunately there is no card protection for this event, it's only for packs, so if you run the risk of drawing you 12th Verix Bladewing or whatever the **** from this event. I've gotten so many Squee the Immortals I should win an award, but have never opened or pulled a single Absorb.
I think part of the problem is you don't play against the same people in your specific draft. When you draft at a shop you get a sense of what is going around the table, and people usually will be able to break up obvious synergies. But in Arena you just play people who had a completely different draft. I mean I guess they can't do it any other way, but it does lead to some obscene match-ups. I've been on both ends. I've had horrific drafts where there is like not even any good commons passing around and the rares are all those super situational ones like Dragon's Hoard or some crap. And then I'll match against people with near perfect constructed tier one decks. Worst I saw was a mono-white lifegain deck. I have no idea how he even drafted enough whites to make a mono colored deck but there it was - with at least three Pridemates. But then in my last draft I got a Chromium in the first round and was able to build a really good u/b/w deck that went 7-1. So it changes. The biggest problem is drafting is so costly that when you have a terrible draft you can't just jump back in after you lose, you have to sit and brood with it because you now need to scrounge up another week's worth of gold to play again.
I tried to play this morning. Picked an Esper Control deck in Bo1. Played three games all against Esper control decks. Game two I was so mana starved my opponent had 12 lands to my 3. Like I just can't imagine how anyone can be like "this is a good product." Why do they need to so much interference into the game? Just let the game run on it's own. Stop with all the manipulation. It's such a gross experience.
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.
(Was banned from the official forums for this observation, so here it is)
I don't think Competitive Standard is a "fun" way to play Magic. It's good. It has it's place - Seeing the best deck you can create and trying to beat all others is totally a legit way to play the game. However it's not an inherently "fun" experience, especially when that's all you have. Magic offers so many ways to play, but in Arena, since the goal is 'win at all costs' and the only free modes are Ranked and Play, that means in Arena THE game is competitive standard. (There's Draft and Sealed, but those are $$$$ and there's the occasional, blue-moon Pauper or Singleton but they're so rare as to hardly consider 'modes of play' in Arena). So Ranked play is all the same top tier decks. And you have to play those too unless you enjoy losing by turn four. I get tired of playing Esper Control sometimes and want to try something janky or a combo deck or even just a halfway decent deck like Esper midrange, but there is no place to play them. Anything else get's crushed fast in Ranked. Even unranked Play mode is all the same tier-1 decks: Monored, monoblue, Esper, Gates, Sultai, Dimir.. on a loop. Sign in to Arena, play one of your tier 1 decks, play 4 games against monored, 2 monoblue and a dimir control, then quit. Janky decks aren't fun to play when your opponent is playing World Championship Mono Red Turn 3 victory deck in the unranked freeplay mode. And I don't know about you guys but I get bored of playing my top tier decks after a while. So what does that leave? The occasional Draft game when I save up enough gold once a week maybe? Draft is fun, but I like deckbuilding and want to play some other games. But right now there's no place for anything else in Arena. So I've just been logging in, doing my daily quest, and leaving... usually feeling "well that was a waste of time" after I'm done. I'd love for this game to make it, but sadly I dont think it's much fun.
Seeing as you have repeatedly shown yourself to be incapable of handling subtlety, I'm going to be blunt. You aren't having fun because you are terrible at the game.
When you just started after jumping over from Hearthstone it was understandable - the game is new, there's a completely different resource system, there's a lot of new effects and timing and all kinds of stuff that HS never touched. Magic is a much more nuanced game, and there's going to be a learning curve. Everyone starts out terrible at the game, but if you take the time to learn and understand the differences, you can do well. Several notable HS players have transitioned to Magic very well even if you don't count Brian Kibler (Who started with MTG, jumped on the HS bandwagon and with Arena has come back to MTG)
You have not done this. Instead you have chosen to complain about every single aspect of magic that you don't like, as if you expect that it will magically change for you. Furthermore, you have not only ignored every attempt by everyone on this website to give you advice, you have made an art form out of deflecting blame from yourself. Lose a game or two because of mana flood or topdecks? Obviously wizards is rigging hands! Lose a game because you ignored a disinformation campaign until drew them 10 cards? Wizards can't balance cards worth a hell, these need to be banned! Get blown out by a pteramander you made no effort to kill because you didn't recognize it for the must-answer threat it clearly is? Magic isn't fun, you're just playing the same tier 1 decks on repeat. Do you honestly listen to yourself when you say these things? It's like listening to a whining 5-year old who got a different toy than the one they wanted and is throwing a temper tantrum, and you should be embarrassed.
And no, magic will not change for you, because you want a game that fundamentally isn't magic. If you were actually GOOD at the game and not stuck in the bronze and silver ranks you would see that the game is incredibly varied, there's easily ten to twelve decks you can run into in plat and mythic with regularity, to say nothing of the meme decks like Rainbow Lich or High Alert Marwyn that still win games because the format is one of the widest open we've seen in five years. If you were actually GOOD at the game you would bring up some of the actual legitimate concerns with Arena going forward instead of Dessy's sponsored crapposts, because there are questions that we want answered that are going to make or break the game in the future. And I find it very likely the reason you were banned was because of these personal failings that you STILL have found a way to maintain aren't your fault.
But you're not good at the game, in fact you seem to take pride in refusing to try to become good. So I'm glad you're finally leaving, because it means the rest of us will suffer a little bit less now that you're gone. #ByeFelicia
I guess most players suck then. Ended last season in Diamond. And that's not the point of the post. The point is Arena needs more game modes. But you incel gamergate nerds cant see past gentle criticism of any consumer product that you devote your personality too. I'm sorry the mean "sportsball" jocks picked on you in high school because you had acne and smelled like pond water and your only outlet was purchasing consumer goods. Maybe you should join a gym or something. Get out of your gaming chair and comfort zone and improve yourself a bit. Maybe people would like you. Its a big "maybe" I'll grant but I'll be praying for you. There is always hope, even for the most repulsive nerd out there. You just gotta want it and put in the work. A better life cant be purchased at GameStop.
This is and always be a matter of opinion. What does "fun" mean to you?
I am playing unranked with four planeswalker decks from GRN/RNA, which I slowly upgrade from ePacks for gold, and I'm having a lot of fun playing against various decks, and having 20% - 40% win rate.
I don't play ranked or limited (I don't know how to draft), and in the future I probably won't spend any money in game. For me, this approach is enough and fun. For you, maybe not.
This is actually what I would consider fun, and would like to be able to do. But at some point you will probably get tired of a 20% win ratio. Even if you're like "winning doesnt matter to me" it gets boring to play games where you've lost by turn 5 over and over. You want to try out your deck. You want a game that goes on for a couple rounds. You cant get that here.
(Was banned from the official forums for this observation, so here it is)
I don't think Competitive Standard is a "fun" way to play Magic. It's good. It has it's place - Seeing the best deck you can create and trying to beat all others is totally a legit way to play the game. However it's not an inherently "fun" experience, especially when that's all you have. Magic offers so many ways to play, but in Arena, since the goal is 'win at all costs' and the only free modes are Ranked and Play, that means in Arena THE game is competitive standard. (There's Draft and Sealed, but those are $$$$ and there's the occasional, blue-moon Pauper or Singleton but they're so rare as to hardly consider 'modes of play' in Arena). So Ranked play is all the same top tier decks. And you have to play those too unless you enjoy losing by turn four. I get tired of playing Esper Control sometimes and want to try something janky or a combo deck or even just a halfway decent deck like Esper midrange, but there is no place to play them. Anything else get's crushed fast in Ranked. Even unranked Play mode is all the same tier-1 decks: Monored, monoblue, Esper, Gates, Sultai, Dimir.. on a loop. Sign in to Arena, play one of your tier 1 decks, play 4 games against monored, 2 monoblue and a dimir control, then quit. Janky decks aren't fun to play when your opponent is playing World Championship Mono Red Turn 3 victory deck in the unranked freeplay mode. And I don't know about you guys but I get bored of playing my top tier decks after a while. So what does that leave? The occasional Draft game when I save up enough gold once a week maybe? Draft is fun, but I like deckbuilding and want to play some other games. But right now there's no place for anything else in Arena. So I've just been logging in, doing my daily quest, and leaving... usually feeling "well that was a waste of time" after I'm done. I'd love for this game to make it, but sadly I dont think it's much fun.
I agree with paper being cheaper. For me the issue with Arena is the lootbox aspect and that I can't really just craft a card I want without "earning" one of their obnoxious wildcards. There are SO many rare cards and mythic cards in each viable meta deck, and there is little crossover unless you play similar decks. So to make my Golgari deck, from before RNA dropped, I needed say 18 rares and 7 mythics. Now I am tapped out of rare and mythic wildcards. RNA launches and to make that deck competitive again I need another 6 rares and 4 mythics. The only way to get these are to open a boatload of packs (is it 20 packs for the guaranteed mythic?) In a shop I can buy them, and even sell the cards that are not in the meta anymore. And some of these rares I need are like $0.75. But in Arena they all have the same value and that value is either long-ass grind, or $40+ in packs to either lootbox RNG the card or earn the WC.
Heaven forbid that you get tired of playing the same deck over and over and want to change it up and make something else competitive. Now I need to earn another 20 rares and 10 mythics (on average Id say) to build another deck of a different type. Arena is a huge expense IMO. IRL I play mainly draft at FNM and buy a few packs or cards just to mess around in standard and I have better standard decks IRL than I do in Arena which I can play everyday. And my cards have an actual real-world value. So even though it's not a true investment, it at least feels like if I drop $3 on a pack, I can "earn" money by pulling a $10 card from it. In Arena it's all valueless except in it's rarity which is selectively doled out by a program that rewards only time or (larger) amounts of money.
Spam warning. This forum's for finding out about card interactions, not complaining about them.
I dont play modern, so I guess I'm talking only Standard. And yes, I agree card draw is a big control power advantage. I still think the amount of counters is a huge advantage too (there's, what, 30 different counters available in standard right now?) and I'd like to see ways to mitigate control without stripping it of power. I play control and find control games fun, but there is a point where it feels like versus control, if you begin the game on the wrong footing with your opening hand there's no way to come back and that's not really great. I'd like to see a way to stop blue from being able to dominate a game once it has a good manabase out and can keep draw and counters in hand at all time. I was thinking draw ability cards should all resolve at sorcery speed, but I think adding more uncounterable options into other colors might make blue decks have to find ways to deal with threats on the board, instead of just ways to prevent them.
Unfortunately there is no card protection for this event, it's only for packs, so if you run the risk of drawing you 12th Verix Bladewing or whatever the **** from this event. I've gotten so many Squee the Immortals I should win an award, but have never opened or pulled a single Absorb.
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 guess most players suck then. Ended last season in Diamond. And that's not the point of the post. The point is Arena needs more game modes. But you incel gamergate nerds cant see past gentle criticism of any consumer product that you devote your personality too. I'm sorry the mean "sportsball" jocks picked on you in high school because you had acne and smelled like pond water and your only outlet was purchasing consumer goods. Maybe you should join a gym or something. Get out of your gaming chair and comfort zone and improve yourself a bit. Maybe people would like you. Its a big "maybe" I'll grant but I'll be praying for you. There is always hope, even for the most repulsive nerd out there. You just gotta want it and put in the work. A better life cant be purchased at GameStop.
This is actually what I would consider fun, and would like to be able to do. But at some point you will probably get tired of a 20% win ratio. Even if you're like "winning doesnt matter to me" it gets boring to play games where you've lost by turn 5 over and over. You want to try out your deck. You want a game that goes on for a couple rounds. You cant get that here.
I don't think Competitive Standard is a "fun" way to play Magic. It's good. It has it's place - Seeing the best deck you can create and trying to beat all others is totally a legit way to play the game. However it's not an inherently "fun" experience, especially when that's all you have. Magic offers so many ways to play, but in Arena, since the goal is 'win at all costs' and the only free modes are Ranked and Play, that means in Arena THE game is competitive standard. (There's Draft and Sealed, but those are $$$$ and there's the occasional, blue-moon Pauper or Singleton but they're so rare as to hardly consider 'modes of play' in Arena). So Ranked play is all the same top tier decks. And you have to play those too unless you enjoy losing by turn four. I get tired of playing Esper Control sometimes and want to try something janky or a combo deck or even just a halfway decent deck like Esper midrange, but there is no place to play them. Anything else get's crushed fast in Ranked. Even unranked Play mode is all the same tier-1 decks: Monored, monoblue, Esper, Gates, Sultai, Dimir.. on a loop. Sign in to Arena, play one of your tier 1 decks, play 4 games against monored, 2 monoblue and a dimir control, then quit. Janky decks aren't fun to play when your opponent is playing World Championship Mono Red Turn 3 victory deck in the unranked freeplay mode. And I don't know about you guys but I get bored of playing my top tier decks after a while. So what does that leave? The occasional Draft game when I save up enough gold once a week maybe? Draft is fun, but I like deckbuilding and want to play some other games. But right now there's no place for anything else in Arena. So I've just been logging in, doing my daily quest, and leaving... usually feeling "well that was a waste of time" after I'm done. I'd love for this game to make it, but sadly I dont think it's much fun.
Heaven forbid that you get tired of playing the same deck over and over and want to change it up and make something else competitive. Now I need to earn another 20 rares and 10 mythics (on average Id say) to build another deck of a different type. Arena is a huge expense IMO. IRL I play mainly draft at FNM and buy a few packs or cards just to mess around in standard and I have better standard decks IRL than I do in Arena which I can play everyday. And my cards have an actual real-world value. So even though it's not a true investment, it at least feels like if I drop $3 on a pack, I can "earn" money by pulling a $10 card from it. In Arena it's all valueless except in it's rarity which is selectively doled out by a program that rewards only time or (larger) amounts of money.