As a data lover myself, I love this article! Great job!
Have you considered doing a charts weighted by rarity? Commons are going to impact limited more than rares so it would be nice to factor it in all the graphs
I'd imagine that they have main deck Abrades, because the spell is still really good, so it would give them targets in game one, and it's not the kind of spell that I want to be sideboarding into.
It's Legion Conquistador. I added it to the list, but the tool does not update the card count automatically and I neglected to change it, I was more concerned with getting the list right.
thought on Manalith (or Cultivator's Caravan I guess)? Getting to your Fumigate or Caracal one turn earlier is clutch against aggro, and they won't be using Abrades against us, right?
That's probably the coolest idea I've heard yet. Feels like the card should do something really broken but disappointingly it just doesn't seem to.
I guess the problem is that if your deck is really looking for some tribal benefits it's probably better to just play cards of that tribe rather than rely on an enchantment to turn all your cards into that creature type.
It might be, would have to test it, I went heavy on the anti aggro plan, and cats were really outstanding against the red deck, because their plan at the time was to stop us from blocking, and three creatures instead of one made that a little bit harder.
I agree that I think Kira has a much better ability for protecting your creatures. The real question is if Kopala's imitation ability is good enough and how much more value you get from the tribal synergies.
Kopala is really the only card I was wanting to try out in the set, the only one that really excited me, but I can't help but think that Kira is just the superior choice.
To me Conquistador reminds of Phyrexian Rager, except it draws three copies of itself rather than a random card. Is it playable? Probably but currently Phyrexian Rager is not a card that really shines in Pauper. And it seems more fit to a midrange shell than an aggressive one.
Thanks for the cool article on a great format. Think it's interesting for beginners of the format and veterans alike to always review the vast difference a few cards 10-11 (and arguably far more different once mana bases are accounted for) in two decks can make in how a deck can play out. You're 100% right, just looking at both lists mine trades off flexibility, value, role selection, and top end power, all of which tend to be the hallmarks of the midrange, for greater coherence, consistency, and efficiency (more so hallmarks of aggro). Both have power, but carried in different ways, and relevant really in a comparative way once you start looking at an expected meta game--in the midrange mirror I'd take your build any day of the week, vs control I'd prefer my own, and I think both decks are fairly well armed vs. other aggro decks of the format (White Weenie and Red Deck Wins). From a pure fun perspective I'd expect most players to enjoy the variance of games that I think your deck is more likely to expect given card selection, i.e. not every game will play out the same. With my more focused build of this "archetype" (this term is loosely applied here because despite both decks running rainbow spectrum spells and being within 10-11 cards or so, they play out vastly different) the deck is expected to play pretty prescriptively: T1: Cast hand disruption, removal on mana dork, or cast my own mana dork; T2: Resolve an on curve threat; T3: Resolve an on curve threat; T4: Remove their most relevant threat, cast an off-curve threat; T5: cast 1-2 off curve threats, remove if available their most relevant threat...kill them. The difference in mana base is chiefly an accepted risk in support of my game plan (I run no basics); I can present 2-3 relevant threats before they can resolve blood moon, back to basics, etc, and if they do this, then although I'm not casting my most relevant spells on the next turn, I just effectively got a time walk turn (because none of these cards really do anything to independently end the game, nor do they change the past, ie what I've previously resolved). So if a new player checking this out would want to try either of these cool decks in a tourney; I think either would be a good recommendation, but would depend on the sort of deck they enjoy playing; S'tsung's build is certainly far more interactive and has expectations to fight beyond the midgame...player decision making has a higher probability of leading you to victory or failure with the deck. My build is more of a clock, its sequencing, land selection (off of fetchlands), keep selection (given knowledge of matchup), are your most crucial decisions outside of evaluation of opposing threats for removal options, because the deck is more focused on winning the board to kill the opponent, but does not have many viable answers for powerful spells that do not interact with the board or indirectly impact the board. Here's the list I brought to the event if anyone is curious: http://gatherling.com/deck.php?mode=view&id=50468
Thanks for the exposure for the format; and if you're interested make your way out on Saturdays through the link that Sensei included above.
My issue with Arena would be the non-trading. Hearthstone became unappealing (aside from infantile graphics/animations) because it quickly became a pay to win game in the casual/competitive constructed matches since all the most impactful cards were only available by completing the "adventures" and the only way to do that in a timely fashion was to purchase them.
That being said, a crafting feature on MTGO would be great... 15000 basic lands to craft a Rishadan Port? I'm all for that sort of thing. Although it would throw the MTGO economy into flux for a while, it would be a way to get more copies of rarer cards onto MTGO without having to promo them. IF a limit were placed on it, it should not crash the economy.
I play most of card games on mute because they have what I consider to be an annoying voice thing. I don't care if the next round is on them, or if it's a gift from the east, I just want to put the card in to play, and battle with it. That's it.
I still want my digital representation of a paper card game to be a cardgame sim, not generic floating stones version number 6.
I would like Arena to succeed because Magic is Magic so bring new players to join our game. Standard could be interesting for competitive players but not for new players. I mean, if I were a new player I would like to have fun as fast as I can. I don't want (initially) take time to learn how to build a mana base or count how many lands I need to make it work. For new and casual players would be interesting a ~Arena~ mode were you could just draft your deck from zero. Could be a 40 cards deck in this mode. With a "fixed" amount of lands so new players would not need to think about mana screw. Example, you choose a planeswalker and draft cards of the same color of your walker.
Arena don't need to support old formats like Modern/Legacy etc but could have an exclusive eternal format. "Eternal Arena" would be something like "frontier" but Arena's version. Let players play ranked in this format too and would be interesting a GP were players would play old formats of "paper magic" (modern/legacy) and also digital Eternal Arena. Could have a 4 player team that players would play Standard/Modern/Legacy and digitally play Eternal Arena.
I think that MTGO is like the "reserved list" of Digital Magic. They should not replace/abandon or overshadow it by anyway. Arena and Mtgo should not compete between them but work together to compete against other competitors.
MTGO could be ugly and weird sometimes(thanks bugs) but I love it. I just need cards to work properly and I really don't need dinosaurs doing some jump scares when I play them. It could be cool for casual/new players, I respect It, but this kind of entertainment is not for me.
While new graphics are cool, as a competitive player, I play cards because they are good and not because they have some 3d animations.
For me MTGO fits good but probably If I were a new player Arena would be better. I'm more worried about strategies and later graphics.
I am thinking of doing a multi-part series examining arena--it's impact, predictions, and so on. The real thing about MTGO and Arena is that once drafting is there, the finances of MTGO will look rather rotten, rather quickly. That is something I would analyze at great length.
As to the older cards on Arena--I think the point of the new enginge is that there is no extra programming for the vast majority of cards. So Eon Hub would just be added and work. Maybe the most complex might take some extra, but it sounded like the whole point was that *any* card, no matter how wonky, should be easy to add.
I am not much for the shiny ponies stuff either but I recognize that some people really love that stuff. I can't imagine Arena alienating anyone unless it is very bad. MTGO is still here, Paper is still here. People that enjoy the game will still enjoy it on those platforms.
Agree that losing MTGO and my collection would probably be a Bridge too Far. But that's doomsday talk. I don't want Arena to fail at the stated intentions for it (Listen to this week's LR podcast to hear Ryan talk about it.) If it does what he says WOTCs wants it to do, MTGO should prosper not be folded into it.
"When Planeswalkers enter the battlefield in MTG Arena , they speak a catch phrase. Also cool"
I'll probably come across as a grumpy geezer for this, but that's perhaps as far as possible from what I consider 'cool'.
I also have to admit Magic Arena (or at least what was revealed of it so far) doesn't do anything for me. I like Magic for the game it is, and I have zero interest in flashy graphics, sounds, and animations to go with it. By the same token, there's a chance that what drives people to Hearthstone streams is that game's simplicity, not graphics and animations.
I also couldn't care less about e-Spots, to be honest. Sometimes companies have to be smart and realize they're better off as the uncontested king of a niche than to try and confront the big boys. Trying to go toe-to-toe with Hearthstone, especially if my above comment about simplicity holds true, may lead Magic into a path which not only fails to capture big Twitch audiences, but also alienates the game's most hardcore user base.
That all said, I'm not as worried as I was before about MTGO going away, especially because I think Wizards will try their best to do right by MTGO players when it comes to transferring their current collections to a new program if the time ever comes. I guess this is the first time I'm actually glad the reserved list exists, as it shows that Wizards will go to great lenghts to honor their commitments to people who purchase their products.
If it turns out MTGO players are thrown under the bus on this one, then well, I'll quit the game. And I don't say this lightly - in fact, the mere prospect of quitting Magic has never ever been something I honestly considered, even when WotC made moves I strongly disagreed with. Losing thousands of dollars worth of cards will do the trick, though.
I ultimately hope Arena, at least in its current proposed incarnation, fails, and also hope that this failure leads them to make a program that's more sober than flashy, but that also fixes the inumerous shortcomings of Magic Online, including having multiplatform support. Not holding my breath, but a man can dream.
As a data lover myself, I love this article! Great job!
Have you considered doing a charts weighted by rarity? Commons are going to impact limited more than rares so it would be nice to factor it in all the graphs
I'd imagine that they have main deck Abrades, because the spell is still really good, so it would give them targets in game one, and it's not the kind of spell that I want to be sideboarding into.
It's Legion Conquistador. I added it to the list, but the tool does not update the card count automatically and I neglected to change it, I was more concerned with getting the list right.
bocco1 - I believe it's the new guy, Legion Conquistador.
Fragoel2 - Good to hear from you! Been a long time. Nice observations, I will keep these in mind as my thoughts on the card evolve.
thought on Manalith (or Cultivator's Caravan I guess)? Getting to your Fumigate or Caracal one turn earlier is clutch against aggro, and they won't be using Abrades against us, right?
Arcane Adaptation naming Human, running the angels that mass-reanimate humans and become practically unkillable with one in play.
That's probably the coolest idea I've heard yet. Feels like the card should do something really broken but disappointingly it just doesn't seem to.
I guess the problem is that if your deck is really looking for some tribal benefits it's probably better to just play cards of that tribe rather than rely on an enchantment to turn all your cards into that creature type.
It might be, would have to test it, I went heavy on the anti aggro plan, and cats were really outstanding against the red deck, because their plan at the time was to stop us from blocking, and three creatures instead of one made that a little bit harder.
Thank you, I wrote this so people could use it as reference if something goes wrong with their clients. Hope it helps some players.
Incredibly useful for those of us who have had problems with the client on our rusted old machines. Thanks for writing another superb article! :D
I think Baral in the board might be better than the cats
Arcane Adaptation naming dragon, then dragonstorm?
Thanks for the comment.
I agree that I think Kira has a much better ability for protecting your creatures. The real question is if Kopala's imitation ability is good enough and how much more value you get from the tribal synergies.
Kopala is really the only card I was wanting to try out in the set, the only one that really excited me, but I can't help but think that Kira is just the superior choice.
It will take testing for sure.
To me Conquistador reminds of Phyrexian Rager, except it draws three copies of itself rather than a random card. Is it playable? Probably but currently Phyrexian Rager is not a card that really shines in Pauper. And it seems more fit to a midrange shell than an aggressive one.
Hi Jason always a good read. What are the 4 missing cards from the deck?
If you use Scryfall there's an option to exclude reprints, which is very nice (I've been using it a lot when developing my Masters 25 design)
S'tsung,
Thanks for the cool article on a great format. Think it's interesting for beginners of the format and veterans alike to always review the vast difference a few cards 10-11 (and arguably far more different once mana bases are accounted for) in two decks can make in how a deck can play out. You're 100% right, just looking at both lists mine trades off flexibility, value, role selection, and top end power, all of which tend to be the hallmarks of the midrange, for greater coherence, consistency, and efficiency (more so hallmarks of aggro). Both have power, but carried in different ways, and relevant really in a comparative way once you start looking at an expected meta game--in the midrange mirror I'd take your build any day of the week, vs control I'd prefer my own, and I think both decks are fairly well armed vs. other aggro decks of the format (White Weenie and Red Deck Wins). From a pure fun perspective I'd expect most players to enjoy the variance of games that I think your deck is more likely to expect given card selection, i.e. not every game will play out the same. With my more focused build of this "archetype" (this term is loosely applied here because despite both decks running rainbow spectrum spells and being within 10-11 cards or so, they play out vastly different) the deck is expected to play pretty prescriptively: T1: Cast hand disruption, removal on mana dork, or cast my own mana dork; T2: Resolve an on curve threat; T3: Resolve an on curve threat; T4: Remove their most relevant threat, cast an off-curve threat; T5: cast 1-2 off curve threats, remove if available their most relevant threat...kill them. The difference in mana base is chiefly an accepted risk in support of my game plan (I run no basics); I can present 2-3 relevant threats before they can resolve blood moon, back to basics, etc, and if they do this, then although I'm not casting my most relevant spells on the next turn, I just effectively got a time walk turn (because none of these cards really do anything to independently end the game, nor do they change the past, ie what I've previously resolved). So if a new player checking this out would want to try either of these cool decks in a tourney; I think either would be a good recommendation, but would depend on the sort of deck they enjoy playing; S'tsung's build is certainly far more interactive and has expectations to fight beyond the midgame...player decision making has a higher probability of leading you to victory or failure with the deck. My build is more of a clock, its sequencing, land selection (off of fetchlands), keep selection (given knowledge of matchup), are your most crucial decisions outside of evaluation of opposing threats for removal options, because the deck is more focused on winning the board to kill the opponent, but does not have many viable answers for powerful spells that do not interact with the board or indirectly impact the board. Here's the list I brought to the event if anyone is curious: http://gatherling.com/deck.php?mode=view&id=50468
Thanks for the exposure for the format; and if you're interested make your way out on Saturdays through the link that Sensei included above.
Take it easy you all.
My issue with Arena would be the non-trading. Hearthstone became unappealing (aside from infantile graphics/animations) because it quickly became a pay to win game in the casual/competitive constructed matches since all the most impactful cards were only available by completing the "adventures" and the only way to do that in a timely fashion was to purchase them.
That being said, a crafting feature on MTGO would be great... 15000 basic lands to craft a Rishadan Port? I'm all for that sort of thing. Although it would throw the MTGO economy into flux for a while, it would be a way to get more copies of rarer cards onto MTGO without having to promo them. IF a limit were placed on it, it should not crash the economy.
Roar or Quack ?
Sound effects, Meh. I also have them muted.
Will someone tell me if the dino pw roars or quacks though :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cICTQX-wc8
I play most of card games on mute because they have what I consider to be an annoying voice thing. I don't care if the next round is on them, or if it's a gift from the east, I just want to put the card in to play, and battle with it. That's it.
I still want my digital representation of a paper card game to be a cardgame sim, not generic floating stones version number 6.
I would like Arena to succeed because Magic is Magic so bring new players to join our game. Standard could be interesting for competitive players but not for new players. I mean, if I were a new player I would like to have fun as fast as I can. I don't want (initially) take time to learn how to build a mana base or count how many lands I need to make it work. For new and casual players would be interesting a ~Arena~ mode were you could just draft your deck from zero. Could be a 40 cards deck in this mode. With a "fixed" amount of lands so new players would not need to think about mana screw. Example, you choose a planeswalker and draft cards of the same color of your walker.
Arena don't need to support old formats like Modern/Legacy etc but could have an exclusive eternal format. "Eternal Arena" would be something like "frontier" but Arena's version. Let players play ranked in this format too and would be interesting a GP were players would play old formats of "paper magic" (modern/legacy) and also digital Eternal Arena. Could have a 4 player team that players would play Standard/Modern/Legacy and digitally play Eternal Arena.
I think that MTGO is like the "reserved list" of Digital Magic. They should not replace/abandon or overshadow it by anyway. Arena and Mtgo should not compete between them but work together to compete against other competitors.
MTGO could be ugly and weird sometimes(thanks bugs) but I love it. I just need cards to work properly and I really don't need dinosaurs doing some jump scares when I play them. It could be cool for casual/new players, I respect It, but this kind of entertainment is not for me.
While new graphics are cool, as a competitive player, I play cards because they are good and not because they have some 3d animations.
For me MTGO fits good but probably If I were a new player Arena would be better. I'm more worried about strategies and later graphics.
I am thinking of doing a multi-part series examining arena--it's impact, predictions, and so on. The real thing about MTGO and Arena is that once drafting is there, the finances of MTGO will look rather rotten, rather quickly. That is something I would analyze at great length.
As to the older cards on Arena--I think the point of the new enginge is that there is no extra programming for the vast majority of cards. So Eon Hub would just be added and work. Maybe the most complex might take some extra, but it sounded like the whole point was that *any* card, no matter how wonky, should be easy to add.
I am not much for the shiny ponies stuff either but I recognize that some people really love that stuff. I can't imagine Arena alienating anyone unless it is very bad. MTGO is still here, Paper is still here. People that enjoy the game will still enjoy it on those platforms.
Agree that losing MTGO and my collection would probably be a Bridge too Far. But that's doomsday talk. I don't want Arena to fail at the stated intentions for it (Listen to this week's LR podcast to hear Ryan talk about it.) If it does what he says WOTCs wants it to do, MTGO should prosper not be folded into it.
"When Planeswalkers enter the battlefield in MTG Arena , they speak a catch phrase. Also cool"
I'll probably come across as a grumpy geezer for this, but that's perhaps as far as possible from what I consider 'cool'.
I also have to admit Magic Arena (or at least what was revealed of it so far) doesn't do anything for me. I like Magic for the game it is, and I have zero interest in flashy graphics, sounds, and animations to go with it. By the same token, there's a chance that what drives people to Hearthstone streams is that game's simplicity, not graphics and animations.
I also couldn't care less about e-Spots, to be honest. Sometimes companies have to be smart and realize they're better off as the uncontested king of a niche than to try and confront the big boys. Trying to go toe-to-toe with Hearthstone, especially if my above comment about simplicity holds true, may lead Magic into a path which not only fails to capture big Twitch audiences, but also alienates the game's most hardcore user base.
That all said, I'm not as worried as I was before about MTGO going away, especially because I think Wizards will try their best to do right by MTGO players when it comes to transferring their current collections to a new program if the time ever comes. I guess this is the first time I'm actually glad the reserved list exists, as it shows that Wizards will go to great lenghts to honor their commitments to people who purchase their products.
If it turns out MTGO players are thrown under the bus on this one, then well, I'll quit the game. And I don't say this lightly - in fact, the mere prospect of quitting Magic has never ever been something I honestly considered, even when WotC made moves I strongly disagreed with. Losing thousands of dollars worth of cards will do the trick, though.
I ultimately hope Arena, at least in its current proposed incarnation, fails, and also hope that this failure leads them to make a program that's more sober than flashy, but that also fixes the inumerous shortcomings of Magic Online, including having multiplatform support. Not holding my breath, but a man can dream.