MTG: Arena

I usually play something with a bunch of creatures, aggro or midrange; been having fun with a popular mono green build with Questing Beast/Feasting Troll King. Usually can beat any bant ramp as long as I can go fast enough, but if I don't have them at 5 health or lower by the time they start getting all those FotD procs i'm dead in the water.

Oh and Rakdos Knights aggro is so much more fun than Cavalcade for me atm. Though, a well timed Torbran is always fun for a quick assrape.

Last time midrange was really viable was with Golgari, so Guilds of Ravnica time.

Hydroid Krasis ruined standard, fite me.

That's weird, I felt like I've seen less control this cycle than I did last cycle, and I fucking HATE control with an undying passion.

One question maybe some of you can answer, why is it on Arena when i'm doing ranked, a lot of the times I end up being paired with someone on a completely different ranked tier for a match? (ie, i'll be Diamond ranked, and get paired with someone who's only Platinum). It only seems to go in that direction too - out of the 2,000 matches i've played, i've not once ever faced someone who was on a higher tiered rank than myself. Does the game mask this when this happens, and say in the previous example, would show me as Platinum ranked to that person too? Or do they get the satisfaction of seeing me as Diamond ranked and then winning?

Asmadai said:

That's weird, I felt like I've seen less control this cycle than I did last cycle, and I fucking HATE control with an undying passion.

One question maybe some of you can answer, why is it on Arena when i'm doing ranked, a lot of the times I end up being paired with someone on a completely different ranked tier for a match? (ie, i'll be Diamond ranked, and get paired with someone who's only Platinum). It only seems to go in that direction too - out of the 2,000 matches i've played, i've not once ever faced someone who was on a higher tiered rank than myself. Does the game mask this when this happens, and say in the previous example, would show me as Platinum ranked to that person too? Or do they get the satisfaction of seeing me as Diamond ranked and then winning?

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He's lumping the ramp decks in with control, when they're really not. but yeah. Also, obviously you can get paired upwards otherwise how would your opponent's get paired against you. It gets real wild in limited since there's a lot less players and at some records like 5-0 etc you can end up matched up 2 or more ranks off. I've played against gold ranked players at mythic in limited a few times.

Fields seems fucky anyway - it says it's supposed to proc for 7 or more lands, but if you have 5 lands out, and play (some card I can't think the name of) that lets you put 2 lands on the field tapped, i've seen it proc 2 zombies off the "6th" AND "7th" land that you then play.

That can't be intended right?

Triggers aren't created until the effect triggering them resolves. So both lands are in play by the time the game creates triggers to put on the stack, and field "sees" 7 different lands both times it checks.

Asmadai said:

Fields seems fucky anyway - it says it's supposed to proc for 7 or more lands, but if you have 5 lands out, and play (some card I can't think the name of) that lets you put 2 lands on the field tapped, i've seen it proc 2 zombies off the "6th" AND "7th" land that you then play.

That can't be intended right?

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It's how it works. Scapeshift did a very similar thing as well.

Asmadai said:

Fields seems fucky anyway - it says it's supposed to proc for 7 or more lands, but if you have 5 lands out, and play (some card I can't think the name of) that lets you put 2 lands on the field tapped, i've seen it proc 2 zombies off the "6th" AND "7th" land that you then play.

That can't be intended right?

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Either I'm missing something or you're describing pretty much what Kuro posted. If you have five lands out, and you get an effect that lets you stick 2 lands onto the battlefield (at the same time as with Circuitous Route) and those two lands would satisfy the condition, you get triggers for both. This is because you "had" 5 and you "have" 7 with two "enters the battlefield" events happening at the same time.

It's basically like this:
- You have 5 lands.
- Circuitous Route (or equivalent effect) says go get two and put them into play tapped.
- Two lands simultaneously enter the battlefield tapped, giving you seven lands and generating two ETB events for Field of the Dead to check.
- Field of the Dead's intervening if checks the names for each event, says all good, two zombies.

Now, if two different effects brings those lands in separately (two separate tutor spells, or you copy something like Rampant Growth) then you should only get the one trigger. Simultaneity in MtG allows you to get seemingly illogical happenings, but strictly speaking they are correct. To put it differently: for an effect like Circuitous Route you are not getting 5+1+1 lands , it's 5+2 lands.

Field decks need a buff, they should reprint Primeval Titan.

Yeah it's what Kuro said, I guess I'm still partially confused as to why it double triggers off lands #6 AND #7 coming into play simultaneously if Field of the Dead only says it should trigger on 7 or more. If the player already had 6 other lands on the field and Circuitous let him play #7 and #8 then it would make perfect sense, but how can the 6th land trigger a condition requiring 7 lands or more? I see what he said about the game checking the field after the effect resolves and "seeing" 7 lands both times thus causing a 2x zombie proc, but I guess my question is why does it delay "looking" at the field for the trigger until the end?

Is this just purely an Arena thing that causes this trigger or would this play out the exact same way in a real life table game? If it's just the way the Arena trigger check works then i'll leave it alone.

It's how it works for triggers in physical magic too, because interrupting a resolving effect to do triggers actually creates a bigger mess in practice than waiting (a lesson WotC learned while running other card games like L5R way back when), even if waiting creates some corner cases that feel un-intuitive.

It's not a rare case, so I shouldn't call it a corner case, but it's definitely uncommon. The two largest sources of this coming up in regular play, previous to Field of the Dead, were both Zendikar (Allies and Valakut), which is a decade ago at this point. Kick a Rite of Replication targeting a Halimar Excavator and prepare for arguments to break out at the table