My favorite deck for the MTGA Historic Pauper event - mono-blue spells that aims to spam a million spells into the graveyard and then beat face with 1-mana tolarian terrors and 8/8 or larger tokens from Serpentine Curve. Mystic Sanctuary almost always wants to bring back Curve. There's just enough interaction to disrupt the other linear decks in the format.
My basic ass can't wait to start messing around with Hobbit/Food decks, and with how broad the appeal of #MagicLTR is likely to be, I doubt I'll be the only one. Better lock in those $0.50 MOC Gilded Goose cards (Gilded Geese?) now! #MtG#MagicTheGathering#MtGLTR
I'm now at the point where I actually can't remember the last time I went first in a game on MTGArena. I know it's been at least 3 days, which is likely 20+ games ago.
In the current Standard meta, you can (accurately) guess how low my winning percentage is over that time.
Drawing a card isn't enough to rebalance the game anymore, and it's becoming almost unplayable. WotC needs to start issuing some corrections for the overpowered 1-drops.
I think one of the best ways that the Magic: The Gathering Lord of the Rings set is paying homage to to the original stories is that by the time I get halfway through reading most of the cards, I've lost interest and moved on to something else.
How likely is it that a Mana Crypt/Sol Ring ban in EDH is incoming? I just watched a Command Zone episode about it, now Sheldon Menery is coming out and saying they're a problem. It sounds like they're laying the groundwork to prepare everybody.
Looks like there's gonna be a bunch of EDH staples and a bunch of fun cards for other formats. I'm really excited to add Reprieve to my Geist of Saint Traft brawl list
As I watch previews for the upcoming #MagicTheGathering Lord of the Rings set the pedantic nerd inside me bristles at people only referring to the movies when discussing the cards and characters.
It's been around three months since I started playing Magic. Since then, I've played mainly mono white. I invested all my wildcards into the deck, and I'm just slowly building up a collection for other strategies. Since I don't have a lot of experience with building Magic decks and I'm missing a lot of card knowledge, most of the decks I (want to) use are copied from the internet or adjusted with a little bit of personal flavor. They're a base for me to learn the game itself, but I'm missing out on a lot of building know-how. That's something I want to change!
Starting today, I'll post sort of a diary for my deck building process. I'll build a new deck every other day. But I don't want to invest in new cards I might not need for bigger projects. So, I'll build decks only using my limited card pool that I collected in the last couple of months as a F2P player.
Day 1: :white: :green: :blue: +1/+1 counter
This is my first attempt because a lot of strategies I enjoy are focused on counters. This deck is more or less a hybrid of two decks I'm currently building anyway (Heavily "stolen" from others). It's just missing the same key cards 😅😅
The most important card in the deck is Brokers Ascendancy, which creates very explosive growth together with Botanical Brawler and Kami of Whispered Hopes. Jugan defends the Tempel and the Planeswalkers are also doing a lot of work.
The biggest downside is the lack of early removal because the deck tends to be overwhelmed with opponents building an aggressive board state early on, but I'm considering getting rid of some other cards to make room for it. I'm just not sure about which removal would be the most useful with Ossification and Lay Down Arms dead to the lack of basic lands.
I played the deck in Standard without rank. Win rate was pretty even. The deck has a lot of potential and I'm excited to play a more refined version in the future.
I made some changes to the deck regarding the monster line-up. Yesterday, I was missing a lot of early summons. So I included four Evolving Adaptive. It isn't the best fit, but works surprisingly well. Especially after Ozolith and one or two Kamis are on the field. After that, Evolving Adaptive is getting a lot of support from late game Brawlers and Apprentice entering the board with 3 to 5 counters.
I also got some other, nice inclusions thanks to the monthly rewards. I'm most excited about Ozolith. This card won't be a one-of forever. Doing so much work with the bonus counter and as an enabler to place them.
Lastly, I cut the Planeswalkers. I still like them in the build, but they rarely came up compared to other plays, and somehow, both of them were glued to my hand. I cut them mostly for more consistent early play.
After some matches with the deck, I have very mixed feelings. The deck played more consistently than yesterday, and I had some very clean wins and big boards, but overall, I lost way more matches.
It was a mixture of the deck still missing key cards, me operating it, and a lot of bad match-ups and especially missed land drops.
The first two problems will get better with time, but I won't change anything regarding the last point. I'm fine with 23 lands in a deck with overall cheap cards. I was also not missing the right colors. Just lands in general. I consider it bad luck today.
Maybe the deck will get some more wins tomorrow. Even if I won't play it much because I'm planning to build something new. Let's see what my limited brain and card pool can come up with 😁😁
Today, I build a deck completely against my preference and... it went pretty well. I didn't look it up and built the deck basically from memory, but it still became a lot like the Aggro deck everyone plays. I was just missing some essential cards. Like always. There are definitely some downsides to the deck without the air support.
The most surprising aspect of the deck and maybe the reason why so many people are playing it... this pile of cards is dirt cheap!! I went a bit against my rule and crafted six cards - 2 Monastery Swiftspear and 4 Kessig Flamebreather. Both require wildcards you normally have to spare. All other cards to make the strategy viable are basically handed to you from the game itself.
I went for my daily wins with the deck and also rushed through Standard Gold Rank. The deck went 15-8, and I'm completely happy with the results, considering most losses were based on me missing the birds.
After playing 23 matches, my opinion of the deck hasn't changed at all. Yes, you can get some fast wins, and I may be playing it again for grinding, but the deck isn't fun. It's like playing on autopilot without one original thought. Control can result in a variety of game states, but these matches were all the same. Burn some creatures and rush in. Again and again and again. I don't like it!
I can't even share some great boards this time. There were none. The only thing worth sharing isn't amazing but funny. I "managed" to play all four Kumano in the first three rounds.
There's not much of an update. I played another day with mono red. It's just so convenient for F2P players to farm cards from the daily rewards.
I also had some matches with my main deck - :white: mono white midrange. The first matches were all against mono red, which is the worst enemy for the white deck I use. I guess that's called karma 😅
For my daily quest, I had to play blue and green. Finished it with the starter deck challenge and decided to build my own deck based on it tomorrow. There's a lot of potential for fun plays.
Today, I tried to build something based on the blue and green Starterdeck you get early in the game. It's one of my favorites from the Starterdecks.
However... this was my first utter failure! This deck doesn't work at all. It performed okay against the bot, but I was destroyed in every match against a real opponent. Well, it happens. I was ready for some bad deck construction and learning from mistakes.
The next couple of days, I'll look a bit more into blue and green possibilities and ramp decks. I definitely do not have the cards to play a viable ramp deck right now... but it seems like something I could enjoy and want to try in the future.
Nothing really big for a couple of days. I mostly played the first deck I invested in when I started playing Arena. It's a mono white deck that doesn't play a lot of creatures and is more focused on Planeswalkers and Boardwipes. The deck is a high-risk, high reward build that can struggle a lot with most Aggro decks. It's still one of the decks I play and enjoy the most. I'm also most comfortable with it and its interactions. That results in more wins, which is also fun.
Today, I made a second version of the deck to change things up a little bit and to keep up with building more decks and increasing my skills. The second build is more focused on creatures and tries to utilize Serra Paragon with things like Ossification, Spirited Companion, and Ambitious Farmhand. Another key card to win games in this build is Steel Seraph. The deck is influenced by a lot of other mono white builds and performing quite well so far.
I enjoy playing both decks, but the original build is definitely more fun when the board goes crazy (with planeswalkers).
I'm starting to have second thoughts about the LotR set.
[EDIT: Let me be clear this feeling isn't about race-swapping in the card art, which is a choice I support. If you feel the need to discuss that, please do so elsewhere.]
I was extremely pumped for this set and intended to buy a ton of it, but so far the designs haven't really interested me as a player, and the cards haven't captured the story of LotR the way I anticipated. I don't think I've seen a single flavor text yet and we've seen a lot of cards [EDIT: on further viewing, there's a lot, even vanilla creatures!], and some choices seem antithetical to the LotR lore, like Sauron being a creature we can see.
I don't know, I'm not as into it as I thought I'd be. Maybe it's a better idea to spend the budget I planned for this set on Commander Masters instead?
OC What cards are you looking forward to playing with when the LotR set comes out?
Looks like there's gonna be a bunch of EDH staples and a bunch of fun cards for other formats. I'm really excited to add Reprieve to my Geist of Saint Traft brawl list