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Magic: the Gathering


Craig H

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Well, if you hate Nexus, Arena Standard BO1 is your format.. BECAUSE THEY BANNED THAT SHIT!

 

Still there in BO3 formats, which Arena is all in on now, as you can Direct Challenge BO3 now.

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On 2/12/2019 at 2:16 AM, Craig H said:

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.

I didn't understand this comment so I googled it, and holy shit. They actually printed a tournament-relevant card that isn't available in booster packs through normal channels? I thought they learned their lesson like, two decades ago with Mana Crypt.

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5 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

I didn't understand this comment so I googled it, and holy shit. They actually printed a tournament-relevant card that isn't available in booster packs through normal channels? I thought they learned their lesson like, two decades ago with Mana Crypt.

They started doing this with Dominaria. They started a Buy a Box promo where the only way you could get the promo card was by buying a whole box of cards and only while supplies lasted. So basically you had to trust your game store to not hoard the cards and actually give them to you. 

Of course, you can buy them on the secondary market, but still, they're tournament legal cards that don't come in booster packs. 

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15 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Well, if you hate Nexus, Arena Standard BO1 is your format.. BECAUSE THEY BANNED THAT SHIT!

 

Still there in BO3 formats, which Arena is all in on now, as you can Direct Challenge BO3 now.

So weird that they only banned it in BO1. Yes, you can sideboard against it, but it's not a guarantee that it would be stopped. 

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7 minutes ago, Craig H said:

So weird that they only banned it in BO1. Yes, you can sideboard against it, but it's not a guarantee that it would be stopped. 

Reasoning is that they're trying to keep the lists between official formats in Paper, Online, and Arena consistent and since they're not touching it in Paper and Online, they're only doing it for BO1 Arena, so it doesn't show up in BO1 Ranked, Casual, or Drafts/Sealed/Events that run BO1.  It doesn't meet WotC's "Too Powerful/Disruptive" criteria, so no overall ban, but they figured it was bad enough in BO1 that it needed the hit, mostly because people just won't stay in a match against it.

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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

BTW, regarding BO1, that seems like it's Merfolk all day, every day. 

I threw together a Merfolk deck and took it to a local weekly tournament two weeks ago. Went 3-0 despite it being a 75-card first draft of a deck. Maybe Merfolk are good?

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There's a free event in Arena right now where you can build a deck with (aside from land) a limit of 1-per card. I like this, as it really rewards game knowledge and is a true ghetto deck experience. Also for some fucking reason you get to have Danny Trujillo as your avatar which I would actually pay money to make permanent.

I am also very tilted I keep coming up one win short of getting the alternate dinosaur art card for winning enough.

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I'm not sure I've ever lost a game on ladder where I resolved an Unbreakable Formation. Card is gas.

Pteramander is also gas. I've been playing Temur Drakes and Pteramander is almost always a huge threat. The card is so good that it's even seeing play in modern and legacy.

BTW, if you play blue, make sure you keep a couple Entrancing Melody in your sideboard at the least. Stealing a 5/5 or better Hydroid Krasis for four mana is tasty.

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Entrancing Melody is insanely underrated. That it actually catches people by surprise because it isn't played that often is crazy to me. It's definitely a very strong anti blue/green card now with all those Adapt +1/+1 counters flying around.

The early game Ptermander doesn't actually scare me that much when I play mono-blue, because Merfolk Trickster just straight up shits on it.

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Just when I started getting used to the scry mulligan rule, WotC is going to experiment with a new mulligan rule during Pro Tou... er... Mythic Championship London.

When you take a mulligan, you shuffle your hand into your deck then draw seven cards. When you are finally satisfied with your hand, you put a number of cards from your hand on the bottom of your deck equal to the number of mulligans you took. So you if you take two mulligans, you'll draw seven, then choose two cards in your hand and put them on the bottom.

I think it's an interesting idea. Most of the discussion I've seen is how it really benefits combo decks in eternal formats.

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I'm very much against the mulligan rule. There's no draw back to having to move a card or cards to the bottom of your deck when you can just mulligan into a god-hand. Your deck is randomized anyway.

Whereas before you had to make a calculated decision of whether or not a hand was good enough to keep or try again with 6 cards, or then with 5, now you can just mulligan until you hit your perfect combo or mulligan into a Leyline or mulligan into anything amazing.

And while your opponent has the opportunity to do the same, part of the way people can win mismatches is if their opponent is unlucky enough to draw. There's statistical evidence you can look at if you simply goldfish decks with perfect hands that one type of deck is going to win each time. 

Also, they've tested this before so this isn't a new thing. My friend who works for WotC and others have talked about this for awhile now and while this is perfect for limited, it's practically broken in constructed and eternal formats. 

They're at least running this as a pilot for a month to see how it goes, but my guess is that they revert back or at the least allow you to mulligan ONCE into another 7 card hand.

There have just been way too many changes over the last few months. While I appreciate them trying new things or at least not doing it at a glacial pace, this is too much.

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It's an unsolvable fundamental issue with the game tying everything you do to land, forever. It cannot be solved. Infinite 7-card mulligans suck ass. I will insta-concede every single game against a blue/white deck under that format because there is no reason to ever play one ever again as long as I live if I want to have fun. Mulliganing to 5 cards also sucks ass and is basically a concession unless you are the luckiest top decker of all-time, or playing mono-red in which case you know if you've won or lost by turn 4 anyway.

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