Step in the (MTG)Arena

TracyDMcGrath

Yeah I was pretty darn disappointed in this whole announcement as well.

beets

I’ve been getting into MTG recently, using a borrowed deck from a friend who doesnt play anymore. It is a white green deck based around cats and artifacts that was pretty strong. I wanted to buy it off him so i could customise it but it was too expensive for me.

So, I ended buying my first commander deck this weekend. It’s a D&D blue, black, white deck centred around exploring dungeons. I’ve been going to a monday night magic thing with friends and they hand out boosters, most of which from the dungeons and dragons collab, so I thought I could expand it with the cards i got from that.

The deck is fun, I like going into the dungeon because of all the ramdom silly effects and with the new initiative/undercity dungeon that a friend uses, it works quite well.

I don’t know D+D at all so I barely get the references (I learnt there’s something called the Sword Coast, lol). It’s funny to pretend the mind flayers are referring to stranger things.

esper

beets oh hey that’s the same commander deck i got!! i almost always play digitally instead of paper these days, but that’s a real fun one.

TracyDMcGrath

I’ve been talking about it more on the bunker but the current set, Dominaria United, is an all time top 5 draft format in my opinion if people want to try it out at an FNM or on Arena, and the word on the street is that the upcoming set, The Brothers’ War, is also going to be at the very least a hoot and a holler lore wise as it revisits the most beloved part of the Magic The Gathering storyline. Also Standard is in a better place than it’s been in recent memory, with a lot of viable decks and no clear best deck, even if Black is a pretty clear best color.

beets

At the aforementioned monday night magic the other week, the store who hosts it gave out a blindbox token figure. I received the 3/3 Beast.

Since then I’ve been really enjoying using it, mostly for marking where I am in a dungeon. But I recently got a commander, Tasha the Witch Queen, who I’ve put in my deck and can make 3/3 Demons.

I really want to get the demon token figure because it is huge. So I ended up buying five blind boxes, I was originally going to buy two for $10 but the guy told me if I bought four I got a fifth for free, how could I resist?

This is the result: a zombie, a soldier, a saproling, a faerierogue, and a plant.
I’m happy I got the zombie at least becuase I use them in my current deck, and the soldier is cool too, but the others are a bit dissapointing as I dont have a green deck!

rejj

At least it looks like that ludicrous Magic 30th set failed, hard.
$999 (plus tax) for four boosters of non-tournament-legal reprints.

beets

I’ve recently put together a new commander deck, it’s a red/blue deck centred around dice rolls.
The commanders are:

Wyll, Blade of Frontiers, who lets me roll an extra dice each time and gets a +1/+1 for every time I roll
Sword Coast Sailor, which stops Wyll from being blocked by the player with the most life.

The majority of the cards involve rolling a d20/d12/d8 etc for various effects. It’s kind of silly and possibly quite annoying to play with due to all the dice rolling. But it’s the first deck I’ve put together on my own so I’m looking forward to using it.

I planned it on scry fall if you want to check it out here.
Be warned it’s padded out with various red blue cards I had lying around.

dracula

Sitting with the windows open this morning and the beginnings of an autumn breeze making their way through the air, I find myself drawn back to Magic once again. I’ve had this feeling more than a handful of times, regardless of the weather, but the last time I was really into Arena was around the launch of Midnight Hunt.
Every time I start to feel the pull to play again, I check out the newest set and it’s always something that does not feel like Magic to me. Opening the homepage this morning, I see Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who sets advertised alongside the new fairytale set, Wilds of Eldraine.
I’m not exclusively looking for straight horror like the Innistrad pair from a few years back, but where the goblins at? It seems like the themes of every set whenever I check in are super bright colors and feel more like Hearthstone than what I know of Magic, or it’s another promotional tie-in.
Should I just shut up and dive in or go back to my old decks or something else entirely? Is anyone keeping up with the latest sets?

TheFragranceOfDarkCoffee

dracula Out of curiosity I looked it up, and there are only three goblins in Wilds of Eldraine!

That being said, you might enjoy WoE all the same. It has some cool cards and themes in it, there’s a lot of space to play around.

TracyDMcGrath

dracula As goofy as the LotR tie in set is conceptually, it was a heck of a set from a draft perspective, way better than the core set that would have normally been released in the Summer slot.

And in general that’s kind of where we’re at with Magic as a whole: limited has never been better, with some all time great draft sets recently like March of the Machines, Dominaria United, and Kamigawa Neon Dynasty. Constructed though has definitely felt the pain of the power creep that was necessary to make an average draft set feel like cube and to make these sets appealing to Commander fans. Cards like Sheoldred the Apocalypse and The One Ring, which were supposed to be chase rares in draft packs, are turning out to be borderline too good for Modern, and the trend of hyper focused single sets over the old block model is making it so Standard doesn’t have enough cards that share keywords, so midrange goodstuff piles are ruling the meta over fun build around Johnny style cards. They’re trying to fix that by moving from a 2 year rotation schedule to a 3 year rotation schedule. We’ll see if that’s enough I suppose, but constructed is in a bit of a rough spot, has been for a while, and that doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.

But again, if you care at all about drafting or sealed, even a little, we’re truly living through some of the most inspired set designs the game has ever had. Including, God help me, the goofy Gandalf set

dracula

TheFragranceOfDarkCoffee Oh you’re right, those look rad and more in line with what I like in Magic’s art. Thank you for taking the time to grab some.
And dang, only three goblins!? Come on Wizards…
I’m reinstalling Arena today to start poking around. I think my username is in the thread somewhere but when I get back in I can drop it again if anybody wants to kick it. I know I have a few folks added already from the long long ago.

dracula

TracyDMcGrath thank you. This is what I was hoping to hear as well. Arena was my first exposure to really learning and enjoying drafting, and really understanding MtG in a new level. I think with WoE it might be a good time to just dive in again and get into it.
I found my name in case anybody wants to add me and party: dracula#75349.

esper

dracula
yeah, to be fair, we’re coming off three sets in a row (Dominaria United, The Brothers War, and Phyrexia: All Will Be One) that were extremely focused on Magic’s History and paying off decades-old story points, so it’s not that the game has foregone the old school magic flavor (Brothers War especially is literally focused on retelling the first real Magic story), you’re just at the lull after a huge wave of it. they even got a bunch of the old artists back for cards in these sets.

take a look on scryfall and soak up all the classic flavor!
https://scryfall.com/sets/dmu
https://scryfall.com/sets/bro
https://scryfall.com/sets/one

that being said, they’re definitely definitely branching out into stuff. kamigawa brought in cyberpunk stuff, capenna was all 20’s art deco, not to mention Warhammer and Doctor Who and a Fortnite secret lair in there somewhere. generally I like these expansions, but if you missed most of last year it would definitely be confusing!!

dracula

esper Dang, these are looking pretty hot. Yeah, I fully missed this stuff in my casual checking in. I think the most of what I’ve seen are the Secret Lair Post Malone type of announcements and bits that just looked like a different flavor.
Thank you!

HyggeState

I am new to Magic and I just started playing Arena today. So far, at the incredibly low rank that I am at, I am undefeated. 2 games in, and 2 victories. Not bad for someone who hasn’t the foggiest idea as to what they are doing!

HyggeState

Don’t mean to brag, but…

Gaagaagiins

HyggeState Wow the art is from after Sam gets back from the adventure, marries Rosie Cotton, and lays pipe

HyggeState

Gaagaagiins We aren’t talking about the kind you smoke Old Toby with.

Gaagaagiins

HyggeState nope, but it do blow up like Gandalf’s fireworks

HyggeState

There is a little disclaimer that these cards are unplayable in Standard. Does anyone know if that will change? Are they simply meant to be lovely little collectibles?

Update: I am completely lost as to what these game formats are.

TracyDMcGrath

HyggeState Yeah so, as someone who has been playing for 20 years, I am also confused about the formats right now. I will try my best.

The main ones in general paper magic are:

Vintage - Everything
Legacy - Everything within reason
Modern - Everything since 2002
Pioneer - Everything since 2012
Standard - Everything since 3 falls ago (as of this very set they changed that from 2 so even this one is in flux despite the name)

There are also casual formats like Pauper (only use commons) and Commander (100 unique cards and a legendary creature you get to cast at will); and limited formats like draft and sealed which give people a random assortment of cards from a single set and have them build a deck from those.

The problem on Arena is that the really old cards still aren’t in the database yet. There’s 30 years of one off mechanics and 50,000 cards to code so it’s going to take years to reach parity with paper. So while Arena has the more recent formats like Standard and Limited, it has to make do with an “all cards on arena” format called Historic….or that is until they started introducing digital only cards that could do things you couldn’t do in paper (for example cards that would draw a random creature from your deck) that are sequestered into their own specific formats. These cards are called Alchemy cards and there’s a version of standard called Alchemy that allows these cards as well as balance changed versions of problem cards in Standard. All well and good but these weird cards are on Arena and therefore they are in Historic, and nobody liked that. So they made yet another Arena only format called Explorer, which is everything on Arena that also exists in the Pioneer format in paper. This format is rapidly approaching parity with Pioneer, but isn’t quite there yet. Once it is it will presumably be removed.

Oh and also there’s Brawl, which is like Commander, but on Arena, strictly 1 v 1 rather than multiplayer, and there’s a version of it for every Arena format.

(Takes breath) Ok where were we? Oh! Right, the lord of the rings cards. That set is legal in Alchemy and Historic only on Arena, and is legal in Modern, Legacy, and Vintage in paper.

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