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Toozler
Jan 12, 2012

The multiple accounts thing is interesting right now because you can just get your daily wins by jamming Channel in the No Ban Historic that doesn't require a collection until it rotates in two (?) weeks

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drainpipe
May 17, 2004

AAHHHHHHH!!!!
You can also play Arena cube as much as you want with new accounts.

Lone Goat
Apr 16, 2003

When life gives you lemons, suplex those lemons.




Toozler posted:

The multiple accounts thing is interesting right now because you can just get your daily wins by jamming Channel in the No Ban Historic that doesn't require a collection until it rotates in two (?) weeks

you can also play the newbie decks against each other for free, very helpful when you get the two colour quests

Lone Goat fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Aug 29, 2023

Starsfan
Sep 29, 2007

This is what happens when you disrespect Cam Neely

drainpipe posted:

I've decided that I'll take the draft plunge with WOE after only having played constructed. I think I'm gonna just create new accounts* to get the welcome bundle repeatedly. I figure if I do some easy daily quests against sparky, I'll be able to do about 3 premium drafts for each account. If I do about 1 draft a week, then that'd be like $85 for drafting every week, which seems reasonable, especially compared to paper drafting (I do not have the patience anymore to grind for wins).

* rather than use a period, you could just add a + and arbitrary stuff afterwards to your gmail account to get a new Arena account, like myemail+whateverhere@gmail.com

that's some commitment! I made a 2nd account that will just be used for practicing the draft, but I figure the two total is enough for me for now to get to the point where I can draft as often as I'd like.. or atleast I'm going to try and give it a go and see if it works out. Between two accounts playing limited and my main trying to grind constructed I figure that's more than enough of a time commitment for me :)

I'm just hoping to the get to the point where the drain on my gems drafting 3 or 4 times a week with each account isn't so great that it can't be at least mostly made up by the daily's.. maybe that's delusional thinking for where I am now (got to plat in limited in my first month playing it, but then ran into a serious roadblock from that point on...)

kalel
Jun 19, 2012

having at least one other account is probably a good idea but I can't be hosed, taking the 45 seconds to log out and log in between accounts sounds like a lot of work

The Dark Souls of Posters
Nov 4, 2011

Just Post, Kupo

Grifter posted:

Come by the discord. Plenty of people there happy to talk you through your draft and play.

Ok!

(It's worth noting that I've done like four total quick drafts, so it's mostly because I'm still very green)

Starsfan
Sep 29, 2007

This is what happens when you disrespect Cam Neely

FlowerRhythmREMIX posted:

Ok!

(It's worth noting that I've done like four total quick drafts, so it's mostly because I'm still very green)

I'm still ruminating on this myself.. I think on my main account I'm trying to build a collection on I'm going to do some MOM quick drafts the next couple weeks to build my collection a bit (I just started a month ago so I don't really have anything from previous sets) whereas on my alternate I'm probably going to try and cut my teeth playing premier drafts for WOE... hopefully I can work out some of the inevitable mistakes before I get around to playing it on my main..

**I also really love the quick draft format, both for being able to take extra time to research the picks and for being able to leave mid-draft and take it back up later..

Grifter
Jul 24, 2003

I do this technique called a suplex. You probably haven't heard of it, it's pretty obscure.

drainpipe posted:

I've decided that I'll take the draft plunge with WOE after only having played constructed.
Some first time drafter advice:
  • For the first 1-5ish picks try to identify the most powerful card in the pack and take that. If you feel like two cards are comparable in power, take the one that aligns with cards you have already taken.
  • Once you hit around the 6th card start looking for signals. These are cards that are powerful but are being ignored because the people passing to you are choosing to focus on other colors. This is one of the hardest things to do in draft. Easy ones to spot are cheap removal or effective uncommons. If you see a powerful signpost uncommon 6th pick, that could be a good sign.
  • What's a signpost uncommon? Each color pair has an uncommon in each set. These uncommons align with the themes of that color.

    Ash here tells you what RW wants - it wants to attack (because of the haste) and it wants to have more than one permanent come into play on your turn to trigger Celebration.
  • Once you have identified your color pair, try to draft within it. Continuously try to identify synergies between different cards. Ideally you want a critical mass where lots of your cards have synergies with one another.

    Hopeful Vigil is good because it generates a 2/2 for two mana, triggers celebration (the token and the enchantment hit the battlefield) and it goes well with cards that want to sacrifice enchantments.
  • As the draft goes on start being conscious of your curve. Generally speaking, the curve starts at two mana in draft, which means most of the time you cast your first spell at two mana. You need lots of two drops, fewer three drops, a few four drops and only a small number (3ish, depends on other things like if you have ramp) of 5-6 mana spells. Sometimes it's better to grab a mediocre third two drop than it is to get a good five mana card when you already have four good five mana cards.
  • When thinking about your curve, only really count the spells you can cast in a vacuum. It doesn't matter if you have five two drops if they're all combat tricks - too often you will draw them when you have no creatures to cast them on. Favor things that impact the board immediately. I killed a lot of people who cast Painfully Quandary and then died to my board full of creatures.
  • Similarly, you will need some amount of removal. These are spells that kill, exile or somehow inhibit your opponent's creatures. You should prioritize them but not over great creatures. When you draw them be thoughtful of when you use them. Removal should either be for cases where you two-for-one your opponent (e.g. killing their creature in response to their combat trick) or for really strong creatures. Limited strategies are about trading resources and if you can trade your mediocre creature for theirs that is much better than using your precious removal on their mediocre creature.
  • I like draftsim, which lets you learn the cards in the draft beforehand and get an idea what each color pair wants.
  • There are set reviews that go over every single card in the set and rate each of them. Personally that does nothing for me because I don't learn well by going over a giant list. I like to try to know the themes for each color pair and there's a million articles that will tell you that if you search "draft guide". If you want to go deep though you can read those reviews or listen to podcasts of people discussing each card. Whatever works for your style.
  • Get 17lands. The rest of this post is based on my own meandering experience. 17lands is based on science.
  • Once you have 17lands you can post your games or drafts for post mortem analysis either here or in the discord. Don't worry about being uninteresting, lots of people do it and it helps everyone get stronger.

FlowerRhythmREMIX posted:

(It's worth noting that I've done like four total quick drafts, so it's mostly because I'm still very green)
I think Quick Draft doesn't get enough love. It lets your really think about each pick. You can look them up on 17lands or more importantly you can look at your curve and think about synergies with your other picks. Once you start doing those things a little more quickly you can shift over to Premium, which has better rewards but is challenging when you have to ready every card AND think hard about concepts that should be guiding your choices.

Grifter fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Aug 29, 2023

CharlieFoxtrot
Mar 27, 2007

organize digital employees




Oh when did they start being able to shorten card names in rules text instead of having to use the full name

Dr. Stab
Sep 12, 2010
👨🏻‍⚕️🩺🔪🙀😱🙀

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

Oh when did they start being able to shorten card names in rules text instead of having to use the full name

Mirage, it seems.

imagine dungeons
Jan 24, 2008

Like an arrow, I was only passing through.
Ooooooh... no hell-queue Historic Brawl for Midweek Magic! I'm a good person and rode Muxus to three easy wins.

quite stretched out
Feb 17, 2011

the chillest

Grifter posted:

[*]I like draftsim, which lets you learn the cards in the draft beforehand and get an idea what each color pair wants.

most sets i will spend some of my idle time on the train or walking to the shops just jamming draftsim, you dont get to try the deck out to see if you actually made something coherent (unless you organise with someone else to test with proxies) but what you do get to do is familiarise yourself with the cards of the set in a pack by pack context. this will help when you are playing actual drafts and instead of having to mouse over each card you will have at least a background familiarity of "this guy wants me to be in the rats deck, that guy makes a role so he wants to be in an enchantments focused deck" and so on

CharlieFoxtrot
Mar 27, 2007

organize digital employees



The suggestion to put Rosie Cotton in my Jan Jansen deck... was a really good one lol

Algid
Oct 10, 2007


Drafting is good, you get a feel for things eventually and will find that you just become better at the game. Like I did over 10 ELD drafts recently while handicapping myself with rare drafting (full set of happily ever after and sorcerous spyglass lol) and still ended up with a 55% win rate. My last 3 drafts that I did just for fun rather than collection building was chaos, BRO, and MID, I got a trophy for chaos and BRO and broke even at 5-3 for MID. Chaos especially felt like a test of basic draft skill since unless you know every card you just need to be able to quickly evaluate cards and find a deck.

I'm also somewhat of a quick draft liker in that I like how exploitable it is (I have 60% wr for MID and VOW qd while rare drafting) but the bad reward structure in currency and packs makes it hard to use for set completion.

Also I don't watch any streamers or listen to podcasts, just look at limited grades and sometimes 17lands data directly, once there's enough numbers out and you know how to read it it can tell you a lot about the format.

Algid fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Aug 30, 2023

MikeCrotch
Nov 5, 2011

I AM UNJUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF MY SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE RECIPE

YES, IT IS AN INCREDIBLY SIMPLE DISH

NO, IT IS NOT NORMAL TO USE A PEPPERAMI INSTEAD OF MINCED MEAT

YES, THERE IS TOO MUCH SALT IN MY RECIPE

NO, I WON'T STOP SHARING IT

more like BOLLOCKnese
17lands is very useful in the first 2 weeks since just knowing the cards that perform well gives you a leg up over most people.

After that it gets dicier since you need your deck to be more synergistic, which doesn't always show up well on 17lands since it's aggregated (though looking at the card values for colour pairs helps since you can see the values for cards that perform unusually well). Also some sets are less 17lands friendly than others, DMU comes to mind due to all the splish-splashing with the kicker cards.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

quite stretched out posted:

most sets i will spend some of my idle time on the train or walking to the shops just jamming draftsim, you dont get to try the deck out to see if you actually made something coherent (unless you organise with someone else to test with proxies) but what you do get to do is familiarise yourself with the cards of the set in a pack by pack context. this will help when you are playing actual drafts and instead of having to mouse over each card you will have at least a background familiarity of "this guy wants me to be in the rats deck, that guy makes a role so he wants to be in an enchantments focused deck" and so on

Also just practicing the pattern recognition so you can recognise the good and bad cards quickly is not nothing, especially early on.

Horace Kinch
Aug 15, 2007

And sometimes there's just good old-fashioned dumb luck. Sometimes your opp gets a bad hand, then a bad mulligan, then another one, then another, etc. Or your opp gets mana screwed/flooded and you run away with the game.

Grifter
Jul 24, 2003

I do this technique called a suplex. You probably haven't heard of it, it's pretty obscure.
Also sometimes that happens to you! But it's just part of the game and you move on.

Hammer Bro.
Jul 7, 2007

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Not only is HBrawl fun, but I got a giganto Elesh Norn avatar out of it.

Might play s'more of it just for kicks.

Starsfan
Sep 29, 2007

This is what happens when you disrespect Cam Neely

Hammer Bro. posted:

Not only is HBrawl fun, but I got a giganto Elesh Norn avatar out of it.

Might play s'more of it just for kicks.

Is that the one you can pay to sign up for like limited and you gotta win 3 or 7 games or w/e and rewards come based on your record?

I don't have any sort of collection to be able to play the historic or modern formats but I've wondered about trying one of the standard ones.. I do have a meta deck but I'm not an amazing player so I'm not sure if I could expect anything out of it, but it might be fun to try once.. or I might get really really mad after I go 0-3 and out.

Judgy Fucker
Mar 24, 2006

Starsfan posted:

Is that the one you can pay to sign up for like limited and you gotta win 3 or 7 games or w/e and rewards come based on your record?

I don't have any sort of collection to be able to play the historic or modern formats but I've wondered about trying one of the standard ones.. I do have a meta deck but I'm not an amazing player so I'm not sure if I could expect anything out of it, but it might be fun to try once.. or I might get really really mad after I go 0-3 and out.

No, historic brawl is a permanent queue that costs nothing to enter. No ranking ladder, just jam decks and have fun.

It is also the Midweek magic event this week, meaning you can play it (in the MWM queue, not the normal one) to get ICRs for your first two wins and a cosmetic for your third.

Toozler
Jan 12, 2012

Historic Brawl does require a pretty robust collection though (especially to win), your deck must be 100 different cards (no duplicates other than basic lands) all within the same color as your deck's commander (a legendary creature or planeswalker of your choice). Most decks are almost all rares or mythic rares.

It is also more difficult to win with beginner player's best friend Red Aggro because life totals start at 25 instead of 20.

I started a new account and Historic Brawl wins seem impossible. I set my commander to Rosko and just sat in mulligan a few times hoping my opponent would concede to cheese some wins - did not happen. My apologies for being a scumbag.

Starsfan
Sep 29, 2007

This is what happens when you disrespect Cam Neely

Judgy Fucker posted:

No, historic brawl is a permanent queue that costs nothing to enter. No ranking ladder, just jam decks and have fun.

It is also the Midweek magic event this week, meaning you can play it (in the MWM queue, not the normal one) to get ICRs for your first two wins and a cosmetic for your third.

Toozler posted:

Historic Brawl does require a pretty robust collection though (especially to win), your deck must be 100 different cards (no duplicates other than basic lands) all within the same color as your deck's commander (a legendary creature or planeswalker of your choice). Most decks are almost all rares or mythic rares.

It is also more difficult to win with beginner player's best friend Red Aggro because life totals start at 25 instead of 20.

I started a new account and Historic Brawl wins seem impossible. I set my commander to Rosko and just sat in mulligan a few times hoping my opponent would concede to cheese some wins - did not happen. My apologies for being a scumbag.



ah right on, yeah I do like how Arena promotes these alternative game modes and sets up incentives for people to play them every now and then. I have quite enough on my plate right now already as things stand trying to pick up standard and limited so I probably won't be building any 100 card deck anytime soon, but it's nice to know there's other stuff to look into for the future :)

Judgy Fucker
Mar 24, 2006

Toozler posted:

I started a new account and Historic Brawl wins seem impossible. I set my commander to Rosko and just sat in mulligan a few times hoping my opponent would concede to cheese some wins - did not happen. My apologies for being a scumbag.

If you want to cheese wins from auto-concedes try Baral, not Rosko.

bad_fmr
Nov 28, 2007

I made a Rusko deck from pretty much what I had gotten from the starter decks and went 3-0. :shrug:

Starsfan
Sep 29, 2007

This is what happens when you disrespect Cam Neely

bad_fmr posted:

I made a Rusko deck from pretty much what I had gotten from the starter decks and went 3-0. :shrug:

PM me the deck code, now I'm interested lol

the promise of rewards for no investment is one I can not ignore

Starsfan fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Aug 30, 2023

bad_fmr
Nov 28, 2007

I dont have pms but I messaged you in the Discord.

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
Yeah you don't really have to "build" anything for MWM, just slam whatever cards you have that are legal in the format together into something resembling a coherent deck. I keep winning with Slimefoot and Squee as a commander and any Jund card I have that says "sacrifice" on it. Manabase sucks who cares, sometimes they concede when they realize you can bring back any big creature every turn + sac for value lol

Lone Goat
Apr 16, 2003

When life gives you lemons, suplex those lemons.




Simply Simon posted:

Yeah you don't really have to "build" anything for MWM, just slam whatever cards you have that are legal in the format together into something resembling a coherent deck. I keep winning with Slimefoot and Squee as a commander and any Jund card I have that says "sacrifice" on it. Manabase sucks who cares, sometimes they concede when they realize you can bring back any big creature every turn + sac for value lol

Yeah I didn't feel like playing Rusko, saw I had a Tyvar deck that I don't remember building and played it. It had horrendous mana, bad cards, and looked like it hadn't been updated in a year, went like 4-2 with it.

kalel
Jun 19, 2012

I only got one instant concede with ragavan today unfortunately

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005


You can also build a deck with the Black Angarth as your commander and 65 Relentless Rats (or whatever the one on arena is) and 35 Swamps and win with a deck that uses 5 Uncommon wildcards

Flowers For Algeria
Dec 3, 2005

I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.


Yeah, rat tribal is an easy option. So is Bruvac with a bunch of persistent petitioners and other mill cards (if you're a pervert) or Baral and a million counters (if you're an even bigger pervert).

edit here's a two or three year old version of the Bruvac mill deck, if you've got newer stuff don't hesitate to swap out cards. I could see an extra Cut Your Losses in there for an insta-win with Bruvac in play. Also the newer Jace.

Commander
1 Bruvac the Grandiloquent (JMP) 10

Deck
1 Sweet Oblivion (THB) 70
36 Snow-Covered Island (KHM) 278
1 Essence Flux (JMP) 151
1 Didn't Say Please (ELD) 42
1 Maddening Cacophony (ZNR) 67
1 Miscast (M21) 57
1 Compelling Argument (AKR) 55
1 Negate (RIX) 44
1 Merfolk Secretkeeper (ELD) 53
1 Disdainful Stroke (KHM) 54
1 Lazotep Plating (WAR) 59
1 Time Warp (STA) 22
1 Unsummon (ANB) 36
27 Persistent Petitioners (RNA) 44
1 Thought Collapse (JMP) 184
1 Dive Down (XLN) 53
1 Wall of Lost Thoughts (JMP) 190
1 Ipnu Rivulet (AKR) 303
1 Ruin Crab (ZNR) 75
1 Iceberg Cancrix (MH1) 54
1 Teferi's Tutelage (M21) 78
1 Into the Story (ELD) 50
1 Sea Gate Restoration (ZNR) 76
1 Mystic Sanctuary (ELD) 247
1 Brainstorm (STA) 13
1 Drowned Secrets (GRN) 39
1 Bond of Insight (WAR) 43
1 Overwhelmed Apprentice (ELD) 60
1 Confounding Conundrum (ZNR) 53
1 Into the Roil (ZNR) 62
1 Whelming Wave (JMP) 193
1 Roaming Ghostlight (M21) 65
1 Multiple Choice (STX) 48
1 Icebreaker Kraken (KHM) 63
1 Shipwreck Dowser (M21) 71
1 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries (WAR) 54
1 Glacial Grasp (ZNR) 59
1 Sage's Row Denizen (M20) 73

Flowers For Algeria fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Aug 30, 2023

Zero VGS
Aug 16, 2002
ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE
Lipstick Apathy

Judgy Fucker posted:

If you want to cheese wins from auto-concedes try Baral, not Rosko.

Currently, Ragavan gets more concedes that Baral. Let's just say I have a lot of data to back this up.

edit: also, while a deck with Baral and 100 islands can get concedes, Ragavan and 100 mountains can straight up WIN on account of playing bullshit from these slow-rear end ramp decks.

Judgy Fucker
Mar 24, 2006

Zero VGS posted:

Currently, Ragavan gets more concedes that Baral. Let's just say I have a lot of data to back this up.

edit: also, while a deck with Baral and 100 islands can get concedes, Ragavan and 100 mountains can straight up WIN on account of playing bullshit from these slow-rear end ramp decks.

Fair enough about Ragavan. And yeah, I think I posted about it a few days ago but I got a win in cube by casting an opponent's Nexus of Fate off of a Ragavan lol. Ragavan is so dumb. Love that little monke

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
Struggling a bit with this MOM Quickdraft

https://www.17lands.com/draft/71cb4880c9ad400e93510562a4d53213

First pick is debatable - should probably have been Preening Champion. I do love the ability to just play whatever bomb tho, so I valued Invasion of Zendikar highly. Anyway, the bots kept feeding me excellent green cards so I just took them. The other color I saw decent cards in was red - in the end, I had a mono-G deck with a possible splash for R:



Now, I don't know if the inconsistency of a second color is worth adding the power of Geoderm (tho I only have one battle, that keeps happening when I have this creature), Spite and the three Skalds (which are very powerful indeed). Mono-G I'd play some stinkers, and of course Invasion is kinda bad with only Forests to search for...



What do you think? Add the R or keep it mono?

Share Bear
Apr 27, 2004

wei posted:

^^being able to draft as much as you like without spending real money

I get that you're not being serious but doing this isn't that productive (in terms of WR%/time spent) for learning a set because even the best players will get a lot of things wrong before actually playing the set. We just do it because we're nerds.

Most of that prep work is meaningless once day 1 of 17lands stats are available. That said, there is something to be gained in developing card evaluation skills. To get the best return for time spent I would suggest at least looking through the commons to try and identify the top commons, then uncommons too if there's time.

Just install a tracker (17lands). I like LLU for content

for some reason i never noticed it keeps track of your win rate

but yeah looking forward to having a draft set i can use, i think i did very badly as far as any recent sets are considered, i'm working otherwise i'd look it up and post my history

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
I was extremely dead as my opponent had their stupid slimefoot and squee engine online, but I stuck it out, and played the next creature I drew



it was tergrid, so when they sacrificed their S&S, I got it. :allears:

I still died horribly the next turn, but it was still funny

edit: I love this event, it's got a ton of people who are just charging in blindly with whatever they've got which leads to some hilarious and actually interesting games rather than the usual historic brawl dregs. I feel kind of bad for this guy though:


I don't think he knew what Phyrexian Obliterator did when he Galvanic Iteration'd his Mizzix Mastery to Magma Opus + Burn Down The House to try to clear my board. he got rid of everything but the liliana and lantern, and cleared his own board and armageddon'd himself instead when the combined triggers from the Obliterator went off.

Captain Invictus fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Aug 30, 2023

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
I won against a Tergrid commander with S&S as well, just always sacrificing tokens :coal:

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Simply Simon posted:

Struggling a bit with this MOM Quickdraft

https://www.17lands.com/draft/71cb4880c9ad400e93510562a4d53213

First pick is debatable - should probably have been Preening Champion. I do love the ability to just play whatever bomb tho, so I valued Invasion of Zendikar highly. Anyway, the bots kept feeding me excellent green cards so I just took them. The other color I saw decent cards in was red - in the end, I had a mono-G deck with a possible splash for R:



Now, I don't know if the inconsistency of a second color is worth adding the power of Geoderm (tho I only have one battle, that keeps happening when I have this creature), Spite and the three Skalds (which are very powerful indeed). Mono-G I'd play some stinkers, and of course Invasion is kinda bad with only Forests to search for...



What do you think? Add the R or keep it mono?

Keep the red (your single best piece of removal is in red), drop Renata, 1x Serpent Blade

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Zefiel
Sep 14, 2007

You can do whatever you want in life.


Starsfan posted:

Is that the one you can pay to sign up for like limited and you gotta win 3 or 7 games or w/e and rewards come based on your record?

I don't have any sort of collection to be able to play the historic or modern formats but I've wondered about trying one of the standard ones.. I do have a meta deck but I'm not an amazing player so I'm not sure if I could expect anything out of it, but it might be fun to try once.. or I might get really really mad after I go 0-3 and out.

You mentioned that you alreay went through the links in the OP, but did you also try all the codes? I started in arena back when NEO was new and with just the codes that give you three packs from the previous expansions got a sizeable collection from the get-go, and you can use those cards in Historic brawl.

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