/mtga/ Introductory Paste

vg's /mtga/ ARENA GENERAL FAQ AND INTRODUCTORY GUIDE

use at your own risk

||TABLE OF CONTENTS idk||

PREFACE: TROLLS and SCRUBS; BAD ADVICE AND HOW TO SPOT IT

0. FAQ

1. NEW TO M:TG (feat. why you should stop bitching about the mana system)

2. NEW TO ARENA

3. NEW TO DRAFTING


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PREFACE
lmao just git gud

Lots of bad M:tG advice floating around, especially in the general. Some of it is intentionally malicious (lmao just craft four teferi's to grind up your gold, rest of the deck doesn't matter) and is pretty easy to spot. The majority of it is unintentional and is just scrubs being scrubs. Harder to spot on anonymous Iberian Mustache-wax Graffiti boards. Sometimes it even comes from "pros" or articles. Red-flags include;

-"just do x, all you have to do is y, it's not hard"
-"it worked for me"
-the words "cheap, OP, bullshit" or variants thereof

After that take everything with a grain of salt. Nobody loves you and we all want to see you fail.

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0. YOU GET NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH, ZERO! GOOD DAY SIR!
who you calling a faq

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How much should I spend on this game?

The beginner's $5 buy-in is a decent deal. After that, general wisdom is to go big or go home. If you're going to spend $100+ on this game, do what you will. $50 dolphins get half a competitive deck and a sour taste in their mouth. Just remember that it's still a beta, it's pretty limited in scope (and will be for the forseeable future) and it's a closed economy, so the only thing you're getting back out is your enjoyment of the game.

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How does the matchmaking system work?

Allegedly, each card has a meta score based on a variety of factors, including popularity and and how often it gets played with other cards. In freeplay, decks are tiered by sum meta score. Thus precons get matched with precons and tier 1 netdecks get matched with like and everything in between. This is also the answer to the question, "Why am I facing fully built netdecks all of a sudden?"

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Is Arena spyware and are Wizards doing nefarious things with this game? Are players who pay favored by the matchmaking and shuffler?

Probably. We can't prove it tho!

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As a f2pbtw, what should I craft?

Nothing to power up your precon! That's trap. Grind those dailies and save up your wildcards until you either
a)have enough gold to enter a draft (and are good enough at draft to recoup your investment or go infinite)
b)can craft a good standard deck from scratch to enter and win events with.

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How does asynchronous drafting work?

Poorly! Basically, you draft against 7 bots and then play against other players (who also drafted against bots). The bots have strong biases that vary from set to set, don't send signals well, make erratic decisions and are generally unpredictable. Don't be afraid to jump ship if they start passing you crazy uncos seventh or eighth pick.