Magic: The Gathering C/D

i don't really like this set at all, even ignoring the balance issues i don't like any of the mechanics except cycling

I've also had that happen to me, where I missed an ability a mutated creature had. Also had a game where I needed to find out what creatures were in a pile of mutated creatures but I wasn't able to figure it out quickly when I was playing and made a bad decision. And then had a game where I tried to remove the counters from Momentum Rumbler in combat only to discover it gains actual double strike, it doesn't gain a double strike counter... still too early to say how much I like the set, but the learning curve has been high, with lots of feel-bad moments similar to figuring out the static walker abilities the hard way in War of the Spark

I would like to confess that I bought a Dell & a fuckin monitor from the local recycled-tech-stuff store to play arena, because the prospect of no magic at all until all this shit has subsided was too awful. I am struggling to get into it but it's better than nothing.

dang do they still not have it on other platforms besides pc?

yeah this is probably the most complex limited set in a while, not complex like Future Sight where there were just a ton of keywords to learn but rather in that there are a lot of "I want to do this but I'm not sure what would happen" moments. what happens when you bounce a Mutated creature? what happens when you kill the base creature in response? why do there have to be 4 triggered abilities every time something happens?

even a card text like "enchanted creature loses all abilities" has a lot of room for interpretation

yeah it's funny that they both wrecked constructed to create an ability aimed at casuals/new players and created a limited format that is absurdly complex. playing arena with my s/o she peppered me with rules questions about mutate and I just had no idea what the answers were.

though it's likely maro doesn't care if kitchen table players get their mutate triggers wrong and the joy they get in making a blobby monster is worth it.

also this set reintroduced one of my least favorite limited architypes, the B/U deck that's nothing but high-toughness creatures, counterspells, and removal

welcome to the trap JCLC

not playing paper magic sux

arena is coming to mac and smartphones, soon there's gonna be nowhere to hide

even a card text like "enchanted creature loses all abilities" has a lot of room for interpretation

Oh lord yes, this is the worst set to have a card like that. I forgot one funny moment I had where I had played that card on my opponent's creature that already had a lifelink counter from their Mentor. They attacked and I made a block hoping they wouldn't realize they could still pump their creature with Mentor. They did try to pump but the creature did not get a +1/+1 counter, so we both learned something about layers

yeah it's funny that they both wrecked constructed to create an ability aimed at casuals/new players and created a limited format that is absurdly complex. playing arena with my s/o she peppered me with rules questions about mutate and I just had no idea what the answers were.

though it's likely maro doesn't care if kitchen table players get their mutate triggers wrong and the joy they get in making a blobby monster is worth it.

Maro himself gave an incorrect explanation of what happens when you kill a creature that has mutated in his Ikoria Design article, which had to be corrected. It's a very confusing mechanic

also the whole "can't mutate Humans" clause seems like a poor design choice. for one, newer players don't really pay attention to creature types, and I bet if there was a paper prerelease you'd see people mutating humans all over the place. for two, having the set's marquee mechanic just not work on a third of the creatures creates a lot of frustrating moments, several times I've kept a hand thinking I could ramp into a turn 3 or 4 Mutate and then realize oh actually you can't do it because that's a Druid Human

https://i.imgur.com/IoQONEC.png

https://i.imgur.com/lqi0xV3.png

seriously how are you supposed to play this set in paper Magic

when i saw they were doing keyword counters my immediate thought was "so this has to be instead of +1/+1 counters, just like how they don't do +1/+1 and -1/-1 in the same set, right?" and then it wasn't

you can play arena on a Mac if you do some annoying shit. both my gf's brothers have it set up on their MacBooks

i have a new opinion which is that small sets were good for the game and they should go back to large-small-large-core as their annual cycle like e.g. the zendikar or innistrad years

that would be a nice change back.

i don’t think i enjoy this limited format very much.

and i mostly play on my mac via remote desktop bec im too lazy to pull my rolling desk in front of the tv, lol

everyone otm about the sucky new mechanics

I wonder how long it's gonna take them before they're going to say 'mistakes were made' - there hasn't even been a prerelease yet!

you can play arena on a Mac if you do some annoying shit. both my gf's brothers have it set up on their MacBooks

because my Mac is also essentially my workplace I don't wanna run Wine/Bootcamp, etc, I installed at one point but it created several headaches. However I did buy a refurb'd Dell last week specifically to play Arena, which is tragic, but the prospect of no Magic at all is worse. Arena is pretty much exactly as "it'll have to do" as i suspected but whatever.

Vintage Cube is back on MTGO...kind of suspicious timing

I know it's only at the rare level but Companion also seems like a dud in a Limited setting. It's not really fun to try to draft around them and it's virtually impossible to make a good sealed deck out of any of them but the Highlander one. It's also not fun to play against an opponent to starts with a bomb rare in their hand every game.

ultimately I wish they'd saved the ability counter/ability lord stuff for another set. there's too much stuff going on here already and I don't like how like 90% of the set seems to be in service of its mechanics

ciderpress - interested why you say that re: small sets

just that the game's balance has been increasingly unstable ever since they committed to making 4 limited environments per year rather than 2 or 3 plus expansions. also keeps them honest with regards to how much complexity they shove into a set if they have to hold back some ideas for the expansion

also means fewer instances where a linear mechanic has one shot to be good enough for standard and they overjuice it to make sure it happens, there was much talk about this during eldraine standard re: food decks.

lmaooo I had not seen this, talk about bad timing

https://shop.tcgplayer.com/magic/ikoria-lair-of-behemoths/spacegodzilla-death-corona-void-beckoner

Never played Arena but I'm cautiously curious about it once it hits Android

yeah they issued a thing on the death corona

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/statement-spacegodzilla-2020-04-02

statement on spacegodzilla

I'm cautiously curious about Arena hitting Android, having never played it.

Arena is great! I played it so much, I completely burned out and may never play again.

how time consuming and/or expensive is it to build a standard deck on there now? i never really gave it a fair shake compared to mtgo since i have cards on mtgo already

I think grinding out a full standard deck from zero would take a long time. Getting all the dual lands is a real killer. If you want to open packs instead, I'd guess around $100. I haven't played in a few months, but I doubt much has changed.

I would typically drop $20-30 on packs from a new set and grind out the rest to keep my decks up to date.

had a fun Cube match last night, my Red-Blue artifact/combo deck vs Blue-White control

first two games were massive grinds with lots of topdecks, G2 came down to him decking himself while I also had an empty deck

for Game 3, we both had about 3 minutes on the clock, which is enough to win with little to no resistance, but not enough if you have to actually navigate board states or use planeswalkers. and neither of our decks were exactly fast. so the dilemma was "do I try to win, or keep passing to clock my opponent out?" and I had to switch from one mode to the other every turn or so. anyway, I won in the end

just sold/shredded over 20k cards off my mtgo account, pretty therapeutic. all i have left now is tickets, my basic lands of choice, and a pauper deck

the collection screen UI is way faster now, shoulda done this back when i was actually playing

https://www.reddit.com/r/BadMtgCombos/comments/bpmc8g/turn_mtg_into_uno_with_one_simple_29card_trick/

yeah that lost me about halfway through. major props for figuring that out though

MTGO has Invasion block drafts this week, maaan this game has come a long way since those days. can't believe how clunky some of these cards are

that was the first good draft format!

oh it was definitely better than say Saga block where 8 of the best 10 commons were Black and half the creatures randomly had protection from a color, I'm just stunned by how 2-dimensional this format is considering how excited I was to draft it as a teenager

lotta mana flooding, double blocks, tapping 7 mana to play a dumb 5/5

yeah it's good not great, the first great draft format was champions of kamigawa

remember when the worst thing that could happen to you in a draft was when someone played an Armadillo Cloak

ok that Flagbearer thing might be one of the worst Limited mechanics of all time, just straight up blanks a bunch of your deck

the 1/1 is just kinda samite healer level annoying but the 2/4 is a mess to deal with

if you're not in black there are very few ways to get rid of it. super annoying because Invasion block is full of "target creature gets XXX" effects and good creature enchantments

It's a cool design but blanks too many cards in practice, yeah. I think that way more common in the old days - cards that have interesting abilities but end up not actually being that fun for play

To my surprise, I've actually been enjoying Ikoria draft on Arena more than the last couple sets. Maybe I'm a Timmy at heart because I find it fun to mutate into big monsters (and the mechanic has more decisions than I thought). I also like how most of the Companions greatly affect your draft decisions, but I know not everyone enjoys that tension. If they ever put Ikoria on Quick Draft, they'll have to tune the bots to prioritize RW cycling highly, or else everyone will draft it every time

I lied earlier, ended up playing a shameful number of Ikoria drafts. Was similarly surprised, format turned out pretty fun for limited. In my best run I went 7-0 with the GB cost reducer companion guy and other creatures only in the deck. I have now uninstalled Arena to stave off further time spent in a drafting trance. Will reinstall when the next set drops. Glad I don't play constructed, all my free time would be consumed by Arena, probably.

Also wishing I could sell my Arena account for a decent price, having all these wildcards and a good collection and zero interest in constructed, but the secondhand market hasn't to a place where it'd be worth it.

*gotten to

i'm getting the itch to play again but gonna try to wait until the fall set to go all in