I'm honestly not feeling very motivated to play Magic right now. I can't explain why, it's just not very fun. I do things like use Oko's +1 on my opponent's Goblin Electromancer because I can't be bothered thinking, if they have Shock they have it, I concede and go next.

Is anyone still playing Gwent? How is that game compared to Magic? I only played Gwent till Homcoming, and I remember it as a better game except 1) coin flip, apparently fixed now and 2) smaller scene. Reading Magic articles & watching videos is actually quite fun, not so many people playing Gwent though.

To be honest, I only know the Gwent from inside Witcher 3, which is suuuuuuper trivial - almost as trivial as the main character's "progression" but whatever..

How is the standalone Gwent compared to Magic on a scale of complexity? I can hardly imagine that game idea to come close to Magic, maybe not even Hearthstone..

That being said, what's the matter with Magic right now? I know, your tastes are a bit awkward (Nexus ), but unless you're a big spender you can only grind with bad decks anyway until ranked draft opens up to acquire ELD cards.

I haven't played Gwent since Homecoming, so I don't know what it's like compared to Magic now. Before Homecoming it was, I think, a better game: there's more strategic complexity thanks to the BO3 mechanic, deck thinning is (was?) a real thing, and so on. In Magic you always have the major unknown of what's on top of your deck so you can never plan more than 1-2 turns ahead, but not so in Gwent. But Magic has its own advantages, chief among which is the diversity of archetypes. Aggro/control/combo - that never exists in Gwent (although Gwent has its own archetypes that don't exist in Magic, such as tempo & handbuff).

I can't put my finger on why Magic isn't fun right now. I imagine it's got something to do with there being a new meta - I find new metas off-putting. The game seems to also have gotten stale somewhat. Even by the end of last season, I was mostly playing through inertia (although I didn't find it too tedious to get ~4 wins every day). I have enough wildcards to craft another deck (having crafted Simic Ramp already), but I just don't feel like it.

I’m playing Rayman Legends and OverCooked 2 now. I was binge-playing Magic 2014 since i stopped playing Duels. Had to move on I guess

Sigh..,Gwent and OverCooked 2.... two big Hakeem games. We were supposed to play a ton of OverCooked 2 together. Just he and I, and then eventually we would bring our kids in

Goddammit

As an example of a game that makes me want to puke.

I'm on the draw.

T1: they Gilded Goose. I play land and pass.
T2: they play Oko, make a food. My hand is land, Leafkin Druid, Brazen Borrower, Hydroid Krasis, Oko, some other stuff.

I haven't lost, but I sure as hell didn't feel like playing, and conceded. Next game.

I'm on the play.

T1: I play land and pass. They play Arboreal Grazer.

Oh yeah, this matchup which I pretty much can't win in game 1. I concede.

IMPOLITE

I played exactly three games (2 vs. AI, one ranked) and some impressions of the game:

For those who've never played Gwent before
- In Magic BO3 play, you play 3 games, and need to win 2 of 3 games to win the match. In Gwent, each individual game is 3 rounds. You need to win 2 of 3 to win the match. The board resets between rounds (although certain effects can keep the board populated), but your hand & deck do not. This means deck thinning in the first round is important, so you can draw your best cards.
- You win the round by having more points in play than the opponent. Each card you play typically adds some points to the board, and there is no combat.
- You draw a hand of 10 cards at the start of the game and don't usually draw more (except between rounds: you cards at the start of rounds 2 & 3). You have to play a card every turn, which means matches have a set length.
- It uses the Hearthstone style of deckbuilding. There are five factions, and each has its own "class cards". This is in contrast to Magic, where you are free to use any card you want in the pool.
- Because each match have a set length, aggro/combo/control as they exist in Magic don't exist in Gwent. Similarly Gwent's macro-archetypes don't exist in Magic: high tempo plays where you put as many points as possible onto the board ASAP, handbuff cards that trade points now for points in the future, and so on.

For those coming from pre-Homecoming
- They fixed the coin flip by adding an "initiative" that gives the person going first extra points. (I am not sure if this is all they did. I vaguely remember reading that they added an initiative system where the faction's leader with the highest initiative goes first, not sure if that happened, but all three games I played I went first.)
- You can now do more than play a card every turn. Some cards have "Order", which means you get to use their extra effects whenever they cooldown. There's also a leader ability now that you can use whenever you want. This means there's more of a combo aspect now than there was before.
- Each deck now has a "provisions" limit, and each card costs some number of provisions. For example a more powerful card might cost 10 provisions to include in your deck, while a weaker one might only cost 4. Each faction leader adds a different amount of provisions.
- If you played pre-Homecoming all your scraps and dust carry over. I haven't played at all since Homecoming but I had enough scraps to craft the entire colleciton.
- Cards have gotten weaker. Back then each bronze card would generate like 12 points of value; now they're tied to the provisions count of course but they don't seem to be >7, at least at once.
- There're only 2 rows now. Weather in general seems much weaker than previously; for example Impenetrable Fog now does 2 damage per turn for four turns.

I sort of miss playing Gwent, but as always high learning curve is a major issue. That, and the fact that Magic simply has more people playing it and therefore more of a competitive scene.

Well, for game #1 you're maybe too used to your Nexus deck that made you ignore whatever the opponent did so the only thing you ever feared/disliked was a blazing fast start.

Now that your deck features Oko + Goose too, you know that this starting hand can happen, but doesn't happen all the time - far from that. I know because I've had the same deal with Llanowar Elves into Steal Leaf Champion. But I always consider that a nice thing, whether it's for me or for the opponent. It's okay to lose to that - for me. Also, not everything is lost even after that start - though yes, I am also one who concedes early and often when a game only has a << 50% chance of winning.

Game #2, sure if you play rock and he plays paper, that's okay if you're going for max time efficiency, but don't get upset at that cute little tree guy

What triggers me is oppressive **** like Thought Erasure or counters in general. I don't want to ask permission in my leisure time and I don't want to trade my best card for a stupid 2 mana card with two additional bonuses.
So Veil of Summer truly is a blessing.

As for Gwent, yeah, what you describe sounds like it's not 10% as complex as Magic.

Well I just played this game too.

I'm on the draw.

T1: he plays land, Gilded Goose. I play land, Gilded Goose.
T2: he plays land, Oko, +2. I play land, Oko, +2.
T3: he plays land, Wicked Wolf my Gilded Goose. Funny thing is, I also had a Wicked Wolf in hand, except now that he's killed my Gilded Goose I can't cast it. Concede.

I played three turns and I literally didn't make any decisions of consequence. Magic snowballs so quickly these days, there are so many games where someone who can see both players' hands knows who's going to win before the first card is played. This never happens in Gwent (at least, it used never to happen in Gwent, dunno about now). I don't know how much longer I can put up with it, right now it really is 1) learning curve and 2) competitive scene as the only things keeping me playing Magic.

Well, that's just the coin-flip issue. I complained about that on the official forums once, trying for a non-random solution in Bo1 matches. Don't know why they don't implement something like that - makes more sense than the "better starting hand" algorithm imo.

Old people say that's Magic, deal with it.

It's possible the frustration is stemming from BO1. We'll see. The problem with BO3 is that it's more serious, and unfortunately enough, I tend to play Magic when I'm queuing for a match in other games (i.e. I can't afford to play BO3).

In the meantime, it seems Gwent does have some competitive scene as well - https://teamaretuza.com/ hosts quite a lot of information I'll be sure to read when I get the chance.

Turns out Team Aretuza has an article that explicitly deals with the changes since pre-Homecoming: https://teamaretuza.com/academy/course?lessonId=228

It turns out I had 400k scraps, more than enough to craft the entire collection. I've made what I'm told is probably the best deck right now, Mystic Echo Dwarves, to explore the meta with - still haven't played many games, but I am playing.

Seems the frustration with Magic was temporary - although I've played several Gwent matches, I'm mostly back to playing Magic again. RIP Gwent. It's a good game, just the halo effect too strong.

Seems the above was premature too! I still read Magic content and get 4 wins a day, but I'm paying an increasing amount of attention to Gwent. The game has changed, it's actually become rather less complex in my opinion (because card advantage wars are so much rarer now), but I like the logical way Gwent matches play out + Gwent deckbuilding actually seems more interesting than Magic now, which is saying something. For people who like exploring totally-new metas Magic is still better, but for people like me who prefer to tune established archetypes, Gwent offers more wiggle room (at least in BO1 deckbuilding).

There may yet come a time when I quit Magic to play Gwent. Right now, the biggest problems with Gwent are 1) smaller scene and 2) long queue times (e.g. right now, I can't get a game at all, and Arena queues aren't much faster. Might have something to do with my rank.).

I would think it easy to find a game at bronze tier 4.

you can always play against sparky...

:runs:

I was thinking maybe they also had a deck-scaling algorithm where someone with a strong deck would not be matched against someone with starter decks. Since I had 400k scraps left over from open beta, I had netdecked a strong deck, so it was possible.

But it seems matchmaking is just down for certain regions, mine being of them: https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.p ... .11015690/

I'm considering quitting Magic again for what's a rather amazing reason in a vacuum: the daily reset is at a very inconvenient time. It coincides with the time of the day when I most want to play other games with friends. If I do Magic dailies at that time, then I'm losing out on valuable friendship time, but if I do it before, then it gets problematic because I can't tell how long it takes to get 4 wins. I could hit a long losing streak and therefore fail to complete the dailies. It's very annoying, significantly aggravated by daylight savings.

I don't know if I'll actually quit though, after all I have been thinking of quitting for a while and never actually quit.

I've been playing since 1995 and I have a on-again off-again relationship. I'll play for a few years, then take a couple years off, then come back for a few years.

I haven’t played since Duels. I don’t really miss it but if they made another game for Xbox, I’d be all over it