MTG: Arena

pharmakos

soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
<Bronze Donator>
16,306
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Just had maybe a big "oh yeah!" moment about this other variation of a Citadel deck I've been working on...

Trying to get a janky BO1 deck going combining Bolas'Citadel with Firesong and Sunspeaker so that my burn spells get lifelink and fuel the life I'm paying to run Citadel. But it doesn't seem to work at all and it's making me sad.

I was thinking Mardu colors because Black for Citadel obviously, White for life gain since Citadel runs on life payments, and Red for Burning Prophet to be able to scry past lands. White also is nice for the bit or card draw, too...

Firesong and Sunspeaker has barely been necessary on top of Revitalize and Sovereign's Bite, the few times that I do win with the deck anyway.

The main hurdle to the deck has been just how long it takes to draw a Citadel AND have the mana for it. What color besides white has life gain, card draw, AND mana fixing? Green, duh.

HMMmmm

Only three days til the tournament, I should be testing builds instead of watching The Expanse reruns. Fuuuu. Tho really, this all might be moot for the tournament, because Esper is probably better for BO3.
 

Chimney

Trakanon Raider
1,652
1,167
Deck matching anecdote and with the new set it's possible more variety is on the ladder, but I've been playing almost solely Orhoz and I am facing a lot of deck variety which has never been the case previously when I was full bore mono red , white or gruul. I'm actually enjoying playing ladder so far this month.

Also did they release what cosmetics you get for gold/platinum this month?
 

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
30,444
22,272
This Dimir deck is great with a few tweaks. Taking advantage of the self-mill is fantastic, not sure why the standard builds dont have 1-2 Chemister's Insight, 1-2 Search for Azcanta and 2x Discovery/Dispersal?

Also abusing the self mill makes your sideboard option fantastic, you can sideboard in 4x Creeping Chill vs Red and that'll easily put you out of the danger zone in the mid game.
 

a_skeleton_02

<Banned>
8,130
14,248
This Dimir deck is great with a few tweaks. Taking advantage of the self-mill is fantastic, not sure why the standard builds dont have 1-2 Chemister's Insight, 1-2 Search for Azcanta and 2x Discovery/Dispersal?

Also abusing the self mill makes your sideboard option fantastic, you can sideboard in 4x Creeping Chill vs Red and that'll easily put you out of the danger zone in the mid game.

You playing in this tournament you scum bag?
 

Tmac

Adventurer
<Gold Donor>
9,385
15,943
On deck matching...

This is a very simple experiment that exemplifies my personal experience. I mostly play Mono Red and White Weenie, so when I'm doing my daily I'm seeing completely different types of decks than I typically see.

Use 3 different types of decks. Queue ranked. Use one deck for your daily and then two different mono decks that are of a different color than your daily. Play 5 games with each deck. Make note of the deck matches. Repeat once a week or once per day. I would even suggest alternating between playing each deck in succession and alternating between each deck, so that there's diversity in play.

Even the biggest aspie fanboi will begin to see VERY OBVIOUS deck matching.
 
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Enzee

Trakanon Raider
2,197
715
The hands you've been dealing yourself for 25 years have never been close to approaching truly random because you don't shuffle enough, or well enough.

You fucking cavemen need to give it up about the shuffler already, my god. Your anecdotal losing streaks and strings of bad matchup pairings sure are compelling evidence that there is a grand conspiracy against you, personally you, to prevent you from advancing as fast as you feel you should through the ladder or whatever.
except... the shuffler actually was bugged prior to WAR release. One guy, Douglas, started analyzing over a million hands and found the discrepancies. But, his experiment wasn't statistically 'accurate' for a bunch of hardcore statisticians, so another one of them did it properly and confirmed the problem. They left off a teeny, tiny, bit of code (literally 2 characters) when they implemented their Fischer-Yates randomization. The TLDR version is it was leading to clumps of cards, and you had a higher chance to draw specific cards based on where they were in your initial decklist.

So, while there are certainly people who use recency and confirmation bias, there actually was a legitimate problem with their shuffler as well. Since WAR was released, the data is finally pointing towards a proper hypergeometric distribution, though.
 

Enzee

Trakanon Raider
2,197
715
I don't mind the complexity, I mind that the person across from me is sitting there thinking about his 3 abilities that offer NOTHING but upsides and hovering over each one like they're discovering it for the first time ever, every game. A tense battle of abilities is fine, a turn 4 "hmm...do I use this ability? Let me read the card I'm not sure" is draining and compounds when there are 6 planeswalkers in play.
err.. the order you do them in can have profound effects on your winrate. Activating kasmina's -2 before teferi, time reveler's -3 might lose you a key card you have to loot away now. Or, choosing not to use Davriel for a turn because you think your opponent sandbagged an extra land.
There's hardly any planeswalker in this set, that is good enough to see play, that you should just be activating automatically without a moment to consider the line you are taking. There can even be borderline scenarios where you don't activate an 'all upside' ability to save their loyalty because you have extensive proliferate effects, and don't want it dropping in range of a burn spell to remove it. I'm splitting hairs on that one, you'd still likely just activate it, but things are rarely so clear cut as to be automatic decisions.
 

a_skeleton_02

<Banned>
8,130
14,248
So I've been playing Simic Nexus because I hate myself and others and I can go 2 hours with out dropping a game but then i realize that only played 3 games.

Would I play it in a tournament? Yes 100% Tamiyo makes the deck so fucking consistent and strong it's crazy plus her static is randomly clutch against esper and grixis.

Would I play it in ranked? Not until i'm deep into mythic it's just so slow to do anything meaningful with it.


Edit: Tamiyo also has the bonus of letting you "talk" to your opponent. When you have zero cards in your deck other than Nexus and you are looping callous dismissal to kill them with an army token you can name "Get the Point" or "Furious Rage" to let them know you have the lock and they should scoop.
 

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
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The number of Risk Factor players who don't read Narset is almost as funny as the people who don't read Nullhide Ferox.
 

Sterling

El Presidente
12,980
7,883
The number of Risk Factor players who don't read Narset is almost as funny as the people who don't read Nullhide Ferox.
Anyone that actually plays Risk Factor probably doesn't know how to read and that's why they put that garbage into their deck.
 
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