Mtg arena open beta

[Primarch]

State of the Game is up for April.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2020-04-13

Hmmm...
Player Draft seems like it could be time consuming. I think I'll be sticking with (hopefully dumb) bot drafts. Better save up a lot of gold for May 1st.

UI improvements look ok.

Anthology 3 in May, Amonkhet and M21 in Summer? That's a lot of new cards.

Still, I'm feeling positive about it all. Just a shame the Mastery Pass took a massive nerf.

[me_in_japan]

Hmmn ho hum...

A lot to digest, there. Their continued commitment to Historic is welcome - I find i definitely go in cycles between loving standard and finding it dull as hell (if I see another bloody Uro deck I’m gonna...) so having Historic as an alternative way to play with a very different meta is vital to retaining interest, I think. Amonkhet will be very welcome, as there’s some great stuff for Commander/Brawl in there.

Interestingly, Amonkhet will be the first set in Historic I don’t already have a bunch of cards for. I’m girding myself for the struggles in maintaining my card library this will bring They may even have found something that makes me spend actual cash on the game We’ll see...

Player draft is all well and good, but charging double compared to bot draft is just gouging. A lot of people play draft to boost their card collection, and the math on this one is going to leave Player draft cold and lonely. I appreciate that not everything is for everyone, and that WotC is keen to maximise player expenditure, but the success of Player draft will be dependent on having a large enough number of players at any given time to keep queue times down. That’s where we FtP players come in, and right now there’s zero incentive for us to play it over Bot draft. I’ll be interested to see where this goes. It’s interesting to see they’re removing Bo3 bot draft, as those players who prefer limited or play seriously all seem to treat bo1 as the kiddie pool. And on that note, why is Bo3 player draft unranked? Seems very odd.

Oh, and MacOS will be a good thing, when it comes. I’m also really curious how the heck they intend to make things playable on a phone screen. But I suppose I’m not a UI developer, so one must assume wiser minds than mine are hard at work on the problem...

[Primarch]

I think mobile will be tablet only. A phone screen is far too small IMHO.

Player draft rewards are can be double or better bot draft rewards by the looks of things, at least in the Bo1 queue. I couldn't comment on Bo3 as I don't play that mode.

Draft Comparison: Bot Ranked Draft Vs. Human Ranked
Cost (gems/gold): 750/5000 Vs. 1500/10,000
0 wins: 1.2 packs, 50 gems Vs. 1 pack, 50 gems
1 win: 1.22 packs, 100 gems Vs. 1 pack, 100 gems
2 wins: 1.24 packs, 200 gems Vs. 2 packs, 250 gems
3 wins: 1.26 packs, 300 gems Vs. 2 packs, 1000 gems
4 wins: 1.3 packs, 450 gems Vs. 3 packs, 1400 gems
5 wins: 1.35 packs, 650 gems Vs. 4 packs, 1600 gems
6 wins: 1.4 packs, 850 gems Vs. 5 packs, 1800 gems
7 wins: 2 packs, 950 gems Vs. 6 packs, 2200 gems

So, if you are good at drafting, the rewards are better. The new version breaks even for gems at 5 wins compared to 6 before.

[me_in_japan]

You make a fair point about the rewards being better, but your analysis doesn’t factor in that (disregarding prizes) for 10,000 gold, a player draft gets you 45 cards (inc 3 rares) whereas 10K on bot draft gets you 90 cards (inc 6 rares.)

[Primarch]

You make a fair point about the rewards being better, but your analysis doesn’t factor in that (disregarding prizes) for 10,000 gold, a player draft gets you 45 cards (inc 3 rares) whereas 10K on bot draft gets you 90 cards (inc 6 rares.)

And that's why I will probably be sticking to bot drafts. The player draft is better if you're looking to convert gold to gems, want more wildcards or just like playing draft, but bot drafting fills your collection and vault faster.

[me_in_japan]

In an interesting twist, when our planned DnD game fell through last night (surprise work re-scheduling for our bard ) a few of us decided to try to get in some magic on the computer. I'd suggested Arena, but the other two guys had some troubles getting started. Anyway, long story short, we ended up playing a 3 player game on Magic Online.

Good points:
3 player game. Totally doable.
You get a shit ton of cards for your first buy-in (2 of every common, 1 of every uncommon in standard. That's in addition to the same 2c/1u that you get when you first sign up. Not bad for 5 bucks)
It looks like you could build a pretty fun, budget commander deck for less than (an additional) 5 bucks. Me and the guys are pretty keen to do this, and there's potential for escalation later if it goes well.

Bad points:
My eyes! They BLEEEEEED!!!! Ye gads but the interface is clunky. Just...horrible to navigate. Not just in comparison to Arena, but to...well, anything.
I can totally see how costs could spiral out of hand very, very easily. Way more so than Arena. Any kind of meta competitive deck is well out of reach for me.
If that goddamn game asks me to click "ok" one more time....

But overall, it was an interesting way to play, and the fact that it allows multiplayer games at the drop of a hat comfortably outweighs any aesthetic/design issues it has. Prim, Kbear - maybe worth considering, perhaps even purely as a way to allow you to play commander against us down here some time. If you do decide to start it, be sure to read a guide as to how to go about it. Navigating that game is akin to wandering the Maze of Ith. Many enter, but few ever leave, and those who do are eternally changed by the experience...

[Primarch]

While you were off playing MtGO, I was having fun with Ikoria on MtG:A and its shiny new 64bit client. I tried the (first hit is free) player draft, which wasn't bad, but you definitely need to be good at drafting to make it worthwhile. I also played a few rounds of Sealed with mixed results.
Ikoria has some fun, janky cards, and the mutate rule is actually pretty cool.

As for MtGO, I've spent a considerable amount of time building up a playable collection in Arena. While Commander is fun, one format is not worth starting a new, competing system for. Taking into account that I'm trying to build EDH decks in paper and I just don't see the point in MtGO to be honest. If I'm going to spend money, I'd rather pay for a train ticket to play face to face. Obviously that's difficult due to Covid, but at some point things will go back to being somewhat normal and gaming opportunities will increase.
In the meantime I'll stick to Arena and play Standard, Historic and Brawl. If you want a game, you know where to find me.

[me_in_japan]

Righty: Thinking-caps time, folks.

This is my sealed pool. Do I go with the RUG deck I have now (which, fwiw, I played 1 game with, evolved Iluna, and got shot out of the sky for my troubles) or do I drop the whole thing and build a bomb-free BW deck with a respectable amout of removal? I have no idea here...

[Primarch]

BW. Neither Illuna nor Lukka have much useful stuff they can dredge out of your deck. While both are probably bombs in constructed, I can't see them doing much in limited formats. BW may be plain, but removal is important.
Lurrus + Poacher can be a very handy combo as well.

[me_in_japan]

It’s a bit painful. I have these lovely bomb rares and yet my drafting instincts (which I seem to have picked up somewhere) are screaming “it’s a trap!!” at the top of their voices. At least I have all day sitting at work with nothing to do other than think about it...