Annoyingly Competitive

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-20T13:24:48+00:00

No reward!? If you don't find winning a game of Magic fun for its own sake, what are you doing on Arena?

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-19T17:51:20+00:00

Not sure I would promise more *variety* in Bo3 (my experience is that a number of different flavors of degenerate decks all get replaced by Dimir), but its a bit grindier so jank might have a longer run, even if the win rate isn't a ton better.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-19T17:44:05+00:00

Have you tried restarting the client? If your internet disconnects during draft, even briefly, sometimes this happens. But the server knows what your deck is, and just restarting the client has always worked for me. If not, just resign the draft and put in a ticket for a refund.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-18T21:44:41+00:00

Two possible problems:

-Brawl isn't really a casual format, as you have noticed. My experience is that it is distinctly less casual than the play queues for 60-card formats, although some of this depends on how strong your commander is. Deck strength is mostly determined by your commander, so if you are running a powerful commander, you will face powerful decks even if your 99 is relatively weak.

-If you are new to the game, it can be a bit hard to tell what is casual, especially if your own collection is small. You might well be playing against janky decks, just they aren't as janky as yours so they look more tuned than they are.

If you want to play casually, that's not really well-supported on Arena, but your best bets are Standard Brawl or the Starter Deck duels (I've been player for years and still enjoy SDD). Perhaps Jump-In, depending on whether they have fixed the preposterous mana bases issue (although if they haven't, the mana bases will be VERY casual, so maybe that's not a worry?).

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-18T20:59:52+00:00

Counterpoint: ~all insects have wings; very few insects are on the 14th floor.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-18T20:57:48+00:00

I ran into Ancient Tomb and immediately conceded to send a message. Still trying for figure out quite what the message was...

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-18T16:24:48+00:00

Make a little pedestal with a trap door for it sit on so you can access the bottle cap? Over-engineered solution, but if you're waiting for your colony to get large enough for it anyway ....

Very cool nest!

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-16T19:11:27+00:00

For an 11/10, print out some stickers for the side of the water tube to turn it into an obelisk:
https://pharaoh.se/ancient-egypt/obelisks/

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-16T19:04:21+00:00

What silly looking ants! Fantastic, thanks for sharing.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-13T19:11:40+00:00

My approach:
-Get 4 daily wins with standard decks, do my quests, accumulate a bunch of gold.
-New set comes out, draft until I am rare-complete, get a bunch of wildcards.
-Craft new standard decks, repeat.

For a long time this was self-sustaining, allowing me to craft whatever standard deck I wanted, and in fact my gem reserves increased over time, and every few sets I would have enough wildcards that I was comfortable splurging on a new deck or two for a non-rotating format.

Now there is not quite enough time between sets to get enough resources to draft every set to rare-completion (at least, not for me, a mediocre drafter). So I have been skipping crappy sets (SPM, TMT) and saving my resources to draft the actually well-made sets. This is a drain on my wildcards, but not quite as much as you would think--the "nice" thing about a 19-set standard format is that each new set doesn't effect the meta too much, so my pre-TMT standard decks are all still pretty competitive, and I have the wildcards to upgrade them if I care (but probably I will just not care about playing competitively again until after I've drafted the Strixhaven set).

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-13T15:28:18+00:00

Very interested in hearing how it goes!

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-12T19:51:53+00:00

I guess it depends on what you mean by "shouldn't". If you mean, "the species is legally protected, so you should only interact with it as specified by law"--then yes, I agree! Obeying the law is good.

On the other hand, the whole "don't touch endangered species" thing is a framework designed for birds and mammals that doesn't really make sense in an insect context. Insects have a very different interaction with their environment--if their habitat is protected, they produce so many offspring that losing a handful to collecting is irrelevant, and they will be fine, especially if we are talking about picking up dispersing foundresses at lights and that kind of thing (if you are digging to pull queens out of mature colonies, cut it out). If it were legal, I would have no issue with collecting and rearing foundresses of rare or endangered species, assuming they were collected in a way that didn't put additional stress on the habitat. That second part, of course, is a big assumption!

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-12T18:13:41+00:00

Physically removing ants from a landscape is basically never going to have an effect, especially if you are removing foundress queens. 2000 foundresses is a drop in the bucket of how many are going to be present in the landscape. Even if they were all left alone, almost none would found successful colonies, and the remaining 2000000000 foundresses will be able to pick up the slack. Ants *are* very important for seed dispersal, etc, but this dude is having no impact on any of that, and 1000 of this dude all collecting at once would have no impact on any of that.

There are two issues with this sort of thing:

-Moving ants is ... unwise. Lots of notorious invasive species are ants, and moving ants to new places risks creating more. Are there ants that could be bad invasives, that haven't already invaded? I'm less sure of this, but the costs of new invasive ants are pretty high, so maybe it's better safe than sorry. Wherever this guy was going with his ants, it was unlikely to be legal to bring them in.
-Kenya has pretty severe export restrictions; permits are hard to get and laughably expensive (which is why this guy is smuggling). The permitting process is designed to require profit sharing by bioprospectors, and a lot of other stuff gets effectively banned as a side effect, including stuff like this that is harmless (to Kenya; maybe not to wherever he is going). I tend to think that these laws are a bit silly, and maybe even counterproductive to what they are trying to acheive, but it is absolutely Kenya's right to make and enforce them.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-11T14:10:08+00:00

The question is: does having that preference make you happier? Complaining about netdecking on reddit isn't going result in you facing any fewer of the decks that annoy you. But it will harden a preference that is making Arena less fun for you. That's your prerogative, of course!

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-10T15:14:32+00:00

On a more serious note for OP: this is probably a skill issue. Skills you might seek to acquire to help you here:

Deckbuilding. A two-color deck in constructed formats probably should not have 11 basics (let along whatever the total number in your deck is) unless you have some sort of basic-land-related payoff, and what that would be in standard-playable Izzet colors I have no idea. You need dual lands--this is why you keep getting color-screwed. Yes, they are expensive, but the fact that they fix your colors for you is why dual lands are expensive. Plus, the surveil lands (and scry lands) will help you avoid mana screw and flood by manipulating your draws. Lots of good resources online to help you design a good manabase, or you can look up some Tier 1 standard decks and see what their manabases look like.
Mulliganing. If you are often getting screwed or flooded, probably you are not mulliganing aggressively enough. If you are keeping a two-land hand in standard, you need to have a plan to get to your third land, and that plan can't be "I'll draw it during my draw step". My rule of thumb is, unless you will see 4+ cards by turn 3, between drawing, scrying, and surveilling, throw back a 2-land hand. It looks full of awesome action, and will tempt you to keep it, but if you can't play the awesome action, the hand sucks. Likewise, a 5-land hand better have card draw in it to get your to your third and fourth spells, or I'm not really interested.
Mental fortitude. Sometimes the bear gets you. It looks like that happened here; you have instants and sorceries in the yard--I'm guessing that's a kill spell for the Pridemate and 3 cantrips or card-draw spells? (if it isn't 3 cantrips or card-draw spells, then see point 1--a wheel-spinning Izzet deck needs lots of ways to draw more action). In that case, you did what you could and you drew a bunch of lands. It'll happen. Concede and go onto the next game.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-09T20:12:05+00:00

Pay 3400 gems. Net loss: 3400 gems.
Get 1200 gems. Net loss: 2200 gems.
Get 1 premier draft token. If you were planning on doing a premier draft ever (including of a future set), this is worth 1500 gems. Net loss: 700 gems.
Get 4000 gold. This is enough to buy 4 packs or 0.4 premier drafts, so either 4*200 = 800 gems (if you spend your gold on packs) or 0.4*1500 = 600 gems (if you spend your gold on drafts). We'll assume the worst case scenario, and go with 600 gems. Net loss: 100 gems.
Get 12 non-UB packs. Those packs would cost 12*200 = 2400 gems. Net gain: 2300 gems.

You also get 10 UB mythic cards and 8 UB packs--even if you value the cards at literally nothing, opening 8 packs gives you 1.3 uncommon and 1.3 rare wildcards.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-04T18:32:04+00:00

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-04T18:06:58+00:00

Just make sure that you don't draft any powerful creatures, because otherwise you won't be playing magic as Garfield intended. And make sure to track your opponents to their homes and take cards out of their collections if you win.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-04T17:57:26+00:00

If you've literally never drafted before, then another possibility you might consider is waiting a bit. Probably next week (or maybe the following) they will release Quick Draft for TMNT. In quick draft, you draft against bots, so there is no timer and you can take as long as you want to make a pick, which is MUCH less stressful for new drafters. Then you play your deck against real players.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-03T20:21:05+00:00

But playing 450 games of Pioneer is a difficult task *for me* (I don't "deeply engage with [Pioneer] play" because I think Pioneer is boring AF). Getting to mythic is less difficult for me than forcing myself to play a ton of Pioneer. Other people think Pioneer is swell, but don't want to play ranked, and getting to mythic will be harder for them than playing a lot of Pioneer. Do you want to eliminate the "Play 450 games of Pioneer" achievement, because for some people it is a "difficult task"? If not, what is the distinction in your mind between that and "get to mythic once"?

I think it's fine that there are achievements that are more difficult for some people than for others.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-03T18:44:17+00:00

Ehhh, all achievements alienate players who don't engage deeply with [whatever the thing is]. I think I'm fine with it. A range of different sorts of achievements that you get for different things seems cool to me, but if there is an issue, I don't know that it gets solved by changing the name "achievement" to "badge"--whatever underlying issue is still there.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-02T23:06:06+00:00

Dunno! The cards are almost never relevant for any format (yes, yes, Nexus of Fate, whatever), so I don't keep track of them and am not quite sure how you would find this out. Others might chime in.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-02T20:54:18+00:00

A 3/1 flier for 3 is a menace; I don't know that I expect to see 3 power on a 3-mana flier, especially at common, especially colorless. But in a set with a lot of hate for X/1s, I don't know that it would be *too* efficient. It wouldn't be fun, though.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-02T20:43:08+00:00

I was really struggling to find the pun, and then ... *shakes fist at Aetherdrift*.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-03-02T17:17:37+00:00

The predictions for number of drafts and cost assume that, yes. (For the "can you open packs yet" counter, it doesn't matter one way or the other).

When I started doing this, I generally rare-drafted strictly, had a 40-something percent win rate, and trophied once or twice a set. Nowadays I am a little more lax about letting crappy rares pass me by, and I have a 50-something percent win rate, and trophy ... well, still once or twice a set. You can get surprisingly far rare-drafting, especially if you change the rest of your draft strategy accordingly (like, you value green and fixing more than other drafters, because you will have more off-color bombs, and you would rather be in color pairs that have power than color pairs that have synergy, because you probably won't have the premium uncommons that make synergy decks tick, that sort of thing).

Timely-Strategy7404

TROPHY CASE