I was really excited for the new cosmetic stuff, but the prices are absolutely unconscionable. I bought cosmetic stuff for Hearthstone and Eternal all the time, and the prices for cosmetics in those games was a small fraction of what they expect in Arena. Disappointing.

The big Arena tournament they're showing on Twitch now is brutally bad.

Bad play or just bad structure?

Bad format, however that **** without sideboarding is called, it's absolutely abyssal to watch an esper control mirror in a game 3 of a BO3 decided by whover draw the least removals

Bad players, there's 20 players in a 64 players tournament that are terrible at magic

Bad camera work, bad sound work, official stream launching ads every 10 minutes

Mtgesports.com website has absolutely 0 coverage

Only good thing would be that following a game on Arena is much better, but the deckmaster thing doesn't work, because they need a spliscreen to show both hand

They saw Arena starting off good, they rushed their thing, it's terrible

esper mirrors without sideboards are an eighth amendment violation

Nah man its all about the deck build. Jumpstart for example is amazing in Ux control in bo1 because you can ditch all the useless removal in the mirror. Removal is required because the best deck in the format is monored and every deck has to have a plan to beat it. The best card in the format is negate because its dead in 2 matchups (tier 2 Rg and tier 2.5 golgari), is easy to cast and has positive tempo against everything. Probably closer to 20/64 players are terrible and the other 44 haven't figured the format out yet. I can get how dudes playing pts all their life might hate the format, but it just requires different deck building, that is all.

Chemister's Insight or not, the Ux mirror mainly comes down to whoever draws less removal spell. The deck has so many blanks.

The format does not lead to interesting gameplay.

The production values are abysmal. There's so much downtime. If some masochist were to watch the entire tournament they will have spent 45 hours listening to speculation about how largely uninteractive games of magic will play out.

One of the announcers is someone I've never heard of that legitimately needs a speech therapist.

There are pyrotechnics before the match. It is so cringe. PYRO! The hype man announces this next competitor is the reigning player of the year! A nerd shuffles his feet through the smoke with his shoulders slumped. The hype man then badly mispronounces his name.

Dang, you guys are misanthropes

I didn't mind the broadcast much or the format. I just hate that esper control is good

Like I agree and I don't. One has to play a lot of removal but little choices about blank cards, how many lands to cut, which make a big difference in best of 1. Mortify and contempt are better than cast down for example. Like if they introduce the new mulligan rule to arena bo1 then maybe control decks can go to 22 lands? I kinda feel like dudes are sleaving up bo3 esper lists and assuming its the deck to beat, but the format is different than the other formats by a bit.

Was kinda annoying that one of the announcers like literally didn't know the rules or have any concept of how the meta is playing out, I bet if she was given 5 minutes to name the 3 color combination names she could not have. Also Day9 called lifelink lifesteal once which gave me a good lol. May as well go all the way and get Danny Trejo and that football player that plays EDH into the mix? Clearly aimed at casuals. I can't hate Ha$bro for it, MTG has been milking the same group of trihards for the last 25 years, time to get another generation hooked to their kid friendly pseudogambling.

The production value is 1000x better than any paper tournament I've watched. Downtime is not hugely different than watching a MOBA and the time it takes between matches to get things setup. There is much room for improvement still but this is clearly a move in the right direction to make MTG more spectator friendly.

Cosmetics wise - I am super happy for sleeves but the way they did them so far seems sleezy. The 600 gem sleeves seem intentionally dull and everything else (except Sol Ring) locked behind ridiculous bundles with unplayable cards.

I am half way to buying the Dimir pack as the avatar and sleeve are up my alley, but not even a single usable style card in the mix?? And 3000 gems?? wow.

Hopefully we get good looking sleeves for playing the ladder each month, and they aren't locked behind Mythic.

I think you can get the guild sleeves in 'sleeves' in the store for 600 gems. WotS spoilers seemed pretty sweet. amass mechanic seems awesome but not really looking forward to proliferate in a sea of planeswalkers. Thankfully they seem to have largely gone away from the game breaking planeswalker ultimate design template.

The 600 gem sleeves and the ones in the bundle are definitely different. The 600 gem ones are super bland in comparison, and why I think there is a definite level of sleeze with how they are doing this.

Except for the new Bolas card that wins the game automatically if it Ults. Heavily costed card though, forced into Grixis and I guess we have to wait and see if a reasonable shell evolves for it.

The new Nicol Bolas looks like it's going to dominate standard unless there's some glaring problem with playing Grixis. I'm glad to see them continuing to put heavy color requirements on powerful cards.

The land that you can sac to play a card at instant speed is really cool. I hope it sees play, it should lead to interesting gameplay.

New Teferi looks very strong. At 3 mana it's totally fine if he does nothing except eat a removal spell. The normal case of him bouncing something, drawing a card and then soaking up two damage is fine value. And then sometimes his passive ability wins the game.

New Karn is a cool card but I don't know what you're supposed to do with it other than try it in Ensnaring Bridge decks in modern

I'm guessing new Chandra never sees play because Experimental Frenzy is better.

Not sure what I think about the Gideon. The last 3 mana Gideon did not get there. New one is a little better when you're ahead but significantly worse when you're not ahead. The white weenie decks already have two good three drops, too.

Dovin's Veto looks to be a big upgrade in Modern, Legacy playable and maybe Vintage playable. Ironically it makes UW worse in Standard because it's only good in the mirror.

Lilliana's Triumph replaces Diabolic Edict in Legacy

They made a BW 1/2 Zulaport Cutthroat. There's probably a sacrifice deck at this point

New meta is the Vivien, Champion of the Wilds and Hydroid Krasis.

im gonna ****ign suck in this new set as a limited player,

this set is all ****ing gas, nothing but

WotS is crazy powerful.

I went 0-2 and 5-1 in two drafts on Arena. Pretty much every game was a blowout. Seems like the strategies are all pretty snowbally. Not looking forward to playing much more of this one

There's just a bunch of cards that you have to answer or die which creates an unfun draft environment. Either you answer them and you had no decisions because you had to answer them or you don't answer them and you had no decisions because you died to an obvious bomb.

I've gone 5-1, 4-2, 2-3 and I think I'm off of it already. That's how I feel with a winning record so you know it's gotta be pretty bad.

had just one level left to reach mythic but apparently the season ended today and not may 1? wtf lol

I think it's been pretty consistent that the season actually ends before the month is over. Mid-day, the day before the end of the month.

Turn 3 kill Feather. My addition to the deck is Domri's ambush which is a massive beating and a super fun addition to naya feather, the slow spellbreaker as an addition to the 3 drop to be more removal resistant, and the super boring lavarunner in the 1 drop slot (it is just better than everything else available since haste and 2 power topdecks much better when you are out of creatures). Main lessons to the deck are doing be afraid to throw back the first 7 if you don't have the right lands or 2 creatures, and against mono red knowing when to hold back your creature for a turn so that you can protect it or guarantee value with one of the removal spells. Certainly a lot of ways to build this but I definitely do not suggest more than 2 thuds as 2 in a game is almost always minus one card, and mostly I win by board control.

Obligatory 'the lands could be better' statement, but I'm not spending rare wildcards on duals that rotate in 3 months. Yes, you will totally lose 1 out of 6 games to land throwup but what deck doesn't. WRECKS mono red.

That deck look hilarious!