I am yes. Nice to see someone else is experience that same sluggishness with the game - at least it's not a system issue on my end. Still a shame since everything else is annoying but workable but that is just killing me - I enjoy building stupid theme decks and the editor running so slow and unresponsive is painful.


Why would you say something like that?! That's literally what's keeping me going at this point!

Cuz I'm a **** dream crusher. And an ass hole

Garren, they already trolled us with Solvent as our "PW" removal. The stage is set for something truly grand now...pretty thematic for Bolas really.

We still don't know if Bolas' abilities can be correctly coded similar to how we missed out on Emrakul, that may be a thing. Otherwise Bolas should be on Amonkhet or Hour of Devastation, may guess it's the later. they will probably introduce us to the new world and probably hint at some grand scheme slowly materializing and then bolas will spring his trap and be revealed.

No but the fact that wizard has already said that he is the BBEG for Amonkhet does (yes yes stainless might not be able to code him but I doubt the new bolas would be terribly complex)

More likely HOD as that's his schtick. I would expect he will be hinted at in other cards for AKH and the story mode will finish with the cliffhanger for his appearance in HOD.

Agreed. Even those booster mock-ups seemed to suggest he'll likely drop in HOD. Gah, Aether Revolt has barely begun and I'm already excited for the next set instead.

It's completely depressing that our default assumption to any potentially cool card is "Stainless probably won't be able to code it." How can Wizards seriously keep on with someone who has that reputation?

hmm crap steam matchmaking atm. 5mins and no joy, **** it ^^

The game feels a bit sluggish on Steam for me as well, but there's so many little factors contributing... longer queue times/loading in to VS match, slower functionality without right click, new players playing slow (and not turning off animations), more unwieldy deck-builder (seriously, why are CMC and color on two separate pages? Those are my most used filters! Also, why is apply filter on the left instead of right side...feels very counter-intuitive).

Feeling a bit burned out atm, but I do want to see how the new AER decks work.

I haven't noticed anything significantly different in the Steam version and I never used right-click (why would you need to?). My biggest complaint is it's taking too long to ladder and I keep getting matched up against scrubs with Origins-pool decks. I want to know what the competitive meta is going to look like. In the meantime, Dimir control is actually good now, and I'm having way too much fun with that. It feels evil: two-mana unconditional counterspells, four sweepers, lots of life gain and card draw...I even decided to go for the gusto and throw in Sphinx's Tutelage as an alternate wincon just for additional demoralization. And I'm not even a control player!

Maybe we won't get Bolas, but will get a bunch of cards that have the Bolas type.

Sorcery - Bolas
Human Agent of Bolas
etc.

My observations of the Steam meta: while going from rank 30 to 40, I've played against maybe 2 or 3 different players that didn't instantly disconnect. Around 3 out of 4 games are against AI playing turn 2 Akroan Jailer and other decks like that.

Besides of this, the best decks I've encountered are: Boros vehicles, that seems to be even stronger than in Kaladesh, and Dimir/Grixis artifact control. Myself I was playing Golgari energy/counters deck (running cubs, trackers, rhinos, constricts etc.), that has worked very well for me.

Dunno about those issues on steam connecting. Sometimes it gets stuck, but I just restart the game after 30 secs wait.
And I just keep playing against red based, aggressive vehicle decks (more than 70% of my matches). The blue based control matches (20% of matches) are mostly UB and Esper instead of Jeskai and UR from last season. From my experience, the meta remained pratically the same, except we see more black and fatal pushes.
Between all the unsuccessful brewing, one of my old decks is still providing amazing results and 90% win rate, so I have pretty much figured out what I bring to the next Showdown. It's a very secret innovative list so I won't share xD

The most popular way to get to rank 40 is to disconnect immediately if you don't get the perfect opening hand, so that's not surprising.

When I get over rank 30 in a season, I start tanking my rank back down to 25 or so, because ranks 20-30 are where I find the most fun matches against the widest range of decks. I didn't do this in OGW season, I think it was, and the rank 40 players I ran into were either absolutely awful (and disconnected as soon as the match swung against them) or were running good decks but disconnected before I even played a land (presumably because they didn't get a God Hand). Ironically, a few times the AI of those people would then go on to beat me, lol.

My observations so far have told me low Steam ladder is just as bat**** crazy as Xbox's, played 3 matches today and came up against U/R bronze sable, mono black consulate turretand R/G werewolves

I guess Improvise has at least made Bronze Sable "almost playable"...

Just played few games against rank 40 guy with some garbage deck, he lost 3 games in the row, disconnected as soon as the game started going downhill for him (didn't even get replaced by the AI, just straight up end of match counting as a win), and yet at the same time he didn't lose any ranks.

It boggles my mind how Stainless can't properly implement something as simple as matchmaking. In current state, they may as well remove matchmaking based on rank and just make you pair up with random opponent, that way getting a match would be much easier, and it seems like rank 20-30 are the most competitive at the moment. Really annoying that you get one proper game every one hour, the rest being playing against AI or waiting 15 minutes in queue only for the opponent to end the game on the first turn.

It's a cheat already used in Kaladesh season, i don't know how it works but both players get the victory without playing or getting replaced by ai. I know the name of a steam player using it, because i encountered him on ladder 20/30 times last season usually 2/3 games in a row every time, and every game he was always at rank 40.
Only once he tried to play against me with a Suntail Hawk monowhite deck and before my final blow he used this cheat to make the game finish without any message to be replaced.
If 1chwhc or whatever is his name is still around i don't think we will see some action against them.

The downside of what I've been facing so far is that superfriends is back and still as annoying as ever, especially when your testing untuned deck ideas (guess I should make a recurring universal solvent LD anti-walker deck. Haven't faced a dedicated Vehicles deck, which is odd but then I probably haven't climbed enough rank yet.
Still face a lot of 60+ card decks, a bit of everything really.