Board 8 > Magic: The Gathering - New Capenna and Explorer incoming

(+) Yeah! (+)

ive been drafting it a bunch on MTGO. Its fun because its loosely like a combined Alara/Tarkir set and I played zero Alara and very little Tarkir

and then also its got other cool stuff. I had a B/U/G graveyard deck and got Arachnus Spinner and two webs and thats pretty fucked up thing to deal with if they dont have removal. The sacrifice this if the creatures power is 4 or greater clause is a lot less relevant when you can immediately reattach the web from the graveyard.

Obligatory day 1 MTGA draft trophy - this deck went 7-2.
https://i.imgur.com/vr7m6V3.jpg
I drafted a handful of good red cards, but in pack 3 I noticed that I didn't have *too* many, so I cut them all so I wouldn't need to worry about mana problems. It played good too, with decent ramp targets and a surprising amount of card draw. Format overall feels fine, sure it's alchemy but it's not terrible.

i was confused for a while upon opening arena today

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/5/8/AAUE4-AADbU2.jpg

not that i play alchemy, but it seemed rather drastic

the actual banned card is darkened in the background

You didn't notice this last set bana? I don't think they flubbed the banned cards (if they had any) but New Capenna Alchemy also showed all of the "new" cards you got. I do like getting 4 free wildcards due to a format I don't play. I also got a mythic wildcard and finished out the wheel for a rare wildcard when I openned my 3 free packs.

i must've glazed over it last time! either that, or i realized what was going on immediately.

this time, i legitimately thought alchemy had banned 12+ seemingly benign cards for a second

Played a draft of Alchemy Baldur's Gate and man, it is very different from paper Baldur's Gate. Don't like it. Although I also just don't like Alchemy in general.

BlackDra90n posted...

Played a draft of Alchemy Baldur's Gate and man, it is very different from paper Baldur's Gate. Don't like it. Although I also just don't like Alchemy in general.

I tried to watch the CFB lords showdown of it and I had no idea what cards were doing because of how absurdly long the text boxes were.

First draft video I ever noped out of

i just tried it out and was surprised by how much of it is just the other D&D set again

like my sealed pool right now has shambling gast and sepulcher ghoul and the sacrifice to draw instant and thiefs tools.... it just looks like AFR. Except arbitrarily the Sepulcher Ghoul has been Alchemyd so its slightly different than what I expect it to be which is kind of confusing

and then yeah, theres a bunch of really complicated stuff that I have to read a few times to figure out. I theoretically like the Specialize mechanic on the uncommons when its sort of straight forward. give this creature a different, but similar upgrade based on a color is relatively intuitive, but then the rares seem to go off the rails.

I got this white Tiefling and the first thing it does is it does a Hearthstonesque handbuff when it enters the battlefield, but then you can specialize it to do five completely different things that dont even relate to the thing the basic card does. Its like five completely different creatures in one creature.

and the alchemy draft from the spell book stuff too... how am I ever supposed to remember what any of these cards are capable of?

Decided to try a draft just out of curiosity, and yeah, not really a fan. Give me cube back imo

Yea there's a lot of text but my main thing is that it doesn't even feel like Magic.

Yeah, the Arena version of Baldur's Gate is garbage and, for this first time since I started playing, I'm not buying the pass. I have an absolute pile of gems (18k) in large part thanks to Kamigawa draft and Explorer events and I just don't want the packs. Alchemy was a stretch for me, I didn't want digital only stuff, but I was willing to give it a chance since standard was so damn boring at the time. Alchemy has only gotten progressively worse since it was introduced, and now with this set they're taking cards and making not even just buffed/nerfed version of cards but versions that are literally nothing like the paper version.

I've seen the numbers. Alchemy is the format with the smallest player base on Arena, and I can only imagine why the remaining few still play. It's almost like the guy who just won an in-person Brawl tournament by being the only person to show up. It's a damn shame they're using BG for the next Open because I have no intention of practicing it thus no intention of participating. WotC needs to just admit the whole damn thing was a failure.

The funny thing is there are interesting digital only mechanics. I used to play a bunch of Eternal before arena was released and it had some interesting mechanics involving cards multiplying for instance.

But magic seems to think digital only means you can put 200 lines of rules text on a card

Yeah, there was a moment when it was released that I liked Alchemy. There is something there, but that something isn't MtG which is why it almost immediately spiraled out of control. With Specialize we now have cards that are actually six cards. It took a minute for the MtG community to get things like split cards, adventures, and DFCs and this takes it 5 steps further.

It only took them 8 months from the introduction of Alchemy to make the most complicated game mechanic of all time, and that's after the introduction of spellbooks. At the current rate of complexity progression, by this time next year you'll need a quantum computer with a fully sentient AI to even explain the cards. Humans won't be able to play the game anymore because as it is in Alchemy learning one card can actually mean learning six to 16 cards already and, again, this is only after 8 months. I have a hard time remembering what Cryptic Command does and that card was a major staple, how the hell am I going to remember what Viconia does?

Specialize is a terrible mechanic.

The worst part of Alchemy was them forcing the cards into Historic.

Been playing MTGA again after a several month hiatus.

Standard is a lot of fun now, which is a refreshing change since the last time I played was before the Alrund's Epiphany ban. I suspect the format is very unsolved right now though. Seems like people have settled on Jeskai Hinata as the deck to beat, but it fundamentally just doesn't feel like a #1 deck to me. It is probably the one I've had the most success with though, so who knows maybe I'm just crazy. I've also been having a lot of fun with Grixis Control which feels solid but maybe not quite there.

Explorer seems fun. Historic is probably still good, but they nerfed both of my decks and I don't feel especially incentivized to use more wildcards on another one that might be nerfed when the Arena economy is as garbage as it is. It's a shame though because I loved playing Arclight Phoenix in Historic. The deck is probably still decent but idk.

Don't care enough about Alchemy to invest wildcards into it but I'll probably give it a try at some point, especially if there are going to be Opens/whatever that use the format.

Oh and Fable of the Mirror Breaker is terrible card design and I hate it send tweet

I started playing MTG:A about a month ago because my brother got me into playing Commander when I visited him.

I'm digging it so far but it does feel a little overwhelming as a new player sometimes. I was spending a little bit of gold on Jump In (before the new set because now it has Alchemy cards) and now I'm doing quick drafts instead. Real draft is a little too intimidating to spend 10,000 gold.

But other than that I'm mainly just doing my daily quests and waiting for the rotation in Fall to actually start playing Standard. It doesn't feel like I can build up a collection fast enough to actually be competitive as a new player for a while.

Best way to build up a collection is to focus on drafting. If you can get decent at the format, it only takes 4 wins to essentially get back your money on a normal draft queue, and you can get pretty close to going infinite that way.

I'm always amused/dismayed when people say that. The truth is the best way to build up a collection is to be good at drafting. If you can't manage to win games the "best" way could end up feeling bad because you're giving up a lot of gold that could go directly towards wildcards.

Either way, unless you find a draft format that you can seriously dominate it really will be 6+ months before you feel like you have the cards to compete in standard so definitely don't waste rare wildcards on Zendikar/Kaldheim/Strixhaven/Forgotten Realms since they rotate out in about two months. You can find budget decks that are fun enough for the play queue and if we're all lucky a budget deck that is actually competitive might show up. If it could happen with boros cycling it can happen again.

Well quick draft is only 5k and you get 42 cards from the draft so that seems to be the best option currently for me. Buying 5 packs would get you 40 cards so it's identical there. My first quick draft had 7 wins so I got 2 more packs and 950 gems.

Obviously you're not getting rares/mythics at the same rate as you would with real packs but the draft aspect also lets you pick cards you actually want to keep.

The real draft modes being 10k and not having unlimited time for drafting is too daunting for me right now though. I really need to read all of the cards and look up online which ones are actually good or not.

Also I played Hearthstone for 5 years so I'm not a complete newbie to drafts/Arena mode or online card games and their monetization.

I'm not huge on building a collection for collection's sake.

Presumably, your goal in playing mtga is to have fun. Figure out what in magic you find fun, and play that

If you like drafting, play draft. If you like constructed, play unranked with whatever stupid deck you have and grind out your gold quests. I've liked a lot of the starter decks. The current ones aren't amazing, but they're okay

Unranked tries (but does not always succeed) to match you against similarly meta or off meta decks, so I find it fun to play something sub optional

Imho if drafting is stressful, and you NEED a certain amount of wins to feel good about spending your gold on it, just skip it and spend your gold on packs instead

We're playing for fun, and steady wins out over excellent

Tbh, I rarely draft nowadays. I hoard gold, and will spend it in two scenarios

1) when I need gems for the battle pass: pay gold for drafts until I have enough gems

2) when I want to build a meta deck that looks super fun: pay gold for packs in the set I need the most from until I have the cards and/or wildcards

I used to give a crap and draft each set a few times while my rating would still be in bronze or silver, but if you play more than that it becomes a trap due to how matchmaking works

it's not that much more lucrative than spamming packs

Official flowchart of gold use:
1) season pass if you can utilize it
2) drafting if you're ranked worse than your confidence
3) buying packs for 1000 gold each

4) drafting if you're not sure you can go above a 50% win rate
5) paid constructed events lmao

Even when drafting is more lucrative, it's just so slow. New players should just derp around in free play. It's a good way to figure out if you want to stick with the hobby

I mean I've been playing a game for less than a month and it's been out for 30 years. Drafting looks fun to me but, even outside of not getting any value out of draft, building up 10k gold takes like 2 weeks of daily quests. So I also don't want to feel like I'm building up to something fun all month and then lose 3 games in a row and have a bad time.

But I also enjoy playing competitive modes and meta decks which I do need cards to do. Janky decks are fun but I still need cards to build those too lol. The starting player experience definitely feels like "how do I spend gold the most efficiently to get the most cards as possible". I mean the starter decks are fun but I'm not looking to only play those for the next year straight either.

banananor posted...

1) when I need gems for the battle pass: pay gold for drafts until I have enough gems

After ignoring everything else you said I will suggest not buying the current battle pass. It is garbage. Save your gems for anything else other than Baldur's Gate.

"5) paid constructed events lmao"
I will also agree new players don't do these. Somehow WotC fucked up... these events were for new players that didn't have competitive decks and they gave away a lot of free rares and such. Now they are for very serious players and are in fact better for advancement than climbing the ladder. You'd think they could have old school events for new players and a separate group of events for people trying to be pros, but no. Now the constructed events are only for if you want to advance, and they will only get more competitive as people who used to regularly hit 1200+ in mythic realize they now have to hit 300+ or find the other way around.

skullbone - my advice would be to do what you can to save up as much for the next set as possible. If you are succeeding at drafts that's something you should do. If not, save up everything you can and get as many daily/weekly rewards as you are able to.

As I mentioned before, a bunch of old sets rotate out when the new sets come in and so you should stock up your resources so you can work your way into competitive play with the new set. Historically the first set of a new season is likely to have the most cards worth playing, so save up for the next two months.

Yeah that sounds like a good plan! I'm also not against pre-ordering the new set to get 50 packs so we'll see how it goes.

And yeah I agree I don't have any interest getting into Alchemy or buying the current mastery pass since it's mostly Alchemy rewards.

The starter decks are good enough that maybe I'll take your advice and just hoard gold for the new set instead of playing more quick draft.

This is a really minor optimization step but the game's algorithms are set up in a way where until you own 4x of every single rare and mythic, you will always get a rare or mythic that you don't own 4 of yet when you open packs. This means that if you're focusing on draft, you shouldn't open any packs from that set unless if you specifically need cards from that set. This reduces the chance of you opening rares or mythics that you'd be drafting anyways.

BlackDra90n posted...

This is a really minor optimization step but the game's algorithms are set up in a way where until you own 4x of every single rare and mythic, you will always get a rare or mythic that you don't own 4 of yet when you open packs. This means that if you're focusing on draft, you shouldn't open any packs from that set unless if you specifically need cards from that set. This reduces the chance of you opening rares or mythics that you'd be drafting anyways.

But rares or mythic you have 4 of instant convert to gems

Yea but it's not enough to get another rare or mythic.

ChichiriMuyo posted...

After ignoring everything else you said I will suggest not buying the current battle pass. It is garbage. Save your gems for anything else other than Baldur's Gate.

oh, you're totally right. i completely forgot that baldur's gate was alchemy only. for some reason i thought it was at minimum historic/explorer legal and gave

that does throw the math off because i could not possibly care less about alchemy. but wildcards and vault progress are still shared, right?

let's check it out. i only take into consideration rewards that i care about. you pay 3400 gems for

16 real packs
4 alchemy packs (don't care)
4000 gold
1200 gems
1 draft token

so, net trade is

-2200 gems
+16 packs
+4000 gold
1 draft token

the value is still better than any non-pass purchase, and features zero rng. but if you think you won't play enough to afford the next pass, it may be wiser to save for the september set.

I wish I could just give you some gold. I have something dumb like 50k gold and 6000 gems because I dont play very often so I get rank decayed down to bronze or silver and then stomp people in drafts when new sets come out

Its a pretty dumb system honestly.

skullbone posted...

But I also enjoy playing competitive modes and meta decks which I do need cards to do. Janky decks are fun but I still need cards to build those too lol. The starting player experience definitely feels like "how do I spend gold the most efficiently to get the most cards as possible". I mean the starter decks are fun but I'm not looking to only play those for the next year straight either.

I know you're being silly and exaggerating, and I also understand your frustration. The actual truth is still longer than it should be, but I'd realistically estimate 2 and a half months for a new f2p player to assemble their first 100% meta deck.

The game is for sure trying to trick you into wanting to spend money. Don't listen to it

For me, those two months were fun because I enjoyed just getting good games with whatever jank deck I could make with the cards I already had. It would be punishing if I were dreaming of being a F2P tournament pro immediately. I don't think you're aiming for that

Due to the way the wildcard system works, on your way to getting enough of any particular wildcard type, you'll accrue enough random cards to at least test out any other kind of deck, minus some of the rares and mythics. Your second complete deck is infinitely easier to assemble than the first

skullbone posted...

building up 10k gold takes like 2 weeks of daily quests.

i feel like i'm splitting hairs, and my point is that the rate shouldn't really matter, but you do get as much gold from daily wins as daily quests. your first 4 wins total to 550 gold. 10k gold takes 5 days or less. unless i'm misremembering and new players get some kind of different daily/weekly win rewards from everyone else

ok I did just have a pretty kick ass moment in baldurs gate sealed

I play Earthquake Dragon for 2 mana (10/10 flying trample that gets cheaper based on the CMC of dragons you control)

opponent returns it to my hand

next turn I draw and play Miirym (when a nontoken dragon etb under your control, create a token copy)

play EQ dragon again and now I have 2 10/10 flying tramples

dude concedes

it was totally unneeded overkill, but it felt good... also it only included real, printed cards and not any alchemy nonsense, so its not exactly an endorsement of the format

I will say, Double Team is a solid mechanic that does a thing paper Magic techicnally cant do, but I feel like you can probably approximate a close enough version of it in paper

banananor posted...

your first 4 wins total to 550 gold. 10k gold takes 5 days or less

Sometimes I play for over an hour and only get 1 or 2 wins. I think you might be underestimating how many actual decks I'm running into with my crappy starter decks, even in casual mode.

skullbone posted...

Sometimes I play for over an hour and only get 1 or 2 wins. I think you might be underestimating how many actual decks I'm running into with my crappy starter decks, even in casual mode.

Can you not build competitive mono red decks for cheap any more? I remember that was the strategy for a while

I don't think burn is quite there, is the problem. You could still try it and it's probably one of the better options if you just want as good a deck as possible with minimal wildcard use, but I don't know. There are aggro decks in the format like Boros and Mono-Green, but they all have a lot of rare creatures that they sort of rely on I think.

Honestly I think the best bet as far as cheap but playable decks go would be some type of Blue/Red control shell.

banananor posted...

oh, you're totally right. i completely forgot that baldur's gate was alchemy only. for some reason i thought it was at minimum historic/explorer legal and gave

...

16 real packs
4 alchemy packs (don't care)
4000 gold
1200 gems
1 draft token

so, net trade is

-2200 gems
+16 packs
+4000 gold
1 draft token

the value is still better than any non-pass purchase, and features zero rng. but if you think you won't play enough to afford the next pass, it may be wiser to save for the september set.

Well, they are Historic legal, yes. However with Alchemy in Historic and Explorer as an option I've transitioned away from playing it. Occasionally I will, maybe if it's practice for an upcoming Open or something, but otherwise I'd rather focus on Explorer.

Also you're right, I think maybe I neglected to count in the draft token when I counted up the value of it before or something. In my first look at it I thought it wasn't worth the gems but looking over your count it is a profitable deal. Still, compared to other master passes it's pretty underwhelming.

masterplum posted...

Can you not build competitive mono red decks for cheap any more? I remember that was the strategy for a while

Currently, not really. Here are the big agro decks that you might think should be kind of budget:

Mono Red (tier 3) - 24 rares/5 mythics main - 5r/3m side
Mono White (tier 2) - 30r/5m main - 10r/1m
Mono Green (tier 2) - 29r main - 5r side
Boros (tier 1) - 30r/4m main - 8r side

All of the competitive decks are easily half rares. There are of course numerous budget options but it's been awhile since there's been something competitive around the 12 rare mark. So yes, you can do better than the starter decks, but we're still talking about expecting a less than 50% win rate.

I only play a few games every month on average, so I'm usually strategic with wild cards and only use them on decks that look like something I'd enjoy playing. Additionally, if I don't want to use as many wildcards as needed to make the deck in full, I try to substitute one of the mythics or rares for some common or uncommon with either a similar mana cost or effect.

Obviously cards like Omnath or Embercleave can't be replicated, but vraska's contempt can be easily replaced with some other "kill a minion" card.

Somehow I have more mythic wilds than I do rares?

Peace___Frog posted...

Somehow I have more mythic wilds than I do rares?

I think this is actually more common among people who aren't just trying to collect everything, especially if you're getting into older formats where the entire manabase is filled with Rare lands.

Also I really do think you can build a pretty competitive Izzet Control deck for <10 rares. This won't be what you'll see if you look up lists online, but I think all you really need is 4x Fable, 2x Hullbreaker Horror, and maybe 1 rare board wipe. If you're playing a 2 color slow deck you can more realistically afford to cheat on the manabase (though there is still a cost to this), and you can replace some of the rare card-draw options with say Behold the Multiverse.

I think a lot of the starter decks have "upgrade" versions online that take the shell and improve it so maybe I'll look into those.

The two color starter decks aren't exactly unplayable and you do get a lot of options so IDK.

So you can go that route pyre, but it's going to have its down sides. Behold the Multiverse is a perfectly fine inclusion, but you're leaving a lot on (or rather off) the table, especially the dominant force that is Goldspan Dragon (bye bye to you after rotation, pal). Overall I'd say it can get you daily wins but without dragon or duals your win % may fall in around 40-45% which gets the job done but can also feel bad.

Also, I know it's easy to underestimate the value of good dual lands, but we really shouldn't. Even in slow/reactionary decks cipt duals are guaranteed to lose you games over enough time. Maybe you won't notice if your sample size is 10-20 games, but once you've played 100-200 games you really will see yourself lose several times because you couldn't use the land the turn you played it.

The list I'm envisioning wouldn't run Goldspan Dragon even with access to the entire cardpool. This is the type of thing I have in mind as a starting point https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4896576.

And yes you would definitely weaken the deck by skipping on lands, I'm only saying that in the scenario where you're pinched on wildcards but looking for anything that isn't a starter deck then it's maybe worth taking a 5% hit to winrate in order to save the 12 wildcards that would be needed to go with this manabase.

(Disclaimer: I don't know what the starter decks look like and for all I know that is a better route to go)

Im still on the Get good at draft train because honestly draft is the only thing magic really does better than every other game.

I'm pretty sure Goldspan dragon is in one of the starter decks but I think they only give you 1 or 2 copies. Also Behold the Multiverse is in the blue/white starter deck with 2-4 copies.

The starter decks are all relatively new decks they're just not refined.

White/green is Cleric heal spam deck
White/black is dungeon crawling
Black/red is treasures I think?
Blue/White is flying and foretell
Green/Red is landfall aggro
Blue/Red is playing a bunch of instant/sorcery and a bit of burst I think
Blue/Black is a control shell where you make your opponent discard their hand early with foretell and then kill all of their creatures with flunk and counters

Can't remember the other decks or haven't played them much.