After playing Magic for a long long time, and in the recent year I started to be a bit more "competitive" with playing on MTGA.
But when I fight certain "tier" deck such as mono white gain life or mill rogue, there is just no real fight, most of these duel are very very often one sided, no real chance to "interact" or anything you can do to catch up. Like against mill, there is basically nothing to protect you, the moment you are at 15 or less card in library you can't catch up, compare to almost any other kind of board state that you can either "doomskar" it or similar other wipe card.
I had even worst feel when I play historic and fight against deck that if you had no way to spot removal or wipe before your turn 3 (even worst when you are on the draw) that there nothing you can do, you lost on turn 4 and there were basically no interaction, mono w life gain, goblin with muxus, elf ball with craterhoof or such, or even deck where its all about the 2 card combo, "oh you didnt had the removal on that turn? I WIN" or even worst when its something like any "copy the next spell" and Approach of the Second Sun, there nothing you can do other than win with aggro before turn 7...
Im tired of this idea, more than 70% of my match boils down to if either player had a specific card on a specific turn, Tetsuko and rat colony, Muxus, mono W gain life, mill, mono R burn or aggro, where is the fun is anyway your opponent couldnot do anything? you have fun playing all by yourself? or that its almost a coin toss of if the opponent had a specific card or not...
Is being competitive all about just not caring and hope for the least amount of interaction? or that the opponent has very little way to even interact with you?
The 1-game system of arena is pretty terrible for "competitive" decks , as you can just get thrown against basically all kinds of decks, as nobody has to win a bunch of games in a row, and if they are losing they can just give up and quickly start another (which produces a pretty annoying system to play against people that keep doing that all the time).
As people fire up the next game so quickly they are much less committed to the single game, and in that way its more about simply playing a lot more in quantity than in quality (but increasing your quality certainly helps too, if you have enough experience to "intuitively" make the right choice, you can play much faster and make less mistakes).
For proper competitive tournament structures you want to win as much as possible, so your deck has adapt to a known metagame of decks.
You dont just build a random deck that you consider good, you have to know what you are up against or what the tier 1 competitive decks are, and then make your choices to beat them as much as possible.
Every deck will have some weakness against especially super fringe specific strategies like mill, you can just beat mill by surviving the mill, you have to be faster than them.
If they take like to turn 7 to win with mill, you need to win faster. If you are control, you need counterspells or answers to survive and even then you still need some kind of win option that beats them in a reasonable time frame if you cannot completely control the game.
The speed of a deck is a big factor in competitive magic in all formats at this point.
With the diverse strategies its basically impossible to have a plan against all decks in a control deck, against some opponents your win chance might be super low, which is fine, if your win % is high against the kind of decks you expect to see.
You are in a spot of casuals decks with a mild competitive mindset, as winning games is obviously rewarding and better than losing all the time.
That all said, your win % basically should be 50%, you lose as much as you win, unless you really get an edge over the metagame you play against.
Especially in Arena players just lose a game and dont really think about "why" they lost and what they could have played different.
Often players make some mistakes that lose them games, but they never see these mistakes or they simply dont know about a rules interaction or delaying a play, in paper form you talk with your opponent and they point out what happened or you might discuss with them, so its much more natural to improve simply by realizing what your options are.
In Arena playing with Full Control to decide when to play cards is a thing thats a bit annoying, but almost mandatory to have all the needed control to optimize what you would want to do.
If the game just auto-skips the turn as it knows you dont have any plays, the opponent will know that as well, as they notice the super fast skip. In full control you can have only lands in hand and still pretend to have something.
If you can record your games with a video capture or stream (even if its just you, simply to have it on video) , you can quickly re-watch a game like a replay and sometimes figure out some grave mistakes, or plays where you see, doing something different could have been the better play.
Regardless of that, current Magic set design produces decks that are quite "snowbally" , so they really dominate a game if they make their plays on curve and do what they supposed to do. If an opponent struggles a bit, even just missing 1 land, that can easily be a massive drawback. Over a single game that can be the deciding factor, but over multiple games, you might have the edge, they have the edge and the truly interesting games are the ones where its almost even and tiny decisions make the difference (or a lucky topdeck, but to get to the point of the lucky topdeck, you have to make decisions that allow you to win the game at that moment).
For some people its all just about winning. These people will resort to cheating to get the wins if they have to, and get angry if they lose, like they feel entitled to win.
Thats a very bad mindset to have, but in the end its nice to win, but not at all cost, you have to have as much fun as your opponent after all.
The true joy of competitive Magic is self-improvement.
To make your own plays more intuitive, see the "best play" ahead of time and know your opponents decks and their options to plan ahead.
Theres still randomness and hidden information in the game, so you cant win all games, but skill ensures you will win more games over a longer course of matches (and winning challenging or super close games is much more gratifying than steam rolling people all the time).
----
For specific metagames the "interaction" can be on many different levels.
You want interaction inside of a game , they play something you play removal, or a creature on your own.
Thats a basic interaction you get in Limited formats all the time (so that might appeal to you a lot more).
In constructed formats you tend to get more streamlined extreme decks, one-dimensional decks are pushed to optimize something and that should win them the game, like a mill deck that only focuses on milling as fast as possible, while they have no interaction to creatures or anything of the opponent, all they do is bank on winning their way.
So the "interaction" with them is to put specific answers to their extreme strategy in your sideboard.
So yes, you might basically 70%+ lose game 1, but with the sideboard, you might be favored to win, so you can 2-1 them, as you play more games with your sideboard after all.
If a mill deck is very prevalent in your expected metagame, you might even put the sideboard hate in your maindeck to improve game 1 (especially if its a flexible card that you might be able to tutor, or a single card that you can afford to ignore).
So the interaction is on a meta-level of building the deck in the first place.
The deck choice itself gives you a % chance to win a match, just changing a single card in a sideboard might shift that % chance in your favor.
The less extreme the opponents strategy, the harder it is to find efficient hate cards for the sideboard against them.
The 1-dimensional decks are overall more "stupid" and usually people play them that want to think less about a metagame, or they expect that nobody expects their deck and has no hate cards against them, such a "Rogue" deck can win a tournament as it surprises them (but if its winning, more people might start playing that deck, and the metagame shifts again).
Having played a match a lot of times gives you experience of specific interactions, that might give you some win % over an unprepared opponent.
So competitive decks have a bigger focus on mastering knowledge about a metagame, preparing for that with your own mastering of your deck in these matchups and then opt for tiny changes that might give you an edge in the mirror matches.
People often just want to play everything on curve all the time and almost give up if they struggle just a little bit.
But over a lot of games, you simply dont curve out all the time, you will struggle, and the skill is to squeeze wins out of close games, thats the games you will remember, not the ones where you just steamrolled the opponent with no resistance.
yeah I understand, but let say I build a deck with
4X Doomskar
4X Bloodchief's Thirst
2X Soul Shatter
but its doesnt matter "how good" or what not I have a good deck or I made good or bad decision I could do because its all about usually what I draw in the first 4 turn or so, its always about getting at least 2 of those if im facing any kind of "aggro" then, flip coin, I dont feel like there any strategy, either im lucky and did a very good doomskar on turn 3 or 4 or can't sustain on turn 4-5 because I hadnt got enough removal
Well, if your deck is only reactive with removal and does not do anything pro-active itself, then you are at the whim of randomness to "not lose".
Its obviously a better bet to roll on winning than not losing.
If a deck has to draw its Doomskar just to "not lose" , its probably not a viable deck in that metagame.
If a mass removal is winning you a game that hard, you can pack 4 more in, and with 8 copies, drawing one has a pretty good chance, especially with mulligans.
And if a deck packs that many point removal and just reactive cards, it will struggle especially hard against variety of opponents, as the removal is not "catch-all" enough (thats why good control decks are tuned against specific decks in a metagame, and not against a field of very different decks).
If you dont know what your opponent is going to be playing, its much better to optimize your own game plan to be as fast and consistent as possible, thats why especially aggro decks do well in a format that does not have a fleshed out metagame of decks, as speed and consistency is going to win games if the opponent does not have a proper deck.
well more than 50% of my match are against aggro or close to aggro, even sometimes I had to doomskar on turn 3 to stabilize, how can you not be a reactive deck when the opponent mostly dump 4 threat in 3 turn, even if I put 1 or 2 mana cost creature, half the time they dont do anything, die to a shock or the board stale is too big
Have you ever heard the terms "fair" and "unfair" as applied to Magic? Fair magic is, we each play one land per turn, play some dudes and attack with them. Unfair Magic is anything that "breaks" the game: infinite combos, alt wincons, extreme ramp, etc. It sounds like you are interested in the former. I can think of two options for this:
The first is to look into midrange-style decks. You play "control" during the early game using spot removal or other tools to delay the opponents strategy. Then, around turn 4 or 5 you deploy your own threats which are bigger than anything the aggro deck can muster.
The other option would be to primarily play draft, since this is the prevalent playstyle. Unfortunately, this isn't a great option with Arena, since you have to play some type of conatructed in order to get the resources to play draft.
I would also be interested to know what tier you are on, because I have not seen many "dump your hand" aggro decks recently, definitely not 50% of the meta.
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But when I fight certain "tier" deck such as mono white gain life or mill rogue, there is just no real fight, most of these duel are very very often one sided, no real chance to "interact" or anything you can do to catch up. Like against mill, there is basically nothing to protect you, the moment you are at 15 or less card in library you can't catch up, compare to almost any other kind of board state that you can either "doomskar" it or similar other wipe card.
I had even worst feel when I play historic and fight against deck that if you had no way to spot removal or wipe before your turn 3 (even worst when you are on the draw) that there nothing you can do, you lost on turn 4 and there were basically no interaction, mono w life gain, goblin with muxus, elf ball with craterhoof or such, or even deck where its all about the 2 card combo, "oh you didnt had the removal on that turn? I WIN" or even worst when its something like any "copy the next spell" and Approach of the Second Sun, there nothing you can do other than win with aggro before turn 7...
Im tired of this idea, more than 70% of my match boils down to if either player had a specific card on a specific turn, Tetsuko and rat colony, Muxus, mono W gain life, mill, mono R burn or aggro, where is the fun is anyway your opponent couldnot do anything? you have fun playing all by yourself? or that its almost a coin toss of if the opponent had a specific card or not...
Is being competitive all about just not caring and hope for the least amount of interaction? or that the opponent has very little way to even interact with you?
As people fire up the next game so quickly they are much less committed to the single game, and in that way its more about simply playing a lot more in quantity than in quality (but increasing your quality certainly helps too, if you have enough experience to "intuitively" make the right choice, you can play much faster and make less mistakes).
For proper competitive tournament structures you want to win as much as possible, so your deck has adapt to a known metagame of decks.
You dont just build a random deck that you consider good, you have to know what you are up against or what the tier 1 competitive decks are, and then make your choices to beat them as much as possible.
Every deck will have some weakness against especially super fringe specific strategies like mill, you can just beat mill by surviving the mill, you have to be faster than them.
If they take like to turn 7 to win with mill, you need to win faster. If you are control, you need counterspells or answers to survive and even then you still need some kind of win option that beats them in a reasonable time frame if you cannot completely control the game.
The speed of a deck is a big factor in competitive magic in all formats at this point.
With the diverse strategies its basically impossible to have a plan against all decks in a control deck, against some opponents your win chance might be super low, which is fine, if your win % is high against the kind of decks you expect to see.
You are in a spot of casuals decks with a mild competitive mindset, as winning games is obviously rewarding and better than losing all the time.
That all said, your win % basically should be 50%, you lose as much as you win, unless you really get an edge over the metagame you play against.
Especially in Arena players just lose a game and dont really think about "why" they lost and what they could have played different.
Often players make some mistakes that lose them games, but they never see these mistakes or they simply dont know about a rules interaction or delaying a play, in paper form you talk with your opponent and they point out what happened or you might discuss with them, so its much more natural to improve simply by realizing what your options are.
In Arena playing with Full Control to decide when to play cards is a thing thats a bit annoying, but almost mandatory to have all the needed control to optimize what you would want to do.
If the game just auto-skips the turn as it knows you dont have any plays, the opponent will know that as well, as they notice the super fast skip. In full control you can have only lands in hand and still pretend to have something.
If you can record your games with a video capture or stream (even if its just you, simply to have it on video) , you can quickly re-watch a game like a replay and sometimes figure out some grave mistakes, or plays where you see, doing something different could have been the better play.
Regardless of that, current Magic set design produces decks that are quite "snowbally" , so they really dominate a game if they make their plays on curve and do what they supposed to do. If an opponent struggles a bit, even just missing 1 land, that can easily be a massive drawback. Over a single game that can be the deciding factor, but over multiple games, you might have the edge, they have the edge and the truly interesting games are the ones where its almost even and tiny decisions make the difference (or a lucky topdeck, but to get to the point of the lucky topdeck, you have to make decisions that allow you to win the game at that moment).
For some people its all just about winning. These people will resort to cheating to get the wins if they have to, and get angry if they lose, like they feel entitled to win.
Thats a very bad mindset to have, but in the end its nice to win, but not at all cost, you have to have as much fun as your opponent after all.
The true joy of competitive Magic is self-improvement.
To make your own plays more intuitive, see the "best play" ahead of time and know your opponents decks and their options to plan ahead.
Theres still randomness and hidden information in the game, so you cant win all games, but skill ensures you will win more games over a longer course of matches (and winning challenging or super close games is much more gratifying than steam rolling people all the time).
----
For specific metagames the "interaction" can be on many different levels.
You want interaction inside of a game , they play something you play removal, or a creature on your own.
Thats a basic interaction you get in Limited formats all the time (so that might appeal to you a lot more).
In constructed formats you tend to get more streamlined extreme decks, one-dimensional decks are pushed to optimize something and that should win them the game, like a mill deck that only focuses on milling as fast as possible, while they have no interaction to creatures or anything of the opponent, all they do is bank on winning their way.
So the "interaction" with them is to put specific answers to their extreme strategy in your sideboard.
So yes, you might basically 70%+ lose game 1, but with the sideboard, you might be favored to win, so you can 2-1 them, as you play more games with your sideboard after all.
If a mill deck is very prevalent in your expected metagame, you might even put the sideboard hate in your maindeck to improve game 1 (especially if its a flexible card that you might be able to tutor, or a single card that you can afford to ignore).
So the interaction is on a meta-level of building the deck in the first place.
The deck choice itself gives you a % chance to win a match, just changing a single card in a sideboard might shift that % chance in your favor.
The less extreme the opponents strategy, the harder it is to find efficient hate cards for the sideboard against them.
The 1-dimensional decks are overall more "stupid" and usually people play them that want to think less about a metagame, or they expect that nobody expects their deck and has no hate cards against them, such a "Rogue" deck can win a tournament as it surprises them (but if its winning, more people might start playing that deck, and the metagame shifts again).
Having played a match a lot of times gives you experience of specific interactions, that might give you some win % over an unprepared opponent.
So competitive decks have a bigger focus on mastering knowledge about a metagame, preparing for that with your own mastering of your deck in these matchups and then opt for tiny changes that might give you an edge in the mirror matches.
People often just want to play everything on curve all the time and almost give up if they struggle just a little bit.
But over a lot of games, you simply dont curve out all the time, you will struggle, and the skill is to squeeze wins out of close games, thats the games you will remember, not the ones where you just steamrolled the opponent with no resistance.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
4X Doomskar
4X Bloodchief's Thirst
2X Soul Shatter
but its doesnt matter "how good" or what not I have a good deck or I made good or bad decision I could do because its all about usually what I draw in the first 4 turn or so, its always about getting at least 2 of those if im facing any kind of "aggro" then, flip coin, I dont feel like there any strategy, either im lucky and did a very good doomskar on turn 3 or 4 or can't sustain on turn 4-5 because I hadnt got enough removal
Its obviously a better bet to roll on winning than not losing.
If a deck has to draw its Doomskar just to "not lose" , its probably not a viable deck in that metagame.
If a mass removal is winning you a game that hard, you can pack 4 more in, and with 8 copies, drawing one has a pretty good chance, especially with mulligans.
And if a deck packs that many point removal and just reactive cards, it will struggle especially hard against variety of opponents, as the removal is not "catch-all" enough (thats why good control decks are tuned against specific decks in a metagame, and not against a field of very different decks).
If you dont know what your opponent is going to be playing, its much better to optimize your own game plan to be as fast and consistent as possible, thats why especially aggro decks do well in a format that does not have a fleshed out metagame of decks, as speed and consistency is going to win games if the opponent does not have a proper deck.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
The first is to look into midrange-style decks. You play "control" during the early game using spot removal or other tools to delay the opponents strategy. Then, around turn 4 or 5 you deploy your own threats which are bigger than anything the aggro deck can muster.
The other option would be to primarily play draft, since this is the prevalent playstyle. Unfortunately, this isn't a great option with Arena, since you have to play some type of conatructed in order to get the resources to play draft.
I would also be interested to know what tier you are on, because I have not seen many "dump your hand" aggro decks recently, definitely not 50% of the meta.