MTG Arena Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Fail Drafting with Bel

May 7, 2018 by Belghast

The first I learned this weekend are that the Quick Draft format in Magic the Gathering Arena is extremely enjoyable. The second thing I learned this weekend… is that I am pretty horrifically bad at drafting a set I didn’t spend much time playing at all. The third thing I learned is that even if you suck at drafting… it is still a pretty reasonable way to pick up cards for doing other interesting things with. If I am doing my math correctly… I walked away with 45 cards that I picked out during the draft and at least 8 cards that I got from the pack that I won just from participating in the draft. Especially if you are trying to work towards something in particular this seems like a very efficient spending of your gems. Ultimately you are getting over 1200 gems worth of cards for 750 gems if you want to think of it in those terms when you are talking about total number of cards gained through the process.

Granted by drafting you are not putting any points towards your next vault opening and there is no chance of getting wildcards other than through any of the 8 card normal packs you win in the process. I drafted a grand total of three times this weekend and failed miserably in all of them with the best I managed to do ending up with a 3 and 3 before finally washing out. There was one where I did not manage to win a single match but even then I walked away with a handful of gems and all of the cards that I managed to draft in the process. The event however sadly ends in roughly three hours as of the time of making this post. I am hoping that they might do this as a weekly thing and offer up a new set each week for drafting. Surely they have enough information on Ixalan to make this work, or it would be a truly great way to introduce Kaladesh as they have already stated they are going to soon.

Ultimately Arena scratches the Magic itch for me especially if I can ever get reasonable at formats like Draft and be able to craft decent decks. A large part of the issue I have is that I am not really playing a lot of magic, and have been more of a collector for the last several years than someone who actually sits down and plays on a regular basis. I am trying to stoke a bit of a Magic culture at work, but it is really difficult for me to find a time or a place to sit down and play. Sure there are shops I could go to Friday Night Magic at… but I don’t even have a deck that I would feel really comfortable playing in such a location because it feels like I have been out of the game so long. There was a time where I could look at a card and immediately think of all of the possible combos for it… and that time has passed. Largely I need to build back up that muscle memory and the only viable way for me to do it… is by playing lots and lots of Arena. On the positive side… each time I sit down to play it I seem to get completely engrossed in the game and completely lose track of how many matches I have ended up playing.

Watch Fail Drafting Hour of Devastation with Belghast! from Belghast on www.twitch.tv

If you are curious and want to see me fail-drafting you can check out the VOD over on Twitch as I streamed most of it. I accidentally cut off towards the end… but I had honestly forgot I was streaming at that point so you are not getting much in the way of commentary as the progression continued on. Chestnut hung out with me for a bit but that was really the only person I had in the stream and even then I think she was mostly afk cleaning house as she said. When I don’t have people interacting with me I sometimes forget I am actually streaming and you end up with me falling back into silence. Anyways… if you want to see what the format is all about you can at least watch how the draft part works at the beginning. I need to sort out why none of the music I had playing was coming through on the stream. If you want to see someone significantly better at drafting… you should also check out Kodra who was my inspiration to stream the draft (because he did it earlier in the day).

Watch Magic the Gathering: ARENA from Kodra22 on www.twitch.tv

MTG Arena Economy

April 27, 2018April 27, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I spent a tiny bit of time in Magic the Gathering Arena because they unleashed the new Dominaria expansion. The funny thing is the digital version of Magic got Dominaria long before I actually got the box that I ordered. If you currently have access to Arena just the act of logging in gets you three packs, and once again remember these packs have 1 rare/mythic, 2 uncommon and 5 commons… and or a combination of wildcards. Wildcards as always can be traded in for any card you are missing of that rarity and they do not appear to be set dependent. This means that more or less you seem to be able to bank them and then turn in a bunch of them any time you want to build a deck.

The other thing that went in yesterday was the ability to spend money and buy the intermediary currency of Arena… Gems. There are two currencies in the game… Gold that you earn by completing quests and such and Gems that you plunk down hard earned cash. The prices range from $4.99 for the first pack of 750 gems making it roughly 150 gems per dollar all the way to 20,000 gems for $99.99 making that 200 gems per dollar spent. The thing that concerns me the most at this point is the fact that MTG Arena is a beta and I have yet to actually find any place that talks about whether or not there will be a wipe before launch… and if there is one if money spent will be refunded. This is the biggest hurdle for me personally against spending any money at all… because I would really like assurances that I would at least keep the value of that purchase even if I don’t keep the cards.

Now we get into the prime thing you can buy with your gems… packs of cards. At the 45 and 90 pack range you get what was the Dominaria buy the box promo card… making me think that they consider 45 packs to be the equivalent of a 36 pack Magic the Gathering Booster Box. I did some nonsense via spreadsheet before I actually noticed that there is a post on the forums with pretty much all of the economy elements outlined. As it stands the only scaling is on gem purchases… where the more money you spend the more gems you wind up getting per dollar. At the high end of buying 750 gem packs that places the price per pack at $1.33 and if you are buying on the low end at 20,000 gems the price per pack drops down to $1. That means 45 packs would be $59.88 buying 600 gems at a time and $45.00 buying 20,000 gems at a time… similarly the gigantic 90 pack bundle comes out to $119.76 and $89.99 respectively.

For an economy reference… Hearthstone buying in the smallest package ends up being $1.49 per pack and in the largest package $1.16 per pack… for 3 fewer cards each pack. The biggest problem with each and every gem pack is they do not exactly sync up with the dollar amounts meaning you are going to have a remainder of gems that are not really usable for the purpose of buying packs. Contrasted again with Hearthstone there is no intermediary currency so you always know what you are getting per dollar spent regardless of some nonsense exchange rate. My friend Toadchild also did some math and figured out that the most efficient way to purchase cards if you wanted the maximum number of packs for your gems… would be 1-45 card pack, 2-15 card packs and 4-6 card packs giving you a total of 99 packs for 19,800 gems. This still gives you an annoying remainder of 200 gems though in the process. If you are curious about the full range of nonsense here is the google sheet I was working things out in.

Other than just the ability to purchase cards for cash… they implemented the beginnings of a draft mode. Quick Draft however is not the pod drafting you were expecting however and instead something significantly different. Effectively when the event is going on you can enter the draft at will and be placed up against some AI that drafts with you. This apparently gives you the ability to leave the screen and return to your matches later any time while the event is active. The buy in is going to be 5000 gold or 750 gems… aka the $4.99 pack and rewards you a blend of cards and gems in prizes. Essentially you keep anything you draft into your collection and have the possibility to win additional prizes if you get to 7 wins before you get to 3 losses. Draft packs have the same distribution as tabletop giving you 1 rare/mythic, 3 uncommon and 10 commons making it a more familiar format for those who have drafted before. The prize support breakout looks a little something like this…

0 Wins: 50 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
1 Win: 100 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
2 Wins: 200 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
3 Wins: 300 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
4 Wins: 450 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
5 Wins: 650 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
6 Wins: 850 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
7 Wins: 950 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted

The boosters are all listed as a “Chance for Extra Boosters” but there really isn’t any particular information surrounding that… maybe if you go 7 and 0 you get 3… or 7 and 2 you only get 1. This isn’t really clarified that I saw.

The other thing that went in is Quick Constructed which is effectively a tournament in a box allowing you to hop in and play in a competitive structure with prize support. The buy in here is 500 gold or 95 gems and has significantly more meager rewards primarily allowing you to gamble your gold for the chance at winning your 7 and getting it doubled in the process with a few randomized cards in the process. This would feel better were it not for the fact that they completely removed random card rewards at the end of winning a match, meaning this is now your way for getting that sort of thing. I actually loved the whole get a random card after you win thing… because it sorta felt like an Ante card even though that concept is an element of a bygone era. For those interested the prize support structure looks a little something like this…

0 Wins: 100 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
1 Win: 200 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
2 Wins: 300 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
3 Wins: 400 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
4 Wins: 500 gold, 2 individual Uncommon cards, and 1 individual Rare card
5 Wins: 600 gold, 2 individual Uncommon cards, and 1 individual Rare card
6 Wins: 800 gold, 1 individual Uncommon card, and 2 individual Rare cards
7 Wins: 1,000 gold, 1 individual Uncommon card, and 2 individual Rare cards

In a worst case scenario you spent 500 gold and got back 100 and 3 common cards. In the best case scenario you spent 500 gold… doubled it and got back 2 rares and 1 common. Unlike draft this is not an AI mode and you are playing against players. They suggest that this is game mode primarily for players who have already completed their daily quests and are looking for a way to get more goodies.

All in all I am mostly happy with the economy of the game so far. It seems rather reasonable especially if you contrast it with paper magic. For your dollar you are getting way more value out of Magic the Gathering Arena both in the sheer number of rares and uncommon you get per dollar and the fact that wildcards exist. Wildcards and stockpiling them seems to be a really good way to prepare for the oncoming release of a new expansion. As it stands right now… I could sit on my stash of mythic and rare wildcards and then the moment the next expansion releases buy everything outright that i need to make a deck work. Cracking packs is always going to be fun for me personally, but for players who would rather just buy what they need… cracking packs becomes a way to get those much needed tokens to finish their custom “brew”. The only concern I have is that since this mode seems so much more equitable to the player… what will it ultimately do to the physical hobby?

[UPDATE]

Any gems purchased with real money during the Closed Beta will be given back to your account after a final wipe at the end of the Closed Beta.

— Wizards of the Coast (@Wizards_Help) April 27, 2018

I got a response back from Wizard of the Coast support and the plan is to return the spent gems to your account when it goes live.

Unintended Night

April 19, 2018 by Belghast

What I was supposed to be playing last night is World of Warcraft as Wednesday is our normal mythical nonsense night. Unfortunately we were down two people already and I myself wasn’t really in the mood to do it either. I’ve been dealing with some stuff and yesterday was a bit of a bad mental health day. When those situations happen I tend to turtle up somewhere quiet and hang out by myself until whatever it is has passed. World of Warcraft is such an inherently social game that even the act of logging in ends up prompting a bunch of people to poke me and say hello… and it feels bad to ignore them when I need to ignore them.

Sure there is now “Appear Offline” mode but even then that is not a perfect scenario. For me at least there are a handful of people that I am generally okay with interacting with, because they know the drill. They understand deeply because they go through their own periods of turtle time, and as a result there is no need to attempt to keep up appearances as it were. However if you are in Offline mode and you reach out to one of those people who are on the closest rings of your monkeysphere… they cannot respond. You will be able to send them messages all day long but they will always get the offline message when attempting to respond back to you. As a result when I am feeling like this I just avoid WoW like the plague because it isn’t worth the hassle.

What I wanted to be doing was to sit on the couch and play some Everquest while watching some more Mighty Boosh streamed through the television. Unfortunately they seem to have had a rather traumatic maintenance yesterday. The servers went down at 5:00 am EDT on the 18th and did not come back apparently until 2:30 am EDT on the 19th. I have no clue at all what was going on… but I kept trying to fire up the launcher and getting the maintenance message. I have been enjoying myself a shocking amount in Everquest, but I realize that I am riding the drug that is nostalgia. I am not sure how long that drug will last but for the moment I am riding its high.

What I did instead was play a lot of MTG Arena as I got it set up on my laptop. Yesterday Scopique wrote an interesting response to my post about Arena… or at least one that mentioned it because it wasn’t exactly a direct response. The funny thing is I wouldn’t necessarily call myself much of a competitive gamer. I traditionally shy away from player versus player situations, but games like MTG Arena or the Crucible in Destiny don’t seem to bother me that much and I am not entirely certain why. I stumbled across a post from Tobold who very much did not enjoy his time with Arena, but for the moment I don’t mind at all that it is largely just a stripped down 1v1 client. I think ultimately if you are going into Arena expecting Duels of the Planeswalkers or MTG Duels either one… you are going to be sorely disappointed.

Arena is simply a Magic the Gathering Online that isn’t horrible. Sure MTGO is serviceable but nothing about it is really intuitive and it feels like you are jumping through a lot of hoops to make anything work. MTGO was absolutely less cludgy than the days of trying to arrange a game on IRC and then getting both parties to fire up and connect to each other through the Apprentice application. However card gaming on a PC has changed drastically since then and Hearthstone more or less has led that charge. Arena is that Hearthstone-esc interface for the far more seasons and complicated game of Magic the Gathering, and the thing is… it works amazingly well.

There have been a few times I have been bit by the game trying to move forward without me… but in the grand scheme of things it seems to do 99.9% of the right things at the right time. The other moments don’t bother me too much because I am not placing a lot of my personal ego into whether or not I am winning. I am simply enjoying playing cards and occasionally I do really well. I do feel like Tobold’s comment of not feeling like he could be competitive with the decks presented was a bit nonsense given that I have been entirely playing the stock Golgari Exploration deck. I felt like I was able to pick it up and start winning matches almost immediately… and sure as my rank has risen I am winning less matches but even that doesn’t bother me much. I am still winning more than enough to complete daily quests getting me packs and gold… to buy more packs. All in all I feel like Arena is going to shape up to be a very solid version of Magic the Gathering Online… but we need to stop the comparisons there for our own sanity.

MTG Arena Beta

April 18, 2018 by Belghast

Yesterday was of course the ninth anniversary of the Tales of the Aggronaut blog… and Wizards of the Coast got me a present. Roughly halfway through the day I checked my mail and noticed that I got an email from WotC inviting me to the closed beta of Arena… their attempt at making a modern Magic the Gathering client. The truth is Hearthstone has been eating their lunch for several years now due to its extreme accessibility. It also does the dual whammy of giving both a nostalgia buzz for magic the gathering and collectible card games in general… while delivering a fatal blow of world of warcraft nostalgia at the same time. It’s a good game… and honestly lately I have been playing quite a bit of the warrior rush deck, but even that said… it is no Magic the Gathering. There is just something about this game that causes me to follow the community and buy cards… even though I don’t get to play that often.

The biggest problem for me is that I don’t really have a LGS or Local Gaming Store to be spending my time at. I live out in the burbs and the closest thing to me is on the opposite end of Tulsa from where I live… making it not exactly convenient to go to in the evenings and play cards. Where a game like Hearthstone or Arena comes in is it allows me to get that fix… without the need to actually get hands on other players. That said I am working on fostering a little community at work for lunch time gaming and am building up some balanced decks to sort of make an easy drop in and play environment. All of that said… it is just so much easier to get online at the end of a day and get my gaming fix rather than trying to coordinate with other human beings.

When you start up the Arena client you are given a handful of packs to start crafting your own decks with. This assortment essentially encompassed the last two blocks of play… Rivals of Ixalan, Ixalan, Hour of Devastation and Amonkhet. I got a handful of decent cards and could have probably crafted together a serviceable deck from them. I personally like these two blocks of play theme wise and together they give quite a bit of reasonable synergy. I believe the plan going forward is to largely limit Arena to standard sets by default… which seems a little if that were the case why Kaladesh and Aether Revolt are not included. It was my understanding that when the Kaladesh block cycles out the Amonkhet block will as well in Q4 2018. Quite frankly I struggle keeping these things in my head as to which sets are in and which sets are out because it doesn’t seem anywhere near as clear as it used to be. I apparently am not the only person to think this because there is literally a website called What is In Standard.

One thing that is going to be a challenge to get used to is that the pack structure is vastly different from live paper magic. When you open a pack you get a grand total of 8 cards instead of 15 cards… which I hope means they are going to charge a reduced price for the packs when the whole buying packs for money thing is eventually introduced. You get a single rare/mythic, two uncommons, and five commons. If you already have more than a play set of a card they replace it instead with a token as you can see underneath Samut in the above picture. These can then be spent to fill out missing holes in your collection trading a rare for a rare or a mythic for a mythic. At first I could not understand why I kept getting them since at this point in my head… I had only opened a handful of packs.

Also in your collection are a wide variety of deck archetypes built and ready to go. Personally I have been shifting back and forth between Golgari Exploration for which Green/Black has always been my preferred color set, and Legion of Dusk which similarly is heavy black and vampire themed enough to ignore the fact that I am using white mana. I love the exploration mechanic and when it compounds with cards that do stuff when any card explores. This means you can get some really big critters on the board that escalate rapidly. Ultimately in a perfect situation I want a foul orchard out on turn one, Wildgrowth Walker on turn two, and then some combination of creatures that explore like Seeker’s Squire or Ixalli’s Diviner to pump up the Walker and start my assault proper. What that works it is beautiful… when it doesn’t there seem to be enough alternate paths to victory to hang in for a very long time.

For the most part the client itself plays exactly like you would expect a magic client to play. It does a lot of things for you, like if you have no plays it goes ahead and skips to the next turn which is likely going to throw you off at first. There is a way to flip the client into a more granular level having you verify each and every trigger that happens… which would be important for more technical decks. I do feel like the timeout is maybe a little bit long given how many phases you have to get through… there have been times that matches have taken forever because the other player was just slow at evaluating their options… or potentially just doing something else at the same time. Unlike the Duels of the Planeswalkers clients I never felt like it was rushing me through things and causing me to lose card play opportunities. It seems to have some intelligence built into the client and stalls anytime it thinks you might have a play option, and so far it has not missed a time when I needed to play a card in response to something.

After each victory you are awarded a single random card, and there are various quests that you can be working on while playing matches. For example you can see in the bar that I am at 8 wins of 10 needed for my next pack of Rivals of Ixalan. The pack quests seem to come at 5 victories, 10 victories and 15 victories… and not sure if that trend continues on every 5 victories or if you are limited to 3 packs per week. Similarly there are quests that I had already completed like Kill 13 of your opponents creatures or cast 13 white or blue spells, each of those rewarding 250 gold. The in game pack purchasing mechanism allows you to buy a pack every 1000 gold, so essentially after doing four of these quests you can get some more cards. I am assuming this gold currency will also eventually be used for drafting which sadly is not in yet… but I believe they have talked about wanting that game play mode exists.

The only real thing you need to know is the fact that I set up my account around 6:30 last night and the next thing I knew… it was 9:30. The game is extremely good and brought back all of the right nostalgia beats for sitting around playing magic the gathering and trying to figure out how to dig yourself out of a card draw hole. There are times when things go extremely well… then there are other times like the above match when things go south really quickly. I just could not get the exploration cards I needed to power up my front line and managed to keep the other player long enough to get a recursive combo on the ground. As a result they manages to gain up 183 life before finally finishing me off in a single round. I could have conceded at any point, but I wanted to see how big they could manage to get their health pool. Even in a horrible loss condition… I was entertained. I look forward to seeing how this product evolves over time and I am likely going to start streaming it on occasion so you can laugh at me as I make obvious mistakes.