A Veteran Paper Player's Thoughts On This Game

[swagen2167]

First some background so I'm not just some noob new to Magic.

I started playing around Revised. I think it was late 1994. I graduated from Standard to Legacy when Standard started to bore me. Was able to hold my own against most opponents and won quite a few tournaments. Okay, I know how to play Magic.

So far, I'm finding playing this game itself easy. I win most of my matches. Of course I run into a lot of opponents who seem to scoop, sometimes before they even play a land. I'm not sure I understand that, but whatever.

For the most part, I like this game. Of course I love playing Magic itself so I am quite biased.

Having said that, there are things about this game that bug me a little. Not enough to stop playing but enough that I felt the need to vent just a little.

1. It's obvious that opening hands are somewhat rigged. People here call it hand smoothing. I call it a shame. Not every hand should be playable. Sometimes, in the real world, you just get no land or too much land. That doesn't happen here. Some people would say that's a good thing. I'm not so sure I agree. Deciding whether or not to mulligan should be harder than it is here. I had to mulligan ONCE in all the games I've played. I think a realistic hand draw based on real probability and not on some algo would make this a better game,

2. The reward system discourages playing this game a lot. I sometimes run out of things to shoot for early in the day long before I want to stop playing. But what's the point when a win gets you nothing at some point?

3. The rewards themselves, for free players, are almost meaningless. With all the cards I've won (most early on) only 2 were worth putting in my RW deck and those 2 marginally made the deck better. In fact, it's arguable if they even DID make the deck better. As they are one ofs, I've yet to use them. Mostly because this deck is so fast that the game ends usually before those cards are even drawn, let alone cast.

4. Then there is the player base itself. Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm playing against a bot. Two matches today, it took way too much time for them to decide whether to mulligan or not. And the one player scooped on his turn before he even played a card and even knew what I was playing. This leads me to believe that they know that most decks in this format (Standard) are very fast. In my experience, they are lightning fast. Some are even faster than my deck. The ramp I've seen on some of these decks is insane. Point is, I've played some matches where I didn't feel I deserved to win based on how quickly some players quit.

Having said all that, Magic The Gathering has been my favorite game for over 30 years. I have some good memories. I spent a lot of money on cards and at one point owned every legal Legacy top tier deck. Those were incredibly fun days. Every week I would bring a different deck to our Legacy shop. When they closed, I cried. Literally.

I eventually sold all my cards for a crap ton of money simply because there was no place left to play around me. I don't even know what the state of Magic is these days as I haven't really followed either the Standard or Legacy meta in a long time. I'd like to think the game is still healthy but it wouldn't surprise me to find out it's not. Like I said, I'm biased but I can understand if people don't like the current Standard meta. Some of these decks are insane. I don't think the best Legacy decks could keep up with them.

In closing, I think the reward system needs to be seriously revamped so as not to discourage f2p players. Though it is doubtful that will ever happen.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on all this. What I said that you agree with as well as what I said that you don't agree with.

[anaris]

...because brawl and other formats are different formats where no reasonable person would assume the numbers would translate????

[anaris]

"stuff that is good in limited is unplayably bad in legacy" is like one of the oldest magic design principles, they know about it

[Gryfn]

Początkowo opublikowane przez anaris:

the highest possible total of the 100 cards probably adds up to the same number as the highest possible commander

Lol, talk about mental gymnastics.

[Gryfn]

Początkowo opublikowane przez anaris:

...because brawl and other formats are different formats where no reasonable person would assume the numbers would translate????

Lol, in Brawl, the commanders are more heavily weighted as they said, but of course they could use the same values for non-commander cards.

[Zlehtnoba]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Gryfn:

Początkowo opublikowane przez anaris:

...because brawl and other formats are different formats where no reasonable person would assume the numbers would translate????

Lol, in Brawl, the commanders are more heavily weighted as they said, but of course they could use the same values for non-commander cards.

They could, but should not. It's a totally different story when you have four copies of a card in your sixty, or one copy in a hundred. More so for the lands, most Constructed formats, apart from Brawl, get a huge benefit from a consistent mana base that allows them to play their cards early.

[$tump]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Zlehtnoba:

I'm at a loss to understand you. What paywall? On Arena, lands cost a wildcard, same as any other card. And what has this perceived paywall got to do with mana flood/draught? I can see better lands making your mana base better when you draw them, but not mitigate draught (the cycling ones can help with flood).

Someone with 8 duel lands vs someone playing 2 colors and tapped lands. Player 1 will win 60% more because they can build for rapid deployment.

Cycling lowers your card count while keeping your colors available.
Ideally you have 3 lands in starting hand. Hence the 40% deck count.

If most of your cards are 2-3 cost you don't need land buildup and cycling helps remove land from your deck to draw, however, you still don't want to be placing 'tapped' land every turn because that will restrict your flow. Most games end in 3-4 mana.

It is a Pay wall as they rotate out of seasons, require rare gold / mythic wildcards, and are a must to build consistent mana on multi-color decks. . . The only way you'll do well is with mono color, and you'll hit a wall when you start playing against players with rare and mythic colorless cycling. Quite frankly, after a year unless you singularly focus on 1 deck/strategy/idea you'll be unable to save up enough wildcards.

[nul]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Gryfn:

Think about it. Why does Teferi have both a weight of 1800 and a weight of 45 in the same spreadsheet if it can not be included more than once in a Commander deck ? The same spreadsheet gives Hallowed Fountain a weight of 0 in both commander and non-commander.

Because the 1800 weight is for when he's your commander, and the 45 weight is for when he's in the 99 instead.
If a card isn't your commander, you can put them in your deck instead.
It would be insane to have him add 1800 weight to your deck while you have a different commander assigned.
And then the reason they have a higher weight as your commander is because they're always available to you, meaning the deck can be structured around that commander.


As for Hallowed Fountain and other cards that can't be your commander, it looks like there just might be data entry errors. Likely from the spreadsheet being made in a hurry. Maybe some copy and pasting and then editing in post to fill in the commander values. As the older sheets were actually separated (the separated ones simply didn't list non-commander cards in the commander sheet).

The spreadsheet's data was only able to be filled in because of brawl. There was an error that happened to print your deck weight to the log file. So people simply did math to figure out which cards had what weight. The "99" in the spreadsheet header specifically refers to 100 card formats.


Yes, other best of 1, unranked, non-event formats have deck weights, but as you can see in the spreadsheet itself. Historic brawl and Standard brawl have different weights for the same cards in the main deck. So it's very likely that the other formats have their own weights.

As for now, they've changed how the system works behind the scenes, so anything beyond May 27th, 2024 is purely speculative. We just know there is a system.

[anaris]

Początkowo opublikowane przez $tump:

Someone with 8 duel lands vs someone playing 2 colors and tapped lands. Player 1 will win 60% more because they can build for rapid deployment.

this assumes they will play each other, which is not my experience. I'm currently doing historic ranked with a top tier manabase (triome first turn, fastland second and third turn, shocklands thereafter), and only about 1/20 games will someone else play a tapland first turn. When I ran bw cats tribal with taplands, it was super common to see other taplands.

[anaris]

Początkowo opublikowane przez nul:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Gryfn:

Think about it. Why does Teferi have both a weight of 1800 and a weight of 45 in the same spreadsheet if it can not be included more than once in a Commander deck ? The same spreadsheet gives Hallowed Fountain a weight of 0 in both commander and non-commander.

Because the 1800 weight is for when he's your commander, and the 45 weight is for when he's in the 99 instead.
If a card isn't your commander, you can put them in your deck instead.
It would be insane to have him add 1800 weight to your deck while you have a different commander assigned.
And then the reason they have a higher weight as your commander is because they're always available to you, meaning the deck can be structured around that commander.


As for Hallowed Fountain and other cards that can't be your commander, it looks like there just might be data entry errors. Likely from the spreadsheet being made in a hurry. Maybe some copy and pasting and then editing in post to fill in the commander values. As the older sheets were actually separated (the separated ones simply didn't list non-commander cards in the commander sheet).

The spreadsheet's data was only able to be filled in because of brawl. There was an error that happened to print your deck weight to the log file. So people simply did math to figure out which cards had what weight. The "99" in the spreadsheet header specifically refers to 100 card formats.


Yes, other best of 1, unranked, non-event formats have deck weights, but as you can see in the spreadsheet itself. Historic brawl and Standard brawl have different weights for the same cards in the main deck. So it's very likely that the other formats have their own weights.

As for now, they've changed how the system works behind the scenes, so anything beyond May 27th, 2024 is purely speculative. We just know there is a system.

thanks, this is a very clear explanation

[anaris]

Początkowo opublikowane przez anaris:

Początkowo opublikowane przez $tump:

Someone with 8 duel lands vs someone playing 2 colors and tapped lands. Player 1 will win 60% more because they can build for rapid deployment.

this assumes they will play each other, which is not my experience. I'm currently doing historic ranked with a top tier manabase (triome first turn, fastland second and third turn, shocklands thereafter), and only about 1/20 games will someone else play a tapland first turn. When I ran bw cats tribal with taplands, it was super common to see other taplands.

one of my partners plays mythic with Path to Exile, and she says the most common outcome at that tier is that the opponent fails to find a basic land to put in play lol

[Gryfn]

Początkowo opublikowane przez nul:

Because the 1800 weight is for when he's your commander, and the 45 weight is for when he's in the 99 instead.
If a card isn't your commander, you can put them in your deck instead.
It would be insane to have him add 1800 weight to your deck while you have a different commander assigned.
And then the reason they have a higher weight as your commander is because they're always available to you, meaning the deck can be structured around that commander.

Yes, I know. That's the point. There were commander and NON-COMMANDER values in the spreadsheet.

As for Hallowed Fountain and other cards that can't be your commander, it looks like there just might be data entry errors. Likely from the spreadsheet being made in a hurry. Maybe some copy and pasting and then editing in post to fill in the commander values. As the older sheets were actually separated (the separated ones simply didn't list non-commander cards in the commander sheet).

The lands were what I found to be interesting. Some lands were actually weighted above 0 but they were utility lands. Rare dual lands like Hallowed Fountain were given a weight of 0 in both formats.

[Zlehtnoba]

Początkowo opublikowane przez $tump:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Zlehtnoba:

I'm at a loss to understand you. What paywall? On Arena, lands cost a wildcard, same as any other card. And what has this perceived paywall got to do with mana flood/draught? I can see better lands making your mana base better when you draw them, but not mitigate draught (the cycling ones can help with flood).

Someone with 8 duel lands vs someone playing 2 colors and tapped lands. Player 1 will win 60% more because they can build for rapid deployment.

Cycling lowers your card count while keeping your colors available.
Ideally you have 3 lands in starting hand. Hence the 40% deck count.

If most of your cards are 2-3 cost you don't need land buildup and cycling helps remove land from your deck to draw, however, you still don't want to be placing 'tapped' land every turn because that will restrict your flow. Most games end in 3-4 mana.

It is a Pay wall as they rotate out of seasons, require rare gold / mythic wildcards, and are a must to build consistent mana on multi-color decks. . . The only way you'll do well is with mono color, and you'll hit a wall when you start playing against players with rare and mythic colorless cycling. Quite frankly, after a year unless you singularly focus on 1 deck/strategy/idea you'll be unable to save up enough wildcards.

Thank you, now I understand. This is all quite true, I was just confused by the term paywall. Now I see it's the general paywall you are talking about, the slow rate at which wildcards are gained in the current system.

FWIW, rare lands are the best use of wildcards you can make, I always first look at the rare duals in a set when planning where to spend them.

[anaris]

FWIW, rare lands are the best use of wildcards you can make, I always first look at the rare duals in a set when planning where to spend them

yeah agree. A decent manabase is often the most expensive thing in wildcard terms, hard to replace with other cards, and can fit in almost any deck of the right colour.

shock duals (pay 2 life or it enters tapped), "enters untapped if you control two or fewer lands", and triomes are the gold standard, i think.

[Tourette's Guy]

Początkowo opublikowane przez swagen2167:

First some background so I'm not just some noob new to Magic.

I started playing around Revised. I think it was late 1994. I graduated from Standard to Legacy when Standard started to bore me. Was able to hold my own against most opponents and won quite a few tournaments. Okay, I know how to play Magic.

So far, I'm finding playing this game itself easy. I win most of my matches. Of course I run into a lot of opponents who seem to scoop, sometimes before they even play a land. I'm not sure I understand that, but whatever.

For the most part, I like this game. Of course I love playing Magic itself so I am quite biased.

Having said that, there are things about this game that bug me a little. Not enough to stop playing but enough that I felt the need to vent just a little.

1. It's obvious that opening hands are somewhat rigged. People here call it hand smoothing. I call it a shame. Not every hand should be playable. Sometimes, in the real world, you just get no land or too much land. That doesn't happen here. Some people would say that's a good thing. I'm not so sure I agree. Deciding whether or not to mulligan should be harder than it is here. I had to mulligan ONCE in all the games I've played. I think a realistic hand draw based on real probability and not on some algo would make this a better game,

2. The reward system discourages playing this game a lot. I sometimes run out of things to shoot for early in the day long before I want to stop playing. But what's the point when a win gets you nothing at some point?

3. The rewards themselves, for free players, are almost meaningless. With all the cards I've won (most early on) only 2 were worth putting in my RW deck and those 2 marginally made the deck better. In fact, it's arguable if they even DID make the deck better. As they are one ofs, I've yet to use them. Mostly because this deck is so fast that the game ends usually before those cards are even drawn, let alone cast.

4. Then there is the player base itself. Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm playing against a bot. Two matches today, it took way too much time for them to decide whether to mulligan or not. And the one player scooped on his turn before he even played a card and even knew what I was playing. This leads me to believe that they know that most decks in this format (Standard) are very fast. In my experience, they are lightning fast. Some are even faster than my deck. The ramp I've seen on some of these decks is insane. Point is, I've played some matches where I didn't feel I deserved to win based on how quickly some players quit.

Having said all that, Magic The Gathering has been my favorite game for over 30 years. I have some good memories. I spent a lot of money on cards and at one point owned every legal Legacy top tier deck. Those were incredibly fun days. Every week I would bring a different deck to our Legacy shop. When they closed, I cried. Literally.

I eventually sold all my cards for a crap ton of money simply because there was no place left to play around me. I don't even know what the state of Magic is these days as I haven't really followed either the Standard or Legacy meta in a long time. I'd like to think the game is still healthy but it wouldn't surprise me to find out it's not. Like I said, I'm biased but I can understand if people don't like the current Standard meta. Some of these decks are insane. I don't think the best Legacy decks could keep up with them.

In closing, I think the reward system needs to be seriously revamped so as not to discourage f2p players. Though it is doubtful that will ever happen.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on all this. What I said that you agree with as well as what I said that you don't agree with.

I started playing magic around 1995. Revised boosters weren't sold anymore. I was more like a casual player; I never truly followed the meta, and I never was a competitive player. I just played with my friends of that time. I spent some money, not too much because I was a kid and I didn't have enough resources to build top-tier decks. But I was able to get a Sol Ring, Zuran Orb, 3-4 armageddons, 4 Mishra's Factories, Crusades, Maze of Ith, a Serendib Efreet from Revised that I got in a futile try of building some of these ridiculously strong blue decks of that era.... etc.

Yeah, the old-school Magic was gone long time ago. And MTG Arena doesn't even try to appeal to veteran players. They just try to shove Alchemy down our throats at every chance. The only eternal 100% paper format we have here is Explorer, a somewhat watered down version of Pioneer, an already watered down version of Modern. Want to play something remotely similar to Modern? Too bad, you have to deal with digital-only cards.

[Free Palestine]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Tourette's Guy:

Początkowo opublikowane przez swagen2167:

First some background so I'm not just some noob new to Magic.

I started playing around Revised. I think it was late 1994. I graduated from Standard to Legacy when Standard started to bore me. Was able to hold my own against most opponents and won quite a few tournaments. Okay, I know how to play Magic.

So far, I'm finding playing this game itself easy. I win most of my matches. Of course I run into a lot of opponents who seem to scoop, sometimes before they even play a land. I'm not sure I understand that, but whatever.

For the most part, I like this game. Of course I love playing Magic itself so I am quite biased.

Having said that, there are things about this game that bug me a little. Not enough to stop playing but enough that I felt the need to vent just a little.

1. It's obvious that opening hands are somewhat rigged. People here call it hand smoothing. I call it a shame. Not every hand should be playable. Sometimes, in the real world, you just get no land or too much land. That doesn't happen here. Some people would say that's a good thing. I'm not so sure I agree. Deciding whether or not to mulligan should be harder than it is here. I had to mulligan ONCE in all the games I've played. I think a realistic hand draw based on real probability and not on some algo would make this a better game,

2. The reward system discourages playing this game a lot. I sometimes run out of things to shoot for early in the day long before I want to stop playing. But what's the point when a win gets you nothing at some point?

3. The rewards themselves, for free players, are almost meaningless. With all the cards I've won (most early on) only 2 were worth putting in my RW deck and those 2 marginally made the deck better. In fact, it's arguable if they even DID make the deck better. As they are one ofs, I've yet to use them. Mostly because this deck is so fast that the game ends usually before those cards are even drawn, let alone cast.

4. Then there is the player base itself. Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm playing against a bot. Two matches today, it took way too much time for them to decide whether to mulligan or not. And the one player scooped on his turn before he even played a card and even knew what I was playing. This leads me to believe that they know that most decks in this format (Standard) are very fast. In my experience, they are lightning fast. Some are even faster than my deck. The ramp I've seen on some of these decks is insane. Point is, I've played some matches where I didn't feel I deserved to win based on how quickly some players quit.

Having said all that, Magic The Gathering has been my favorite game for over 30 years. I have some good memories. I spent a lot of money on cards and at one point owned every legal Legacy top tier deck. Those were incredibly fun days. Every week I would bring a different deck to our Legacy shop. When they closed, I cried. Literally.

I eventually sold all my cards for a crap ton of money simply because there was no place left to play around me. I don't even know what the state of Magic is these days as I haven't really followed either the Standard or Legacy meta in a long time. I'd like to think the game is still healthy but it wouldn't surprise me to find out it's not. Like I said, I'm biased but I can understand if people don't like the current Standard meta. Some of these decks are insane. I don't think the best Legacy decks could keep up with them.

In closing, I think the reward system needs to be seriously revamped so as not to discourage f2p players. Though it is doubtful that will ever happen.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on all this. What I said that you agree with as well as what I said that you don't agree with.

I started playing magic around 1995. Revised boosters weren't sold anymore. I was more like a casual player; I never truly followed the meta, and I never was a competitive player. I just played with my friends of that time. I spent some money, not too much because I was a kid and I didn't have enough resources to build top-tier decks. But I was able to get a Sol Ring, Zuran Orb, 3-4 armageddons, 4 Mishra's Factories, Crusades, Maze of Ith, a Serendib Efreet from Revised that I got in a futile try of building some of these ridiculously strong blue decks of that era.... etc.

Yeah, the old-school Magic was gone long time ago. And MTG Arena doesn't even try to appeal to veteran players. They just try to shove Alchemy down our throats at every chance. The only eternal 100% paper format we have here is Explorer, a somewhat watered down version of Pioneer, an already watered down version of Modern. Want to play something remotely similar to Modern? Too bad, you have to deal with digital-only cards.

What's wrong with Alchemy?