Etdlahq Memorial Bar - your shelter from forum crashes

@Drystan: Yeah too much mana or not enough can suck balls. That's why I like decks that have a whole lot os spells or creatures that cost little, throw in a few fetchers or deck shufflers and you minimise the chance on something like that happening if you have atleast one of those cards in your hand at draw, you might want to mulligan if not.
 
That is exactly why I stopped playing MtG Arena in favor of Hearthstone. I much prefer MtG as a game... waaaaay more strategy and tactics, but lacking the ability to 'restack' my deck (going through and seperating lands and cards, then stacking them two cards>one land>two cards) between matches, you just get mana flooded or none at all...

Now, if you want to sit down at a table and play, MtG all the way... we will need to be playing Vintage, Legacy, Modern, or Commander though... haven't bought new cards in a minute...
 
Loan me a deck, any deck, and I'll play tabletop Magic. I think seeing, feeling and actually discussing the game would be rewarding. I've had a few really good games with my Mill deck, although those games do tend to last longer, and as I learn more about which cards would help when, and become more familiar with the deck, it has gotten stronger.

One game, I was almost out by a flying creature that would kill me in two turns. For the last several turns, knowing I had hard counters for that flying creature, I went through about 15 extra cards with 'draw x cards', all the while not getting what I needed. His creature got me 2 turns to within loss (about 7 health,) and I finally got one of my counters. I went through about 35-40 of a 60 card deck before finding one of my ~10 direct counters to that creature.

I don't mind the occasional mana flood/drought, but... with a 1/3 chance of drawing a land, drawing 10 lands in a row shouldn't happen very often. Nor should going 6 draws without a land. I should keep a running tally, as it happens way more than it should, statistically. That's where I hate luck, because in card games that require strategy and knowledge (MtG and poker,) I don't have any form of luck.
 
StarCraft 2... Playing again, as I want to finish the Covert Ops campaign which I never ended up playing. One of the major issues I had appears to be solved in one of the newer updates: Playing a mission, followed by playing another mission resulted in the inability to Save Game, with a message simply saying that the game wasn't saved. After each mission, it required a full exit and re-start SC2 to save again. Appears FIXED!

Another one, still existing... Playing Protoss with Warpgates: The Default Hotkey for 'Upgrade Weapons' is "W". Makes sense. But the over-writing Hotkey for "Select All Warpgates" is... "W". A common issue. I'm going to have to do a bit of reading to see if someone else has found where specifically to disable this. I can't believe this was a thing to begin with, when you Control Group all your Gateways, and logically, you'd Control Group all your Warpgates. But Blizzard feels this building needs a special hotkey. :/
Back to Protoss!
 
Back down to score 1 in Magic Arena. Second last game, 34% mana, I drew 11 lands to 4 playable cards. Last game, to put me from score 2 -> 1, 5 land in play, while the opponent had 10. The rest of my cards were all enchantments, with no creatures or spell damage.

Sigh.
 
Try and find some lands / cards that have an edge over normal lands.
There are elves that can be taped for mana for example.
Goblins that can be sacrificed for mana.
Other creatures that can be removed from the game for mana.
Those do excist in MtG I don't know if there are such things in Arena.
 
I've got several artifacts that either Draw a card when played, or search for lands. I've added some extra draw cards to synergise with some cards that rely on artifacts.
Elves that can be tapped for land exist, and I remove them as soon as I can.
I haven't seen any goblins that can be sacrificed for mana/land.

But last nights games were just unlucky. 11/15 cards were land/land draw, with ~34% of the deck lands. Some nights, this exact same deck has won nearly every game. And last night, it lost almost every game, mostly due to lands either being all I drew, or none. Was a very unlucky night.
 
Skirk prospector is an example. Another interesting goblin if you have forests is goblin clearcutter.
Those are from MtG but might not excist in Arena.
 
Skirk prospector is an example. Another interesting goblin if you have forests is goblin clearcutter.
Those are from MtG but might not excist in Arena.

These don't exist in Arena. Arena is almost exclusively standard (the last 2 years worth of sets that have been released), hence a lot of the more broken cards don't exist.

@Drystan if you're interested in looking at the "metagme" decks they are here: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/standard#paper - might give you some ideas about where your deck is going wrong?

Often the issues relate to not having a plan for your deck. Decks generally fall into 3 categories. Aggro or aggressive decks these try to win asap often by ~ turn 4/5 in standard, they don't tend to have a lot of interaction and if they do it often doubles as burn to the face.
mono red / mono black agro are classic examples

Control decks aim to survive the early game with removal and/or counter spells and then win going late due to there more powerful cards. The current Tier 1 control decks are either esper stax, jeskai super-friends or bant (golos) lands. The lands deck is probably the strongest deck in standard at the moment.

Middrange decks are in the middle, they play under costed good cards in the 3-5 casting range. They try to control against agro and beat down control. The current best are the simic/ bant good-stuff decks example.

These are only examples, but think about what your deck is trying to achieve and have a plan around how it does it. The only other thing I'll note is generally enchantments (Auras) are bad in constructed. The main reason being is that they are an easy 2 for 1 (you kill the creature and destroy the enchantment at the same time) hence you get two cards for one.

I don't really know how many cards (or crafting materials) you have, so hard to comment on where you might be going wrong. I mostly spend my gold doing drafts, which is a good way to collect more cards. Channelfireball.com is a good resource with strategy content and videos that might also help. I tend to like LSVs content personally.
 
Some people get bottled and tabled, then the bar gets burned down, someone initiates the cleanup / rebuild bot, we all have a laugh and a drink and the discussion gets tabled for another day.
 
I'll have to take time to go through those links/deck builds.
Tonight, I won 5/6 games (same deck as usual), the last one being a loss. It was almost a comeback, after knowing from the start I was far behind. The opponent's first turn, he played a 1 mana, 7/11 Vehicle, followed by a few very strong enchantments.
I got a neat combo off, on my last turn, reducing the opponent to 3 life: Combustible Gearhulk, combined with Flameshadow Conjuring.
A 6/6 artifact, with a 6/6 Haste artifact, both of which force the opponent to choose between taking damage or giving me 3 cards. It's a fun combo when it gets played, but does require 7 mana and survival. The Flameshadow Conjuring does provide some good opportunities as well, and Gearhulk has both filled my hand back up, and done up to 13 damage, winning a game (almost) single-handedly.

Edit: I'm not sure why that first site claims Combustible Gearhulk has been removed from Arena, as I'm playing with it in my deck. Must be old information, and they chose to put it back in.
 
Last edited:
I'll have to take time to go through those links/deck builds.
Tonight, I won 5/6 games (same deck as usual), the last one being a loss. It was almost a comeback, after knowing from the start I was far behind. The opponent's first turn, he played a 1 mana, 7/11 Vehicle, followed by a few very strong enchantments.
I got a neat combo off, on my last turn, reducing the opponent to 3 life: Combustible Gearhulk, combined with Flameshadow Conjuring.
A 6/6 artifact, with a 6/6 Haste artifact, both of which force the opponent to choose between taking damage or giving me 3 cards. It's a fun combo when it gets played, but does require 7 mana and survival. The Flameshadow Conjuring does provide some good opportunities as well, and Gearhulk has both filled my hand back up, and done up to 13 damage, winning a game (almost) single-handedly.

Edit: I'm not sure why that first site claims Combustible Gearhulk has been removed from Arena, as I'm playing with it in my deck. Must be old information, and they chose to put it back in.

I assume you are not playing ranked? Combustible Gearhulk still exists in Arena - but only in historic. The links I provided are for the standard game mode.
 
Back
Top