I tried to play this morning. Picked an Esper Control deck in Bo1. Played three games all against Esper control decks. Game two I was so mana starved my opponent had 12 lands to my 3. Like I just can't imagine how anyone can be like "this is a good product." Why do they need to so much interference into the game? Just let the game run on it's own. Stop with all the manipulation. It's such a gross experience.
The basics of the product are good. All the fancy extra bullcrap/modifications they throw in is what ruins it. You should see the official MTG Arena forums under feedback. People are constantly complaining about the shuffler and the match up system being broken. I HATE the fact that they are OBVIOUSLY using the matchmaker in the ranked system. The RANK is what should determine your opponent.
I honestly don't remember them using a matchmaking system like this for bo1 in the past. I was amazed at the diversity of decks I would play against. Those days have been gone for over a month now though. I'm getting back into online poker and considering Hearthstone if they don't fix this problem. Right now I'm playing just a couple of games a day to try and roll through my gold quests so I can draft.
The limited environment is pretty good still I find. Also, you don't run into the multiple copies of the same card problem because most limited decks have only 1-2 copies of a card.
The only established problems the game has is with the hand selection in best of one doing extremely weird stuff like making huge land pockets, putting multiple copies of the same card together, etc. The other problem is the ranked queue and player behavior due to the incentives.
There basically shouldn't even be a ranked version of play in Arena right now for anything other than traditional best of three. Fast play one vs one is just broken all day long.
I mean, just today trying to play this game at all in one vs one has ended up having a match where someone ixalan binds a krasis, and the deck shuffler stacked all the krasis together followed by a land pocket 3 deep.
The next match, I get all four arrests bunched up, a land pocket of 4 lands, and die because the other guys starting hand basically was better.
The match after that, I ended up having all my hero of precinct one stacked, a land pocket of 3 lands, and then got into another pocket of three of my four negates.
I'm sorry, but this is not acceptable. If I mulligan once, it does not behave at all like this.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The basics of the product are good. All the fancy extra bullcrap/modifications they throw in is what ruins it. You should see the official MTG Arena forums under feedback. People are constantly complaining about the shuffler and the match up system being broken. I HATE the fact that they are OBVIOUSLY using the matchmaker in the ranked system. The RANK is what should determine your opponent.
I honestly don't remember them using a matchmaking system like this for bo1 in the past. I was amazed at the diversity of decks I would play against. Those days have been gone for over a month now though. I'm getting back into online poker and considering Hearthstone if they don't fix this problem. Right now I'm playing just a couple of games a day to try and roll through my gold quests so I can draft.
The limited environment is pretty good still I find. Also, you don't run into the multiple copies of the same card problem because most limited decks have only 1-2 copies of a card.
I went to the bother after taking a break (I burned out HARD playing Burn while abusing the land shuffler) to put together Esper Control, and the difference between what I play against as Esper, vs Burn, is comical. I'm not in it to have the game artificially match make me in ranked ladder, but its pretty obvious that it does, and I'm not about to grind to Mythic to the point where the player pool is shallow enough that it must (I assume?) respect the rank while making a game.
Between this and the also obvious land shuffler abuse, its no longer Magic.
I mean, just today trying to play this game at all in one vs one has ended up having a match where someone ixalan binds a krasis, and the deck shuffler stacked all the krasis together followed by a land pocket 3 deep.
The next match, I get all four arrests bunched up, a land pocket of 4 lands, and die because the other guys starting hand basically was better.
The match after that, I ended up having all my hero of precinct one stacked, a land pocket of 3 lands, and then got into another pocket of three of my four negates.
Yeah I've been having the same problem, but then, real paper magic does have instances of this too, just not as regularly.
Thing is, variance is fine, but I do find your land choices make a big difference to starting hands.
Case in point, playing Esper Control.
I found that having my land count (26 for me) a certain way would get me all 3 colours by T3 every single game, but if I deleted a guildgate for a second swamp, I would see both of those swamps by T2, and generally get locked out of blue until T5.
And I've noticed this in other decks to a lesser degree. My advice would be, if your deck regularly runs well and curves out well, don't change anything.
Methinks the developers have some work to do on their deck shuffler.
Matching up certain decks with others is tedious, but I only notice being really obvious in ranked play. If I play;
RDW - my opponents are almost always running lifegain with Golgari Midrange, White Weenie & Esper Control, occasionally the Mirror.
Gates - Esper Control almost exclusively, which can be very tough to beat.
Esper - Mirror, Golgari Mid or RDW
Izzet Drakes - Mono-Blue, Esper & RDW
Gruul - Esper or RDW
I very rarely play against a Gates deck, and I can expect to play against either Esper or RDW in every second game if I play any of the above decks.
Now if I play a silly deck running lots of basic lands, rubbish creatures etc., I come up against other homebrew janky decks I would otherwise never see.
And this is despite of playing ranked play or not. I never see these decks unless I'm running something rubbish, which is a shame, I kinda want to see homebrew creations across the *virtual table* so I can steal their idea's.
Now if I play a silly deck running lots of basic lands, rubbish creatures etc., I come up against other homebrew janky decks I would otherwise never see.
You're lucky. If I play lots of basics and rubbish creatures, I still come up against Esper or RDW, or Izzet.
Yeah, I'm using the default decks and I seem to come up against pretty strong decks fairly regularly I feel. I know it's not what they want but I wish you could have games just against the default decks, they're fun enough for me at least. Whereas once you start getting into more competitive decks they're extremely not good.
Foolishly decided to go into a Constructed event. Not sure how they work there but 4 games (I won 1 because they randomly conceded) and all 4 were mono white: Dauntless Bodyguard, Hunted Witness, Skymarcher Aspirant, the elephant that convokes etc.
Just played a few games of Temur Vanni-pod for my dailies and was paired against Green semi-Stompy, and another green big creatures deck. Edit: I am at 89% Mythic, 2-1 with this.
Matchups have been green, green UW with Teferi/Lyra/Mystic main, so playing against "non-tier", I guess.
The "Crazy One", playing casual magic and occasionally dipping his toes into regular play since 1994.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
Yeah, I'm using the default decks and I seem to come up against pretty strong decks fairly regularly I feel. I know it's not what they want but I wish you could have games just against the default decks, they're fun enough for me at least. Whereas once you start getting into more competitive decks they're extremely not good.
Not sure how that would upset their precious ranking system. I suppose some sort of format could exist limited only to the preconstructed decks.
They would probably have to give out those precons. I believe they're using new pre-cons along with the new tutorial system and since people like me can't redo the new tutorials on existing accounts, we don't get the new decks.
Or maybe they can give you precon decks to choose from in that kind of format but you don't get to keep the cards. I dunno. It's an interesting idea but I can almost guarantee WotC won't implement such a thing.
I guess you can use the new trainer mode they have. But the thing is so junk, I'm not even sure if it's really worth it. For me, at least, the A.I. seems to intentionally make worse plays as your life point drops down. I was fooling around with it because I wanted to see if the hand shaping still happens. We were both 1:1 on creatures but the bot had, IIRC, a trampler. All it needed to do was swing and win but it kept holding back for about ten turns until I drew what I needed. WTH?
We were both 1:1 on creatures but the bot had, IIRC, a trampler. All it needed to do was swing and win but it kept holding back for about ten turns until I drew what I needed. WTH?
Yeah the practice mode is odd..a lot of the time I play it, it plays mono white, and seems to attack every turn with it's 1/2s and 2/2s, even if it costs it the match.
On a side note, as for matchmaking, it is definitely doable from Ai. On Duels, for example, if I played Delirium then Watchers of the Dead, Scarab Feast, etc would come out without fail in multiples. GB Snake deck, the Ai would ALWAYS play instantly anti-snakes deck with lots of things that would place counters on my creatures, Grasping Dunes, Festering Mummy, Soulstinger etc
Yeah, I'm using the default decks and I seem to come up against pretty strong decks fairly regularly I feel. I know it's not what they want but I wish you could have games just against the default decks, they're fun enough for me at least. Whereas once you start getting into more competitive decks they're extremely not good.
Not sure how that would upset their precious ranking system. I suppose some sort of format could exist limited only to the preconstructed decks.
They would probably have to give out those precons. I believe they're using new pre-cons along with the new tutorial system and since people like me can't redo the new tutorials on existing accounts, we don't get the new decks.
Or maybe they can give you precon decks to choose from in that kind of format but you don't get to keep the cards. I dunno. It's an interesting idea but I can almost guarantee WotC won't implement such a thing.
I guess you can use the new trainer mode they have. But the thing is so junk, I'm not even sure if it's really worth it. For me, at least, the A.I. seems to intentionally make worse plays as your life point drops down. I was fooling around with it because I wanted to see if the hand shaping still happens. We were both 1:1 on creatures but the bot had, IIRC, a trampler. All it needed to do was swing and win but it kept holding back for about ten turns until I drew what I needed. WTH?
It's not about the ranking system, it's that if there is a mode where you just play with the decks then people aren't spending money on packs, which is what they want. It's a shame though, I'm finding it fun enough just with the default as I said, but getting blown out at times by people playing entirely too good to compete (relative to default Selesnya Enchantment deck) is kind of disappointing.
And the AI is useless. It's fun if I feel like beating up on something that can't fight back, but it's way too defensive. Unless you have an empty field it won't take a chance and attack.
.. but it's way too defensive. Unless you have an empty field it won't take a chance and attack.
Quite the opposite when I play it - I have a tapped Gruul Spellbreaker and a tapped Sunder Shaman, am on 35 life while AI is on 6 or 7, and it still attacks with it's 2/2 and 1/1 vanilla cats even with Ajani's Welcome out, LOL
I don't mind the matchmaking idea, but it really needs to be based on full collection level. People with a boatload of Rares and Mythic Rares have obviously been playing forever, investing tons of money or both. They should be matched up against similar players. F2P noobs like me with few rares/mythics should also be matched up in kind.
Having power players play novices like me creates match-ups which are just frustrating for us peasants and not challenging for the power players.
They may think the way they are doing it will "force" players to invest money in the game, but, for me, that is not the way it works. Before I invest, I evaluate the game to see how well it is designed. If I see Pay-to-win aspects, or unbalanced matchmaking or broken random deck generation, that becomes a "hard-no" from my wallet. WotC - if you want my money, don't break your games.
Ok so I am pretty new to this game....only been at it about 2 months. I thought maybe there was some kind of loose matchmaking, but holy hell now that I really see how bad it is I already am hating this game hard.
I spent the first few weeks getting spanked with my newb decks, that's a given, but didn't really experience any really powerful decks. After a bunch of grinding and drafts for a few weeks I managed to put together a nice mono red deck (as I suppose most new people do). When playing with this deck I see Esper control or super friends about 70% of the time, sometimes a mirror, and a few others of the more popular decks (but not many). I got tired of these same match ups over and over and went back to the grind for a month; now I've completed an Izzet Drake deck. Much to my dismay the meta then COMPLETELY changed for me. All I've seen are some kind of ridiculous control decks (I don't even know what they are, I'll have to research them), and green stompy or Golgari midrange. I have probably seen these decks a total of about 5 times before out of thousands of matches with my mono red.
This just really pisses me off. I spent so much time trying to change decks and I get crapped on by something completely different? There's got to be a better way to match people up; maybe rank players instead of decks? I honestly don't care if I'm up against other people with a similar win rate...even if their deck is going to crush mine...I'd rather see a range of different decks to play against than get stuck facing the same crap with a given deck every single time...
I came here to see what MTG was like, as a possible prelude to playing with real cards in real life. They sure found a way to prevent any actual sales revenue from me. I swear its like I am up against bots, with decks perfectly matched to counter my deck AS WELL AS my opponents getting perfectly ordered cards vs. me getting mana abused.
I swear its like I am up against bots, with decks perfectly matched to counter my deck AS WELL AS my opponents getting perfectly ordered cards vs. me getting mana abused.
Can relate.It's not unlike on Duels, if I played Delirium the AI would "suddenly" pull out Watchers of the Dead and that card for B that removes 3 cards from a graveyard, out of nowhere.
I can confirm that the matchmaking is rigged somehow. Most decks I've played were non-specific, they had no real archetype and were rather unfamilar to most players. I've also played WUBRG a lot, which makes it even harder to assume what my decks actually do.
What I've experienced was:
- decks that run a lot of boardclear will mostly end up against esper control or other deck types that give a ***** about boardclear.
- decks that are weak to aggro/burn will mostly end up against burn. Switch deck and all of a sudden no aggro, no burn.
- played against a lot of burn/discard and added white leyline resulted in barely any player target spells
- played a tricky deck that is a bit slower but still decent, ended up with a ton of fast discard opponents
Until WOTS it was all cool. I had quite predictable opponents, tweaks actually helped and the meta was somehow consitent. I went to mythic with a pretty bad hsitoric/walker deck. Even with these rigged matchups it was possible to make your deck kinda resiliant to the meta.
After WOTS came out, my match ups kept getting weirder. It feels like your opponents often have the perfect counter for literally everything youre doing and it's not like they just counter spells. They literally always have the perfect janky specific counter cards to completely disable me.
Few examples:
- I've barely seen Karn, the great creator. When I play my new artifact deck, I get matched up against him a lot. Today, I had two matches with opponents pulling out Karn in turn 4, which kinda locked me out of my artifact deck
- Same for decks that have trouble with flyers. If I play one of my decks that run more stuff like defeaning clarion I never get matched with flyers, probably because 1 clarion is enough to win a game against them. If I play a creature deck that doesn't have much own flyers or spot removal, I get like 5 of em in a row
- Literally everytime I got a solar blaze in my hand or draw one when wipe is needed, my opponent's creatures have more toughness than power and it ends up being useless
- Played against a lot of hexproof/dont counter me dinos and got olbliterated often. Added some plaguecrafters and never really saw em again
- decks with few enchant/artifact removal often ran into decks that had a lot of em, same for walkers and high value targets like thief of sanity
- going down from 24 to 23 lands in a deck that runs a lot of mana elves changed the deck in way that makes it impossible to draw a 4th or 5th land. Feels like playing 18-20 lands now.
I don't have more examples at the moment, but I've lost in a really silly manner lately and it got to a point where it is really suspicious. Especially when you see how bad the decks you play against actually are. Makes you wonder how on earth they got that far.
A friend of mine told me about similar issues and he also mentioned that the way people always have the perfect counter in their decks is just ridiculous, still not talking about the common countermeasures, talking about extremely specific counters/weird counters.
He also mentioned that he never gets the same opponents as me. He plays more control, I think a lot of grixis and he ends up playing against control only. He said that he improved his experience by playing bo3 with a decent sideboard. He said he won most bo3 matches and it was a better experience than usual.
Update:
played a lot of matches with my artifact deck today and mostof them were against other artifact decks. Until this point, I didn't even knew that there are actually players playing artifact decks. wtf
Update 2:
I start to feel that they somehow put you in some sort of league: play a token deck -> compede with other token decks etc. Just a theory but I feel like playing certain deck types results in a lot of semi-mirror matches.
It feels like your opponents often have the perfect counter for literally everything youre doing and it's not like they just counter spells. They literally always have the perfect janky specific counter cards to completely disable me.
THIS
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I honestly don't remember them using a matchmaking system like this for bo1 in the past. I was amazed at the diversity of decks I would play against. Those days have been gone for over a month now though. I'm getting back into online poker and considering Hearthstone if they don't fix this problem. Right now I'm playing just a couple of games a day to try and roll through my gold quests so I can draft.
The limited environment is pretty good still I find. Also, you don't run into the multiple copies of the same card problem because most limited decks have only 1-2 copies of a card.
There basically shouldn't even be a ranked version of play in Arena right now for anything other than traditional best of three. Fast play one vs one is just broken all day long.
I mean, just today trying to play this game at all in one vs one has ended up having a match where someone ixalan binds a krasis, and the deck shuffler stacked all the krasis together followed by a land pocket 3 deep.
The next match, I get all four arrests bunched up, a land pocket of 4 lands, and die because the other guys starting hand basically was better.
The match after that, I ended up having all my hero of precinct one stacked, a land pocket of 3 lands, and then got into another pocket of three of my four negates.
I'm sorry, but this is not acceptable. If I mulligan once, it does not behave at all like this.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I went to the bother after taking a break (I burned out HARD playing Burn while abusing the land shuffler) to put together Esper Control, and the difference between what I play against as Esper, vs Burn, is comical. I'm not in it to have the game artificially match make me in ranked ladder, but its pretty obvious that it does, and I'm not about to grind to Mythic to the point where the player pool is shallow enough that it must (I assume?) respect the rank while making a game.
Between this and the also obvious land shuffler abuse, its no longer Magic.
Spirits
Yeah I've been having the same problem, but then, real paper magic does have instances of this too, just not as regularly.
Thing is, variance is fine, but I do find your land choices make a big difference to starting hands.
Case in point, playing Esper Control.
I found that having my land count (26 for me) a certain way would get me all 3 colours by T3 every single game, but if I deleted a guildgate for a second swamp, I would see both of those swamps by T2, and generally get locked out of blue until T5.
And I've noticed this in other decks to a lesser degree. My advice would be, if your deck regularly runs well and curves out well, don't change anything.
Methinks the developers have some work to do on their deck shuffler.
Matching up certain decks with others is tedious, but I only notice being really obvious in ranked play. If I play;
RDW - my opponents are almost always running lifegain with Golgari Midrange, White Weenie & Esper Control, occasionally the Mirror.
Gates - Esper Control almost exclusively, which can be very tough to beat.
Esper - Mirror, Golgari Mid or RDW
Izzet Drakes - Mono-Blue, Esper & RDW
Gruul - Esper or RDW
I very rarely play against a Gates deck, and I can expect to play against either Esper or RDW in every second game if I play any of the above decks.
Now if I play a silly deck running lots of basic lands, rubbish creatures etc., I come up against other homebrew janky decks I would otherwise never see.
And this is despite of playing ranked play or not. I never see these decks unless I'm running something rubbish, which is a shame, I kinda want to see homebrew creations across the *virtual table* so I can steal their idea's.
You're lucky. If I play lots of basics and rubbish creatures, I still come up against Esper or RDW, or Izzet.
Dauntless Bodyguard, Hunted Witness, Skymarcher Aspirant, the elephant that convokes etc.
Matchups have been green, green UW with Teferi/Lyra/Mystic main, so playing against "non-tier", I guess.
Here is the list, lots of "tier" cards in there:
2 Biogenic Ooze (RNA) 122
1 Dream Eater (GRN) 38
2 Druid of the Cowl (M19) 177
4 Incubation Druid (RNA) 131
4 Llanowar Elves (DAR) 168
2 Mirror Image (M19) 61
1 Pelakka Wurm (M19) 192
4 Prime Speaker Vannifar (RNA) 195
1 Ravager Wurm (RNA) 200
4 Rekindling Phoenix (RIX) 111
2 Sailor of Means (XLN) 73
2 Siege-Gang Commander (DAR) 143
4 Adventurous Impulse (DAR) 153
4 Rhythm of the Wild (RNA) 201
4 Breeding Pool (RNA) 246
2 Forest (XLN) 277
3 Hinterland Harbor (DAR) 240
3 Rootbound Crag (XLN) 256
4 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
4 Stomping Ground (RNA) 259
3 Sulfur Falls (DAR) 247
1 Carnage Tyrant (XLN) 179
1 Kraul Foragers (GRN) 135
1 Kraul Harpooner (GRN) 136
4 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
2 Negate (RIX) 44
1 Reclamation Sage (M19) 196
3 Spell Pierce (XLN) 81
2 Vivien Reid (M19) 208
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
Not sure how that would upset their precious ranking system. I suppose some sort of format could exist limited only to the preconstructed decks.
They would probably have to give out those precons. I believe they're using new pre-cons along with the new tutorial system and since people like me can't redo the new tutorials on existing accounts, we don't get the new decks.
Or maybe they can give you precon decks to choose from in that kind of format but you don't get to keep the cards. I dunno. It's an interesting idea but I can almost guarantee WotC won't implement such a thing.
I guess you can use the new trainer mode they have. But the thing is so junk, I'm not even sure if it's really worth it. For me, at least, the A.I. seems to intentionally make worse plays as your life point drops down. I was fooling around with it because I wanted to see if the hand shaping still happens. We were both 1:1 on creatures but the bot had, IIRC, a trampler. All it needed to do was swing and win but it kept holding back for about ten turns until I drew what I needed. WTH?
Yeah the practice mode is odd..a lot of the time I play it, it plays mono white, and seems to attack every turn with it's 1/2s and 2/2s, even if it costs it the match.
On a side note, as for matchmaking, it is definitely doable from Ai. On Duels, for example, if I played Delirium then Watchers of the Dead, Scarab Feast, etc would come out without fail in multiples. GB Snake deck, the Ai would ALWAYS play instantly anti-snakes deck with lots of things that would place counters on my creatures, Grasping Dunes, Festering Mummy, Soulstinger etc
It's not about the ranking system, it's that if there is a mode where you just play with the decks then people aren't spending money on packs, which is what they want. It's a shame though, I'm finding it fun enough just with the default as I said, but getting blown out at times by people playing entirely too good to compete (relative to default Selesnya Enchantment deck) is kind of disappointing.
And the AI is useless. It's fun if I feel like beating up on something that can't fight back, but it's way too defensive. Unless you have an empty field it won't take a chance and attack.
Quite the opposite when I play it - I have a tapped Gruul Spellbreaker and a tapped Sunder Shaman, am on 35 life while AI is on 6 or 7, and it still attacks with it's 2/2 and 1/1 vanilla cats even with Ajani's Welcome out, LOL
Having power players play novices like me creates match-ups which are just frustrating for us peasants and not challenging for the power players.
They may think the way they are doing it will "force" players to invest money in the game, but, for me, that is not the way it works. Before I invest, I evaluate the game to see how well it is designed. If I see Pay-to-win aspects, or unbalanced matchmaking or broken random deck generation, that becomes a "hard-no" from my wallet. WotC - if you want my money, don't break your games.
I spent the first few weeks getting spanked with my newb decks, that's a given, but didn't really experience any really powerful decks. After a bunch of grinding and drafts for a few weeks I managed to put together a nice mono red deck (as I suppose most new people do). When playing with this deck I see Esper control or super friends about 70% of the time, sometimes a mirror, and a few others of the more popular decks (but not many). I got tired of these same match ups over and over and went back to the grind for a month; now I've completed an Izzet Drake deck. Much to my dismay the meta then COMPLETELY changed for me. All I've seen are some kind of ridiculous control decks (I don't even know what they are, I'll have to research them), and green stompy or Golgari midrange. I have probably seen these decks a total of about 5 times before out of thousands of matches with my mono red.
This just really pisses me off. I spent so much time trying to change decks and I get crapped on by something completely different? There's got to be a better way to match people up; maybe rank players instead of decks? I honestly don't care if I'm up against other people with a similar win rate...even if their deck is going to crush mine...I'd rather see a range of different decks to play against than get stuck facing the same crap with a given deck every single time...
Well done, WOTC
Can relate.It's not unlike on Duels, if I played Delirium the AI would "suddenly" pull out Watchers of the Dead and that card for B that removes 3 cards from a graveyard, out of nowhere.
I was matched up against Teferi control and Nexus a DAY after starting out on Arena, lol. I must have the worst of luck.
So true. I have 21 land in one deck, and I swear to god I draw like 11-12 out of the first 18 cards EVERY time.
What I've experienced was:
- decks that run a lot of boardclear will mostly end up against esper control or other deck types that give a ***** about boardclear.
- decks that are weak to aggro/burn will mostly end up against burn. Switch deck and all of a sudden no aggro, no burn.
- played against a lot of burn/discard and added white leyline resulted in barely any player target spells
- played a tricky deck that is a bit slower but still decent, ended up with a ton of fast discard opponents
Until WOTS it was all cool. I had quite predictable opponents, tweaks actually helped and the meta was somehow consitent. I went to mythic with a pretty bad hsitoric/walker deck. Even with these rigged matchups it was possible to make your deck kinda resiliant to the meta.
After WOTS came out, my match ups kept getting weirder. It feels like your opponents often have the perfect counter for literally everything youre doing and it's not like they just counter spells. They literally always have the perfect janky specific counter cards to completely disable me.
Few examples:
- I've barely seen Karn, the great creator. When I play my new artifact deck, I get matched up against him a lot. Today, I had two matches with opponents pulling out Karn in turn 4, which kinda locked me out of my artifact deck
- Same for decks that have trouble with flyers. If I play one of my decks that run more stuff like defeaning clarion I never get matched with flyers, probably because 1 clarion is enough to win a game against them. If I play a creature deck that doesn't have much own flyers or spot removal, I get like 5 of em in a row
- Literally everytime I got a solar blaze in my hand or draw one when wipe is needed, my opponent's creatures have more toughness than power and it ends up being useless
- Played against a lot of hexproof/dont counter me dinos and got olbliterated often. Added some plaguecrafters and never really saw em again
- decks with few enchant/artifact removal often ran into decks that had a lot of em, same for walkers and high value targets like thief of sanity
- going down from 24 to 23 lands in a deck that runs a lot of mana elves changed the deck in way that makes it impossible to draw a 4th or 5th land. Feels like playing 18-20 lands now.
I don't have more examples at the moment, but I've lost in a really silly manner lately and it got to a point where it is really suspicious. Especially when you see how bad the decks you play against actually are. Makes you wonder how on earth they got that far.
A friend of mine told me about similar issues and he also mentioned that the way people always have the perfect counter in their decks is just ridiculous, still not talking about the common countermeasures, talking about extremely specific counters/weird counters.
He also mentioned that he never gets the same opponents as me. He plays more control, I think a lot of grixis and he ends up playing against control only. He said that he improved his experience by playing bo3 with a decent sideboard. He said he won most bo3 matches and it was a better experience than usual.
Update:
played a lot of matches with my artifact deck today and mostof them were against other artifact decks. Until this point, I didn't even knew that there are actually players playing artifact decks. wtf
Update 2:
I start to feel that they somehow put you in some sort of league: play a token deck -> compede with other token decks etc. Just a theory but I feel like playing certain deck types results in a lot of semi-mirror matches.
THIS