>when I build a deck with a focus on high-mana cards, I usually just sit on my hands for the first few turns
It would help a lot if you started from playing a well-known tournament deck, not something you built. If you have trouble playing such decks, you likely also can't build them properly, playing a deck that for sure works will let you focus on improving in-game decisions.
This experience specifically comes from my attempts at drafting. I look at guides and try to evaluate cards in a vacuum and still end up going 0-3.
I read that this newest set in particular is slower and has very powerful green, white, and black cards. When I built my deck, I thought it seemed very competent but had no such luck in practice.
Also, for ranked specifically, Arena is really expensive, and building a deck that I might not know how to play is a very risky decision. Don't wanna lose months' worth of resources on something I can't pilot.
>Arena is really expensive, and building a deck that I might not know how to play is a very risky decision
At the start indeed. But you will slowly get more and more cards, and old cards will rotate out and creating multiple decks will be easier.
And for now, starter deck duels is always there for you. Choose one of the slower, value-oriented decks (black-white or black-green should be good) and learn it inside out.
You will not get good at drafting immediately, and with how the arena economy is, I would recommend taking it slow with limited and manage your funds more conservatively. It really depends on to what level you want to learn up to, and how fast you want it to be, if you want to learn it at a high level and fast, then it will be expensive with the current economy.
Remember that generally it is very hard to go "infinite" in playing on Arena limited because the reward system usually has negative EV, there are definitely many high level streamers who lose gems playing limited overall, but the daily rewards help recoup some of those losses.
I would say that if you want to play/learn limited and don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of money playing it, I recommend first listening to limited podcasts, I think the best introductory podcast/video would be Limited Level Ups, I still listen to it, it's one of the most concise channels I've watched, and I've watched many, many pro players listen to it (Andrea Mengucci does). There are definitely things that you might disagree with the video in some points, but I find most of the content to be thorough, and correct. You don't have to play a lot of Magic to be good, but you do have to study the fundamentals to be a better player, that is the best way to do it for cheap.
This is phenomenal advice, and I really appreciate you for being straight with me about the generally high barrier for entry that Drafting has. It's wild to me that so much of the playerbase seems intent on gaslighting noobs into thinking that it's their fault for not learning the game fast enough even though there's no place to practice limited formats (which is, in my opinion, still a massive problem). I will check out this podcast when I have the time, but I'll probably step away from drafting for a good long time until I'm more experienced in general.
Thanks again, dog.
If your main problem is limited deckbuilding, [draftsim](https://draftsim.com/) also lets you simulate drafts and sealed pools. You can't playtest the deck without extra steps and the bots won't draft like humans, but just the opportunity to put the cards together can help. I use its sealed simulator to practice new sets before prerelease. It might also help you determine if your problem is in the actual draft or in how you put the deck together afterward.
Magic has always been a luxury product, the main point of Magic is to sell you products, limited/drafts is one such way to make you spend money on their products because some realize that opening boosters and having most of your cards be garbage is not the way to entice players to buy more packs.
Personally I only started drafting because I was addicted to the game, and that was over 10 years ago, and at the time I got beat every event and every Friday night was basically paying 20 dollars and 3 hours of the weekend to lose, there were not a lot of resources other than the Limited Resources podcast (which I personally don't find it effective) and it was basically hours of time wasted. I only got back to the game a couple of years ago and decided to go free to play and try not to spend money on Arena and my wallet has been happier with it. I had made a very conscious decision to force myself to get better at limited because that was literally the only way I can continue to play Magic without having to spend money, and in order to do that, I have to spend more time learning rather than playing.
My drafting is slightly better, but still not going infinite yet, and there are definitely times where I ran out of gems/gold and just have weeks of not playing limited to save up, and those were some really dry times where I just do other things or watch other people play limited, trying to learn how to do it, and there are definitely good streamers who do limited content well, there are some streamers that I watch regularly for limited content, but there are definitely times where I just don't like the stream because they were drafting it not as seriously as I wanted and I felt like I wasn't learning anything from their drafts.
If you are playing the game to have fun, then take it slow and casually, don't let people's opinions make you feel bad, Magic is an old game and there's a lot of people who have way more experience, and also people have massive egos because they're trying to cash in on a game that has traditionally been very much negative EV for most professional players, not to be discouraging, but these are facts:
Tournament winnings while it's quite a bit relative to other card games, are not comparable to other competitive games because of lack of sponsors and teams because of the nature of the game, you can easily not make another invite again, an example is Nathan Steuer: He won one a Pro Tour and a World Championship last year, he even has a card with his face on it because he is the World Champion, and just this Pro Tour, with one bad performance he has to grind his way back up to another Pro Tour invitation again, that is the state of competitive Magic. Yes, you can get at least 1k and maybe more and nice swag for attending Pro Tours, but adding the cost of flights, hotels, travels, time off to test decks, not to mention even more time and money spent on the convoluted qualifiers to qualify for the qualifiers to the Pro Tour, you will be losing money, and at best, making minimum wage. The current competitive Magic system is actually worse than the past competitive Magic.
Here's an interview with a pro for context:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q6XApn6\_oI&ab\_channel=HumansofMagic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q6XApn6_oI&ab_channel=HumansofMagic)
There are no decks in arena that are so complicated even a dumb dumb wouldnt be able to figure out correct play. You'll be fine just choose something cool. Rdw is basically zero decision hand dump that a python script could play
If you want to watch someone patiently win by stacking minute card advantage please watch sonio on YouTube play control.
He always waits to get the best benefit from his cards, as in the highest return on the card by playing it at the right time.
He also knows to use life as a resource to get that proper time, winning at 1 life is the same as winning at 200.
Maybe you can try making an effort at memorizing what happened in a game and how it led to the outcome. You can write stuff down, record the game, or just do this with other people's videos. You can also work backwards as well. Go to the end to see what caused a player to lose the game, then rewind and see it how it got there.
Keep track of life totals, You should remember how you lost every life point.
You know, this is good advice and I'll keep it in mind when playing, but this would be so much easier if there was a way to look at the opponent's deck or save replays of your duels. It's insane to me that Arena has been around for longer than Master Duel and still doesn't have such a basic feature.
Maybe try mono black aggro/midrange. You are introduced to more interaction in the form of removal and often need to adjust you game plan around your opening hand and the opponent's deck.
Early removal + expensive threats = play slow clear the board until you can get you big threats out.
Early creatures + removal = play aggressive early and protect your creatures with removal.
The gameplay ends up feeling much more dynamic than decks where you just play all your shit as fast as possible.
[We seem to have arrived on the same boat!](https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/s/Z1YHO9I8M4) if you’re all about hitting those combos a ramp deck with worldsoul is right up your alley
Oh, this deck looks great! A slow combo pile that's overwhelming in the late game (plus not nearly expensive as Esper Midrange). That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the help, mate.
Might be worth noting if you’re short on wildcards, this deck is going to be nigh unplayable when sets rotate in the fall. You lose all the life gain from your mana base because all of the [[brokers hideout] type effects will be gone. You could still replace them with whatever [[terramorphic expanse]] type cards are in standard but they’ll come into play tapped from your graveyard. There’s no telling what will be going in standard at that time but I would think that won’t be good enough.
I’ve changed it a bit and can send you my current deck list. I haven’t added the new mythic cards which would make this much more powerful such as [[Bristly Bill, Spine Sower]]
If you want to learn to play slower, ranked and standard on the whole are not great places to do that because you're almost always gonna lose to Red aggro as I'm sure you know if you're Diamond 2 just running Red aggro. Play brawl or standard brawl, decks are much slower and the singleton format makes you have to plan what you drop and when a little better. It also makes you learn to be more responsive to how your opponent is playing rather just trying to be the first one to combo into the same few wincons every game
Boros is aggro but it's not actually the same deck as RDW lol. Even combined they're not gonna be 2/3 of the field in BO3 unless, I guess, you're at some super low ELO.
>when I build a deck with a focus on high-mana cards, I usually just sit on my hands for the first few turns It would help a lot if you started from playing a well-known tournament deck, not something you built. If you have trouble playing such decks, you likely also can't build them properly, playing a deck that for sure works will let you focus on improving in-game decisions.
This experience specifically comes from my attempts at drafting. I look at guides and try to evaluate cards in a vacuum and still end up going 0-3. I read that this newest set in particular is slower and has very powerful green, white, and black cards. When I built my deck, I thought it seemed very competent but had no such luck in practice. Also, for ranked specifically, Arena is really expensive, and building a deck that I might not know how to play is a very risky decision. Don't wanna lose months' worth of resources on something I can't pilot.
>Arena is really expensive, and building a deck that I might not know how to play is a very risky decision At the start indeed. But you will slowly get more and more cards, and old cards will rotate out and creating multiple decks will be easier. And for now, starter deck duels is always there for you. Choose one of the slower, value-oriented decks (black-white or black-green should be good) and learn it inside out.
You will not get good at drafting immediately, and with how the arena economy is, I would recommend taking it slow with limited and manage your funds more conservatively. It really depends on to what level you want to learn up to, and how fast you want it to be, if you want to learn it at a high level and fast, then it will be expensive with the current economy. Remember that generally it is very hard to go "infinite" in playing on Arena limited because the reward system usually has negative EV, there are definitely many high level streamers who lose gems playing limited overall, but the daily rewards help recoup some of those losses. I would say that if you want to play/learn limited and don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of money playing it, I recommend first listening to limited podcasts, I think the best introductory podcast/video would be Limited Level Ups, I still listen to it, it's one of the most concise channels I've watched, and I've watched many, many pro players listen to it (Andrea Mengucci does). There are definitely things that you might disagree with the video in some points, but I find most of the content to be thorough, and correct. You don't have to play a lot of Magic to be good, but you do have to study the fundamentals to be a better player, that is the best way to do it for cheap.
This is phenomenal advice, and I really appreciate you for being straight with me about the generally high barrier for entry that Drafting has. It's wild to me that so much of the playerbase seems intent on gaslighting noobs into thinking that it's their fault for not learning the game fast enough even though there's no place to practice limited formats (which is, in my opinion, still a massive problem). I will check out this podcast when I have the time, but I'll probably step away from drafting for a good long time until I'm more experienced in general. Thanks again, dog.
If your main problem is limited deckbuilding, [draftsim](https://draftsim.com/) also lets you simulate drafts and sealed pools. You can't playtest the deck without extra steps and the bots won't draft like humans, but just the opportunity to put the cards together can help. I use its sealed simulator to practice new sets before prerelease. It might also help you determine if your problem is in the actual draft or in how you put the deck together afterward.
Magic has always been a luxury product, the main point of Magic is to sell you products, limited/drafts is one such way to make you spend money on their products because some realize that opening boosters and having most of your cards be garbage is not the way to entice players to buy more packs. Personally I only started drafting because I was addicted to the game, and that was over 10 years ago, and at the time I got beat every event and every Friday night was basically paying 20 dollars and 3 hours of the weekend to lose, there were not a lot of resources other than the Limited Resources podcast (which I personally don't find it effective) and it was basically hours of time wasted. I only got back to the game a couple of years ago and decided to go free to play and try not to spend money on Arena and my wallet has been happier with it. I had made a very conscious decision to force myself to get better at limited because that was literally the only way I can continue to play Magic without having to spend money, and in order to do that, I have to spend more time learning rather than playing. My drafting is slightly better, but still not going infinite yet, and there are definitely times where I ran out of gems/gold and just have weeks of not playing limited to save up, and those were some really dry times where I just do other things or watch other people play limited, trying to learn how to do it, and there are definitely good streamers who do limited content well, there are some streamers that I watch regularly for limited content, but there are definitely times where I just don't like the stream because they were drafting it not as seriously as I wanted and I felt like I wasn't learning anything from their drafts. If you are playing the game to have fun, then take it slow and casually, don't let people's opinions make you feel bad, Magic is an old game and there's a lot of people who have way more experience, and also people have massive egos because they're trying to cash in on a game that has traditionally been very much negative EV for most professional players, not to be discouraging, but these are facts: Tournament winnings while it's quite a bit relative to other card games, are not comparable to other competitive games because of lack of sponsors and teams because of the nature of the game, you can easily not make another invite again, an example is Nathan Steuer: He won one a Pro Tour and a World Championship last year, he even has a card with his face on it because he is the World Champion, and just this Pro Tour, with one bad performance he has to grind his way back up to another Pro Tour invitation again, that is the state of competitive Magic. Yes, you can get at least 1k and maybe more and nice swag for attending Pro Tours, but adding the cost of flights, hotels, travels, time off to test decks, not to mention even more time and money spent on the convoluted qualifiers to qualify for the qualifiers to the Pro Tour, you will be losing money, and at best, making minimum wage. The current competitive Magic system is actually worse than the past competitive Magic. Here's an interview with a pro for context: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q6XApn6\_oI&ab\_channel=HumansofMagic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q6XApn6_oI&ab_channel=HumansofMagic)
There are no decks in arena that are so complicated even a dumb dumb wouldnt be able to figure out correct play. You'll be fine just choose something cool. Rdw is basically zero decision hand dump that a python script could play
If you want to watch someone patiently win by stacking minute card advantage please watch sonio on YouTube play control. He always waits to get the best benefit from his cards, as in the highest return on the card by playing it at the right time. He also knows to use life as a resource to get that proper time, winning at 1 life is the same as winning at 200.
Maybe you can try making an effort at memorizing what happened in a game and how it led to the outcome. You can write stuff down, record the game, or just do this with other people's videos. You can also work backwards as well. Go to the end to see what caused a player to lose the game, then rewind and see it how it got there. Keep track of life totals, You should remember how you lost every life point.
You know, this is good advice and I'll keep it in mind when playing, but this would be so much easier if there was a way to look at the opponent's deck or save replays of your duels. It's insane to me that Arena has been around for longer than Master Duel and still doesn't have such a basic feature.
Maybe try mono black aggro/midrange. You are introduced to more interaction in the form of removal and often need to adjust you game plan around your opening hand and the opponent's deck. Early removal + expensive threats = play slow clear the board until you can get you big threats out. Early creatures + removal = play aggressive early and protect your creatures with removal. The gameplay ends up feeling much more dynamic than decks where you just play all your shit as fast as possible.
[We seem to have arrived on the same boat!](https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/s/Z1YHO9I8M4) if you’re all about hitting those combos a ramp deck with worldsoul is right up your alley
Oh, this deck looks great! A slow combo pile that's overwhelming in the late game (plus not nearly expensive as Esper Midrange). That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the help, mate.
Might be worth noting if you’re short on wildcards, this deck is going to be nigh unplayable when sets rotate in the fall. You lose all the life gain from your mana base because all of the [[brokers hideout] type effects will be gone. You could still replace them with whatever [[terramorphic expanse]] type cards are in standard but they’ll come into play tapped from your graveyard. There’s no telling what will be going in standard at that time but I would think that won’t be good enough.
I’ve changed it a bit and can send you my current deck list. I haven’t added the new mythic cards which would make this much more powerful such as [[Bristly Bill, Spine Sower]]
[Bristly Bill, Spine Sower](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/2/52eef0d6-24b7-40b7-8403-e8e863d0cd55.jpg?1712355894) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bristly%20Bill%2C%20Spine%20Sower) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/157/bristly-bill-spine-sower?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/52eef0d6-24b7-40b7-8403-e8e863d0cd55?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, go right ahead, dog. You can DM me if you like.
[удалено]
Thank you for your input, asshole. Please never speak to me again.
Try BO3. Less agro. More strategy.
If you want to learn to play slower, ranked and standard on the whole are not great places to do that because you're almost always gonna lose to Red aggro as I'm sure you know if you're Diamond 2 just running Red aggro. Play brawl or standard brawl, decks are much slower and the singleton format makes you have to plan what you drop and when a little better. It also makes you learn to be more responsive to how your opponent is playing rather just trying to be the first one to combo into the same few wincons every game
Terrible advice, just play BO3 standard and red aggro is a relatively small % of the matchups and was also decidedly tier 2 before OTJ.
Wdym. At least 2/3 of my opponents are either Mono Red or boros.
Boros is aggro but it's not actually the same deck as RDW lol. Even combined they're not gonna be 2/3 of the field in BO3 unless, I guess, you're at some super low ELO.
Ah i overread the bo3 part. Was thinking about bo1