Status
Not open for further replies.

noquarter

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,505
Wow, I've been out of Magic for them to flip on the Block Structure again? Three Ravnica sets in a row really seems like a strange thing to do so soon after getting rid of the block structure.

Sorry to bring up what is old topics, but I really haven't been paying attention to Magic the last 8 months or so.
 

Bigkrev

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,406
Wow, I've been out of Magic for them to flip on the Block Structure again? Three Ravnica sets in a row really seems like a strange thing to do so soon after getting rid of the block structure.

Sorry to bring up what is old topics, but I really haven't been paying attention to Magic the last 8 months or so.
If it seems like there is no rhyme and reason to what they are doing anymore, don't worry its because you are out of the loop. Even the most dedicated fans don't get it anymore
 
OP
OP
SigmasonicX

SigmasonicX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,705
The three Ravnica sets will all be drafted separately, and apparently the third one isn't really a Ravnica set, but rather a differently themed set that happens to take place on Ravnica.
 

Justin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,762
Seattle, Washington
Wow, I've been out of Magic for them to flip on the Block Structure again? Three Ravnica sets in a row really seems like a strange thing to do so soon after getting rid of the block structure.

Sorry to bring up what is old topics, but I really haven't been paying attention to Magic the last 8 months or so.

It is exactly as they described in metamorphosis 2.0. No more blocks but they will stay on a plane for as many sets as they want. All the sets will drafted separately. Also the third set is set on Ravnica but apparently very different than any Ravnica set they have done before.

The reason for that is because from a creative standpoint, we plan to stay on worlds for as many sets as makes sense for the story. Some worlds will be a single set while others might be two or three sets. If we stay on a world for more than one set, something about how the world is structured will let us have a delineation between the sets. Sometimes, but not all the times, we will have mechanical carryover between sets that share a world. For instance, under this new model, if we chose to stay on Kaladesh for two sets, we might have chosen to use energy in both sets (most likely playing around in different design spaces), but the rest of the mechanics would have been unique to their set. Note that sets that share a world won't necessarily overlap in any mechanics.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/metamorphosis-2-0-2017-06-12
 
Last edited:

GamerKingFaiz

Member
Nov 15, 2017
223
I've been outta MTG for a few years now and MTG Arena is making me want to at least delve into the digital side of Magic.

Can someone please answer some questions I have about MTG Arena?

1. I understand there will be a reset, so there's no point in hoarding the free gold and packs that I've gotten so far, right? I should spend the gold and crack the packs?

2. From what I understood MTG Arena is just Standard, but how come MTG Goldfish has a section for Standard and Arena Standard?
L4KNWMv.png


3. Any tips/tricks for starting out or things to keep any eye out for?
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,326
Vancouver
Arena has a few cards that paper Magic (Standard) does not.

As for the account wipe / reset, there is one coming so just spend whatever you want- no reason to hoard unless you're saving for a Draft or whatever :)
 

GamerKingFaiz

Member
Nov 15, 2017
223
After the reset do you get an equivalent amount of whatever you had used back? For example, in Hearthstone beta I remember if you bought 10 packs after a beta reset you'd get 10 packs to crack again.

Is there a list of Arena exclusive cards?
 

Justin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,762
Seattle, Washington
After the reset do you get an equivalent amount of whatever you had used back? For example, in Hearthstone beta I remember if you bought 10 packs after a beta reset you'd get 10 packs to crack again.

Is there a list of Arena exclusive cards?

Any money you spend will get converted back to gems so you can choose to rebuy packs or to use them for drafts and events. There are like 4 arena only cards and they are all bad and given out during the tutorial.
 

GamerKingFaiz

Member
Nov 15, 2017
223
Any money you spend will get converted back to gems so you can choose to rebuy packs or to use them for drafts and events. There are like 4 arena only cards and they are all bad and given out during the tutorial.
That's really odd that MTG Goldfish has a separate section for Standard and Arena Standard then. Even more so is that there are different decks at the top of the meta for each one.

What's up with that?
 

Imperfected

Member
Nov 9, 2017
11,737
That's really odd that MTG Goldfish has a separate section for Standard and Arena Standard then. Even more so is that there are different decks at the top of the meta for each one.

What's up with that?

Any division in player base of sufficient size, in a sufficiently complex game, will give rise to a unique meta.

For example, look at League of Legends: every major region has it's own meta, despite the fact everyone is playing exactly the same game.
 

Hydrophobic

Member
Oct 25, 2017
217
That's really odd that MTG Goldfish has a separate section for Standard and Arena Standard then. Even more so is that there are different decks at the top of the meta for each one.

What's up with that?
When the closed beta originally started they only had cards from Ixalan as far as I know. I would guess that the section existed before all of the current standard set was implemented into Arena. I don't know why the decks are different.
 

Justin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,762
Seattle, Washington
That's really odd that MTG Goldfish has a separate section for Standard and Arena Standard then. Even more so is that there are different decks at the top of the meta for each one.

What's up with that?

The guys who run Goldfish make a living of MTGO and are very concerned about what will happen if Arena is successful.

But yeah, it's probably just a holdover from when Arena didn't have the full standard implemented yet. They only caught up a month or two ago.
 

Bigkrev

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,406
That's really odd that MTG Goldfish has a separate section for Standard and Arena Standard then. Even more so is that there are different decks at the top of the meta for each one.

What's up with that?

When they first started doing Arena tracking on Goldfish, Kaladesh block didn't exist on Arena, so it truely was a different format than paper standard
 

aidan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,792
Brewer's Delight on Arena seems like a breath of fresh air compared to ladder and Quick constructed!

So far, I've face:

- G/B Constrictor
- Mono-R Aggro

Oh... wait.
 

GamerKingFaiz

Member
Nov 15, 2017
223
What does this flower icon mean in the deck builder?
KJvp0pP.png


And how does the hourglass system work in-game? Is it the game's rope system?
GGqOKzX.png



Thank you!

When they first started doing Arena tracking on Goldfish, Kaladesh block didn't exist on Arena, so it truely was a different format than paper standard

Weird that it still seems to have a different meta then paper magic. Even given Imperfected's explanation, MTGO seemed to always follow the same meta as paper magic.
 

Imperfected

Member
Nov 9, 2017
11,737
MTGO doesn't really have the same meta as paper magic most of the time. If you play in-store, paper Magic's meta is mostly based off the last tournament. If you play in tournaments, there's a specific meta (actually, a bunch of mini-metas) created by team-oriented testing environments and the desire to hide information. MTGO's meta is somewhere in between: it often isn't "current" to the upcoming tournament meta, but it's usually not as dated as the last tournament's results, either, largely due to the number of tournament players that use it extensively for individual testing.

Basically: LGS Magic tends to be an old and fairly diffuse meta where you might see some decks from the tournament/MTGO meta, MTGO is a somewhat more experimental meta but due to sheer averages will have a much more similar proportion of meta decks tot he tournament meta, and the Tournament meta is a much narrower slice of MTGO's meta and often has very different decklists as a result, since generally people are only really preparing for 3-4 different decks and often focusing heavily on the mirror match.
 

GamerKingFaiz

Member
Nov 15, 2017
223
Wait a sec, is MTG Goldfish actually aggregating meta decks for Arena? The #2 ranked on Goldfish looks exactly like the premade UB deck that I quickly tried out this morning.
 

Justin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,762
Seattle, Washington
Wait a sec, is MTG Goldfish actually aggregating meta decks for Arena? The #2 ranked on Goldfish looks exactly like the premade UB deck that I quickly tried out this morning.

It looks like they might just be based on decks that users are submitting and not tournament/league results like they are for the other sections. WOTC has not yet released deck lists from arena.
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,326
Vancouver
Weird that it still seems to have a different meta then paper magic. Even given Imperfected's explanation, MTGO seemed to always follow the same meta as paper magic.

I don't know if that's true, is it? I was under the understanding that Magic Online's meta usually favoured aggro strategies more than in a larger paper tournament. I always heard that there were differences.

I don't think it's surprising that Arena's meta is different, even vastly so, considering the playerbase is potentially quite different.

PS: The Lotus / Flower shows you how many of each Wildcard you have to spend. If you hover over it with your mouse, you'll see a tally. If you click it in the deckbuilder, it will show you all the Wildcards you have in the filtered deckbuilder view.
 

Imperfected

Member
Nov 9, 2017
11,737
If you offer in-game rewards for wins it strongly favors Aggro, yeah. Basically if an Aggro deck has the same win rate as a Control deck but averages half the game duration you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot playing the Control deck.

A tournament setting is almost the opposite since a Control deck can always try to lame out draws in unfavorable match-ups and finishing fast doesn't really net you much benefit.
 

Imperfected

Member
Nov 9, 2017
11,737
They might be the first set I don't just buy outright. Most of them don't have any unique cards I'm particularly interested in, and they don't look super fun as self-contained decks.

I'll probably end up grabbing the Miracles deck anyway because it looks like the future value winner from the bunch. Either that or Lands.
 

jph139

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,514
Yeah, there's some cool cards for C18 here and there, but nothing super exciting and no reprints worth looking for. Didn't they increase the MSRP too?
 

LProtagonist

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
7,721
Think I'm doing my first draft in a while tonight. Tried to learn the set as best I could and look up what the archetypes are. I'll probably be crap, haha.
 

Yeef

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,443
New York
Thank you!

Weird that it still seems to have a different meta then paper magic. Even given Imperfected's explanation, MTGO seemed to always follow the same meta as paper magic.
Note that of the Arena exclusive cards, only the mono-white cards are actually available to players. The rest are used by AI opponents in the tutorial. So this is actually what you're looking at in terms of building a deck: https://scryfall.com/search?q=e:mtga+-f:standard+c:w&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
 

Giant Panda

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,692
Looking on Scryfall, Avenger of Zendikar was the highest value reprint. I don't think they raised prices to include better value reprints.
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,326
Vancouver
Looking on Scryfall, Avenger of Zendikar was the highest value reprint. I don't think they raised prices to include better value reprints.

I think Enchantress's Presence is probably the highest? ($14.50 USD TCG Mid as of July 27)
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Onslaught/Enchantresss+Presence#paper

With Bear Umbra a close second (($14.25 USD TCG Mid as of July 27)
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Rise+of+the+Eldrazi/Bear+Umbra#paper

Apart of Avenger of Zendikar, almost nothing else is above $5. Pretty big letdown for reprints but I guess there have been like 100 other sets released this year... but at limited print runs. I would have liked to have seen the Battlebond lands at least... like, I know Wizards knows exactly what they're doing but, as a player...
 
OP
OP
SigmasonicX

SigmasonicX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,705
Guilds of Ravnica leak
24otue9rhkc11.jpg


Choose a creature card from your graveyard with converted mana cost 1. Repeat this with creature cards of converted mana cost 2 and 3. Return these cards to the battlefield.
Variety is also the spice of death

Prerelease is in late September, so weird that it would leak this early.
 
Last edited:

chazashley

Member
Oct 28, 2017
18
So just thinking out loud randomly, I wonder if certain LGS are getting more and more cranky with the way that WOTC has been treating them lately and now have a "screw this" mentality when it comes to keeping new products under wraps. These leaks are seriously getting out of hand.
 

Justin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,762
Seattle, Washington
So just thinking out loud randomly, I wonder if certain LGS are getting more and more cranky with the way that WOTC has been treating them lately and now have a "screw this" mentality when it comes to keeping new products under wraps. These leaks are seriously getting out of hand.

Why are stores upset at WOTC now?

Also the last two major leaks had nothing to do with stores. They came from WOTC themselves and a thief at the printer.
 

Yeef

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,443
New York
I was under the impression that only a very small amount of LGS were getting product directly from WOTC.
Most decent sized LGS' would have been getting from both Wizards Direct and other distributors. Wizards was cheaper, but there were weekly caps on what you could order that were generally lower than other distributors.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.