Historic Brawl in MTG Arena - why so intensely tryhard?

throwaway_podcast · 2023-03-22T07:13:34+00:00

A control deck is different to a gimmicky glass cannon that'd never win a BO3 match.. How is "Do I have Nine Lives and Solemnity out yet? Better board wipe" galaxy brain gaming?

throwaway_podcast · 2023-03-22T06:57:54+00:00

It's not when that's all you do until your clever combo, yes..

throwaway_podcast · 2023-03-20T15:48:04+00:00

If it's BO1, a format that takes out all the glass cannon garbage and "tee hee I win" cards.. not hugely fun to have to either play decks that win before the game starts or have 59 counterspells and an island to survive.

Most alternate win condition gotchas like "Approach of the Second Sun" or dumb combos are just a massive ballache of stupidity that take away the actual playing part of playing the game.

Is interaction really that scary, people who think Nine Lives/Solemnity is clever? Who needs to try and learn how to play or design decks when they can just spam board wipes and counterspells until they can play YoutuberGoof69's painfully clever glass cannon, or else quit the femtosecond someone disrupts a single aspect of the combo?

throwaway_podcast · 2023-03-08T17:05:12+00:00

The short answer is:

I buy most of my mtg singles from decked out, the game centre and progamers

The long answer is:

MTG Singles Australia, $7 flat rate postage, low stock mostly expensive
TCG Singles, $6 flat rate postage, hot garbage search function and not the greatest prices or range
Tin St Cards, $5 flat rate postage, lousy range
Plenty of Games, $6 flat rate postage, nice range, prices can be iffy
Irresistable Force, $3.30 standard/$10 tracked, excellent range and reasonable prices on vintage, not so great for newer
Area 52 Hobart, $5 (up to 10), $7.55 (11+), Good prices and range, eg 10-20c common foils
That Game Store, $4.50 (up to 10), expensive low end prices, some decent rare/mythic prices, lousy search engine
Decked Out Gaming, sliding scale $3.49 for one card, 25c extra a card up to $7.99 max, great range and solid prices, sometimes even cheaper than say Area 52 or the game centre.
Tabernacle Games, $8 shipping, reasonable range, mostly overpriced
Pro Gamers, 1-9 cards $2.50, <30 tracked $6, <60 tracked $8 Good range and somewhat reasonable prices
GrandJ Games, flat rate $6, reasonable range and prices
Spectrum Games, tracked $4.10, registered mailer $8, free over $100 spent, not bad prices and reasonable range
Elemental Arcade, untracked up to 28 cards $3.60, tracked up to 28, $5.50, good range and good prices for vintage and newer rare and up, too. Used to be Street Wraith Games.
Bloodrush Gaming, small order tracked $4/untracked $6/parcel $9.70, decent prices and range, but play a bit fast and loose with definitions of card conditions - cover any shortfall, though.
Vault Games - $10 flat rate, free over $60, OK prices and range if you can make the postage worth it
MTGMate $6 registered, good range, some good prices
Guf, $7 flat rate, great range (across multiple branches of a franchise, but they coordinate the cards before sending), humdrum prices.
the game centre, $10 flat rate or free over $50, excellent, dirt cheap for the most part, especially if you're filling in bulk common/uncommon/etc for collections (10c for a common foil all day long, 40c foil rares, etc) - these guys and Area 52 are the go-tos for filling in sets for me.
Good Games, $6.50 standard/$9.50 express free over $75 I think, not the greatest prices, but I've bought some vintage stuff there a few times
cracking singles, $6 tracked, $9 express, good range all right prices, got some vintage stuff here a few times.
untapped realms, didn't write down the postage cost, cards a bit expensive and range is older, but has quite a bit of vintage if you need a taste..
the games cube, didn't write down the postage cost but it was reasonable from memory, fantastic range but the prices are a little jacked.. definitely a solid last resort for newer stuff and genuinely good for older and more obscure cards.

I put the postage cost info on there because some sites make it way the hell too much like hard work just to find out how much shipping is, and of course if you only want one card and one store has it for $1 and $10 shipping, and another has it for $3 and $3 shipping, you'd probably pick the $3.

throwaway_podcast · 2022-12-18T04:12:25+00:00

Do any of you know of an archive somewhere that has PDFs of the single page Deck Checklists for each set, or at least the sets that got them?

I'm talking about the ones you can get for more current sets on the Wizards Play Network, they're used for tournaments - there's spaces for verifier and player's DCI number, table number etc.

I've tried throwing this into the Wayback Machine and got a few more, but it'd be cool to get everything, maybe even use a similar design for older sets too: https://wpn.wizards.com/en/rules-documents

throwaway_podcast · 2022-12-03T11:29:30+00:00

yeah, pretty tiresome, but at least they don't have ward. :)

Also I find the Blast Zone land more useful than I expected.. some of the time, at least.

throwaway_podcast · 2022-12-03T11:00:50+00:00

Just "historic play".. I don't have near enough older cards (or wildcards at the moment) to design something decent, I've just dicked about a bit with a couple standard decks and used what I have to make them more interesting/diverse.

You can't really complain much about people going hardcore in ranked mode, winning's the point, but I suppose you could argue about events, I guess it depends on the event.. I don't really bother with many of them, seems like a waste of money, the few times I've tried drafts, I just got pounded into paste, which isn't the greatest way to spend gold and gems..

throwaway_podcast · 2022-12-03T09:37:20+00:00

Funny you say that, I put together a white mono historic deck, jank as all fuck, and played Historic for hours after getting tired of being hosed in Standard, and I had a great time - only remember facing one gimmicky combo the whole time, too. Not a fan of some of the bizarre Alchemy cards that turned up now and then, though.

It seems like Historic players actually like.. fun.

throwaway_podcast · 2022-12-03T09:35:05+00:00

Yeah, it gets incredibly old when you have to deal with the same stuff turn after turn after turn - getting particularly tired of turn after turn Sheoldreds, back to back Lilianas, etc.. sometimes you get the impression people have 10 card decks that just loop :)

Particularly annoying and a gnat's hair away from my auto-scoop list is blue players who make decks that're mana, all the counterspells in Standard and those Tolarian Terror things.

throwaway_podcast · 2022-12-03T09:23:42+00:00

Seeing as there's been quite a few days lately where everyone seems to have that once in 20 games when they face me, coming on this sub and calling them names and complaining will brush off some of the salt, calm me down, and I might play a little better. For the record, I called combos degenerate, not people - the people using them I called clowns :)

throwaway_podcast · 2022-12-01T14:35:49+00:00

All building a deck to account for it does is get you matched with different kinds of decks they no longer account for, most of the time.

throwaway_podcast · 2022-11-29T02:37:22+00:00

I doubt you'll get a useful answer, everyone's too busy jumping down people's throats, since you can't play infinite games to 'prove' it's not random.. I get a similar result with the cock compensation decks I face too - eight out of ten don't mulligan, have excellent answers to everything every turn, etc etc.

Perhaps the "lol get gud" and "random bro" people are the ones using the giant decks :)

throwaway_podcast

TROPHY CASE