I guess I can understand that a fresh start is a good thing. It’s a good point Haven made that at least we will be better prepared and in particular the wild card redemption conundrum. It may have taken me a while due to lack of regular play but at least I now have a deck that makes me think in the early days I was wtf .... facing similar. It can be fun seeing all the triggers happen and in particular ones that buff your creatures. I know an explore fest can be a disheartening sight as the creatures just keep getting bigger.

At least I am starting to sit on the other side of the fence. The meta battles can still happen but at least it can be satisfying when your deck curves out and indeed as others (Nighthawk in his recent vid) pointed out if you can make use of all your mana from turn 1 for 4 straight turns its likely you are going to win. It’s good when you have a deck build that makes that not un uncommon occurrence! And yes as I said at the OP to this thread “it’s Magic!’” Hence once bitten it is very difficult to leave it alone ..... I’d agree that Arena has the makings of a decent Digital Magic offering and appears aesthetically superior to MTGO. The economy though will be the thing.

Constructed is where that becomes a real challenge hence my hope is that the draft modes are made more economy friendly as I’d happily tap into a sealed tourney as it pits both deck building, luck, playing at the fore. They just need to find away to leave a lasting legacy for the effort paid. I don’t see why they don’t just deploy what paper events do but I guess that does not factor in the hundreds of participants and to be too generous would dilute the constructed builds that rely on more of a cost investment. One solution may be to ensure e.g. wildcards are only earned in constructed modes where there value is more significant. In Limited sealed you could grant the drafted mythics / rares based on the final standings from a draft round.

The real question is if they will ever introduce a proper draft mode where all players are drawing from same packs, rather than this pseudo AI draft but then matches versus real players. Does anyone else get why that does not amount to the same experience and arguably true test of a players drafting and playing skills?

SD

I have been playing since half January, I really love the gameplay (yeah I love magic). I just really like the fact that I can play online magic whenever I want without having to resort to 90's graphics (I tried that and I ran away from the horrible experience of magic online), since I live in the middle of nowhere and there's no one to play with here. I spend like 60 dollar to get wildcards, which to me makes the game quite enjoyable. I made 1 tier-1 deck (RDW) and a few semi-jank decks (with God Pharao's Gift, I love reanimator stuffs, and a midrange GB).

I would think that if you want to go full-on f2p, it will be pretty nasty if they don't improve the economy. Which is something they should really do, else the playerbase will probably dwindle sooner than later, which is bad for all of us who want this game to succeed. So fingers crossed for the next economy update, but I don't have very high hopes seeing what they did to try improve stuff in the past few months (like removing wildcards from the vault, then putting them back, etc).

Anyway as far as I know there will just be 1 more final wipe when the beta goes public (and no one knows when that will happen). Until then I'll just keep doodling around a bit.

Back in after the latest update and now we are in standard. Oh Kaladesh and Aether Revolt how I love you! As an ex Magic Duels player I can now field a similar deck that enjoyed back in the Magic Duels days. Despite the preponderance of the red Aggro and UW Control still, the Kaladesh / Aether Revolt cards can just give you cards that overpower them. I do like to see some of the Dominaria Scheme cards though. They gave us some nice new cards but oddly as it’s full standards you can build decks that are not legal. It seems odd as they don’t let you save them. Anyway the latest updates seems to have whetted the appetite much more so encourage any of you ex NGA’ers who have not signed up yet for the beta to do so. SD

Well mixed fortunes in the Arena! But some very good games including quite a protracted one with SuperLadMan. That was quite epic. Managed the win but it was a clever deck he built. On that subject people just can’t seem to help assembling the Chandra, Heart of Kiran, Rekindling Phoenix decks. I mean come on. The usual UW is the bane of my playing but in a lot of matches even the great Scarab God can come unstuck, in particular if you do your best to avoid giving him creatures to bring back. Menace works a treat. Enjoying the competitive constructed, it gives you a chance to tweak a sideboard and at a reasonable 1,000 gold you can normally reclaim that during the match. Not planning to spend yet so the other drafts are eluding me, I did try Aether revolt but at 5000 gold it’s pricey. I failed abysmally though in being suckered into drafting a mono black deck. I should have gone into another colour earlier. Hoping that they will look to make the drafts for all the modes a little more affordable in the early stages. SD