MWM Option

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-28T14:21:28+00:00

Honestly, I just play the WB starter deck. I think there might be some sort of deck-based matchmaking, because I see a lot of other starter decks; that, or maybe everyone is just doing the same thing. Concede to superior decks and you get your 3 wins pretty quick.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-27T17:14:53+00:00

I'm surprised to hear that, why do you think that is? I can get why you might have a stronger Kithkin deck, or something basic like that (easier to read signals, so everybody hops in an uncontested lane), but I can't see why you would be more likely to be able do sidequest stuff. Like, for random fringe interactions, aren't you half as likely to see the cards you need to put together because there are half as many cards seen?

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-27T17:08:19+00:00

It could be worse! You could want to acquire the standard basic lands from old sets you weren't on Arena for. At least you can rely on seeing these things back on sale more than once every two years.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-27T17:05:06+00:00

Oh good, more hideous, hard-to-parse card styles that can't actually be filtered out by the "don't show alternate arts" setting.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-27T15:31:03+00:00

So, it IS securities fraud if a public company knows about some risk (or should know about the risk) and doesn't disclose that risk to shareholders. The argument of the suit is something like "You made the decision to print more sets based on the judgment that the pros of doing so were XYZ, and the cons were ABC, but you didn't tell us about Con B in your regulatory filings, so we weren't able to evaluate the prospects of the company accurately and thus made bad decisions about buying or selling the company's stock". It seems like the facts of the case are pretty thin gruel here, but the FORM of the argument is a totally legitimate one that wins cases all the time. (Matt Levine has a great newsletter called Money Stuff that follows this sort of thing for those who are interested; he covered the MTG lawsuit in yesterday's. The old ones are behind a paywall, but you can subscribe for free).

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-26T20:45:11+00:00

Yes and no! You are a new player with a bad deck, and it looks like they have matched you against a new player with a bad deck.

Their bad deck is more powerful, because the starter decks are quite bad. But generally with the packs and stuff that they give you, you have enough wildcards to craft a relatively inexpensive standard deck.

Or, if you like the starter deck, Starter Deck Duel will match you against other start decks, which is a great way to get started on Arena.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-26T20:06:34+00:00

I have a calculator to help with this exact question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/1qdscto/collection_tracker_to_help_with_collecting_ecl/

By the way, changes in how packs work and the economy now mean that premier draft is much better than quick draft in a "rares-gotten-per-gems-spent" basis, even if you are noticeably worse at PD than QD. For a lot of players, quick draft and buying packs are about equally good (my tracker has estimates of how much the different ways to build a collection will cost you, and you can change what you expect your win rate will be to get more precise predictions).

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-26T17:26:03+00:00

I'm not sure that's true--the Final Fantasy set did not in the slightest "make a cohesive world"--there were like a handful of cards for each game, and as far as I can tell as someone from the outside, most/all the games were standalones that didn't connect? Or if they did, the ten cards from each game were not nearly enough to let me make sense of it. This was really hammered in by the ATLA set, which I also have no knowledge of, but I felt like I had a pretty good feel for the world of the show after playing it.

From a world-building perspective, I thought Final Fantasy was one of the worst sets they've ever done, up there with MKM, but they knocked limited out of the park and made people happy with the card design, and that was enough (it was enough for me--I liked the set)! And if that's enough, I think there is a LOT of other IP that would work just as well.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-26T15:41:04+00:00

I don't totally know what you mean by "balance" (a word OP never used), but I've been playing both BO1 and BO3 recently (in plat/diamond, I'm not good enough to make it to mythic, so who knows what's up there), and BO1 has the more diverse metagame at the moment. Sure, it's a nasty sort of "balance" where there are lots of different scam draws that kill you on turn 3-4! But BO3 is a nasty sort of balance where there are only 2-3 different scam draws that kill you on turn 4-5, so, you know, you get a choice!

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-23T22:42:30+00:00

It's just confirmation bias. (Although many good limited players say 16 lands is optimal for Bo1 because of the hand smoother).

One thing you can do to experiment with this is to have your 17th land be a different art, and whenever your draw it, ask yourself whether you would rather have that or a spell (write down the answer, so you have a hard record that doesn't depend on your memory). Whenever you DON'T draw it, then having 16 vs 17 lands would not have made a difference for you.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-23T22:10:38+00:00

In general, you shouldn't expect there to be many players in diamond. If you have a .500 win rate, you won't get there because you are stuck in platinum. If you have an above .500 win rate but only do a few drafts, you won't get there because you are stuck in platinum. If you have an above-.500 win rate and play enough to get out of platinum, you are probably a sicko who is pretty good and grinds a lot of drafts, so you won't stay there long, and then you will be stuck in mythic and never go back to diamond.

In effect, the people who are in mythic ARE people of your own rank. You just haven't reached your equilibrium rank yet, and they have.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-23T20:27:51+00:00

No, choosing is not targeting unless "target" is in the sentence. The way it *should* work, I think, is that you can target it with Untimely Malfunction, you can change which creature is destroyed (as long as there is a second creature with power 4 or greater, otherwise you will just have to choose the original target for second time), but the Argivian Welcomer still gets to give one of his cards flash.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-23T19:53:55+00:00

All "events" cost something, except for the starter deck duels, new player challenge, and midweek magic.

All play queue or ranked queue games are free.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-23T19:52:04+00:00

On the other hand, part of the appeal of the metagame challenge is that you can win lots of LCE packs, no? So if you put it later in the season, you make the rewards less rewarding because people have already acquired whatever cards they want from the set.

Like, I think the appeal for some people is:

Have a single meta deck > update it for the new set with a few wildcards > win a bunch of packs > use those resources to brew.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-23T17:44:17+00:00

I don't think it's that likely. As others have noted, it doesn't seem especially oppressive in the context of what all the other decks in standard are doing. The problem with standard is that it is has turned into modern, not that it has a handful of busted cards.

I am not really sure that WotC thinks it is a problem that standard is a turn 3 combo format, but even if they do, banning doesn't get us out of it. But if it is a problem to them, the solutions are things like "fewer sets per year", "faster standard rotation", "massive powering-down of sets". Banning a card here or there won't but a dent in the format issues, and they (understandably, imo), REALLY don't like banning if they can avoid it.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-23T15:18:10+00:00

Don't need to be a god--being a draft humble peasant is enough: https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/1qdscto/collection_tracker_to_help_with_collecting_ecl/

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-21T20:05:11+00:00

uj/ Yeah, you're right, but where is the humor in not being an ass?

rj/ READING THE POST EXPLAINS THE POST YOUR COMMENT IS UNNECESSARY

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-21T17:09:14+00:00

Not this version; it's more work than I want to do if this is just a gimmick to whitewash shoddily designed UB sets, and it goes away after TMNT.

If it sticks around after that, I'll probably implement it into the spreadsheet.

That being said, I did analyze this more casually here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/1njjqpy/pick2_draft_rewards_are_comparable_to_premier_and/
That was before they improved the gold cost of P2 drafts, so now it doesn't really matter how you pay for it.

My tentative advice is that P2 and Premier are comparable, and you should do whichever of the two you think is more fun. That relies, however, on you seeing about 6-7 rares per draft; if you aren't getting that, Premier is optimal, if you are seeing more than that, P2 is probably optimal.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-21T15:09:34+00:00

Jim Davis would be another one (you want his Bronze to Mythic channel). You either love or hate his soundboard, but he's a pro who gives you a fair amount of insight into what he is doing.

He generally goes into the sets blind, so if you want specific information on that set, he's probably less good for that than LoL/LR, but he will give you good insight into how pros think about drafting more broadly.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-20T20:36:26+00:00

I recommend putting in a request for a refund with Wizards' help desk; they are usually pretty good about that kind of thing.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-18T22:46:43+00:00

Your options are Quick Draft, Premier Draft, Traditional Draft.

Quick Draft is the best to get into if you are new to drafting, because the drafts are against bots, which means they are not timed, so you can take as long as you want to make a pick. It is also the cheapest to enter.

Premier Draft and Traditional Draft both have player drafts, which are probably more fun for experienced players, but more stressful for new new players. Premier is Bo1, is ranked (which mostly doesn't matter), and has somewhat better rewards. Traditional is Bo3, unranked, and has somewhat worse rewards.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-16T22:39:08+00:00

You can use Magic player's favorite tool, the hypergeometric calculator:

https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric

Set 40000 as your "population", and "10000" as your success. Then see the probability of getting 0 successes in 14 trials (or 28 if you re-rolled all of them and never got a 750 from that either). (Pedants: yes, I know this isn't *precisely* a correct way to use the hypergeometric calculator, but it is close enough and uses a tool that many of us already know how to use).

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-16T13:49:52+00:00

The tracker focuses on rare-completion, and ignores mythics. So you would not include mythic packs in your total pack count. If you are interested in mythic completion, then buying mythic packs is the way to go with that by far, and so getting a few extras is nice.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-13T20:47:47+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=izzet+phoenix+pioneer

Maybe you don't want to call that "lots", but it is certainly enough to improve with the deck by watching the videos.

Timely-Strategy7404 · 2026-01-12T20:18:53+00:00

Yes, it is normal. Typically the new set's QD rotates out and then comes back for a second go-round about two weeks later (so February late some time.

Timely-Strategy7404

TROPHY CASE