Why are these cards ALWAYS in hand early game, usually in multiples of 3? Every game. Every game against a drake deck there's a Spell Pierce cast in the first turns. Every game against RDW Lavarunner drops right away. I dont see aggressive mulliganing. It's almost like certain cards are coded to show up at certain points in a match.
Because of your curve. The hand manipulation 100% is at work here. I'm quite sure, if we could somehow test against bots, someone could script things to find the algorithm, and give you an 'optimal' 60, for Best of 1.
EDIT: Would you run 18 lands in paper? Hell no. Can you get away with it on Arena? You bet.
Because of your curve. The hand manipulation 100% is at work here. I'm quite sure, if we could somehow test against bots, someone could script things to find the algorithm, and give you an 'optimal' 60, for Best of 1.
EDIT: Would you run 18 lands in paper? Hell no. Can you get away with it on Arena? You bet.
It feels totally unnatural. I've played a lot of REAL magic, and I don't ever see the variance in that that I do in Arena. Now that the meta is like 80% Red, you can play against like 20 Red decks a day and I see a mulligan like once, but EVERY game they drop the same cards early: Lavarunner, Shock. Without fail, My first creature will be shocked. My second will be Shocked. There will be two Lavarunners out. And likeise I always pull the same cards in my decks.
Yeah I'm playing that. Mono Red, 18 Lands, bolts, shocks, skewer, 3 Whirler, 2 Risk Factor and a Flame of Keld.
Thats it, and the times I feel I must mulligan are very low, while I will almost always have 1 or 2 1cmc creatures, several bolts, and will get to 13 lands.
It feels totally unnatural. I've played a lot of REAL magic, and I don't ever see the variance in that that I do in Arena. Now that the meta is like 80% Red, you can play against like 20 Red decks a day and I see a mulligan like once, but EVERY game they drop the same cards early: Lavarunner, Shock. Without fail, My first creature will be shocked. My second will be Shocked. There will be two Lavarunners out. And likeise I always pull the same cards in my decks.
SO much truth here. First turn always Mountain, then Shock, then Shock again. I'll never forget the opponent that went Shock, Shock, Lightning Strike, Skewer, Skewer, Skewer, Shock. Boring
Playing G/B or against them? Bet you see a Wildgrowth Walker every turn two and a Merfolk Branchwalker every turn three and four. I have both those cards in my opening hand virtually every single game.
Yeah, the bo1 hand system is a bit whack. Hopefully they will learn to make it more fair soon.
*Puts tin foil hat on* Some say that the rigging goes far beyond what they actually admit to. That the game gives you a bit better hands when you start playing for the day. However, the more gold/rewards you earn, they start making your hands a bit less good.
Also, it's clear there are far too many instances of weird stuff going on with lands beyond that opening hand business too. I've had quite a few games where I don't draw any land except for the 2-3 I start with for many turns. I mean, my deck has like 42 cards left in it, and I still don't have another land. The odds of this happening are about 1 per 937 games. I doubt I've even played that many games yet, or maybe approaching that number. This no land draw has happened to me more times than I can count now.
Conversely, who else hits land after land after land? It becomes so ridiculous sometimes, like drawing 5-8 lands in a row. The odds of drawing 5 lands in a row, with a deck now at 49 cards and 19 land left in it are 1 in 163. 7 lands in a row (happened more then once to me) 1 in 1,704 games. I certainly haven't played 1700 games, yet this has happened to me multiple times, along with all the other nonsense?
It shows a clear pattern of incredible odds. People recognize it. Hopefully Wizards will fix it.
Because of your curve. The hand manipulation 100% is at work here. I'm quite sure, if we could somehow test against bots, someone could script things to find the algorithm, and give you an 'optimal' 60, for Best of 1.
EDIT: Would you run 18 lands in paper? Hell no. Can you get away with it on Arena? You bet.
Follow up on this comment. I was hitting a wall in my bo1 rank. I realized I need to make every card basically do something the turn it comes down, or provide card advantage, or be instant speed removal. This is how mono-red gets so far. It needs so few lands, and can basically always play cards. Me getting hands with like 2 3 drop creatures just wasn't fast enough.
I further modified my deck to again combat mono-red. The top of my curve is now 4 Rekindling Phoenix, no other 4 drops. Anyway, lowering my mana curve to like 2.7 on average made me start climbing the ladder again. I also removed a land to combat these "You're going to keep drawing lands for the next many turns" kind of games. My motto became "I will never have to mulligan again." If you mulligan, or even go second sometimes, it becomes too hard to win. The draw back of going first in paper is that if you mulligan, you're going to have a hard time. However, with the hand fixing system, mulligans are becoming a thing of the past, so long as you build your deck right. That means the players going second aren't getting as much as an advantage as they used to.
I am a bit worried as to how linear bo1 may become eventually. I mean, we're all still learning how best to adapt or exploit this new hand system, and also the weird shuffling.
Despite all that, there is a meta developing beyond red. There are a few distinct decks out there, but red accounts for almost half of the meta it seems to me. I'm gold level 3 right now. I've heard people say the meta changes as you go up the ladder. You higher ranking players still experiencing the red wave?
I kept a 2 land hand, and proceeded to not draw any for the next 12 cards. The odds of this happening are .13299% given I had 22 lands in the deck overall. That should only happen 1 out of every 752 games.
Their shuffling system is obviously rigged at times. That is one thing I do absolutely hate about Arena. Also I'm getting dropped/disconnected much more often it seems these days.
Screenshot for proof. I've had many other games like this. People have tried to shoot me down before regarding this egregious shuffling error. However, I've since learned to do the math for these hands and how to take a screenshot from my computer. IT IS UNDENIABLE that the "bugs" in the shuffling system go far beyond what they admit about taking the best of 2 hands. I hope they fix this soon.
i haven't started tracking it yet (considering doing so) but I've noticed that if I have a higher cmc card in my hand I'll start to draw adequate land sources (and on color when it matters) to cast said card.
An example is just how often I start with two land hands in mono red. Using hypergeometric distribution I should have a 33.9% chance to draw exactly two lands in a 17 land deck. Do I almost always start is adequate resources to cast what I need? I sure do. I know I'm not shipping 2/3 of my openers for having 0, 1, 3+ lands lol. Heck I played ten games the other day and I had no openers that I recall with 3 lands (21.73% chance with 17 lands with opening 7). It's obviously matching my opening lands to my average curve in my eyes.
BO1 is starting to not feel very much like magic to me. I see it time and time again when new players come to draft for the first time in our LGS in the past 2 months. They build incorrect mana bases for a 3 color deck and then just lose nonstop. Arena does a lot of heavy lifting for newer players but doesn't tell you it's doing it. It's very jarring from what I've seen when these players migrate to paper magic imho.
Now I haven't played thousands of games and I could be reading into variance way too much. Just another opinion and bit of feedback to toss into the pot.
I've been on a roller coaster ride with MTGA ever since I started playing it. At first in the bronze leagues when everyone is throwing together stuff it's all fun and enjoyable, but when the meta got figured out the games in BO1 just became a nightmare. I can 100% say in Gold that I'm losing over half my games now. Pewtie Pie freaking played the game and while normally I would say he is more of an entertainer than someone who gives strait info, in his video I could feel exactly what he was feeling when he kept running into Mono-red and other decks over and over again over his entire play through. It's not fun to make it to platinum league. It's absolute hell making it to platinum.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
Holy smokes is Best of Three a billion times better than Best of One. Just did some matches last night and it gives me hope in this world for some kind of life for Arena in the future. Unfortunately, that is assuming the company doesn't bend the game towards favoring Best of One matches in the set design, which is what they have been toying with over the last few months it seems like.
I mean, you do NOT feel like you get unfairly blown out when your first match goes horribly, since you can sideboard and actually defend yourself. All the swiss army knife cards feel like they are at rare and make the deck into a jumble.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
mapccu Wizards has admitted that they fix your opening hand in bo1. Supposedly they take 2 hands, then give the hand with the best land/spell ratio. I agree, they should make it more clear that the hands are rigged in bo1. I wish they would just do away with all this hand fixing stuff all together and make it truly random.
Supposedly they take 2 hands, then give the hand with the best land/spell ratio.
That's not quite right - they are not very open on details, but as I understood it, the system does not straight up give you the better of two hands - it prefers the one with a land/spell ratio closer to your overall deck and specifically should avoid no-land/90% land hands.
Nobody outside of the development team really knows any specifics though.
Supposedly they take 2 hands, then give the hand with the best land/spell ratio.
That's not quite right - they are not very open on details, but as I understood it, the system does not straight up give you the better of two hands - it prefers the one with a land/spell ratio closer to your overall deck and specifically should avoid no-land/90% land hands.
Nobody outside of the development team really knows any specifics though.
There is a thread on a different forum (Reddit?) that dives into the details on this. It that was several versions ago and I suspect that the algorithm has been tweaked a bit since then. Enough that it breaks certain decks and enables others. Case in point, gold fishing the 24-land version of a Gates deck does not pan out but works wonders on Arena BO1. WTH?
The Arena hand/deck tweaking really cast doubt, in my eyes, on the health of the game overall. Last week, I ran up against a freakish 250-ish card 5-color Gates deck. Based on the current meta and what cards I saw played, that's 44 Gates in the deck or a 22% land/card ratio assuming no other lands. If someone had the same ratio for a 60 card deck, that works out to be ~13 lands! I did not see him play Plaza of Harmony or any other land, yet he hit his curve, dropped the gate search cards including Circuitous Route, District Guide and Open the Gates giving him his ramp. It was such a bizarre "perfect game" for my opponent that I was left wondering if it was just pure luck or the opponent had figured out how to game Arena's hand manipulation.
BO1 is starting to not feel very much like magic to me. I see it time and time again when new players come to draft for the first time in our LGS in the past 2 months. They build incorrect mana bases for a 3 color deck and then just lose nonstop. Arena does a lot of heavy lifting for newer players but doesn't tell you it's doing it. It's very jarring from what I've seen when these players migrate to paper magic imho.
Happens at FNM as well. Last Friday, we fired off and I forgot to put in three lands after a test build, I was running only 24 lands (realized it only after I went to search for my 25th land and it wasn't there, oops). So I went 1-2 my first game, then went 0-2 2nd game, received a buy my 3rd game. I still ended up in 4th place. So many people had "net" decked Arena BO1 deck lists that they rage quit game 1 or 2. Those Arena-Deckers who stayed lost every single match. We ended up hanging out for an hour with those that stayed on proper deck construction.
That night was the night I stopped equating Arena with Magic.
More proof the shuffler is way more broken than they admit. I guess it's possible this guy is trolling us and only showing videos that makes the shuffler look bad. Given how many people are saying similar things, I tend to believe him. He builds a 13 land red deck and proceeds to basically always get his 2nd/3rd lands.
Shock.
Petramander.
Lavarunner.
Chemister's Insight.
Opt.
Why are these cards ALWAYS in hand early game, usually in multiples of 3? Every game. Every game against a drake deck there's a Spell Pierce cast in the first turns. Every game against RDW Lavarunner drops right away. I dont see aggressive mulliganing. It's almost like certain cards are coded to show up at certain points in a match.
EDIT: Would you run 18 lands in paper? Hell no. Can you get away with it on Arena? You bet.
Spirits
It feels totally unnatural. I've played a lot of REAL magic, and I don't ever see the variance in that that I do in Arena. Now that the meta is like 80% Red, you can play against like 20 Red decks a day and I see a mulligan like once, but EVERY game they drop the same cards early: Lavarunner, Shock. Without fail, My first creature will be shocked. My second will be Shocked. There will be two Lavarunners out. And likeise I always pull the same cards in my decks.
Thats it, and the times I feel I must mulligan are very low, while I will almost always have 1 or 2 1cmc creatures, several bolts, and will get to 13 lands.
Its not 'real' magic, its forced.
Spirits
SO much truth here. First turn always Mountain, then Shock, then Shock again. I'll never forget the opponent that went Shock, Shock, Lightning Strike, Skewer, Skewer, Skewer, Shock. Boring
Spirits
*Puts tin foil hat on* Some say that the rigging goes far beyond what they actually admit to. That the game gives you a bit better hands when you start playing for the day. However, the more gold/rewards you earn, they start making your hands a bit less good.
Also, it's clear there are far too many instances of weird stuff going on with lands beyond that opening hand business too. I've had quite a few games where I don't draw any land except for the 2-3 I start with for many turns. I mean, my deck has like 42 cards left in it, and I still don't have another land. The odds of this happening are about 1 per 937 games. I doubt I've even played that many games yet, or maybe approaching that number. This no land draw has happened to me more times than I can count now.
Conversely, who else hits land after land after land? It becomes so ridiculous sometimes, like drawing 5-8 lands in a row. The odds of drawing 5 lands in a row, with a deck now at 49 cards and 19 land left in it are 1 in 163. 7 lands in a row (happened more then once to me) 1 in 1,704 games. I certainly haven't played 1700 games, yet this has happened to me multiple times, along with all the other nonsense?
It shows a clear pattern of incredible odds. People recognize it. Hopefully Wizards will fix it.
Follow up on this comment. I was hitting a wall in my bo1 rank. I realized I need to make every card basically do something the turn it comes down, or provide card advantage, or be instant speed removal. This is how mono-red gets so far. It needs so few lands, and can basically always play cards. Me getting hands with like 2 3 drop creatures just wasn't fast enough.
I further modified my deck to again combat mono-red. The top of my curve is now 4 Rekindling Phoenix, no other 4 drops. Anyway, lowering my mana curve to like 2.7 on average made me start climbing the ladder again. I also removed a land to combat these "You're going to keep drawing lands for the next many turns" kind of games. My motto became "I will never have to mulligan again." If you mulligan, or even go second sometimes, it becomes too hard to win. The draw back of going first in paper is that if you mulligan, you're going to have a hard time. However, with the hand fixing system, mulligans are becoming a thing of the past, so long as you build your deck right. That means the players going second aren't getting as much as an advantage as they used to.
I am a bit worried as to how linear bo1 may become eventually. I mean, we're all still learning how best to adapt or exploit this new hand system, and also the weird shuffling.
Despite all that, there is a meta developing beyond red. There are a few distinct decks out there, but red accounts for almost half of the meta it seems to me. I'm gold level 3 right now. I've heard people say the meta changes as you go up the ladder. You higher ranking players still experiencing the red wave?
Their shuffling system is obviously rigged at times. That is one thing I do absolutely hate about Arena. Also I'm getting dropped/disconnected much more often it seems these days.
Screenshot for proof. I've had many other games like this. People have tried to shoot me down before regarding this egregious shuffling error. However, I've since learned to do the math for these hands and how to take a screenshot from my computer. IT IS UNDENIABLE that the "bugs" in the shuffling system go far beyond what they admit about taking the best of 2 hands. I hope they fix this soon.
An example is just how often I start with two land hands in mono red. Using hypergeometric distribution I should have a 33.9% chance to draw exactly two lands in a 17 land deck. Do I almost always start is adequate resources to cast what I need? I sure do. I know I'm not shipping 2/3 of my openers for having 0, 1, 3+ lands lol. Heck I played ten games the other day and I had no openers that I recall with 3 lands (21.73% chance with 17 lands with opening 7). It's obviously matching my opening lands to my average curve in my eyes.
BO1 is starting to not feel very much like magic to me. I see it time and time again when new players come to draft for the first time in our LGS in the past 2 months. They build incorrect mana bases for a 3 color deck and then just lose nonstop. Arena does a lot of heavy lifting for newer players but doesn't tell you it's doing it. It's very jarring from what I've seen when these players migrate to paper magic imho.
Now I haven't played thousands of games and I could be reading into variance way too much. Just another opinion and bit of feedback to toss into the pot.
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 mean, you do NOT feel like you get unfairly blown out when your first match goes horribly, since you can sideboard and actually defend yourself. All the swiss army knife cards feel like they are at rare and make the deck into a jumble.
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!
That's not quite right - they are not very open on details, but as I understood it, the system does not straight up give you the better of two hands - it prefers the one with a land/spell ratio closer to your overall deck and specifically should avoid no-land/90% land hands.
Nobody outside of the development team really knows any specifics though.
W(W/U)U Ephara - Flash & Taxes W(W/U)U || B(B/G)G Meren - Circle of Life B(B/G)G
RGW Marath - Ever shifting Wilds RGW || (U/R)C(W/B) Breya - Artificial Dominion (U/R)C(W/B)
UBR Becket Brass - take what you can, give nothing back UBR
There is a thread on a different forum (Reddit?) that dives into the details on this. It that was several versions ago and I suspect that the algorithm has been tweaked a bit since then. Enough that it breaks certain decks and enables others. Case in point, gold fishing the 24-land version of a Gates deck does not pan out but works wonders on Arena BO1. WTH?
The Arena hand/deck tweaking really cast doubt, in my eyes, on the health of the game overall. Last week, I ran up against a freakish 250-ish card 5-color Gates deck. Based on the current meta and what cards I saw played, that's 44 Gates in the deck or a 22% land/card ratio assuming no other lands. If someone had the same ratio for a 60 card deck, that works out to be ~13 lands! I did not see him play Plaza of Harmony or any other land, yet he hit his curve, dropped the gate search cards including Circuitous Route, District Guide and Open the Gates giving him his ramp. It was such a bizarre "perfect game" for my opponent that I was left wondering if it was just pure luck or the opponent had figured out how to game Arena's hand manipulation.
Happens at FNM as well. Last Friday, we fired off and I forgot to put in three lands after a test build, I was running only 24 lands (realized it only after I went to search for my 25th land and it wasn't there, oops). So I went 1-2 my first game, then went 0-2 2nd game, received a buy my 3rd game. I still ended up in 4th place. So many people had "net" decked Arena BO1 deck lists that they rage quit game 1 or 2. Those Arena-Deckers who stayed lost every single match. We ended up hanging out for an hour with those that stayed on proper deck construction.
That night was the night I stopped equating Arena with Magic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KjaIumu-jI