MTG Arena General Discussion

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jmlima

New historic anthology to be released:

https://mtgazone.com/historic-anthology-2-cards/

Of course, since Historic is mostly played Bo1, anything that does not slot into aggro decks can be ignored.

---

From time to time, they offer historic ranked and historic traditional ranked possibilities.
I've been playing UArtos lately in traditional ranked and been having a lot of fun. And it is absolutely not an aggro deck... And the best deck in the format seems to be UW control :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jmlima

The latest big news, human drafts are coming. That's another dent on MTGO.

---

Isn't it good news? :)
It's the end of the super good decks because you have finally understood the way bots draft... I hated loosing 3 times in a row to super good decks with 5 or 6 of the same common that is backbreaking in the archetype... It's going to happen less!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tylert

From time to time, they offer historic ranked and historic traditional ranked possibilities.
I've been playing UArtos lately in traditional ranked and been having a lot of fun. And it is absolutely not an aggro deck... And the best deck in the format seems to be UW control :)

---

Totally true, but I was coming from the perspective of F2P where you have to brutally maximize the number of games played and amount of fast wins...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tylert

Isn't it good news? :)
It's the end of the super good decks because you have finally understood the way bots draft... I hated loosing 3 times in a row to super good decks with 5 or 6 of the same common that is backbreaking in the archetype... It's going to happen less!!

---

It's very good news! Except for MTGO that will get another dent, but it's defo a very welcomed thing on Arena.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jmlima

Totally true, but I was coming from the perspective of F2P where you have to brutally maximize the number of games played and amount of fast wins...



It's very good news! Except for MTGO that will get another dent, but it's defo a very welcomed thing on Arena.

---

There are still way better formats on MTGO.
To be honest, I still play on mogg which has the worst interface in terms of magic software because it offers better formats

Does anyone actually enjoy Arena at this point? I have two takeaways from my experience.
1. My dislike for planeswalkers is fully justified after playing current Standard.
2. The only use for Arena is a rules tool.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by the Thin White Duke

Does anyone actually enjoy Arena at this point? I have two takeaways from my experience.
1. My dislike for planeswalkers is fully justified after playing current Standard.
2. The only use for Arena is a rules tool.

---

It's even a garbage client that took me multiple days to install and still crashes about one s session

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by the Thin White Duke

Does anyone actually enjoy Arena at this point? I have two takeaways from my experience.
1. My dislike for planeswalkers is fully justified after playing current Standard.
2. The only use for Arena is a rules tool.

---

Well, if you don't have modo, then it's the only option currently.
At this point I would also rather not invest into modo.

A more general thing:
Does anyone else fell that their RNG is really bad.
I know that true randomness feels not random to humans but still.
It fells strange to have a lot of games drawing either no lands or flooding hard.
If I import a list, I cut 2-3 lands first.
I also get a lot of duplicates often in a sense that my hand consists of 2x same card + 3x other card.

As for the formats they, feel awful.
Cards are so powerful that you are so far behind if you don't handles them immediately, that you might as well give up.
The only "soothing" experience I have is playing mono B in Historic and imagining the opponents face once I drop an obliterator which know he can't handle.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zoid

A more general thing:
Does anyone else fell that their RNG is really bad.
I know that true randomness feels not random to humans but still.
It fells strange to have a lot of games drawing either no lands or flooding hard.

---

100%
I was going to bring this up initially, but figured I'd be called a crack pot. I don't trust the RNG at all. Plus, I've heard that the game draws two opening hands and gives you the one with more land, or something to that effect.
I don't run into Mana screw often, but constantly get flooded.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by the Thin White Duke

100%
I was going to bring this up initially, but figured I be called a conspiracy theorist. I don't trust the RNG at all. Plus, I've heard that the game draws two opening hands and gives you the one with more land, or something to that effect.
I don't run into Mana screw often, but constantly get flooded.

---

They only generate 2 hands in BO1. In BO3 it's just one.
You get the hand with a "better" land/spell mix.
That way they want to reduce non-games.

The whole crux of the game is that they want to make you play BO1 even though MTG is not designed to be played this way (so far).
In limited it more or less doesn't matter beside making you more susceptible to variance.
Since a lot of constructed strategies require dedicated hate, you either have to main stuff or just play decks that have at least a fair chance against everything.

The ring in arena, I thought they admitted, is fixed to ensure you get a mix of lands and spells

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by the Thin White Duke

Does anyone actually enjoy Arena at this point? I have two takeaways from my experience.
1. My dislike for planeswalkers is fully justified after playing current Standard.
2. The only use for Arena is a rules tool.

---

Standard is what it is, it ebbs and flows with every rotation. Historic can become a pretty interesting format, but at this point in time it's totally in flux so who knows.

Overall I rate it as a positive experience, you can easily play what you want (from what is offered) for free and there are play modes to suit most people. It's also the only place where you get some form of compensation when you have cards that are banned (in the form of an equivalent number of wildcards and this, in the current ban-o-rama that MTG is, is a pretty good thing. I would dread to pay actual money for cards in MTGO and then see the decks banned and the cards reduced to a fraction of their value (been there a lot in modern). I'm also cheap, so the opportunity to have competitive play for free suits me just fine.

All in all, B+ so far.

As an aside, I think it gets a lot more flak than it deserves (as a client) but I also think the same thing from MTGO, so...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

The ring in arena, I thought they admitted, is fixed to ensure you get a mix of lands and spells

---

Not in Bo3. You can get mana flood and hands with no lands at all.

Put Historic down as another great success story for MTG. After countless bans and suspensions we reach this stage:

'...With the format so warped around 2 archetypes, one necessitating main deck hate and another having no bad matchups over the course of the weekend when put to the test at the highest level, there needs to be changes. I am not qualified to make any suggestions on which cards need to be banned or what cards need to be added in an Anthology to help the format recover, but 60% of the metagame being held by 2 main archetypes isn’t healthy. A format requiring main deck hate cards and one deck making up 6 of the Top 8 spots isn’t great either. ...'

https://mtgazone.com/zendikar-rising...rt-2-historic/

I finally got into playing Arena and holy shit is this client worse than mtgo. It's amazing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

I finally got into playing Arena and holy shit is this client worse than mtgo. It's amazing.

---

I'm on the rather lonely side of actually liking the MTGO client, and of having done so since I started playing it some 6-8 years ago. I think arena has some advantages , but largely prefer the more professional application type of interface that MTGO offers. At this point though, you cannot really argue with free.

Been playing arena for a while. Only spent 5 bucks to start and have drafted more or less continuously. Sometimes I fall into a slump where I need to daily quest back up, but it's free and quick to play. Now I am pretty happy when I'm not playing paper and feel no need to play mtgo, which is a terrible client, even after 20 years.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mistercakes

Been playing arena for a while. Only spent 5 bucks to start and have drafted more or less continuously. Sometimes I fall into a slump where I need to daily quest back up, but it's free and quick to play. Now I am pretty happy when I'm not playing paper and feel no need to play mtgo, which is a terrible client, even after 20 years.

---

It's pretty easy to go infinite indeed.
I draft once every two days and only goes 7-x two or three times during the season, but beetween the free drafts with gold and all the ones where you go 3/4/5-x You're never out of gems and the collection is growing.
When I don't draft I can allways go historic or standard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tylert

It's pretty easy to go infinite indeed.
I draft once every two days and only goes 7-x two or three times during the season, but beetween the free drafts with gold and all the ones where you go 3/4/5-x You're never out of gems and the collection is growing.
When I don't draft I can allways go historic or standard.

---

Indeed it is. There is still one thing that reached the point where I'm getting close to never again touching arena which is the fact that the engine coordinates your match-ups. Probably not a biggie when drafting, but in historic it makes it vile.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jmlima

Indeed it is. There is still one thing that reached the point where I'm getting close to never again touching arena which is the fact that the engine coordinates your match-ups. Probably not a biggie when drafting, but in historic it makes it vile.

---

What do you mean?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

What do you mean?

---

https://draftsim.com/mtg-arena-match...n_Does_it_Suck

If anyone wants Kaldheim codes, send me a PM. I have 3 prerelease codes.

Uro banned in Historic.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles...odern-historic

All aboard the cats and cauldrons train!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jmlima

Uro banned in Historic.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles...odern-historic

All aboard the cats and cauldrons train!

---

ANyway, I was bored getting my uro exile by the god of lies :)
But that seriously weakens the kinnan deck by removing an alt wincon

I just started playing this on my phone today and I have noticed some things

1. The game needs to reconnect to the server a lot. It was smart of them to include this fact in the game's tutorial so I could be prepared for it to happen again later

2. There's no Lorwyn so there's no Kithkin. This bug almost caused me to delete the game but I held out

3. There are a bunch of active promo codes for free packs which I felt was pretty nice, not that 3 packs per set with 8 cards in each pack goes very far. I did get a couple mythics but since they aren't Kithkin I'm not sure what they do

4. Whoever decided that turning a card 15° was enough to indicate it's tapped needs to be defenestrated

I will keep playing because I'm a slut for f2p phone games and most other f2p TCGs have let me down (I can't get good at Shadowverse and Hearthstone lost its appeal when Baku and Genn totally fucked things up).

The glorious interface of arena kept taxing my graphics card (why?) so I finally uninstalled it from my phone. So far I bought a big RPG off steam to waste my time but we'll see if I reinstall once that finishes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TsumiBand

I just started playing this on my phone today and I have noticed some things...

---

I started playing last month, certain I would hate it. Turns out I love it...
Initially downloaded onto my wife's POS all-in-one, but it kept having thermal events and shutting down the computer. So I bought a tablet for $450... to play a free game... :confused:

I just about have Torbran fully built. I'll probably jump into Bo3 Standard when I'm finished. Also 40/60 cards towards Historic Izzet Phoenix, but someone decided Brainstorm and Faithless Looting are rares, so it'll take me a while to accumulate that many wildcards.

Mostly I'm just surprised how much I enjoy playing Standard. I'm positive it has more to do with the accessibility to play Magic than any real interest in Standard. I also think if I couldn't just play a pile of haste creatures and burn I would have dismissed it immediately.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

The glorious interface of arena kept taxing my graphics card (why?) so I finally uninstalled it from my phone. So far I bought a big RPG off steam to waste my time but we'll see if I reinstall once that finishes.

---

When I tried to play Arena on my laptop even on the absolutely lowest settings, it would eventually cause it to overheat and shutdown. Granted, its a relatively old device but you'd figure this application shouldn't be such a resource hog.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Purple Blood

When I tried to play Arena on my laptop even on the absolutely lowest settings, it would eventually cause it to overheat and shutdown. Granted, its a relatively old device but you'd figure this application shouldn't be such a resource hog.

---

It depends on your components, but the overheating is because the power settings are probably set at max performance.

I had to dig to find the system requirements:

Quote:

---

Q. What are the system requirements to playing Magic: The Gathering Arena?

A. Minimum Requirements:
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+ or Equivalent
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 8800 or Equivalent
RAM: 2 GB
Operating System: Windows 7

Recommend Requirements:
Processor: Intel Core2 Quad Q9300 @ 2.50GHz
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560
RAM: 4 GB
Operating System: Windows 10

---

Not exactly sure what the laptop equivalent to a desktop GTX 560 is, but that might be the issue.

This game low- key reminds me of the Steam MtG game I played like 8 years ago, Duel of the Planeswalkers or some such. I always liked that game. After playing Hearthstone for a few years I've really come to appreciate a computer keeping track of the game state.

I think I found an issue with Foretell and disconnects though, I found I couldn't cast face-down spells for their Foretell cost if I exiled them prior to the disconnect. I'll have to see if it happens again I guess.

All in all this game is not too too bad. I think I plan on playing strictly little kid decks though, if there's one thing I can't stand it's a goddamned metagame.

I didn't see a way to play EDH yet, I will have to settle for Brawl I guess

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

The glorious interface of arena kept taxing my graphics card (why?)

---

Happens alot for most card games. I thing there is some kind of bottleneck for all the HD images of the cards. Also the initial load time for the client with all their HD ads... Idk most of the time I alt+f4 and play something else.

But I played my fair share of Arena got to mythic330 but then I burnt out and never got into the grind again.

I've ground up to Mythic a couple of times. It's really not worth it imho. Anymore I just play up to Platinum for the card styles then go mess around in the casual ques. Historic is a garbage town format right now, and Standard still suffers excessively from the last year of mistakes. It's just not remotely fun to play "who casts "i win" creature or spell first hur-dur-hur" in the ranked games.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by morgan_coke

I've ground up to Mythic a couple of times. It's really not worth it imho. Anymore I just play up to Platinum for the card styles then go mess around in the casual ques. Historic is a garbage town format right now, and Standard still suffers excessively from the last year of mistakes. It's just not remotely fun to play "who casts "i win" creature or spell first hur-dur-hur" in the ranked games.

---

Good news about historic!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Good news about historic!

---

That is good news. The article is kind of hilarious though. Like, the reason those decks "only" have a 51.5% winrate is because everyone is pre-boarded against them. I swear wotc isn't run by clowns, it's the entire damn circus.

EDIT: Honestly, half the shit in the strixhaven archive should have been pre-banned in historic. I mean, for fucks sake, Brainstorm AND Looting in a tiny format? And they're like "why is everyone playing red and blue?" Idiots is too kind a word.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by morgan_coke

That is good news. The article is kind of hilarious though. Like, the reason those decks "only" have a 51.5% winrate is because everyone is pre-boarded against them. I swear wotc isn't run by clowns, it's the entire damn circus.

EDIT: Honestly, half the shit in the strixhaven archive should have been pre-banned in historic. I mean, for fucks sake, Brainstorm AND Looting in a tiny format? And they're like "why is everyone playing red and blue?" Idiots is too kind a word.

---

They have a 51% win rate because they play against other brainstorm decks 90% of the time. P Sully burst out laughing on the Odyssey episode of the resleevables when Cedric informed him that Brainstorm was legal but bolt was banned.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by morgan_coke

That is good news. The article is kind of hilarious though. Like, the reason those decks "only" have a 51.5% winrate is because everyone is pre-boarded against them. I swear wotc isn't run by clowns, it's the entire damn circus.

EDIT: Honestly, half the shit in the strixhaven archive should have been pre-banned in historic. I mean, for fucks sake, Brainstorm AND Looting in a tiny format? And they're like "why is everyone playing red and blue?" Idiots is too kind a word.

---

Brainstorm only suspended while Time Warp is banned is hilarious.
Not to mention they didn't touch Looting which is a way worse for the meta.

The porting the mystical archive on arena was a stupid idea.
Most of the cards were either legal in historic anyway or are banned in literally every arena format so they are pointless.
I see the point of trying to keep parity with paper but some things just don't work and they should have just made those cards illegal in paper limited as well.
Probably they only did it to sell the cosmetic skins of the awful jap alts.

TBH I don't see were they are trying to go with historic.
With the collections they obviously try to force certain archetypes, they then introduce cards in the remasters that don't do the format any good either.
Not to mention it takes them ages to do something in the online only formats.
Maybe they want to get people back to playing standard by making historic and brawl suck ass ignoring that standards is even worse so people just stop playing all together.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zoid

TBH I don't see were they are trying to go with historic.

---

Seems like its intended to be a curated, eternal format for their Arena client. Since its curated, the meta could end up being similar to Legacy, Modern, or Pioneer. They could also end up scrapping the entire format if and when they have all of Pioneer on Arena.

Its really anyone's guess but I like the idea of a curated non-rotating format. In theory, you could make an incredibly well-balanced meta game that way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wrath of Pie

It depends on your components, but the overheating is because the power settings are probably set at max performance.

I had to dig to find the system requirements:



Not exactly sure what the laptop equivalent to a desktop GTX 560 is, but that might be the issue.

---

Thanks. I only use the laptop when I travel but I'll have to remember to check into that setting next time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Purple Blood

Thanks. I only use the laptop when I travel but I'll have to remember to check into that setting next time.

---

You might also have to make sure it's actually using the GPU and not the integrated graphics (I have had this problem with games before).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Purple Blood

Seems like its intended to be a curated, eternal format for their Arena client. Since its curated, the meta could end up being similar to Legacy, Modern, or Pioneer. They could also end up scrapping the entire format if and when they have all of Pioneer on Arena.

Its really anyone's guess but I like the idea of a curated non-rotating format. In theory, you could make an incredibly well-balanced meta game that way.

---

Pioneer is unlikely to come on Arena because it would directly compete with Historic in the role of premier non-rotating format. (Also, they actually make money directly because of Historic, so why mess that up with Pioneer?)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wrath of Pie

You might also have to make sure it's actually using the GPU and not the integrated graphics (I have had this problem with games before).


Pioneer is unlikely to come on Arena because it would directly compete with Historic in the role of premier non-rotating format. (Also, they actually make money directly because of Historic, so why mess that up with Pioneer?)

---

They have said over and over their plan is for pioneer on arena

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

They have said over and over their plan is for pioneer on arena

---

Do you really believe what they say?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wrath of Pie

Do you really believe what they say?

---

Do I believe Wizards wants to put more products on their shiny flagship online money making tool? Yes.