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Magic: the Gathering


Craig H

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As someone that took a *very* long break (more than a decade) from Magic before coming back to Arena, it's staggering how many good 1-3 cost cards there are that can just fuck someone and there's nothing they can do about it if their opening hand rolled out bad. It feels like I walked in on the middle of some kind of extended arms race that, at some point, is probably going to get scaled back a bit. Like, there are a ton of 2 and 3 cost cards right now that probably would have been 3-5 back when I was playing paper. It's probably been the wildest adjustment for me.

It's a much faster game than it used to be, that's for sure. It's not really a "good" or "bad" thing, just different, and the kind of thing I imagine they spend a ton of time internally trying very hard not to have spiral out of their control.

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2 hours ago, Death From Above said:

Hah. I remember when this game was still experimental and did some flat out insane nonsense.

shahrazad-16240-medium.jpg

 

city-in-a-bottle-924-medium.jpg

Those were the days. I had both of these at one point and then those cards were stolen ?

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I started playing during Ice Age and took my first break when Urza's Saga came out (because fuuuuuuuck that block). I came back with Invasion and had the most fun playing in that meta. My second break was when Lorwyn came out because I didn't have time to play. Then mythic rares and planeswalkers were printed (ugh) and I said I'd probably never play again.

Never say never, I guess.

I was playing when Serra Angel was too good to print and then cards like Baneslayer Angel, Siege Rhino and Mantis Rider were printed years later. Quite a different game from back then. And of course, this is where I say Serra Angel was too good to print in the core set back then, but Necropotence was JUST FINE.

I've got a handful of stuff built but I'm mainly playing with Esper Control. Lots of good answers to tough threats (Cast Down, Moment of Craving, Kaya's Wrath, Mortify, Vraska's Contempt), get to play with the best card in the game in Teferi and have a choice of finishers. I'm currently playing two copies of Karn for the card draw and also as win conditions but there are a few other options.

Plus I get to play with Absorb again, one of my favorite cards from Invasion. It's kinda like getting to hang out with an old friend.

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6 hours ago, tbarrie said:

Because the colours are supposed to be good at different things, and white is better than black when it comes to low-cost creatures.

 

Well, I mean, that's part of the flavor, but the other part is that the white creature is a vampire soldier while the black creature is just a vampire.

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I may have played in the single worst game of Magic Arena ever played tonight.

I was playing a mono-white experimental deck I named Get A Life (one of my ghetto operations where I spend no wildcards to build the real thing, but my collection is now big enough that combined with my game knowledge I can drop some really weird off-brand shit on people), built entirely around lots of creatures and life gain. The other guy was playing a black/white deck built entirely around lifegain.

The cards rolled off absolutely perfect to produce a stalemate that simply couldn't be broken without utter carnage and anarchy. So we sat there watching Ajani's Welcome, Dawn of Hope, Leonin Vanguard and whatnot go off. For all 50-something turns. 

He ended on about 160 life. I easily more than doubled him up and had at least 340. The highlight of the entire match was me remembering to press the Nice button when each of us reached 69 life.

I attacked on the second to last turn and he played a Settle the Wreckage to remove roughly 55 creatures. I responded in kind for about 30 of his.

I won the game when he had to draw from a deck of zero. The game lasted well over an hour, 95% of which was hitting the next button on various activations. I actually had to eventually stop summing 1/1 creatures with Dawn of Hope because I was going to lose the game by timing myself out when so much bullshit was going off. Truly, I wish this had been documented in film to be downthumbed on Youtube for all time.

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As a player who's first favorite card when he started playing was Control Magic, I love the blue/black mechanic that Hostage Taker and Thief of Sanity have: "steal your stuff and cast it using any color of mana".

Especially Thief. I changed up my Sultai deck to play Thief main deck instead of out of the side and it's really strong against most decks. It helps put some early leverage on the field against control and midrange and gives you the ability to take their best cards from them. Plus there's the chance that you can deny them mana to do anything by milling lands off their deck.

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Just finished listening to LSV talk about how Nexus of Fate should be banned because it's unfun and allows for infinite turns. And then I read something about how at paper tournaments people were using basic lands as proxies for the card because it was the buy a box promo.

One, people can shit on me all they want for playing land destruction decks and loving ponza decks, but nothing is worse than the bullshit of watching someone take endless turns. Two, this is a curious issue. The buy a box promo isn't really a problem for Arena or even Magic Online, but it is for paper magic. I wonder how WotC reconciles a problem like this where it's definitely a problem in paper magic and it's totally unfun to play against in any format, but there's a specific problem that's limited to just the paper side. I'm guessing WotC just lets it go, but with them moving more towards esports faster and faster, it makes me wonder how bans and restrictions are affected going forward.

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Banning Nexus would neuter Turbo-fog, which I have no problem with.  At least if you see it coming and have the right deck you can attempt to stop it.  

I don't get the ability to use something as a proxy on the paper side though.  I mean, either you have it or you don't.  I thought you can't use Proxy in official games and you can only do it in casual.

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29 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Banning Nexus would neuter Turbo-fog, which I have no problem with.  At least if you see it coming and have the right deck you can attempt to stop it.  

I don't get the ability to use something as a proxy on the paper side though.  I mean, either you have it or you don't.  I thought you can't use Proxy in official games and you can only do it in casual.

I believe it's this...I think the rule is that in tournament play you can use the proxy instead of foils, but you have to present your foil cards as proof that you have them. The reason being is that up until recently, WotC changed their foiling process and it resulted in foils being super warped, even with sleeves on. Honestly, the foiling process is still garbage. I have a stack of bulk foils from Dominaria to use for foiling out other cards and that entire stack of cards is totally warped.

Anyway, you have to have the actual cards, but you can use proxies instead of the card so it's not obvious to yourself or your opponent what you're drawing. I might be wrong, but that's how I've seen it explained.

Also, Nexus of Fate is ONLY foil since it was only printed as a buy a box promo card.

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I am really holding my breath hoping MtG Arena doesn't put in some sort of crazy "conceding games is bad" penalty, because 100% there are a lot of decks right now that are literally designed around boring your opponent to death, Nexus of Fate being a big one, and it's absolutely wrong to punish players for bad game design. I concede a shit ton of games when that trash shows up. I have 15 win daily goals to hit, man, get that nonsense out of my way.

There's other stuff that is complete trash (mono-red being able to deal 11 damage by the end of turn 3 is kind of a sick joke), but there's no chance they actually fix that shit.

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I actually think the Teferi deck that just keeps putting Teferi on top of your own deck over and over again to prevent yourself from being decked while your opponent draws through their entire deck is the worst shit by far, but Teferi is so good that you can't ban him.

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I don't think there's gonna be a "concede is bad" penality since it's pretty much ettiquette to scoop once you know you're done, unless you're just trying to grind dalies. 

 

I also tend to stick out running into shitty endless loop decks because most people play them to get you do concede out once you realize what it is, so I make them play that shit out.  If you're gonna bore me to a loss, I'm going to make you fucking earn it.

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5 minutes ago, Raziel said:

I don't think there's gonna be a "concede is bad" penality since it's pretty much ettiquette to scoop once you know you're done, unless you're just trying to grind dalies. 

 

I also tend to stick out running into shitty endless loop decks because most people play them to get you do concede out once you realize what it is, so I make them play that shit out.  If you're gonna bore me to a loss, I'm going to make you fucking earn it.

That's what I do as well unless it takes extra long. Some dickheads on there like to let their rope damn near burn out before taking actions to make the loss even more agonizing. That's the type of shit that should be reported for poor player conduct.

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