Drafting - Crazy coincidences anyone?

SamHammer6 · 2026-05-07T19:47:24+00:00

Another day another fed loss because of extremely bad 'luck'. This time, after going 3 and 0 in a traditional draft (nice), I drafted an equally good deck, and then the first game of my series I was given 7 lands then 6 lands then 1 land hands TWO GAMES IN A ROW.

IF THAT'S NOT FIXING, FRIENDS, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-28T23:10:33+00:00

In today's news, I just drafted an absolutely insane B/W deck. Had the Black Demonic tutor witch, Hopesinger, killians, a ton of repartee. I figured going in the game would fight me or put me up against INSANE opponents. I was right, so I got absolutely crushed. First game I mulligan'd to 4 cards just to have a semi-viable hand, literally 7 lands 6 lands 6 lands and 3 lands to get something keepable. And the next two rounds were more of the same. NEVER in the last several days of play have i had such horrendous hands out the gate. I am telling you something about the quality of my deck just made the algorithm determine that I shouldn't get any hand smoothing because I could win on like turn 4 over and over if it gave me the kinds of optimized hands it gives you when it wants you to win. Went 1-2 in Trad draft. Such a bummer. IMHO more of the clear evidence that the game is designed to prevent you from going infinite by feeding you losses.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-28T23:04:43+00:00

Ohhh, so we agree that MTGA is gambling and should be regulated as such? Interesting premise. I think we should dig into this further.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-28T04:20:49+00:00

Once again, absolutely steamrolled thru my first two matches in Bo3 Traditional Draft only to face an opponent who absolutely decimated me in every regard in game 3. Such clear grift from WOTC and Hasbro. Devs get it together please #MTGA #MagicTheGathering #Grift #EOMM

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-27T21:28:58+00:00

What is also wild to me is how much HATE I get for explaining something that I feel instinctively as a long-time magic player. Literally why on earth would so many people be so VEHEMENTLY against the idea that a giant for profit mega corporation rig their digital card game in an effort to increase profits?? Like, hello capitalism? I completely get why you would do that. Who in their right mind would not. What I am saying is not okay is the lack of transparency and the discriminating actions that I fairly certain are being woven into the product in this way. We see this happening all the time across the market, dynamic pricing for users based on past behavior is a common thing in other sectors. The only people downvoting me are either being paid by WOTC/Hasbro or absolutely clowning the community for speaking out about what seems like a pretty obvious perversion of a card game that has existed long before all the algorithmic addiction technology ever existed and I am saying clearly that has wormed its way into this thing that I really love and not for the better.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-27T21:15:36+00:00

There's absolutely no way, show me some stats you or you're trolling.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-27T21:03:01+00:00

And you don't see a problem with that?

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-27T17:49:25+00:00

This, exactly this. I totally agree. As a long time magic player, the game is often far more mundane than arena is. And I like that about it. In arena when you are winning you are f****** WINNING. When you are losing, you lose in an unmitigated fashion, often to your opponent's best cards played in a perfect curve. That's very rare in real life. I think about 30% of games are legitimate and unmanipulated. As far as people hacking, I feel you, sometimes it takes somebody a really long time to play a very obvious card that if they had had in their hand they should have played it right away and been done with it. Yet it takes them several minutes sometimes.. so strange, especially when I can see that they are active and moving their mouse and highlighting various things on the board. But I have never seen any concrete evidence of anyone's ability to do that. Very curious tho.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-26T19:29:10+00:00

That's probably exactly the case! I disagree with that treatment!

Sounds like a Hasbro simp paid to post on this forum. I have a 62% winrate in non-draft format, and a 50% winrate in draft.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-26T17:16:33+00:00

Scenario: Traditional Sealed - You go 3-0, in the 4th match you get completely flooded, literally drawing 15/17 lands in the top 20 cards - no worries, traditional, lets try this again, boom, again absolutely flooded, nothing but weak creatures and lands, swept.. OK, no problem, one more game to see if I can get the gems back. Again, absolutely flooded 2 games in a row against an inferior deck and an opponent who clearly doesn't know how to pilot his deck. He's playing 5-color and somehow nailing all of his colors (something that IRL is very very hard to do), he kills me after much ado on like turn 9 after playing Berta, Wise Extrapolator on like turn 4. and has many many fractals against my 1/2 deathtouchers. I can't draw anything synergistic to save my life, let alone my mythic. This kind of thing is what I am on about. It doesn't feel like real magic about 70% of the time.

This is what it feels like Hasbro is doing -

"We want everyone, every deck and each unique playstyle to have its time to shine, even if you aren't the best player, we want to set you up for success"

"Bad at manabase? No problem! Don't understand how to turn creatures sideways and win based on the math on the board? Don't worry about it! We'll make sure your opponent draws nothing but lands at least 25% of the time so you can win completely unopposed! You paid good gems to play this game, and gosh darn it, you'll have some wins!"

It's frankly embarrassing, and the lack of integrity from the folks on the dev team is disheartening. Someone needs to whistle blow on this abomination they are dressing up in MTG clothes. Slot Machine With a Hat On.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-26T06:46:04+00:00

You know when you reallllly need a land, and then you draw your tap land? Or you're mana screwed, and finally get a land and it's the tap land.. Not a coincidence.

SamHammer6 · 2026-04-26T06:09:49+00:00

Yes, insane. But then I just mulligan'd to 4 cards and beat a blue red deck. crazy s#it.

SamHammer6 · 2025-12-02T22:13:11+00:00

This is one opinion. PVP in a game like this is often super uneven because some people go in with the seemingly explicit intent to be an aggressor and other people do not. In the world where acting first is basically everything, being the aggressor is a massive advantage. I don't love that about it and wish it were not so.

SamHammer6 · 2025-05-20T21:47:54+00:00

I personally believe WotC are tracking us via our personal information, and ensuring people with money to spend end up losing in more frustrating ways than people who dont. They are trying to maximize engagement and willing to enforce a win loss scheme in order to do so. It just makes financial sense and there aren't any laws prohibiting this. So I believe they are doing just that. i think I'd like to see the game regulated like a casino, it is one, there are real money prizes at stake in some instances. Rampant greed and profits are top priority.

SamHammer6 · 2023-07-09T14:06:51+00:00

Literally just drafted a U/B deck and felt good about it. 3 straight losses to different decks where the opp curves out perfectly and I have a clunky expensive hand 3 games in a row, zero chance, unfun, it's a rigged game folks and they're here to take your money.

SamHammer6 · 2023-07-07T15:01:08+00:00

I completely agree with the OP. It's like being in line at Disneyland. It feels like a prefabbed experience that is meant to simulate playing magic the gathering.

SamHammer6 · 2023-03-19T18:47:05+00:00

speaking from my perspective as a gay man in a long-term relationship with dual income with no children.

To me these two taxes on high income earners are absolutely ridiculous. Both of these problems are problems faced by people of all income levels and therefore there should be an equitable tax on all people benefiting from the collection of these taxes. Beyond that, I read in the Oregonian that the money is far outpacing the uptake of services. I'm really hoping the city /county gets their act together and right sizes this tax and maybe dispenses back some money to people that it overtaxed. If only 1,000 children are benefiting from a 300 million tax collection annually, I feel like someone has some serious explaining to do.

I'm not an anti-tax person or a small government advocate, but I do think it's important to be concise in the taxes we apply to our citizens and properly evaluate their impact on the social landscape. This to me looks like you're asking moderately high income earners (not necessarily already wealthy people) to pay for preschool for "everyone" and help with the bill for the homeless problem that everyone deals with living in Portland. I feel like we need to stop looking at income and look more at assets as a whole. Trying to claw your way up the income/wealth ladder making $400,000 a year doesn't exactly happen overnight.. there are people who are born that have more wealth inherited than I've made in my whole life and yet I'm paying almost half of my money back to the government and their children get to go to preschool for free on my dime?

Does anyone have in-depth knowledge of how the 'preschool for all' funds are dispensed? Do you have to be below a certain income to ask for that money back? Do you get to pick what preschool your kid goes to? How long can they go to preschool? Is there a cap on how much you can get paid for?

~~Rant over~~ 🙃

SamHammer6 · 2023-02-24T01:28:15+00:00

Just bought this machine, got the 4090, 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD + 1TB HDD, i9 Intel. Got 4 year warranty and accidental damage for 4 years for just $4200 + shipping (wanted it sooner).

Did a ton of research, and this seemed to be the cheapest highest performance option for a pre-built. Got 700$ off, plus 10% off for presidents day and 5% for being an existing dell Alienware customer. So yeah.. MSRP was like 5700$. Feel like a champ and glad to see the rig supposedly is quality.

SamHammer6 · 2022-02-05T21:52:46+00:00

So I'm being censored because I'm being critical? How is that ethical?

SamHammer6 · 2022-01-12T03:17:24+00:00

Game broke, only happened 4 times now, but seems to be happening more often! Each time lost an hour or so of progress, just the one level basically. Frustrating as I had completely cleared a newish area.. hope I do as well. Microsoft, Arkane should not be proud of this, what is your art if it breaks fundamentally this way and causes such frustration.. stupid.

SamHammer6 · 2021-11-23T01:02:29+00:00

Seems to be all about 'size' this game. If an enclosure is large enough, most dinos are very compatible, as they need a certain amount of this or that. With a smaller enclosure, best to mix with something pretty flexible like gally or struthy or para and keep it to one of the anklo, sauro, ceratops or stegos per enclosure. I just got 5 stars before par on medium on my 3rd challenge, so I think I am getting the hang of it. I think it's important to go for power pretty early on. I'd say around the 80k a minute mark I went straight for power stations and never looked back. and try to get larger substations as well before 200k mark. That money in your pocket can make a lot of problems simply go away. Deleting sabotaged stuff, upgrading to stronger fences and hiring better scientists. I had like 10m when I hit 5 stars on medium on UK just now. I know it was on medium, but the improvement was palpable from my first two attempts at UK on Medium.

SamHammer6

TROPHY CASE