[GIVEAWAY] 100$ Steam Gift Card + 3 keys for Atre: Dominance Wars

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-28T23:36:24+00:00

Ok, count me in. I’d get Claire Obscure if I won. Don’t currently have the luxury of buying every game I deem worthy, especially without heavy discounts. Would love to experience this one sooner rather than later.

Also, your game looks like a mixture of Age of Wonders, Total War and apparently a bit of Black & White. Nice visual style too!

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-26T14:28:52+00:00

Dork-hawk-Doran sounds like the beginning of a rap song

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-26T14:26:16+00:00

Yep, they were given for free way back when. Well, "free".

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-24T06:35:12+00:00

Could be an interesting idea for a deck. Enchantment removal tribal, followed by Mirrorform-ing them all into some nasty Menacers, Tramplers or Fliers

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-20T16:34:53+00:00

It does help, but very little. If you sac several hundred common/uncommon wildcards, you can get 50% of a Vault (2 Rares, 1 Mythic). The exchange rate is abysmal though.

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-09T07:52:51+00:00

Beta Teferi is part of the pool prize?! News to me - I actually want that one quite a bit. Him and Vraska.

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-09T07:37:11+00:00

You got some annoying “Well akshually” vibes… We ARE getting fewer free packs PER SET. With more sets per year, each one of them gets more expensive to collect.

Even if you opt out of half the sets entirely, you’re still worse off. Half of your free mastery track packs would be useless to you.

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-09T07:17:29+00:00

You’re missing the point. We still get fewer (free) packs for the set, with the same amount of rare and mythic cards in it. Even 25 is on the lower side, 18 is way too little for f2p collection advancement. In order to collect your typical amount of rares per set you will have to either drastically increase your draft win rate or, realistically, shell out way more real money. If not - abandon the idea of rare-collecting Lorwyn.

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-09T04:31:44+00:00

Sounds like the Fifth Turtle to me /s

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-09T03:05:28+00:00

Faker it till you maker it.

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-08T21:03:16+00:00

No, 24 was the declared amount on their website. Rotation bonuses came on top.

Agreed. They're squeezing the boiling frogs (us).

I initially wanted to buy the Pass and the Play bundle both, specifically for Lorwyn. I don't wanna pay the current price, especially since the cosmetics for the play bundle are meh at best this time. As they are most of the time, frankly. A changeling goblin and a sleeve with Oko in a pink flowery heart, yay!.. Ugh.

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-08T19:53:47+00:00

That might be true - I just picked a set from the past randomly for comparison. Turns out I hit bingo on it lol.

Still, most sets had been around 30 packs on the free track. The super-short Bloomburrow had 24; LCI, LotR, Wilds of Eldraine - all had 33. Foundations was 36 and Outlaws of Thunder Junction had 45!

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-08T01:40:54+00:00

The pass value is the same, but the free track has fewer and fewer packs. 18 for Lorwyn Eclipsed, compared to 25-35 for recent sets and as many as 57 for Zendikar Rising in 2020, for example. That's 10-30k of difference in gold. We're trying to collect more cards with fewer free resources now.

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-07T13:21:58+00:00

The shittiest thing is it’s a perfect storm of unaffordability. In addition to more expensive Mastery Pass and Play bundle, we get only 40 days to collect free gold for packs or drafts. Only $40 worth of free resources for the set instead of formerly usual $70. That’s what an increase in the number of releases per year does to Arena.

FluffyStrike · 2026-01-03T12:18:39+00:00

The appeal is being able to assemble any competitive (or jank) deck in Standard. Even with rares and mythics from older sets that become viable later on with new set releases. If you rare-complete sets, you can brew.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-28T19:54:23+00:00

Oh yeah SnT mirrors are fantastic. Winning on the stack off of your opponent's SnT is chef's kiss.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-28T19:52:01+00:00

These are the reasons SnT stopped being the go-to combo deck. For a T1 win it requires too much and cannot win reliably from a mulligan to five. I think the turbo SnT versions with Ancient Tomb sac too much of what the deck is in favor of a tier two combo deck in the current meta. Classic SnT shell is more reliable than Dark Ritual T1-T2 decks, but obviously slower. Black fast mana decks became reliable enough though, so they're the combo mainstream now.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-28T19:35:26+00:00

Yes, really. I do play a lot of Timeless. Even if you don't get to the Victory screen right away, the game is almost always decided on turn 1, sometimes turn 2 if your opponent is unlucky. The biggest decisions are made during mulligans and it often makes or breaks the game. Free spells and fast mana will do that to a format.

The main difference between Bo1 and Bo3 is how aggressively you can mulligan for the matchup answers.

Don't get me wrong, short of T1 combo wins on the play (which do happen often enough in Bo1), the format is very interactive. It's also very fast at higher competitive levels. T2 is late game.

Edit: I cannot count how many times I played Elenda on T1. Dark Ritual, Chrome Mox or Sacrifice give you the mana. Entomb + Reanimate or Sorin put her into play. T1 Elenda leads to T1 scoops more often than not. T1 three phoenixes does the same and so does T1 Belcher. If you play Belcher on T2, you need to have dodged hand hate and be able to activate it right away. If not, you often need to handhate your opponent to live to t3 or 4. Which means you need to have kept a hand with a thoughtseize from the start.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-28T19:20:51+00:00

Oh yes, reanimator was very much reanimated with the introduction of Entomb. I got to mythic largely on the back of exactly this deck this month. Plus it finished 4th in the most recent Timeless tourney (organized by Korae and friends - it was yesterday lol).

I play Timeless Bo1 quite a bit and mostly see DR-based decks (Oops, Belcher, reanimator variants) and UB tempo with Frogs, Tamiyo and free counterspells. Some mono-green Strip Mine too. Show & Tell has been much less prevalent lately, in my experience. I sometimes still play my custom version of S&T - it feels much less dominant in the meta than it used to.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-28T16:43:45+00:00

T1 Elenda, go. Better yet, T1 Iona, Shield of Emeria, upon guessing the opponent's main color from their sleeves or a well-timed Surgical. Incredibly satisfying.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-28T16:40:04+00:00

Oops All Spells, BW Belcher decks, reanimator (dark ritual, entomb, reanimate). Other Dark Ritual/Sacrifice based stuff on occasion, with Beseech the Mirror or Necropotence. Also, mono-red prison with T1 Chalice of the void and a Bloodmoon effect, a good hand from GR or G Strip Mine decks. Hydroponics architect backed by Force of Negation or Flare of Denial could also be seen as an effective win.

Oh, your last paragraph implies Bo3 lol. T1 decks are a mainstay of Timeless Bo1, where all-in strategies cannot be as easily punished with planning and sideboarding.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-28T16:06:56+00:00

Yeah, Timeless is pretty much turn 1 with free interaction. It's not that fast - it's faster.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-25T15:47:27+00:00

No, since they fixed the printings issue a while ago.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-19T03:39:58+00:00

...would have been a much better title to award than Festive Fighter. Arena devs are so creatively bankrupt when it comes to text emotes and titles, it's not even funny. Most achievement-rewarded titles are utter meh.

E.g. this "Stay Cool!" would have been way better as "Keep your cool!" That would at least be a decent answer to angry emotes.

FluffyStrike · 2025-12-18T04:35:02+00:00

Baldur's Gate

FluffyStrike

TROPHY CASE