you can click on the phases if you need to stop it for a turn (like a treasure map upkeep activation)

auto-tapping is by far the biggest quality of life improvement from mtgo. you can still just manually tap before casting your spells by clicking the lands when needed. full control is so clunky, i can't even watch a stream that uses it

so just gotta build the habit to click the stop locations then

I feel like I don't have a very good grasp on the game, and this is probably just the upper end of variance, but each time I've impulse-bought into a Sealed event, I've hit 7 wins. (3 for 3).

I even started this last one Izzet with Ral and immediately swapped to white/green/red Sylesnia/Boros type deck with Inescapable Blaze as a finisher. Stalwart MVP for sure.

It's super nice getting your gems back and I don't really care to collect for constructed, but I feel like it's actually pretty good value even though 2000 gems is like ten bucks.

You're pretty much forced to go full control everytime because as the game is developed now, it's too easy to read

I played a lot of limited, so most of the time I can feel when an opponent have something, and he can bluff that. but with this system I simply knows if he has something or not. Attacking with a 2/2 4 mana open into a 3/3 is a standard move IRL, you just can't do it on Arena

You are not forced to go full control all the time. Nobody does this. The stakes are so low that nobody cares. People like the fast games.

I played Eternal for a while and it had the same pause thing. It was never a big deal

first time doing ixalan draft, i hate it

Yeah Rivals is awful. 3x Ixalan was somehow even worse. The worst set since I've been playing by far, even badly outpaces BFZ.

Ixalan and Rivals was the worst draft format since Avacyn Restored back in 2012

Unfortunately, drafting it is the best way to get some of the cards you want for standard like Carnage tyrant, Search for Azcanta, Treasure Map, etc

I hate the new rank system for Draft. Went from getting ~3 to 7 wins in gold to averaging 1 or 2 wins in Platinum. Maybe partially variance but the skill jump seems huge.

Was hoping to do more Ixalan but probably just going to wait for Allegiance and do Sealed / Bo3 draft until I get reset back to Gold.

Just finding out about Penny Dreadful. Is this an actually supported format on MTGO or is it 100% community driven? Looks like a great way to get a lot of mileage out of a couple dollars.

I think RIX is an okay format. Ixalan was one of the all time worst.

Arena RIX is pretty dumb though. You just force Esper City's Blessing every time and enjoy the 7th pick Impales, and then get Dusk Charger, Secrets of the Golden City, Spire Winder and Soul of the Rapids picks 10-15. Arena bots continue to suck.

In real RIX, Sailer of Means was a sneaky first pickable card because it was really important for this deck. But since everyone is playing Esper, the 1/4 body isn't actually doing much so it goes back to being pretty bad.

Why is the ability to take 5+ turns in a row a thing (pretty sure the guy was infinite but I conceded out of frustration of having to click "ok" every ****ing time he revealed Nexus whateverthe****thecardis instead of being able to autopass everything)? Like, come the **** on I'm just testing a new deck I built that might lose to literally any deck with any semblance of semblance. I understand it's "neat" to have a mechanic like that that you can theory craft around but jesus **** let me just rip an inescapable blaze off the top ONE TIME


*edit* lolz at me I'm mad

Yup, I hate that card its such a waste of time. I always make the other player play it out from spite (spite for myself probably)

I just hate that it's some dude sitting there thinking to himself "lol this guy must be so mad. He probably doesn't even realize he's already lost!" the smug little ****er

Any suggestions for a somewhat rotation proof deck for Arena best of 1s? My golargi deck is pretty totally built except the BG dual that rotates. Izzet drakes, Orzov seem like contenders to me. Probably will hold off until Allegiance but no harm in planning.

It seems a bit early to worry about rotation proofing a deck - standard doesn't rotate until Autumn and any deck that you try to build now will probably have to change a lot before then.

On a different note, latest state of the beta is up:

https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/44955
https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/44953

Quick summary is that a rare/mythic that you already have a playset of will now be replaced by a different rare/mythic from that set, or if you already have all of the rares/mythics then you will get 20/40 gems respectively. For ICRs it just does the gem replacement rather than giving a different card. ICR rewards for constructed events have been nerfed to balance these changes.

I haven't looked into things in my detail yet but from a quick look at reddit is seems like people are mostly happy with the changes, which makes me think it's probably a decent solution as reddit normally complains about everything.

Changes look pretty okay. I'm pretty happy with this being the solution to the 5th card problem for rares and mythics.

5th copy fix didn't overly involve gutting rewards so seems pretty win-win. Giving back some upgrade % on ICRs seems fairly reasonable for the added efficiency to collection building.

Seems like a good strategy for the new set will be drafting like mad at first and as you get to the point where 5th copy of Rare's start happening, switch gold over to opening packs.

Now it seems like rare drafting any chance you get has value because every jank rare you can add to your collection is one less than you'll open in packs.

Seems pretty much perfect imo because it was super lame that some whale spends $100 and gets like 4 cards

Their solution is better than I ever could have imagined.

The ICR changes are very big though, on average 60% less rares and 80% less mythics.

We knew 5th card fix was going to come at the cost of something. I am at least glad it's a tweak on ICR's and not an attack on the amount of gold we can earn per day.

I just hope all these reddit posts about how much worse CE rewards are now doesn't tap the glass, as the # of casual / new players in the events right now is definitely padding my winrate.

After having done a bit more research into the changes it seems like it will be hugely beneficial for people who spend a lot of money on Arena and will scale down based on the amount you spend, to the point of being a moderate nerf for f2p players who previously could build a collection quite well from grinding CEs.

The way the economy looks at the moment is still massively warped by the fact that there are 5 sets of cards released at the same time, so there are a huge number of cards that everyone needs. By the time it gets to rotation it will probably result in being a very generous structure for people who have been playing since the beta started.

Yeah, the main flaw of the wild cards is that you currently really don't want to get junk cards that are not from the current draft set as those are unplayable AND won't contribute to vault.