Today I learned that casting an 8 mana Blood on the Snow due to the second thing of Elspeth Saves the Day will not, in fact, let you get Ugin back.
v disappointing.
That's odd. Are you sure all eight mana was snow?
While I may have missed the autotapper using Crawling Barrens (but I don't think it did) I'm pretty sure it only said 6 snow mana were spent anyway.
It's fully possible that I wasn't looking closely enough at what was getting tapped, but I've been unable to even find a definitive answer as to whether or not this should work (tho I suspect it should).
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I agree that it should work. It's definitely a weird edge case, but the way additional costs work is you calculate the total cost of the spell and then pay it all at once. The extra (2) isn't paid separately, so it should be counted the same way as the rest.
I agree that it should work. It's definitely a weird edge case, but the way additional costs work is you calculate the total cost of the spell and then pay it all at once. The extra (2) isn't paid separately, so it should be counted the same way as the rest.
Yeah, but searching the comp rules for some keywords didn't turn anything up, none of the snow counting cards or sunburst cards or Jodah have any relevant rules comments in gatherer, it's like there's some sort of information void around this specific issue.
The only thing I've found is a random MTGSalvation comment about Jodah and that seems pretty far from official.
I agree that it should work. It's definitely a weird edge case, but the way additional costs work is you calculate the total cost of the spell and then pay it all at once. The extra (2) isn't paid separately, so it should be counted the same way as the rest.
Yeah, but searching the comp rules for some keywords didn't turn anything up, none of the snow counting cards or sunburst cards or Jodah have any relevant rules comments in gatherer, it's like there's some sort of information void around this specific issue.
The only thing I've found is a random MTGSalvation comment about Jodah and that seems pretty far from official.
Both Sunburst and Converge (which is effectively Sunburst on non-artifacts) work properly when you are forced to pay extra.
702.44b: Sunburst adds counters only if the object with sunburst is entering the battlefield from the stack as a resolving spell and only if one or more colored mana was spent on its costs, including additional or alternative costs.
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Anybody want to test it sometime with like a bunch of Elspeth Conquers Death and Reidanes? I don't want to submit a frivolous bug report but I am very suspicious of the possibility that the snow mana cards were coded to look at how much of their mana value was snow instead of how much snow mana was spent to play them.
Anybody want to test it sometime with like a bunch of Elspeth Conquers Death and Reidanes? I don't want to submit a frivolous bug report but I am very suspicious of the possibility that the snow mana cards were coded to look at how much of their mana value was snow instead of how much snow mana was spent to play them.
You could try and find the game's logs.
Unsure how long any specific game lasts in the files, but they are fairly detailed and most likely would show what lands are tapped.. aside they might be a bit obtuse to read (lots of objects rather than card names)
Greetings thread. Sometimes not enough people are playing Artifact to find matches and so I was wondering about getting into Arena. But I have poked around a bit and it seems like all the draft/sealed/whatever non-constructed modes are pretty tough to play for free? You need a lot of gold or whatever and that stuff comes slowly? Basically my question is if I have zero interest in playing constructed deck games, is there any real option in Arena or should I stick with Artifact?
So, quick draft costs 5K gold a go and rewards gems.
To get 5K gold, you're looking at completing 10 days of 500 gold daily quests. You can rotate a quest once a day, and should to attempt to get a 750 gold quest.
None of the quests require winning constructed games, but will require playing constructed games if you don't have the ability to play limited.
You also have daily wins of 250/100/100/50/50/25/card/etc.
New players tend to be bumped into a new player queue for like 50 games.
In any case, if you can win some games, then you can probably cut down the number of days to 5.
The weekly wins award XP which largely turns into packs of cards.
I don't think there's gold on the XP track unless you spend gems to unlock the mastery pass.
So you can likely play a quick draft once a week if you played constructed daily.
And then depending on how well you go in quick draft, you should be able to turn your gems into more sealed games.
Greetings thread. Sometimes not enough people are playing Artifact to find matches and so I was wondering about getting into Arena. But I have poked around a bit and it seems like all the draft/sealed/whatever non-constructed modes are pretty tough to play for free? You need a lot of gold or whatever and that stuff comes slowly? Basically my question is if I have zero interest in playing constructed deck games, is there any real option in Arena or should I stick with Artifact?
As mentioned above, you can do a quick draft about once a week, but also this is a really good time for constructed imo. When I last played Arena a year or so ago I just felt frustrated constantly and now I've been having a great time.
But because you keep all the cards you draft outside of special events, it's pretty tough to draft for free.
Ran into someone playing Divine Gambit in STX sealed. They decided casting it on my Professor of Zoology, after using Introduction to Annihilation on Witherbloom Apprentice and drawing me a card, was a winning play...
someone in draft tried to race me with arrogant poet.dec, they had three of them out by turn four.
it did not go well for them to spend mana to swing in at parity every turn, it turns out that's not really a winning strategy against another aggressive deck.
Greetings thread. Sometimes not enough people are playing Artifact to find matches and so I was wondering about getting into Arena. But I have poked around a bit and it seems like all the draft/sealed/whatever non-constructed modes are pretty tough to play for free? You need a lot of gold or whatever and that stuff comes slowly? Basically my question is if I have zero interest in playing constructed deck games, is there any real option in Arena or should I stick with Artifact?
If you want to play for free or want a game that respects your time in terms of translating into rewards, you really have to play Runeterra.
Magic has that Magic... magic. It's a great game. But it still assumes you're going to dump $50 a set into it OR you're going to go hard every single day and play a lot of matches to... eventually... be able to play meta games.
Also, Magic not having any way to just buy a Tier 1 Meta deck super blocks it here. Other games, including Runeterra, you really don't NEED to dump money in, but you can just straight up buy a T1 Runeterra deck for ~$30. Cold cracking Magic packs will cost you about $500 to build a real deck with luck, assuming you don't take a few weeks and game your way through draft.
Thought this was a pretty good summary, from Magic enthusiasts, on MTGA not really respecting time/money very well.
Alright, thanks everyone! Sounds like it's not for me. I might just stick with Artifact or check out Runeterra. Seems weird that they wouldn't have a free draft mode where you just don't get to keep the cards, but I guess that would leave people fewer reasons to play the existing drafts.
Magic is kind of stuck by being so good and so well established, but also still 90% focused on real world cards. They haven't really figured out what to do with this internet thingamajig.
I really recommend Runeterra as its own thing. I play both games; Magic because I can't kick the habit and Runeterra because I feel like the game actually respects my time and investment.
Magic has always been an expensive game to play. Arena still kind of needs you to pay to be able to play but it's still the cheapest way I've found to play.
I do think that WotC's base modus operandus is a bit greedy and they still do things in Arena where they put profit before player fun.
Magic has always been an expensive game to play. Arena still kind of needs you to pay to be able to play but it's still the cheapest way I've found to play.
I do think that WotC's base modus operandus is a bit greedy and they still do things in Arena where they put profit before player fun.
MTGA being more expensive than real world magic to play competitive is what kind of gets me stuck every time I look at it.
What is this I don't even.
0
Options
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
I dunno if all the good decks are busy with the constructed event (haven't seen a single meta deck) but that pile of cards I posted is 7-1 in bo3 so far, having lost like 3 games total. Just absolutely tore through the ranks to plat 1 when I've never been out of plat 4 before.
Magic has always been an expensive game to play. Arena still kind of needs you to pay to be able to play but it's still the cheapest way I've found to play.
I do think that WotC's base modus operandus is a bit greedy and they still do things in Arena where they put profit before player fun.
MTGA being more expensive than real world magic to play competitive is what kind of gets me stuck every time I look at it.
I dunno, I have multiple decks in Arena with a paper price exceeding my total expenditure in Arena. It is probably the most restrictive f2p model of the CCGs out there, but I wouldn't say the requirements are worse than paper.
Another thing, like if your deck just needs 1 playset of a rare and one copy of a mythic from a set, you don't need to get a single pack from that set, you can open the set that has most of what you need, and the wildcards you get will let you pick up the offset cards. Those 4 rares and 1 mythich will take, absolute most, 30 packs (24 for the rares, another 6 to get the mythic)
Magic has always been an expensive game to play. Arena still kind of needs you to pay to be able to play but it's still the cheapest way I've found to play.
I do think that WotC's base modus operandus is a bit greedy and they still do things in Arena where they put profit before player fun.
MTGA being more expensive than real world magic to play competitive is what kind of gets me stuck every time I look at it.
I dunno, I have multiple decks in Arena with a paper price exceeding my total expenditure in Arena. It is probably the most restrictive f2p model of the CCGs out there, but I wouldn't say the requirements are worse than paper.
I mean that starting fresh, if you want to make a T1 deck without drafting for a few weeks, it costs about $500 to do it. Vs. being able to do it for $200 in paper.
Obviously there's a lot of nuance, but there's a weird thing there.
Magic has always been an expensive game to play. Arena still kind of needs you to pay to be able to play but it's still the cheapest way I've found to play.
I do think that WotC's base modus operandus is a bit greedy and they still do things in Arena where they put profit before player fun.
MTGA being more expensive than real world magic to play competitive is what kind of gets me stuck every time I look at it.
I dunno, I have multiple decks in Arena with a paper price exceeding my total expenditure in Arena. It is probably the most restrictive f2p model of the CCGs out there, but I wouldn't say the requirements are worse than paper.
I mean that starting fresh, if you want to make a T1 deck without drafting for a few weeks, it costs about $500 to do it. Vs. being able to do it for $200 in paper.
Obviously there's a lot of nuance, but there's a weird thing there.
I've spent about $600-$700 since Ikoria dropped on MTGA. I can make literally every T1/2/3/4 competitive deck in standard. A single Sultaimatum deck costs around $300+ in paper magic, and there's a few other lists get quite high (Temur, anything with 4x Great Henge starts at $200). If you compare that to what I normally do with paper magic- buying two boxes of every new release-I'd have enough cards to make some jank pile list for the same cost.
I don't think the MTGA model is unfair in terms of the paid model, but I'd agree that it's a crapshoot if you're doing F2P.
I think it's actually nowhere near as tight as it needs to be to take on the really good decks, but it just absolutely slaughtered all the non-meta decks this weekend.
e: wtf I just noticed it puts the goofy ass regular Kaya art on the deckbox after you exit out of deckbuilding, this is a gamebreaking bug.
Magic has always been an expensive game to play. Arena still kind of needs you to pay to be able to play but it's still the cheapest way I've found to play.
I do think that WotC's base modus operandus is a bit greedy and they still do things in Arena where they put profit before player fun.
MTGA being more expensive than real world magic to play competitive is what kind of gets me stuck every time I look at it.
I dunno, I have multiple decks in Arena with a paper price exceeding my total expenditure in Arena. It is probably the most restrictive f2p model of the CCGs out there, but I wouldn't say the requirements are worse than paper.
I mean that starting fresh, if you want to make a T1 deck without drafting for a few weeks, it costs about $500 to do it. Vs. being able to do it for $200 in paper.
Obviously there's a lot of nuance, but there's a weird thing there.
I've spent about $600-$700 since Ikoria dropped on MTGA. I can make literally every T1/2/3/4 competitive deck in standard. A single Sultaimatum deck costs around $300+ in paper magic, and there's a few other lists get quite high (Temur, anything with 4x Great Henge starts at $200). If you compare that to what I normally do with paper magic- buying two boxes of every new release-I'd have enough cards to make some jank pile list for the same cost.
I don't think the MTGA model is unfair in terms of the paid model, but I'd agree that it's a crapshoot if you're doing F2P.
Excellent point and I agree. Basically, MTGA is not too expensive compared to Magic. If you don't take it in the context of it being a digital/phone game in that marketplace, it's a thing. But if it's competing with that market, it's a Whale's game only. F2P or cheap players are going to have to make it their primary game to get much with it in a given set, and are going to have major ramp up investment time almost every set. If you like MTGA on its merits and love Magic, it's great. If you're looking to compare it to/assess it against other digital marketplace card games... it's a big ask that I don't think is reasonable.
MTG content creators have an incredibly negative view of the MTGA economy partially because they engage with it in the worst way possible.
Like, if you don't play Arena very much at all and play a variety of wild bad jank decks, then of course MTGA is super expensive relative to buying bulk rares in real life, but that's the biggest edge case possible.
I ate an engineer
+2
Options
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
I have spent... $130 since I started playing again, right about when Kaldheim released. The last time I played was before Eldraine, and I also wasn't having much fun so I don't think I spent very much.
I'm actually quite pleased with that, I thought I'd spent at least $200.
Clearly this means I've earned another $50 gem purchase.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
It's easy to keep up with MTGA if you play mostly limited and casual formats.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I get a terrible hankering for Sealed every so often, but standard has never really been my jams, so for me it’s a limited platform where I occasionally play other modes for currency.
Historic is kind of... warped right now. When combo is faster than aggro you have a few problems. Release bolt you cowards, I need it to fight grapeshot and mastery! Or just ban those, either way.
It's easy to keep up with MTGA if you play mostly limited and casual formats.
I have been crushing Bo3 drafts lately. Each time I 3-0 one it pays out 3000 gems, which is two more drafts. 2-1 is a 1000 gem rebate which also isn't terrible. 1-2 is awful though...
I get a terrible hankering for Sealed every so often, but standard has never really been my jams, so for me it’s a limited platform where I occasionally play other modes for currency.
Historic is kind of... warped right now. When combo is faster than aggro you have a few problems. Release bolt you cowards, I need it to fight grapeshot and mastery! Or just ban those, either way.
Do you play Bo1 or Bo3 in historic? Combo/ramp is King in Bo1 just because you can't split the difference between Gruul/CoCo piles and random Nissa piles while also having anything resembling a viable anti-combo plan. In Bo3 you can just sideboard in hand-hate and negates, etc.
Magic has always been an expensive game to play. Arena still kind of needs you to pay to be able to play but it's still the cheapest way I've found to play.
I do think that WotC's base modus operandus is a bit greedy and they still do things in Arena where they put profit before player fun.
MTGA being more expensive than real world magic to play competitive is what kind of gets me stuck every time I look at it.
I dunno, I have multiple decks in Arena with a paper price exceeding my total expenditure in Arena. It is probably the most restrictive f2p model of the CCGs out there, but I wouldn't say the requirements are worse than paper.
I mean that starting fresh, if you want to make a T1 deck without drafting for a few weeks, it costs about $500 to do it. Vs. being able to do it for $200 in paper.
Obviously there's a lot of nuance, but there's a weird thing there.
I've spent about $600-$700 since Ikoria dropped on MTGA. I can make literally every T1/2/3/4 competitive deck in standard. A single Sultaimatum deck costs around $300+ in paper magic, and there's a few other lists get quite high (Temur, anything with 4x Great Henge starts at $200). If you compare that to what I normally do with paper magic- buying two boxes of every new release-I'd have enough cards to make some jank pile list for the same cost.
I don't think the MTGA model is unfair in terms of the paid model, but I'd agree that it's a crapshoot if you're doing F2P.
Excellent point and I agree. Basically, MTGA is not too expensive compared to Magic. If you don't take it in the context of it being a digital/phone game in that marketplace, it's a thing. But if it's competing with that market, it's a Whale's game only. F2P or cheap players are going to have to make it their primary game to get much with it in a given set, and are going to have major ramp up investment time almost every set. If you like MTGA on its merits and love Magic, it's great. If you're looking to compare it to/assess it against other digital marketplace card games... it's a big ask that I don't think is reasonable.
I'll be honest and say that I haven't really played the field much when it comes to digital cardboard. Hearthstone was cool, but I feel like they got very greedy very quickly, on top of not being terribly deep. Meta decks still required 60% rares, and the dust mechanic basically means you either don't engage with it, or you're turning cards into fewer cards, which feels awful IMO. Artifact was just barren of any actual soul or reason for existing, the entire thing seemed like a contrivance. Despite having very high hopes for Runeterra, I bounced off it immediately.
The Elder Scrolls Legends was actually fairly enjoyable. Almost spent money on it, but it seemed like the scene was dead. At the time, the value prospect seemed pretty bad.
MTGA really seems like the only substantive card game on the market, but I do think it could be cheaper. I'd consider something like temporary wildcards would be great; as in you get 20/15/10/5 wildcards that reset at the end of the week.
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Hearthstone’s economy and F2P model suck shit, even compared to MTGA. The only advantage it has is you can dust your old cards for the wildcard equivalent but that only helps if you’re a long-term players who doesn’t care about Wild.
Eternal is the only other one I’ve spent significant time with and it has a reasonably generous F2P model but just feels like... digital Magic-lite. Better than the blatant Magic rip-off that came out a while back (is that still around? I forget the name) in both gameplay and economy, but not interesting enough.
To any other poor fools who dumped wildcards on Magnum Opus:
Idles around a 50% winrate. Flamepainter is a woefully underrated card that dodges most common removal, really only gets merc'd by Heartless Act and Extinction Event. Galazeth is also really good to get out, if only because you can drop him turn 3 with a treasure, and then drop Goldspan on turn 4. If he lives, you can actually cast those big Outbursts and Mopuses.
Biggest problem is it just folds to mono red. They just shit out more, bigger, faster creatures. Otherwise it's pretty fun.
I get a terrible hankering for Sealed every so often, but standard has never really been my jams, so for me it’s a limited platform where I occasionally play other modes for currency.
Historic is kind of... warped right now. When combo is faster than aggro you have a few problems. Release bolt you cowards, I need it to fight grapeshot and mastery! Or just ban those, either way.
Do you play Bo1 or Bo3 in historic? Combo/ramp is King in Bo1 just because you can't split the difference between Gruul/CoCo piles and random Nissa piles while also having anything resembling a viable anti-combo plan. In Bo3 you can just sideboard in hand-hate and negates, etc.
I play RW burn in Bo1 in historic. Please, tell me what I could sideboard in that would make this better.
Blue? Maybe just play rogues instead? Maybe I should spend all my wildcards building the degenerate combos that are going to get banned in two weeks? Honestly not sure.
edit: probably there’s white and artifact graveyard hate / some kind of anti-storm stuff, but really their board is going to be better than mine most of the time...
Posts
That's odd. Are you sure all eight mana was snow?
While I may have missed the autotapper using Crawling Barrens (but I don't think it did) I'm pretty sure it only said 6 snow mana were spent anyway.
It's fully possible that I wasn't looking closely enough at what was getting tapped, but I've been unable to even find a definitive answer as to whether or not this should work (tho I suspect it should).
The only thing I've found is a random MTGSalvation comment about Jodah and that seems pretty far from official.
Both Sunburst and Converge (which is effectively Sunburst on non-artifacts) work properly when you are forced to pay extra.
Sounds like you were auto-tapped.
You could try and find the game's logs.
Unsure how long any specific game lasts in the files, but they are fairly detailed and most likely would show what lands are tapped.. aside they might be a bit obtuse to read (lots of objects rather than card names)
To get 5K gold, you're looking at completing 10 days of 500 gold daily quests. You can rotate a quest once a day, and should to attempt to get a 750 gold quest.
None of the quests require winning constructed games, but will require playing constructed games if you don't have the ability to play limited.
You also have daily wins of 250/100/100/50/50/25/card/etc.
New players tend to be bumped into a new player queue for like 50 games.
In any case, if you can win some games, then you can probably cut down the number of days to 5.
The weekly wins award XP which largely turns into packs of cards.
I don't think there's gold on the XP track unless you spend gems to unlock the mastery pass.
So you can likely play a quick draft once a week if you played constructed daily.
And then depending on how well you go in quick draft, you should be able to turn your gems into more sealed games.
But because you keep all the cards you draft outside of special events, it's pretty tough to draft for free.
it did not go well for them to spend mana to swing in at parity every turn, it turns out that's not really a winning strategy against another aggressive deck.
1 Avalanche Caller (KHM) 45
1 Bind the Monster (KHM) 48
2 Frost Bite (KHM) 138
2 Squash (KHM) 152
1 Cyclone Summoner (KHM) 52
1 Feed the Serpent (KHM) 95
2 Snow-Covered Mountain (KHM) 283
1 Undersea Invader (KHM) 78
1 Snow-Covered Swamp (KHM) 281
2 Frost Augur (KHM) 56
8 Island (STX) 369
1 Karfell Harbinger (KHM) 65
1 Smashing Success (KHM) 151
1 Invasion of the Giants (KHM) 215
1 Snow-Covered Mountain (KHM) 282
3 Mountain (STX) 373
3 Strategic Planning (KHM) 77
1 Snow-Covered Swamp (KHM) 280
1 The Trickster-God's Heist (KHM) 232
1 Reflections of Littjara (KHM) 73
2 Skull Raid (KHM) 111
1 Icebind Pillar (KHM) 62
3 Frostpyre Arcanist (KHM) 58
2 Swamp (STX) 371
2 Run Amok (KHM) 147
Sideboard
1 Saw It Coming (KHM) 76
1 Pilfering Hawk (KHM) 71
1 Raiders' Karve (KHM) 242
2 Dogged Pursuit (KHM) 85
1 Brinebarrow Intruder (KHM) 49
1 Snow-Covered Plains (KHM) 277
1 Tuskeri Firewalker (KHM) 157
1 Draugr Thought-Thief (KHM) 55
1 Tormentor's Helm (KHM) 155
1 Karfell Kennel-Master (KHM) 101
1 Jarl of the Forsaken (KHM) 100
1 Immersturm Raider (KHM) 141
And also my lanky wizard bodies?
This is what happens when I first pick Cyclone Summoner <_<
And didn't really get enough giants.
If you want to play for free or want a game that respects your time in terms of translating into rewards, you really have to play Runeterra.
Magic has that Magic... magic. It's a great game. But it still assumes you're going to dump $50 a set into it OR you're going to go hard every single day and play a lot of matches to... eventually... be able to play meta games.
Also, Magic not having any way to just buy a Tier 1 Meta deck super blocks it here. Other games, including Runeterra, you really don't NEED to dump money in, but you can just straight up buy a T1 Runeterra deck for ~$30. Cold cracking Magic packs will cost you about $500 to build a real deck with luck, assuming you don't take a few weeks and game your way through draft.
Thought this was a pretty good summary, from Magic enthusiasts, on MTGA not really respecting time/money very well.
I really recommend Runeterra as its own thing. I play both games; Magic because I can't kick the habit and Runeterra because I feel like the game actually respects my time and investment.
I do think that WotC's base modus operandus is a bit greedy and they still do things in Arena where they put profit before player fun.
I'm not asking for much, just a THAC0 enchantment.
MTGA being more expensive than real world magic to play competitive is what kind of gets me stuck every time I look at it.
Turns out playing Ugin wins a lot of games.
I dunno, I have multiple decks in Arena with a paper price exceeding my total expenditure in Arena. It is probably the most restrictive f2p model of the CCGs out there, but I wouldn't say the requirements are worse than paper.
I mean that starting fresh, if you want to make a T1 deck without drafting for a few weeks, it costs about $500 to do it. Vs. being able to do it for $200 in paper.
Obviously there's a lot of nuance, but there's a weird thing there.
I've spent about $600-$700 since Ikoria dropped on MTGA. I can make literally every T1/2/3/4 competitive deck in standard. A single Sultaimatum deck costs around $300+ in paper magic, and there's a few other lists get quite high (Temur, anything with 4x Great Henge starts at $200). If you compare that to what I normally do with paper magic- buying two boxes of every new release-I'd have enough cards to make some jank pile list for the same cost.
I don't think the MTGA model is unfair in terms of the paid model, but I'd agree that it's a crapshoot if you're doing F2P.
10-1 in bo3, with about 4 games lost total.
4 Solemn Simulacrum (M21) 239
3 Duress (STA) 29
2 Agonizing Remorse (STA) 24
3 Mazemind Tome (M21) 232
1 Cling to Dust (THB) 87
1 Snow-Covered Forest (KHM) 285
2 Umbral Juke (STX) 89
3 Bloodchief's Thirst (ZNR) 94
2 Kaya the Inexorable (KHM) 218
2 Flunk (STX) 71
3 Letter of Acceptance (STX) 256
3 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon (M21) 1
14 Snow-Covered Swamp (KHM) 281
2 Professor Onyx (STX) 83
1 Crawling Barrens (ZNR) 262
3 Faceless Haven (KHM) 255
1 Snow-Covered Plains (KHM) 276
2 Blood on the Snow (KHM) 79
4 Binding the Old Gods (KHM) 206
4 Arctic Treeline (KHM) 249
Sideboard
3 Elspeth's Nightmare (THB) 91
2 Crippling Fear (KHM) 82
1 Bloodchief's Thirst (ZNR) 94
1 Duress (STA) 29
1 Kaya the Inexorable (KHM) 218
3 Heartless Act (IKO) 91
3 Eliminate (STA) 30
1 Agonizing Remorse (STA) 24
I think it's actually nowhere near as tight as it needs to be to take on the really good decks, but it just absolutely slaughtered all the non-meta decks this weekend.
e: wtf I just noticed it puts the goofy ass regular Kaya art on the deckbox after you exit out of deckbuilding, this is a gamebreaking bug.
Excellent point and I agree. Basically, MTGA is not too expensive compared to Magic. If you don't take it in the context of it being a digital/phone game in that marketplace, it's a thing. But if it's competing with that market, it's a Whale's game only. F2P or cheap players are going to have to make it their primary game to get much with it in a given set, and are going to have major ramp up investment time almost every set. If you like MTGA on its merits and love Magic, it's great. If you're looking to compare it to/assess it against other digital marketplace card games... it's a big ask that I don't think is reasonable.
Like, if you don't play Arena very much at all and play a variety of wild bad jank decks, then of course MTGA is super expensive relative to buying bulk rares in real life, but that's the biggest edge case possible.
I'm actually quite pleased with that, I thought I'd spent at least $200.
Clearly this means I've earned another $50 gem purchase.
Historic is kind of... warped right now. When combo is faster than aggro you have a few problems. Release bolt you cowards, I need it to fight grapeshot and mastery! Or just ban those, either way.
I have been crushing Bo3 drafts lately. Each time I 3-0 one it pays out 3000 gems, which is two more drafts. 2-1 is a 1000 gem rebate which also isn't terrible. 1-2 is awful though...
Do you play Bo1 or Bo3 in historic? Combo/ramp is King in Bo1 just because you can't split the difference between Gruul/CoCo piles and random Nissa piles while also having anything resembling a viable anti-combo plan. In Bo3 you can just sideboard in hand-hate and negates, etc.
I'll be honest and say that I haven't really played the field much when it comes to digital cardboard. Hearthstone was cool, but I feel like they got very greedy very quickly, on top of not being terribly deep. Meta decks still required 60% rares, and the dust mechanic basically means you either don't engage with it, or you're turning cards into fewer cards, which feels awful IMO. Artifact was just barren of any actual soul or reason for existing, the entire thing seemed like a contrivance. Despite having very high hopes for Runeterra, I bounced off it immediately.
The Elder Scrolls Legends was actually fairly enjoyable. Almost spent money on it, but it seemed like the scene was dead. At the time, the value prospect seemed pretty bad.
MTGA really seems like the only substantive card game on the market, but I do think it could be cheaper. I'd consider something like temporary wildcards would be great; as in you get 20/15/10/5 wildcards that reset at the end of the week.
Eternal is the only other one I’ve spent significant time with and it has a reasonably generous F2P model but just feels like... digital Magic-lite. Better than the blatant Magic rip-off that came out a while back (is that still around? I forget the name) in both gameplay and economy, but not interesting enough.
Please, @admanb . This is a safe space. Tell us how you truly feel.
The Deck:
Also The Deck:
Idles around a 50% winrate. Flamepainter is a woefully underrated card that dodges most common removal, really only gets merc'd by Heartless Act and Extinction Event. Galazeth is also really good to get out, if only because you can drop him turn 3 with a treasure, and then drop Goldspan on turn 4. If he lives, you can actually cast those big Outbursts and Mopuses.
Biggest problem is it just folds to mono red. They just shit out more, bigger, faster creatures. Otherwise it's pretty fun.
I play RW burn in Bo1 in historic. Please, tell me what I could sideboard in that would make this better.
Blue? Maybe just play rogues instead? Maybe I should spend all my wildcards building the degenerate combos that are going to get banned in two weeks? Honestly not sure.
edit: probably there’s white and artifact graveyard hate / some kind of anti-storm stuff, but really their board is going to be better than mine most of the time...