To fix your mana base add Fabled Passage. I run 3 plus one rugged highlands. I'm also at 24 lands too. Without another untapped r/g land at our disposal, you will probably need 23 lands at least.
My list for bo1 Arena. Seems decent, perhaps not as good as in the last meta. Bonecrusher giant is really good, as is questing beast. I'm not sold on Robber of the Rich yet. I think Zhur-taa Goblin may be better.
I'm talking about the fox/cat thatappears to the right while playing the game. I checked profile and didn't see a way to turn it off. Can you screen shot it?
I'm so tired of this stupid animated thing making noise all the time. I don't want to hear it, but I do want to hear the game. I'd prefer to remove it all together. Any ideas?
Interesting logic they're using to justify requiring two wildcards to craft Historic-only cards there.
I agree. Odd logic. We newcomers already have problems dealing with opponents with 4 of every card from every previous or current release. Why add to the old-timer's advantage, where they can use their wilds for new releases while us newbies need to spend twice as much just to compete in Historic?
Personally, that logic would be more the reason to avoid historic matches entirely.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The entire Arena monetization is lame. It's crappy enough that there is a forced disparity between the stupidly lucky and/or wealthy and those that need to manage their quids since the only reliable way to get specific cards is to spend wild cards and the only way to get wild cards is by opening packs and the only reliable way to get packs is by spending cash. By my rough estimates, around $800 a year on Arena.
Admittedly, packs for paper cards can hit stratospheric costs. There is no mechanism that alleviates duplicate cards. So it's very possible to open 20 copies Befuddle and not a single Chandra.
But the big difference with Arena is a paper player can offset costs by selling valuable unwanted cards and/or control spending by buying only singles. Doing so drastically lowers the cost of decks to be on par with Arena. Another huge difference is rotating cards can continue to be used or further sold off to recoup additional costs. None of which is possible with Arena.
I'm not trying to argue that paper is cheaper. What I'm trying to illustrate is that paper is an easier pill to swallow since players know they can continue to earn value from their money. Something that WotC seems to have zero interest in doing with Arena.
Let's be honest, If WotC can figure out how to charge us $75/month under the guise of a subscription and still charge us for packs and cards, I imagine they would.
Yeah it's really unfortunate. I think there are enough people getting into the game and willing to pay it though. They REALLY turned a lot of people's rotating cards into something that's basically worthless unless you're willing to spend EVEN MORE money to give them value again. I was looking forward to historic but no longer.
Wizards has an official feedback sheet you can send them to let them know. They do reverse decisions sometimes with enough outcry. I made the point that 2:1 wildcards will actually just encourage people to ignore Historic completely (like me) instead of spending a little bit extra to get a deck. It will be a format full of rich whales eventually. Especially once they've released even more old powerful cards into the format, forcing everyone to buy more cards.
By my calculations, not counting random wild card drops, it takes opening 24 packs of cards to get 1 mythic card in Historic. 6 packs=rare wild card. next 6=mythic rare wildcard. Multiple that by 2 to get 2 mythic wild cards. Multiple that by 4 to get a playset of Historic mythics=96 packs for a play set of mythic wildcards. That's ridiculous!
It is total bull*****. I can't believe that they can't make this random. They suffer from either gross incompetence or manipulating the system for some reason. Either way that's pretty bad.
I'm more upset about how non-random the land distribution is. Before the nay sayers pop up with "You can't tell" I use a hypergeometric calculator and an understanding of statistics to determine the lack of randomness.
Whether or not the deck makes it after rotation will depend on what comes out in Throne of Eldraine and how the new meta shakes down. I'm sure a lot of decks will lose some good cards during rotation. Until we get the full spoiler of eldraine it will be hard to even guess what the new standard will look like. We do get to keep Gruul spellbreaker, Skarrgan hellkite, Paradise Druid, Growth chamber guardian, Nullhide ferox...
Been playing this list in Bo1 constructed event where it's pay to play. Been mining some gold. 7-0 wins on the first round 6-3 on the second round. Going to keep at it.
Played 3 games today. One of them had a .088% chance or a 1 in 1,136 game chance of happening. 4 lands out of 19 cards with 17 lands in the 40 card deck. This game is obviously rigged I feel more and more. I don't believe that Wizards can't hire someone to make them a random shuffler. The longer this goes on, the more I feel it's intentional. Screen shot for proof of their bull*****.
BTW I started the game with 3 lands in hand. Drew a 4th on turn 5 or so. That means I didn't draw a land for 8 turns in a row. This is obviously utter bull*****. This kind of thing has happened to me maybe a few times in my entire life of paper Magic. On Arena it's about every 3rd or 4th game with this kind of nonsense.
I haven't played Arena in almost a couple of months. Soon as I started playing again yesterday I immediately noticed how crappy my hands were.
Here's a screen shot with a .62% chance of happening. (Note that I had already used a Bond of Flourishing that allowed me to dig 3 cards deeper than the 24 cards left in the deck.) I had another game just a couple after that where I was stuck on 2 lands out of 19 cards which has a .11% chance of happening. At .11% should happen every 909 games. Another game or two goes by, draw 9 lands out of about 13 cards. This has a 1.4% chance of happening.
People that don't understand math will say things like Sharpened did "Oh it's just random, humans can't tell what's going on, we all just assign patterns where there aren't really patterns." This is absolutely true if you're talking about just using your brain without any kind of other tools. However, if you take screen shots and use a hypergeometric calculator and have an understanding of statistics, you can be nearly assured that the shuffler is broken. All it takes is playing 10 games and like 6 out of those 10 games will have these crazy unlikely hands/draws show up. Then you keep playing and notice it keeps happening. Then you see all the other people who complain about it too. I listen to the people who know how to use a hypergeometric calculator and give percentage chances and screen shots with their answer.
Fact is, you can't keep having these 1 in 300-900 games chances keep popping up at a rate of more like 1 in 2 games without the shuffler being obviously broken. Your instincts are correct and there is hard proof out there given by that buy who analyzed a million games.
Yes, the shuffler is definitely still broken it seems. There was a study done by a statistician that proved without a doubt the shuffler was broken, it analyzed over a million games. You can search for it on Reddit or find the link somewhere in this Arena forum. It really makes me sad since Arena is so great in every other way.
BTW I was the one who figured out you can manually switch your list around to fix the broken shuffler. There is a post about that too on this forum. It's rather tedious and involved, but I guarantee you that you will instantly see results with it. I figured out how to do this because of the author of that study mentioned he thought the card ordering in the list had a lot to do with the lack of randomness in the shuffler. So I took my list and evenly distributed the lands throughout it. Magically, I no longer experienced negative effects from the evil shuffler. This is an EVEN MORE obvious evidence that the shuffler is truly broken. When something truly randomizes something, it does not matter the order of the list to begin with. Even if the list is perfectly in "order" to begin with, one round of randomization will make it it totally random. The fact that changing the order of your cards in the list fixes the shuffler proves that it's broken.
Well, it appears the staff tried to buy the site and couldn't for some reason. So it was announced it would close, the staff started developing a new site so people could transition. Then, surprise! The site was sold to some other company. Nexus staff see their site as superior (and it does have some pretty cool tools I just checked out) but, they don't have the mass of people on their site as it just opened. Considering I hardly heard about this transition, I'm sure many here haven't either.
From what I've learned searching the forums, this looks like a cluster____. I'm very confused as to why the staff decided to build a new website when this one works perfectly well. So was it the owner of the MTGSalvation site who decided to close it? Cryogen made a post about the staff wanting to buy the site and keep it open, then they couldn't, then someone else could? I barely heard any whispers about this just a couple of days ago.
Anyway, that's really beside the point. I completely agree that the new site seems unnecessary. There are years of history and countless hours spent developing all of the amazing content already available on this site. I went to mtgnexus.com and there was basically nothing going on in the standard forum at all. The only reason I heard about/considered nexus was because a couple of my favorite members have been saying they will transition to the new site. However, all the great content/answers/ideas that have come from them are on THIS site.
I think the new website will just dilute out some of the great content that used to be added here. Personally, I don't want to make 2 accounts in order to post things/check in on things. My internet is slow as a snail and adding on extra accounts, especially for a site with very few people/threads on it just doesn't seem appealing. Also, this site has a deck builder, but the other doesn't?
It just seems that salvation is superior in every way right now. At the same time, I'm confused and sad as to why the staff started this new site. I want to hang out with all usual friends that used to be found here. I want to remain loyal to the people who started this amazing site. At the same time, salvation still seems better to me.
I wish this site would close, or the new one just be shut down and fold the staff back here in their old jobs. If this site was good enough to keep open and running, why was there a need to start another one?
Is Razaketh, the Foulblooded a better choice? I still like Vilis, Broker of Blood as a budget option substitute (Razaketh is $10-12 while vilis is about $1.) Razaketh has trample, which can't be ignored with 8 power. Vilis can get chump blocked out easily.
My card order for Marchesa came in. Note that I have an upgraded mana base for the list. Basic lands are there until I type my real lands into the list. For my next EDH game:
The deck is running 3 plans for winning: Combos, boardwipes where we get our creatures back, and just generally riding Marchesa to victory with creatures.
While combos are usually considered a very linear form of play, this deck doesn't combo off with a commander and generally requires 3 cards to get an infinite combo going. Finding 3 cards is VERY difficult, almost untenable, in an EDH game. I make up for this by making sure all of the combo pieces are pretty decent on their own/add synergy to the deck without the need to combo off. Also, many of the combo pieces are interchangeable with each other, leading to a greater ability to naturally draw into a combo without too much searching. This should keep the deck from falling into a one-track mind.
The synergy of the combo pieces are great because you can choose not to play the deck as an infinite combo if you want. For example, my Scarab god deck has one infinite combo in there. After comboing in off, I still wanted to play the deck next game. I promised my friends I would not infinite combo off no matter what this game, and they were all happy with that. In a way, you can adjust the power level of the deck on the fly without having to actually change any cards around.
Redcap is about the only combo card that does not share much synergy with the deck. Upon closer inspection, it can be a little helpful at times. He can target our own life total so that we can dethrone again. He can adjust opponent's life totals a bit, helping us aim the team at the most threatening player. His -1/-1 persist counter can be removed by Marchesa's dethrone ability. While obviously a weaker stand alone card, it's combotastic potential makes it a staple in this deck.
I'm considering adding Damnation to the deck. This card should really be an auto-include for the list I feel, barring price restrictions. Boardwipes were my main win-con for this deck in it's previous iteration. They work wonders for us. The really nice thing is, we can attack whoever we want so long as we have the Marchesa creature protection. Just fullswing, boardwipe, get our creatures back and watch our opponents cry.
I think Bolt bend can stop counter spells if you have the mana to pay for it. They play counterspell, you play bolt bend, counterspell targets itself. Of course you may rip a hole in a the Magic continuum as counterspell resolves, yet doesn't resolve? Also bolt bend can stop some non-counterspell nastiness. My friend plays Mana Short for instance. Autmun's Veil can't stop that from affecting me, but bolt bend can.
Also, bolt bend is a 2 for 1 when successfully pulled off. You stop their spell, and were able to reuse the spell's power for your will. Autumn's veil just stops something from happening without redirecting the damage. It's only a 1 for 1.
Are you enjoying MTG Nexus more than Salvation? Why the switch?
I was able to pick up a Time of need. It will replace Gamble. I'd rather have something that will search for Dragonlord Atarka or Emrakul without the cost of losing a card. The deck has enough ramp, extra combats et. that I don't need to search for them with Gamble. Also we have enough dragons that Atarka can gain some extra damage via giving them double strike. It seems to be the card I search for the most. 24 haste trample damage ain't bad.
I also picked up Neheb the eternal. I like the combination of card selection/trample damage coming out early.
Xenagos is still probably my favorite deck. With everyone's help, it is my most tuned deck. It's really hard to find upgrades without spending $20+ per card at this point. The power level is real. The deck is fair. Also, it's a solid aggro edh deck which is pretty hard to pull off. As a bonus, it's a deck that speeds up games. Even if we die, it's nearly certain that we've done 30-100 damage before we went out. I really prefer this to extremely slow, "You can't play Magic" style of lock out decks.
I had a game today that was pretty rough due to an early painful quandry hitting the board. I was about to kill the person with it out, when he realized that his thaumatic compass should have flipped already. I still threw around something like 60 damage before succumbing to my opponents.
I'm looking at that one too. I'm actually putting it first in my Marchesa, the black rose deck first, as she can just keep creatures coming back at no mana cost. The god would cost 4 to resurrect something that is sacrificed, but it's a bit slower. Still, with all of the etb effects, 4 mana to resurrect something then be able to sac. it to get 2 more cards is appealing. It'd be slower in this deck, but perhaps still quite viable.
My list for bo1 Arena. Seems decent, perhaps not as good as in the last meta. Bonecrusher giant is really good, as is questing beast. I'm not sold on Robber of the Rich yet. I think Zhur-taa Goblin may be better.
4 Gruul Spellbreaker (RNA) 179
4 Growth-Chamber Guardian (RNA) 128
10 Forest (RIX) 196
6 Mountain (M19) 275
2 Zhur-Taa Goblin (RNA) 215
2 Nullhide Ferox (GRN) 138
3 Fabled Passage (ELD) 244
4 Paradise Druid (WAR) 171
1 Rugged Highlands (M20) 250
2 Shock (M19) 156
3 Once Upon a Time (ELD) 169
4 Questing Beast (ELD) 171
2 Skarrgan Hellkite (RNA) 114
4 Bonecrusher Giant (ELD) 115
3 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
2 Robber of the Rich (ELD) 138
Yeah it's really unfortunate. I think there are enough people getting into the game and willing to pay it though. They REALLY turned a lot of people's rotating cards into something that's basically worthless unless you're willing to spend EVEN MORE money to give them value again. I was looking forward to historic but no longer.
Wizards has an official feedback sheet you can send them to let them know. They do reverse decisions sometimes with enough outcry. I made the point that 2:1 wildcards will actually just encourage people to ignore Historic completely (like me) instead of spending a little bit extra to get a deck. It will be a format full of rich whales eventually. Especially once they've released even more old powerful cards into the format, forcing everyone to buy more cards.
By my calculations, not counting random wild card drops, it takes opening 24 packs of cards to get 1 mythic card in Historic. 6 packs=rare wild card. next 6=mythic rare wildcard. Multiple that by 2 to get 2 mythic wild cards. Multiple that by 4 to get a playset of Historic mythics=96 packs for a play set of mythic wildcards. That's ridiculous!
What deck do you want to play?
I've liked my trusty gruul midrange so far.
Note they will be adding "new" cards that aren't currently standard legal to the format.
I'm more upset about how non-random the land distribution is. Before the nay sayers pop up with "You can't tell" I use a hypergeometric calculator and an understanding of statistics to determine the lack of randomness.
Been playing this list in Bo1 constructed event where it's pay to play. Been mining some gold. 7-0 wins on the first round 6-3 on the second round. Going to keep at it.
4 Gruul Spellbreaker (RNA) 179
2 Domri, Anarch of Bolas (WAR) 191
4 Lightning Strike (XLN) 149
4 Rootbound Crag (XLN) 256
4 Rekindling Phoenix (RIX) 111
4 Growth-Chamber Guardian (RNA) 128
8 Forest (RIX) 196
7 Mountain (M19) 275
3 Llanowar Elves (DAR) 168
4 Zhur-Taa Goblin (RNA) 215
2 Thrashing Brontodon (RIX) 148
3 Nullhide Ferox (GRN) 138
2 Skarrgan Hellkite (RNA) 114
1 Gruul Guildgate (RNA) 249
1 Domri's Ambush (WAR) 192
1 Llanowar Elves (M19) 314
2 Paradise Druid (WAR) 171
BTW I started the game with 3 lands in hand. Drew a 4th on turn 5 or so. That means I didn't draw a land for 8 turns in a row. This is obviously utter bull*****. This kind of thing has happened to me maybe a few times in my entire life of paper Magic. On Arena it's about every 3rd or 4th game with this kind of nonsense.
Here's a screen shot with a .62% chance of happening. (Note that I had already used a Bond of Flourishing that allowed me to dig 3 cards deeper than the 24 cards left in the deck.) I had another game just a couple after that where I was stuck on 2 lands out of 19 cards which has a .11% chance of happening. At .11% should happen every 909 games. Another game or two goes by, draw 9 lands out of about 13 cards. This has a 1.4% chance of happening.
People that don't understand math will say things like Sharpened did "Oh it's just random, humans can't tell what's going on, we all just assign patterns where there aren't really patterns." This is absolutely true if you're talking about just using your brain without any kind of other tools. However, if you take screen shots and use a hypergeometric calculator and have an understanding of statistics, you can be nearly assured that the shuffler is broken. All it takes is playing 10 games and like 6 out of those 10 games will have these crazy unlikely hands/draws show up. Then you keep playing and notice it keeps happening. Then you see all the other people who complain about it too. I listen to the people who know how to use a hypergeometric calculator and give percentage chances and screen shots with their answer.
Fact is, you can't keep having these 1 in 300-900 games chances keep popping up at a rate of more like 1 in 2 games without the shuffler being obviously broken. Your instincts are correct and there is hard proof out there given by that buy who analyzed a million games.
Yes, the shuffler is definitely still broken it seems. There was a study done by a statistician that proved without a doubt the shuffler was broken, it analyzed over a million games. You can search for it on Reddit or find the link somewhere in this Arena forum. It really makes me sad since Arena is so great in every other way.
BTW I was the one who figured out you can manually switch your list around to fix the broken shuffler. There is a post about that too on this forum. It's rather tedious and involved, but I guarantee you that you will instantly see results with it. I figured out how to do this because of the author of that study mentioned he thought the card ordering in the list had a lot to do with the lack of randomness in the shuffler. So I took my list and evenly distributed the lands throughout it. Magically, I no longer experienced negative effects from the evil shuffler. This is an EVEN MORE obvious evidence that the shuffler is truly broken. When something truly randomizes something, it does not matter the order of the list to begin with. Even if the list is perfectly in "order" to begin with, one round of randomization will make it it totally random. The fact that changing the order of your cards in the list fixes the shuffler proves that it's broken.
The best thread I could find about this is here:
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/812307-new-website-mtgnexus
Anyone else have thoughts or desire to transition to nexus? I made an account just so I could secure my name at least.
Anyway, that's really beside the point. I completely agree that the new site seems unnecessary. There are years of history and countless hours spent developing all of the amazing content already available on this site. I went to mtgnexus.com and there was basically nothing going on in the standard forum at all. The only reason I heard about/considered nexus was because a couple of my favorite members have been saying they will transition to the new site. However, all the great content/answers/ideas that have come from them are on THIS site.
I think the new website will just dilute out some of the great content that used to be added here. Personally, I don't want to make 2 accounts in order to post things/check in on things. My internet is slow as a snail and adding on extra accounts, especially for a site with very few people/threads on it just doesn't seem appealing. Also, this site has a deck builder, but the other doesn't?
It just seems that salvation is superior in every way right now. At the same time, I'm confused and sad as to why the staff started this new site. I want to hang out with all usual friends that used to be found here. I want to remain loyal to the people who started this amazing site. At the same time, salvation still seems better to me.
I wish this site would close, or the new one just be shut down and fold the staff back here in their old jobs. If this site was good enough to keep open and running, why was there a need to start another one?
My card order for Marchesa came in. Note that I have an upgraded mana base for the list. Basic lands are there until I type my real lands into the list. For my next EDH game:
1 Walking Ballista
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Metallic Mimic
1 Mikaeus the unhallowed
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
1 Spark Double
1 Sage of Fables
Sac. outlets (also for combo)
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Yahenni, Undying Partisan
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Sadistic Hypnotist
1 Grimgrin, corpse-born
Tutors
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Trinket Mage
1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1 Rune Scarred Demon
Creatures
1 Spellskite
1 Oona's Blackguard
1 Plaguecrafter
1 Loyal Drake
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Drana, Liberator of Malakir
1 Thief of Sanity
1 Ravenous Chupacabra
1 Hostage Taker
1 Dack's Duplicate
1 Falkenrath Aristocrat
1 Sol Ring
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Dimir Signet
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Talisman of Dominance
1 Talisman of Indulgence
1 Mind Stone
1 Solemn Simulacrum
Card draw
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
1 Skullclamp
1 Benthic Biomancer
1 Looter il-kor
1 Fblthp, the lost
1 Baleful Strix
1 Dusk Legion Zealot
1 Smuggler's Copter
1 Thassa, God of the Sea
1 Midnight Reaper
1 Grim Haruspex
1 Shadowmage Infiltrator
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Concentrate
1 Mulldrifter
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Swiftfoot boots
1 Unspeakable symbol
Boardwipe
1 Ashling the Pilgrim
1 Grave pact
1 Magmasaur
1 Living Death
1 Deadly Tempest
1 Jokulhaups
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Blasphemous Act
13x Island
13x Mountain
13x Swamp
While combos are usually considered a very linear form of play, this deck doesn't combo off with a commander and generally requires 3 cards to get an infinite combo going. Finding 3 cards is VERY difficult, almost untenable, in an EDH game. I make up for this by making sure all of the combo pieces are pretty decent on their own/add synergy to the deck without the need to combo off. Also, many of the combo pieces are interchangeable with each other, leading to a greater ability to naturally draw into a combo without too much searching. This should keep the deck from falling into a one-track mind.
The synergy of the combo pieces are great because you can choose not to play the deck as an infinite combo if you want. For example, my Scarab god deck has one infinite combo in there. After comboing in off, I still wanted to play the deck next game. I promised my friends I would not infinite combo off no matter what this game, and they were all happy with that. In a way, you can adjust the power level of the deck on the fly without having to actually change any cards around.
As to the combos, my favorites are Murderous Redcap+Spark Double+Sac. outlet, and
Sage of Fables+Flayer of the Hatebound+Ashnod's Altar I figured these out on my own (with assurance from the rules gurus that they worked,) and they use cards that were already in the deck anyway!
The only 2 card combo is Walking Ballista+Mikaeus, The Unhallowed
Redcap works with Mikaeus as long as a sac. outlet is out.
Redcap+Metallic Mimic+sac. outlet
Redcap is about the only combo card that does not share much synergy with the deck. Upon closer inspection, it can be a little helpful at times. He can target our own life total so that we can dethrone again. He can adjust opponent's life totals a bit, helping us aim the team at the most threatening player. His -1/-1 persist counter can be removed by Marchesa's dethrone ability. While obviously a weaker stand alone card, it's combotastic potential makes it a staple in this deck.
I'm considering adding Damnation to the deck. This card should really be an auto-include for the list I feel, barring price restrictions. Boardwipes were my main win-con for this deck in it's previous iteration. They work wonders for us. The really nice thing is, we can attack whoever we want so long as we have the Marchesa creature protection. Just fullswing, boardwipe, get our creatures back and watch our opponents cry.
Also, bolt bend is a 2 for 1 when successfully pulled off. You stop their spell, and were able to reuse the spell's power for your will. Autumn's veil just stops something from happening without redirecting the damage. It's only a 1 for 1.
Are you enjoying MTG Nexus more than Salvation? Why the switch?
I also picked up Neheb the eternal. I like the combination of card selection/trample damage coming out early.
Xenagos is still probably my favorite deck. With everyone's help, it is my most tuned deck. It's really hard to find upgrades without spending $20+ per card at this point. The power level is real. The deck is fair. Also, it's a solid aggro edh deck which is pretty hard to pull off. As a bonus, it's a deck that speeds up games. Even if we die, it's nearly certain that we've done 30-100 damage before we went out. I really prefer this to extremely slow, "You can't play Magic" style of lock out decks.
I had a game today that was pretty rough due to an early painful quandry hitting the board. I was about to kill the person with it out, when he realized that his thaumatic compass should have flipped already. I still threw around something like 60 damage before succumbing to my opponents.