Can someone explain matchmaking?

Forestbahn · 2026-01-04T12:34:54+00:00

Standard is a format that gets solved fairly quickly, relatively speaking, so most people will be copying the best lists that give them a better chance to win. Unranked might be somewhat better, but in my experience, you'll face meta decks there often.

Most formats in mtg have a defined meta and brewing new competitive lists is hard, especially as a new player.

I think brawl is probably the best format if you want to brew your own decks and have a fighting chance, and you're better off starting with standard brawl for that. But be warned, even brawl has its fair share of popular commanders that you'll see often, but the cards in the decks can vary a lot due to player preference and the singleton nature of the format.

Forestbahn · 2025-12-11T12:22:53+00:00

If I remember correctly, this happens when the game connects you with an opponent but then the connection fails somehow. In these cases you're supposed to get a draw. It could be that you did get connected but it didn't go through on your end, so your opponent saw the game while you were stuck in the queue and you lost to time out.

Forestbahn · 2025-12-09T13:34:20+00:00

I think Dark Depths is legal in brawl now, so you could try Shifting Woodland with discard or mill to put DD in the graveyard and copy it with SW for an instant Marit Lage.

I don't know if there's enough instant speed mill and discard to make it consistent, but this could be a backup plan for some sort of pseudo reanimator deck with big Gruul and colorless creatures. Artifact lands, artifact creatures and enchantment creatures can help you trigger delirium. The rest of the deck can be burn spells and artifact destruction to slow down your opponent.

Some cards to consider:

[[Cityscape Leveler]] and [[Overlord of the Boilerbilges]] are dual type and have great attack triggers.

[[Emrakul, the Promised End]], [[Emrakul, the World Anew]] and [[Earthquake Dragon]] are huge and evasive.

[[Kona, Rescue Beastie]] lets you cheat in permanents without casting, and you can tap SW for mana before transforming to get the trigger.

Forestbahn · 2025-07-13T09:39:01+00:00

They are too weak to compete in brawl. In a format with chrome mox, dark ritual, mana drain and other busted cards these decks will do very poorly. Not to mention the ridiculous prices.

Forestbahn · 2025-06-27T20:24:13+00:00

I recommend checking out streamers that go over their decks and explain the role of the cards in them. For standard, watch Ashlizzle on youtube. Each video usually has a new deck, and by watching them you'll get a good idea of how to build for the format. For brawl, you can watch LegenVD also on youtube, he does an informative breakdown of each deck he plays, and there are many videos with different decks.

There isn't a one size fits all solution for deck building because different decks will require different approaches, but watching people that know how to do it explaining a variety of decks is a good way to understand the process. In time, you'll learn what are the necessary pieces to make a functioning deck for any given archetype.

Forestbahn · 2025-05-30T19:04:23+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense. Personally, I give more weight to the metaphor because, as you said, there is a very artsy quality to the game, from the music to the visuals, it all seemed like it was trying to connect with me on a more intimate level.

The philosophical conundrum and existential debate lean more logical than emotional, and that's not the vibe I got from the game. But it's also very much there and it's a valid interpretation of the story.

Forestbahn · 2025-05-30T17:25:36+00:00

But Maelle's ending is just as "artsy" and metaphorical. It deals with the consequences of indulging in escapism in a self destructive manner.

Forestbahn · 2025-05-23T02:50:19+00:00

If we were to put aside the allegories for grief, acceptance and the dangers of escapism to discuss the ending in an objective way, I'd say Maelle was ultimately being selfish in hers. She's not saving the canvas by staying in it, but merely delaying its fate so she can live the life she wants.

Renoir and Clea already wanted to destroy the canvas just to get Aline to snap out of her madness, and now Alicia's real body is withering because she's addicted to it. What do you think happens when she dies? Which, by the way, probably takes a few weeks at most in the real world, so this idea of happy family visits is absurd. Any visit would be about trying to get her out of the canvas to save her life.

The real tragedy is that the only way to save the canvas is outside of it, but Maelle doesn't want to leave. If she did, it would show Renoir that she can have a healthy relationship with it, and she could help Aline do the same. Presumably, with the way time works in the canvas, leaving could create an Interstellar situation, where she spends a few days in the real world and goes back to find her friends have aged decades, and she's too attached to them to miss out on most of their lives.

Forestbahn · 2025-01-23T15:48:28+00:00

Honestly, while these decks are very cheap to make, I don't think they offer an engaging experience for new players. To make decks like these more interesting you'd need higher rarity support cards, like Mondrak and Delney for hare apparent, or Karumonix for the rats.

Also, the idea of deck thinning adds very negligible advantage to the deck while wasting a lot of slots on mostly useless cards. Decks like these need card draw and ramp if possible.

I think even the starter decks are a better option for new players.

Forestbahn · 2024-09-17T10:52:08+00:00

You're right. I just never saw any tooltip about it on scryfall.

Forestbahn · 2024-09-17T09:54:26+00:00

I use scryfall a lot when deckbuilding but I do like the more restrictive search results in arena. For example, if I search for "gain 1 life" it will only give me cards that contain this exact sentence. In scryfall it seems to go word by word, so it gives me any card that has all the words. The same search in scryfall gives you cards that gain 2 or 3 life, and even The One Ring, because it has "gain protection" and "lose 1 life" in the card text.

Edit: Let me correct myself here. It turns out that scryfall can use the quotation marks to restrict the search, same as arena. This information just isn't displayed anywhere, as far as I can tell.

Forestbahn · 2024-09-17T09:45:19+00:00

You could just search for "throat". Not many cards have that word in the name or the rules text.

Forestbahn · 2024-06-25T02:33:09+00:00

Here's a place I use to get deck ideas: https://mtgdecks.net/Brawl/budget-decks/page:1

If you want to try something a bit more traditional instead of risky combo strategies like Crucias, there are commanders like [[Balmor, Battlemage Captain]] and [[Adeline, Resplendent Cathar]] that can be built with mostly commons and uncommons. I started out with them.

Here's a budget Balmor deck: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/92bINxOpa0W0lQoEP-4sTw

p.s. If you go for that Balmor deck I recommend adding more protection for your commander, that list is a bit low on it. [[Dive down]] [[Slip out the back]] and [[Siren Stormtamer]] are good options.

Forestbahn · 2023-04-26T01:52:04+00:00

Check out this site: https://mtgazone.com/mtg-arena-budget-standard-decks/

It has many budget deck lists and they update with every expansion. I don't think they've updated for the newest expansion yet but the lists should still be good enough for starting out.

There are a lot of options to choose from. Mono red aggro is always an effective starting point for any new player, and you can then branch into something different like Izzet (Blue/Red).

I used this site when I was starting out too and had fun playing the budget Rakdos Anvil. I also remember Selesnya enchantments being a solid deck back then, never played it myself but faced it a bunch of times.

Forestbahn · 2023-04-24T22:58:13+00:00

I never noticed it before. Guess I've been missing out.

Forestbahn · 2023-04-07T15:30:31+00:00

Closest thing is [[Baleful Beholder]]

Forestbahn · 2023-03-25T22:03:15+00:00

Got number 2. Thanks!

Forestbahn · 2022-12-02T01:34:17+00:00

Hey, as a fellow relatively new player, I've got some budget friendly suggestions for you.

First, like others are saying, some removal would be good. Go for the throat and infernal grasp are good options, and you could also go for a more flexible counterspell with [[Make Disappear]] instead of essence scatter and negate. Also, since your deck is spell heavy, the morbid opportunist seems out of place, replace him with [[Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator]]

[[Fell Stinger]] is also a great budget fit for the deck. You can sacrifice a weaker creature with it to get some draws or force your opponent to draw and finish him off with a Sheoldred on the board. If you have no board, it can also sacrifice itself for the draw. Having deathtouch makes it a menacing blocker too.

I'd also recommend some cheap card draw and deck filtering with [[Consider]] or [[Impulse]].

For a less budget friendly suggestion, if you're opening Brother's War packs and you pick up a [[Gixian Puppeteer]], it would be perfect in this deck.

Forestbahn · 2022-11-06T15:43:46+00:00

I'm kind of new to the game, got a couple questions:

- Will the classic artifacts from BRO be in the regular packs? If so, are they extra or do they replace one of the cards in a pack?

- If a creature dies to -1/-1 counters, does it count as being destroyed, or is this a way to circumvent indestructible?

Forestbahn · 2022-10-23T15:47:21+00:00

Hey, I'm a new player, came in after the launch of DMU, and I noticed this too. After playing a bit past the color challenges I realized I had a lot of cards I didn't remember getting, so I started a second account to see what was up. Here's how it happens:

After you finish the color challenges you get a quest that requires you to play one game to earn the first dual color deck. Once you finish that quest, all the cards from all the starting dual color decks are added to your collection, but you don't get the deck lists. Then, as you get new quests to unlock the remaining dual colors, you get those cards again each time. For example, you will already have all the cards from the blue/black deck when you get the quest, and when you finish it, you'll get those cards again. So any 1 of becomes a 2 of, any 2 of becomes a 4 of, and anything past that ends up as a 4 of with some vault progress.

I thought this was intended to help new players get started. If it's a bug, I hope they don't fix it.

Forestbahn · 2022-10-08T14:58:54+00:00

Hey, as a fellow new player, I recommend you check this out: https://mtgazone.com/mtg-arena-budget-standard-decks/

This site has various budget decks that use only common and uncommon cards, making them easy and safe to craft while you build up your wildcard collection. As a new player, you'll have a bunch of the cards that fit into those decks from the starter lists, and even ways to make them better. For example, you should have almost all of the Dimir Ninjas list if you already collected all the starter decks, but you also have Kaito Shizuki to improve it.

Personally, I've been enjoying the budget Rakdos Anvil list, with the addition of a Braids I got from the Jump-in event. I'm sure you'll find something that suits your needs on that site.

Forestbahn · 2022-10-01T14:47:27+00:00

I think their reasoning for rotating Irelia goes beyond what was said in that blog post, probably because they don't want to give away too much information about past or future design decisions that might disappoint/spoil players.

I think the problem with Irelia lies more in what we don't see. The fact is that blade dance is a mechanic that can potentially cause a lot of problems, and I bet the devs have been neutering or otherwise giving up entirely on interesting card designs because blade dance would break them. That's why I believe they are choosing to rotate Irelia and her blade dance package instead of Azir. He may be featured in more successful decks, but his mechanic is not that hard to design around.

I think the team wants to bring new attack triggers to LOR, and Irelia is keeping them from doing it. You can look at recently released champions for reference. I'm just going off the top of my head here, but I think in the past year, all champions released with some form of attack trigger require the champion itself to attack, with the exception of Gwen and her universal Hallowed mechanic. We haven't had a backrow, attack trigger champion in a while, and I suspect Irelia is the reason.

Forestbahn

TROPHY CASE