So, what are everyone's plans?

Starting tonight we can go at it again and play from scratch. I know nothing about our initial card pool, but there's already a State of the Beta:

https://mtgarena.community.gl/forums/threads/37045

TL;DR:

Free Singleton for the entire weekend starting today with minimal ICR rewards
No GRN limited event without gems until October 11th
Naming convention from now on: "competitive" -> Bo3, everything else Bo1
New 2k gold event: Competitive Meta: play until 7 wins or 1(!) loss

My own ideas:
Today I won't be able to do much for the release time will be 10 pm unless someone mixed up time zones. So I probably play through the NPE and aim for 4 wins beyond that - maybe just through Free Play with a mono-colored pre-con.
For the remainder of the weekend I'll check out Singleton, but before that I will get some intel on Rat Colony in that format. If it can win, it might be worth the time. That's the only event to reliably gain something for now for "Gold Constructed" could be full of P2W guys. And I'd rather save up gold for the GRN Draft in two weeks than slowly drain it in Constructed.

Well, I've done it. Blew 9000 gems on GRN packs and 9000 on DOM packs.
Got some good pulls from GRN, but DOM was mostly chaff. Did get a sizable amount of WCs that'll let me a brew a half decent deck though.
I'm going with boros or mono-white for now, taking advantage of my pulls. Crafted the boros lands (because a good mana-base is essential) the other 3 history of benalias and the rest will be mostly uncommons and commons for now.
Let's hope I made a good choice, because I've got 2000 gems left (so I'll probably try the sealed event).

I have 22.5k in gems, just taking a second to try to work out my first deck.

Game plan: draft, or play some quickplay/quick constructed with whatever deck I can make using the starter collection, until after the pro tour. Then I netdeck something, make that deck, farm lots of gold, and worry about what to play next afterwards.

EDIT: Yeah right now it's just queuing into monogreen mirrors (**** the queuing algorithm seriously), and the deck has two Plummets. Since other green decks have no flying creatures it's a literal dead card. Making things worse is that I have literally no other green cards in collection. Sheesh.

I'll wait until after the Pro Tour, then build a deck designed to **** your deck.

I just built a GB Stompy with the cards/WCs I had. Pretty decent, although I had to use fillers.

Interesting thing - I couldn't cast Statue from my graveyard o_O

PS. You get Vraska, Ral and Teferi - check your email for code.

Heh, bring it.

Also stuff the matchmaking algorithm seriously. I play the default green deck and queue into all green mirrors. The default green deck has no flyers, but it does have two maindeck Plummets, so I have two dead cards in my deck. I swap them out for artifacts Diamond Mare & Arcane Encyclopedia, and now I'm queuing into other tweaked decks with Seal Away and whatnot. Wtf? This stupid algorithm is seriously making me want to put the Plummets back in.

EDIT: Yeah, put the Plummets back in. Sheesh.

Bought the Starter kit to be able to play Sealed early. Got the old 2 decks in 1 pool:





We'll see what comes around of it.

I played Sealed, opened junk, and went 2-3.

Status // Statue does not have aftermath. Aftermath cards are unique among split cards where you always play the left side from hand and always play the right side from graveyard. Most split cards just have you choose one side and play it from hand.

I entered sealed twice and then spent the rest of my gems on packs.

After opening about 10k worth of packs, I cobbled my mythics together and built Abzan midrange.

I undervalued Might of the Multitudes. It for 4 destroyed Dimir Control.

I'm not spending my gems until they implement 5th copy protection, and I'm not redeeming wildcards until I know what's in the 2-color NPE decks.

So, I'll get to enjoy the f2p experience.... just farm as much gold as possible for QD guilds on the 11th.

Also, I'm not touching sealed with a 10 yard pole.

Got 10 M19 boosters and 33 GRN from what I've paid during the Beta. Built myself a sweet Dimir Midrange/Control out of them. Boy, Surveil sure is a sweet mechanic! Beat my Boros opponent with 2 Dimir flies pumped up to 4/4

I think you can also play both at once for the combined cost. Please verify

I decided to at least get the $5 package despite it having only M19 packs and am debating with myself if I should join you money-players. But you're already $100 in, that feels steep. It's not that I couldn't afford it and I do intend to stick around for a while, but going from zero cost to the cost of 3 retail games, hmm.

Also not sure how to spend my 2,5k gems. Maybe go for a Sealed, maybe save them for GRN Draft. Need to check prize structures.

Btw, is it possible that every GRN booster has a Gate? That's true in paper, but looks like it's also true for us, which kind of accelerates our dear "5th card"-issue.

@Banedon: I see your intention to game the match-making, I tried as well during my early closed beta days. Not sure, you can do that. FWIW, I made a mix of the good green and white starter decks and got matched with many pre-cons, but also some $$-decks in between.

Well, to be fair, I have barely any cards so it's not like I have much wiggle room (my best replacements for the Plummets are Diamond Mare and Arcane Encyclopedia, which should say something). If in return for having two bad cards I can run into much weaker decks, I'd rather do that. Still, stuff the matchmaking algorithm, seriously.

I'm hoping the best deck that shakes out of the new meta will involve Lyra Dawnbringer. I can't put my finger on it, but I just like the card. Maybe it has something to do with the angel tribe in general, I really tried to run Bruna, the Fading Light decks in Duels as well.

I entered the sealed event and got 4 lands as rares...
Went with Jeskai flyers, 2-0 so far.

Went 5-3 with the Boros version of my first Sealed pool. Misplayed with Tajic twice, otherwise I might have pulled off 6 or even 7.

My second pool is quite a bit worse. 2 Rares are lands, two are bad, the other two are Response/Resurgence and the Sunburst artifact creature. Went Naya splashing U and B off Guildgates, am 4-2 so far.

I didn't plug any money into the game to begin with and can't right now either. With tweaking in a couple cards I've made the white giveme deck go 5 for 5 so far. That's all I've played.