MTG thread

ronne

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How many lands do you play? The way the Arena mulligan system works you want 22 lands if you're a fast/aggressive deck with a low curve, or 26 if you're a slower midrange/control deck that wants to cast 5-6 drops. Any other number is incorrect.

Otherwise there is no answer in Standard really. You can't hit the critical mass of card selection/draw/cantrips like you can in eternal formats so you just have to live with it mostly.

Arena being best of 1 though means just snap concede if you miss a land drop, no reason to waste your time.
 

Enzee

Trakanon Raider
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so, you'll never solve the issue completely, but playing lands that have some other kind of effect, and then playing 1-2 more lands then you'd normally think, can help alleviate the issue. ex: Your deck only needs 22 lands to operate, but you play 23/24 instead to combat mana screw, BUT you also play things like cycling lands so you can cycle them if you are flooded. The best players always play a couple more lands, as they'd rather be flooded then screwed, with ways to sink all that extra mana into effects.
However, a lot of it depends on the meta, what deck you are playing, etc.. fast aggro decks generally can't play a bunch of lands that come into play tapped, and control decks don't want to miss land drops for first few turns.
 

ronne

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I'm playing something very similar right now in Arena and the deck feels super, super real. Not just like, its week 1 and everyone is playing trash real.
 

Chris

Potato del Grande
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Can't play arena because I cant get cards because I lose every match to people who have more cards. Do they have no matchmaking system?
 

Deathwing

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Could use a good resource for deck lists. I've never been good at deck theory crafting and I'd rather not waste my wild cards.
 

Therage

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In arena specifically, I have been in beta for about a while but really started heavily playing few weeks ago. You get lots and lots of wilds as you play. I'm not sure of all the best combos including dominaria, but I'm going like 4-3 or 5-3 with a vamp deck in quick constructed. But hitting against people playing with nothing but rare/mythic is usually a rape.

But I've gotten atleast 8 random mythic and twenty plus rares. They come so fast if you do the weekly and daily and buy packs.

For me the key is building a quick and easily synergistic deck to win the daily and weekly for packs although now i use my gold for the constructed shit since I win most of it back.

Vampires are really op if you can mass with sanctum seeker for example. Merfolk blue green is easy to build.


*edit* also the more packs you open the more chests you get which in my experience so far only contain wildcards.
 

Enzee

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If you think wildcards come fast, you've spent at least $50 on the game in the first few days. Based on how many you say you've gotten, you spent over $100. A mythic wc comes every 25-30 packs. If you've gotten 8, ignoring the 1 or 2 you might have gotten from vaults, you opened over 100 packs to get 6 of them in that time frame. Considering you only get about 7 a week from free rewards, and lets say you've been playing for a month, that's still over 60 packs you would have had to buy.

And yes, if you mouseover the 'chest' (it's called the Vault) it tells you it's always exactly 1 mythic WC, 2 rare WC and 3 uncommon WC.
 

Therage

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If you think wildcards come fast, you've spent at least $50 on the game in the first few days. Based on how many you say you've gotten, you spent over $100. A mythic wc comes every 25-30 packs. If you've gotten 8, ignoring the 1 or 2 you might have gotten from vaults, you opened over 100 packs to get 6 of them in that time frame. Considering you only get about 7 a week from free rewards, and lets say you've been playing for a month, that's still over 60 packs you would have had to buy.

And yes, if you mouseover the 'chest' (it's called the Vault) it tells you it's always exactly 1 mythic WC, 2 rare WC and 3 uncommon WC.


Have not spent a penny on the game yet. Was debating getting some gems for the drafts but haven't yet.

I got 4 packs in a row with mythic wc, maybe a glitch maybe I was lucky idk. I've flipped one on a constructed, got another mythic and a rare on the same one. Plus every update or so they give you packs randomly and I've had the beta since it started, set up the account played like two games and left it for weeks while busy with work. Came back and had like 15 packs to open, a vault, etc.
 

Deathwing

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Was reading the analysis here


That the game is at least 2x more expensive than Hearthstone even with similar-costing packs. I might continue to play in the downtime between PoE leagues, but that's kind of a bummer if true. Their matchmaking system blows, I more times than not get matched with opponents outside of my metallic ranking, let alone sub ranking. So, expensive + slow progress = frustrating.
 

Burren

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What looks odd about it to you? I can explain it some. Most of the deck revolves around Raff Capashen and only playing spells on your opponents turns.

You have a legendary who buffs angels, but you have no other angels. You have the saga that buffs Knights, but no other knights. Are you just relying on counters to keep the board clear and having one or two (ballista?) damage dealers?
 

Deathwing

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This game is seriously fucking frustrating. 2 lands and nothing on curve, here have 4+ plus when you mulligan and that's all you'll draw for the next 5 turns. The amount of times this happens, basically mana flood/screw, is staggering. Combined with playing against people with much better decks, I maybe actually play/win 20% of my games?

I don't expect them to fix the screw/flood issue, that's been an issue since inception. But their other systems(slow progression collection, "matchmaking") is indirectly amplifying how bad it feels. MTGA is basically DoA unless they heavily abuse the fact that it's in closed beta.
 

Lunis

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The thing I don't like about newer mtg, at least from experience on Arena, is how much better aggro decks are than almost everything else. Creatures are so OP compared to when I quit (around Mirage), 5/5's for 4 mana.. no drawbacks... AND combat abilities. Juzam Djinn would be an average uncommon now. Slower decks just don't work anymore.
 

ronne

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They work fine in standard, but are difficult to play in to a blind best of 1 system unfortunately.