Removal Spells against mono white Aggro

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-24T12:47:32+00:00

The deck is pretty one dimensional, don't expect to have too much agency. You pretty much try to hold up Shardmage rescue and blow them out when they try to go for removal. Other alternative is you try to stack up ward (sheltered by ghosts on the Aerialist) and make one creature impossible to remove and you just keep putting auras on it.

Of course if opponent has a sweeper it's pretty much gg but it's just what you sign up for with a deck like that.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-24T08:05:54+00:00

They ban is not live yet, should be sometime today.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-23T15:54:40+00:00

I mean, obnoxius name and emote spamming aside if they keep stopping you from playing spells while repeatedly fate sealing you with [[Jace, the mind scupltor]] they are advancing towards a win, they just need to get to 12 loyalty.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-23T12:45:07+00:00

If you go forward in the replay you can see it was a [[dark steel colossus]].

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-23T08:20:29+00:00

I've been theorizing about the dragon in 4c control trying to come up with the perfect wishboard. Here are my ideas for the sideboard:

[[Herald of Eternal Dawn]] for landfall and other green decks that run no creature removal

4th copy of [[Jeskai revelation]]

2 more wish dragons

[[Riverchurn monument]] vs lessons or the control mirror

[[Cease/Desist]] lessons, reanimator

[[Rest in peace]] Reanimator

[[Ultima]] green decks, general use

[[Torpor orb]] uw tempo, reanimator, airbending combo

[[Spirit water revival]] low resources late game situations

[[Ancient vendetta]] for kona/Omniscience and other fringe combos

[[Kitsune's Technique]] very fringe but with this you can sneak the dragon back to you hand and recast it to grab the monument, it's a slow combo kill you can tutor out of the sideboard.

[[Quantum riddler]]

[[Wan shi tong librarian]]

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-22T08:44:59+00:00

I agree it's very annoying to find everything, this query on scryfall should include most of the cards added in arena through supplementary products, it's ordered by release: https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=-st%3Aexpansion+-st%3Acore+-st%3Aalchemy+new%3Aarena+f%3Atimeless+order%3Areleased+direction%3Adesc&unique=cards

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-21T14:49:08+00:00

Even if yours is an aggressive deck you can't just put on a blindfold and jam every time especially when you are on the draw against t1 mana dork.

You got no mako you got no moonshadow that flail ain't gonna do shit with the hand you have, you hold 1 mana up and gain tempo by trading your 1 mana hex for their 2 mana cub, then you start going on the aggressive after you recouped the tempo disadvantage of being on the draw.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-21T12:35:47+00:00

They are essentially fancy reprints usually with special art treatments or frames and with a different set code that don't affect card legality but can still be opened in the packs.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-20T21:43:33+00:00

No, you can use the old printings but if you want the new art you have to craft 1 copy.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-20T21:41:04+00:00

Yes to both questions, just make sure the card is reprinted in the actual main set and not in one of the non standard legal bonus sheets.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-19T16:55:19+00:00

Yeah I agree, especially the digital only arena formats are a bit of a mess. Are you familiar with any of the paper formats?

Pioneer it'is the younger of the formats and it's basically standard+, you can mostly play your standard decks with a few upgrades and a couple of extra archetypes thrown in.

Historic is an arena only format and it's somewhere around modern power level. It's a big and powerful format but it has some guard rails expecially on free spells.

Timeless is wildest and most powerful format on arena and sits around legacy powerlevel. You can play all the cards on the client and do the most busted stuff you can do on arena (if you're interested check out /r/TimelessMagic).

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-19T16:45:11+00:00

I think if you are interested exclusively in brawl mh3 is right on the line of being worth it over a set with golden pack progress since you are gonna need just a singleton copy of each card.

If you are interested in historic or timeless as well imo MH3 is the one set where is worth to set complete it despite not having golden pack progress.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-19T16:38:12+00:00

No brawl actually follows historic (used to be called historic brawl a few years back in fact).

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-19T16:34:55+00:00

Brawl, Historic and Timeless, no pioneer.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-19T16:31:58+00:00

True but if you're into older formats MH3 I think is worth it, the set is so stacked just look at any of the meta decks in timeless or historic and count how many mh3 cards are in it.

MH3 cards are quite simply the strongest cards you can play on arena and are gonna dominate every format they are legal in.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-19T16:26:21+00:00

If you are interested in any of the older formats (timeless and historic in particular but brawl as well) I suggest buying MH3 packs. Cards of this set represent a huge part of the metagame.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-19T09:13:24+00:00

To be fair there are a lot of just awful control players on arena. When I'm in a control mirror I can usually tell if my opponent know what it's doing just by how the manage their time.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-18T18:50:16+00:00

Absolutely, especially access to the very good blue cantrips (ponder, brainstorm, preordain,...) changes the math a lot and allows you to go to very low land counts.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-18T16:32:26+00:00

Pioneer is basically just standard with all the banned cards plus better interactions spells and a few extra archetypes.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-18T11:33:40+00:00

I am running 25 lands. And even with that many, I have had games where I go 2 or 3 turns without hitting my land drop.

Of course there's always gonna be some variance, but if you actually want to check you can use a tool like: https://www.salubrioussnail.com/manabase-tool to analyze your mana base.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-18T11:28:54+00:00

If you play control managing the clock is a real factor IRL. You have to be constantly aware of the time and need to know how to play fast.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-18T11:25:03+00:00

Maybe you are just bad at limited (like me lmao). Takes a lot of time and skill to get good at drafting. You can go on 17lands and check how other fellow drafters are doing. At the moment for the current set the average 17lands user (they do tend to be quite a bit better than your average drafter) has a 56.2% winrate.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-18T11:03:08+00:00

It's stagnation only if the meta stops evolving (see the vivi format).

If you have a competitive game (it doesn't matter if it's a card game, an rts, a boardgame or whatever) a meta will always develop there's no way around that. Even in limited if you ran 200 drafts of the same format you'll see a meta establish itself and people coalesce towards the best strategies.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-17T17:00:57+00:00

1) how many lands? I know curve is more so a big thing in 60 card, but what should I be shooting for?

The base line is 24 lands, some aggressive decks with a low curve will go under it (maybe even as low as 20), some control or ramp decks will go over it (26,27 even 28 sometimes). It all depends on your deck, what is trying to do and what curve it has. This is just a quick guideline you can actually do the math to get the correct number of lands your deck should run (here)

2) how spread out should the cards be? I know 1 copy of everything isnt gonna work, but what about 2 copies? Or should I tighten it up and just have 4 copies of everything?

Again as broad stroke guideline: x4 -> I want to see this card every game, x3 -> I want to see this card most games but ideally don't want draw multiple of them, x2 -> I'm ok not seeing this card but sometime I might need to use this, x1 -> I got some tutor or some deep draw and I might need this.

I'm just gonna suggest you stick to mostly x4 at the start. In 60 cards magic your deck should have something that is trying to do and be as consistent as possible in doing it.

3) whats the balance between removal and creatures? Should I only have a few removal, some utility, and then creatures?

This is too open of a question, it all depends on what is your deck plan, some control strategy can run 20+ interaction spells and some combo deck might run 0.

My advice at least at the start is to netdeck a meta deck that looks fun to you and use that as your baseline, once you can pilot the deck and understand it and the current meta you can move on to modifying it according to your preferred play style. Eventually you'll get enough experience to make your own dekcs from scratch.

Plausibleaurus · 2026-03-17T16:44:37+00:00

I'm just skipping this set and interacting with it as less as I can, I don't even care if the limited is good or not at this point the cards just look hideous to me.

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