The General Magic the Gathering Thread

Gotta sign up for a pre-release, that’s for sure. GRN is looking more and more like an awesome set. WotC have really been on a roll lately. Even Core 2019 was decent, which isn’t something you would usually expect when you consider previous core sets. And I loved Dominaria. And the Ixalan block is really beginning to shine as we approach rotation.

Full Guilds of Ravnica spoilers have been officially posted!

There are a lot of amazing cards in this set, many of which will be prohibitively expensive to just buy outright (jeez Assassin’s Trophy is a freaking $32 card already…) so I’m going to get a box and see where the chips land. I think my son is getting a box as well, we’ll see as we are going to try and get a hold of a Mythic Edition box, but it sounds like trying to pre-order limited edition stuff from the Hasbro Toy Store is a damned nightmware.

I went to CoolStuffInc to see what the single card prices looked like and just on the first page alone, here is the list of cards I actively want badly. In most cases one copy will do it, but in many cases AMAP (as many as possible) would be great (like the shock lands, or the assassin’s trophy).

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It would run me $140 just to get one of all those (not even including the 5 shock lands), so it’s way cheper to buy a box and cross my fingers I get some cool stuff. Plus all the amazing rares and uncommons not even listed on the front page!

Looks like Arena is opening up next week, on the 27th. Collection wipe, looks like, but at least closed beta players get “a code (via email) for a trio of Masterpiece Planeswalker cards.”

I’ve been playing the open beta of Arena for a while and i’ve really found I enjoy MTG better than almost all the other computer TCGs.

The big reason I think is the breadth of instant speed interactions(which makes it a pain in the ass to make a good mtg client), which really introduces more varied and less obvious lines of play. Most of the other online TCGs end up sacrificing that level of interactivity for smoothness.

Launch tomorrow. Today they’ve got all the Twitch streamers playing a day early.

Feels like stompy Green and super-fast red-white are the thing so far.

Open beta is live.

Seems promising, even for a casual f2p type - which is kinda crazy for WotC. Of all card games of this nature, I’ve always liked MTG the best but the cost was way too high for my casualness. I’m curious to see what the pact of earning packs or enough gold to play an occasional draft is (hah, like I could play draft) - I’ve read up to 3 packs/week if you do all the daily/weekly quests which seems decent.

The open beta launch seemed fairly smooth. I just played a couple of games, and everything seemed to work. I know, “it didn’t crash” is a low bar, but that’s where we’re at with MMO games these days. We’ll see how it holds up over the coming weeks as people settle into regular play.

Well I’m enjoying it so far. It’s just so quick to get into a game.

You can get three free packs if you redeem the code “PlayRavnica” in the store.

Yup. And the code is case sensitive, so be aware of that.

I was super excited to try out GRN sealed prior to my midnight prerelease tonight. It’s really boosted my confidence with the new set. I ended up playing an Izzet deck (I lucked into both a Firemind’s Mastery and a Ral) and went 5-3.

What’s the best “advancement” method for a mostly f2p/casual/bad player? I know there is a lot of hype around saving up gold to enter draft and/or sealed modes, but that’s for people that can actually win I assume. Assuming worst-case scenario of flat out losing all games, does that mean just buying packs would be better? What is the break-even point between draft/sealed and buying packs?

I spend gold on drafts, gems on packs. If you’re really good at drafting, maybe spend some gems on a draft or two…it’s a good way to expand your collection, obviously. But the name of the game is wildcards and you get none of those from drafts.

I’d also say, once you have a decent constructed deck, running the Constructed Event is a cheap way to fill out your rare and uncommon collection. 35 runs for $20 is pretty good, especially if you can win a little.

Also, you should be spending some time this weekend running the free Singleton event. Rares and mythics are rolling on the regular. I just popped a Ral, Izzet Viceroy planeswalker from a 1-win uncommon reward.

I really love Arena but man is it killing me that I can’t play with friends that I know are playing. For now I’ve been sticking to drafts. I’m not awesome at drafting but I can usually win a little before getting kicked.

Yeah, looking forward to friends lists. I feel like it can’t possibly be that hard to implement, so there must be some other reason they’re slow-rolling it.

I just can’t get a clean install. I deleted my old install and tried from scratch and there’s one file it keeps choking on downloading.

To be honest, I kinda get the feeling the programmers at Magic HQ might not be exactly the varsity team.

Taking a four-hour nap fixed it. I am unimpressed that I lose connection to the server half the time I create a deck and all of the time that I finish a game.

The sealed deck matches are single-game, no sideboard? wtf?