Magic: The Gathering Arena - Another MtG video game

Today’s daily deal is free gold, get it before it expires tomorrow morning!

Not sure how long before that code expires. Probably they’ll leave it up for a while.

Thanks, @ineffablebob! It dropped 2K gold, 2K xp, and a few rare cards.

A new digital-only format is coming next week with nerfing and buffing (probably mostly nerfing)…is this the end of Standard?

Around here, Standard is already dead. Stores have commander nights, modern nights, occasionally draft events, but I can’t remember the last time anyone ran a Standard event that wasn’t specifically for some WOTC marketing thing.

I doubt Alchemy will be any better, though. All those other formats have their niche - Commander (casual) lets you play your big dumb fun stuff, Modern and Commander (competitive) let you play super-powerful stuff, limited formats give you a level playing field regardless of collection size. Standard does none of those things, it costs a ton to stay current, and you’re always playing against the same few decks since the comparatively small card pool means the internet solves the format for the best decks very quickly. Alchemy may help with that last bit if they make updates on a fast cycle, but it won’t make Standard appeal to the Commander or Modern player.

Alchemy is getting seriously slammed by Historic players because the nerfs are going to affect their format.

Alchemy is live!

Looking at the format as whole, I’m actually pretty excited to dig in. Unfortunately, Arena made Standard no longer viable. Hopefully, this will fix it.

What do you mean that Standard is no longer viable?

In the sense that the format is more or less solved within a week, with very few meta shifts until the next set.

Basically, 7 days after a new set, you’re left just waiting for the next one to come out. Only grinding Arena makes that possible. And while I don’t really play cardboard Magic anymore, I can’t imagine that it helps the diversity of that format either.

What rank are you in standard? I still see a wide variety of decks at Gold 1, which admittedly is not very high. I haven’t played Arena for long (and for now am strictly F2P, although the mastery pass is looking appealing) so I took the advice to rank up only to Platinum 4 last month and stop there. I’m sure that going though Plat and Diamond, the deck diversity is reduced.

The matching algorithm takes into account your deck composition. A fringe deck will lead to more match-ups against other fringe decks. If you’re able to build a good fringe deck you can easily climb the ladder. You do get match-ups against top tier decks but I believe those are mixed in a greater variety of decks because of you deck composition. I’m usually able to get up to diamond at each season.

I was playing a reanimator deck with Velomachus Lorehold before rotation that got me in diamond. I’m now playing a WG ramp deck with Yasharn to stop black sacrifice or treasure/blood tokens decks.

I think fringe deck is a very accurate description for what I usually run with. That explains a lot, and also why I see stuff that doesn’t work at all in Gold.

I’m really enjoying this week’s Midweek Madness, which is Historic Pauper. It’s kinda nice not seeing the crazy bombs.

However, there are some outrageous historic commons. I had never seen this card before, being mostly a standard player, but how did they decide to make a 1/1 for W that gives 1 life ANY TIME a creature enters play (including your opponent’s creatures). And this was a common?

Back in the day, balance was more of an aspiration on the part of the developers rather than a science. They still make mistakes, of course, but they tend to at least be at the top end of the rarity spectrum these days. See also guys like Blood Artist:

The card is Soul Warden, by the way. I have seen it enough in the Pauper event where it is quite popular indeed.

I’m going to sound crotchety and old because I am crotchety and old, but I miss the days when the bomb was a 4GG 6/4 with no abilities except for flavor text. So much flavor text.

Nah, true mastery was only achieved by slowly rendering your opponent’s mana base inoperable, one land per turn, with a 3GGG beefcake.

Unless they also had green spells. Or artifacts.

I don’t miss these guys.

image

Land destruction was so dumb.

There was a time when Strip Mine, Army Ants, Stone Rain, and Pillage were all Type-II legal.

It was a silly time.

To be clear, Soul Warden is from Exodus. If you’re being old and crotchety about it existing, you’re complaining about a card that was first printed 23 years ago.

Ayup. Don’t let me get started on this new game called Halo!

I’m not complaining about Soul Warden per se, but I am surprised that it was released (and then frequently rereleased) as a common.