Does anyone play Arena? MTGO?

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3drinks
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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

NoNeedToBragoBoutIt wrote:
4 years ago
WolfWhoWanders wrote:
4 years ago
What kind of cards cause lots of clicking/trigger management? I feel like I should be able to guess at this but want to ask anyways
I can only speak for Xmage, but cards that are nerve-wracking IRL are usually just as nerve-wracking online.
Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, Consecrated Sphinx, Mystic Remora, ... virtually anything with a may trigger that triggers a lot.
These, like rhystic and smothering, are just a matter of right clicking the trigger and setting "always yes" and "always yield" to them, leaving your opponent to decide how to approach these triggers each turn. So you always get your draw for minimal clicks. Or, if you're like me, I play with a hand on the mouse and another over F2 so it's a matter of a button press. It's not really a big inconvenience...

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Post by lvg » 4 years ago

Sure, I know those shortcuts. But there are so many opponents that don't and it makes games feel glacially slow. Also if you have responses it's better not to auto yield to a lot of things, so I often just end up playing sorcery speed decks.

That said, given this whole corona situation, MTGO might be the only Magic I get to play for a while. Glad I still have that rental subscription.

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Post by Treamayne » 4 years ago

lvg wrote:
4 years ago
For those playing on MTGO. Do you make any card or deck decision because you are playing on MTGO? Even though I so far only play with friends while on a discord channel, I still mostly play sorcery speed decks (maelstrom wanderer for example). Just because keeping mana up and responding is such a pain. I just want to F6 really. Not my preferred playstyle normally.
I really miss the V3.5 functionality of F8. That said, there are cards I don't use in my decks because of the annoyance of how their triggers are handled (SDT, for example). But really, yielding a turn is more important in the early game and F6 makes that easy and you can always use F3 to cancel the auto-yields to make a response. Really though, I just mapped F2 to a mouse button to make clicking "ok" easier and faster.
NoNeedToBragoBoutIt wrote:
4 years ago
WolfWhoWanders wrote:
4 years ago
What kind of cards cause lots of clicking/trigger management? I feel like I should be able to guess at this but want to ask anyways
I can only speak for Xmage, but cards that are nerve-wracking IRL are usually just as nerve-wracking online.
Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, Consecrated Sphinx, Mystic Remora, ... virtually anything with a may trigger that triggers a lot.
I would say there are three classes of cards in this vein:

- Cards that are easy to resolve/manage table-top (TT), that are a nightmare to use online.
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This is usually because of how you can "shortcut" when playing TT, and how objects leaving a public zone, come back to the public zone as a different object. Example: SDT - in paper, it's very easy to say "I'll look and draw at the start of <player's> turn" and the rest of the table doesn't have to wait and watch while you evaluate the three cards, re-order them and draw one. Online - every time SDT leave the battlefield and is recast, it is a new object, so even if you yielded to triggers before, you have to do it again and it really just slows everything down because there is no "shortcutting" the process. I had a Tribal Legacy (60-card) Chimera deck that used Thrumming Stone, Bloodbond March, Sensei's Divining Top, and the Mirage Chimera (e.g. Tin-Wing Chimera) as the primary deck engine. Great fun in paper, almost always timed-out online, just because of triggers (especially Stone and SDT). Thrumming Stone is another example of when a card causes headaches online, because the ripple triggers are seen to have come from the card you are playing, so you can't auto-yield them (effectively) because each spell has a "slightly different" trigger that doesn't recognize the other auto-yields.

Infinite combos that are based on triggers are very difficult to pull off. E.g. Somebody plays Palinchron with at least one land that makes > 1 mana; they will usually "say" (chat) "I have infinite mana, do you have a response? If not, concede." (or some similar content). They then rely on players actually conceding to say they "won" because otherwise they have to click through all of that tapping and untapping to get the mana they want to take whatever action they intend. Generally I tell them will neither respond nor concede. If you bring an infinite combo to my table where I advertised "casual, no infinites" then I will let you "play it out." I sure hope you can win before you time-out from trying to click through the tapping and untapping a few hundred times to pull off whatever it is you are trying to do...
- Cards that are a nightmare to resolve/manage TT, but are easy to resolve online.
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These are cards and events that usually require some physical action (shuffle, coin-flip, etc.) that can't really be effectively shortcut IRL, but that are handled on MODO with random engines. The best example of which that I can think of easily is Warp World. On MTGO, I have an Izzet EDH deck that tries to Fork WW at least twice when cast. Each creature's ETB trigger either unsummons something on the opponent's board or makes at least 1 token for my side. The result is three successive Warp Worlds rarely takes more than 90 seconds to "resolve" each (assuming people are not responding, as there is no actual shuffling - longest part is assigning Auras and resolving triggers) but each resolution increases my permanent count and decreases everybody else. I would never try to do a deck like this in paper... resolving WW once is hard enough, but three successive copies and the table would lynch me.
- Cards/synergies that can be equally easy/difficult online or in paper.
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This usually happened when you have 3+ effects triggering from the same event. The difficulty won't always be the same: Online, triggers that require a target, and triggers that are similar but different, slow things down; but you do have F7 that helps a lot. In paper, cards that require action (target in an opponent's graveyard, shuffle, etc.) are what will slow things down, but cards that are "blanket" (e.g. In the Web of War - same trigger for everything that applies) are easy to shortcut.
raddleman wrote:
4 years ago
How easy is it to buy singles on MTGO now? I remember back in the day you had to use third party sites and go through a longer process to get individual cards. Has this changed? I love arena but crave more Commander and it's the easiest way for me to play.
Very easy. You still need to use third party sites if you want to pay cash for cards (instead of trading tickets), but most reputable sellers can have your "order" delivered in less than an hour. The seller I use (can we share data like this in the public forum, or only via PM?) I will place the order, then log into MODO. Their automated delivery bot usually PMs me for delivery within about 5 minutes of logging in (maybe 20 minutes order my order "checked out" via PayPal)
V/R

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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

Worth noting, Chains of Meth is both affordable and easily decipherable online. I love that it always has the most current Oracle text. Huge plus.
lvg wrote:
4 years ago
Sure, I know those shortcuts. But there are so many opponents that don't and it makes games feel glacially slow. Also if you have responses it's better not to auto yield to a lot of things, so I often just end up playing sorcery speed decks.

That said, given this whole corona situation, MTGO might be the only Magic I get to play for a while. Glad I still have that rental subscription.
You just need to know what you're auto yielding to. Be very deliberate. I'm not gonna respond to my own rhystic trigger ever. Or my own Phy. Arena. I'll def auto yield to my necro so I can get my cards.

So, what I'm saying is I don't get this sorcery speed only thing. Sounds like a bit of a cop out. "It's too hard to wait patiently and press a button to respond". Maybe I just naturally don't play fast. I use to have a real issue with clocking out of games...

I like to be proactive. Activating things, using my triggers.

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Post by lvg » 4 years ago

Fair enough, I'll try some more interactive decks and see how they feel. I'm a fairly fast player though and also very much used to the MTGO interface. Not all of my friends are and some online opponents aren't either. That can just be frustrating.

I do love how MTGO let's me play cards that I otherwise wouldn't be able to afford. Also great for testing deck before buying them on paper.

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Post by Toshi » 4 years ago

So, with university library on lockdown, side job and volunteer work beeing postponed until further notice, i have much more time on my hands.
If anyone is gonna hit the german Xmage server and wants to go for a round or two, hit me up, i go by "Mifune" on there.

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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

lvg wrote:
4 years ago
Fair enough, I'll try some more interactive decks and see how they feel. I'm a fairly fast player though and also very much used to the MTGO interface. Not all of my friends are and some online opponents aren't either. That can just be frustrating.

I do love how MTGO let's me play cards that I otherwise wouldn't be able to afford. Also great for testing deck before buying them on paper.
Before I sold out the first time, I had maintained both Wydwen and Nin control decks. Both notoriously slow decks. Nin being much slower of the two since Wydwen has flash and kills in seven hits, while Nin is protecting my Prognostic Sphinx to eventually win/hope I draw runechanter's pike to speed up the clock. I never had any troubles with games, though with Nin, players would just concede once they saw I had the game superiority going on.

...Don't laugh at my Sphinx. It works just fine, tyvm. >_<

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Post by illakunsaa » 4 years ago

I've played on xmage for a while now and I think it's a pretty competent software. It has rules automation, bunch of formats (even few customs ones) and almost all the cards (I don't know what is missing, some uncards, magical hack type cards, Whippoorwill). They even recently added a commander format where you can ignore all the deckbuilding rules (I made a deck with all the eldrazi titans in the command zone and 420 mana crypts in the deck.)

The biggest problem with edh in xmage is the other players. Xmage's multiplayer is configured that the latency for the game is the sum of all players. So if all players have avg ping of 50 the total ping is 200 which means a mostly enjoyable game but if your lobby has even one brazilian (avg ping 450) you are gonna have a bad time. The engine really doesn't like people with bad internets. Lag is one problem but if one players randomly drops out the game freezes for the rest with little chance of recovery. It's not super bad and I have even managed to play a 10 man free for all

1v1 drastically reduces network issues.

I think most cards work correctly but xmage uses old blood moon rules (the devs said it's hard to code) and banishing light effects don't interact correctly with the cmdz.

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Post by WolfWhoWanders » 4 years ago

So I finally got the computer up and running and have some time to spend on it. I did a little reading up on the programs mentioned throughout the conversation. I've downloaded cockatrice and xmage so far. I have a friend who plays cockatrice, so maybe he can help me understand it a little better...otherwise it's been so long since I've operated a computer I don't know if I feel like troubleshooting a program like that right now. Xmage feels similar, but not quite as hard to figure out. I like that I can watch some games and get a little bit of a feel for it that way but it still seems daunting. I've mostly been reading up on mtgo and it seems like it is the easiest to use, best option for good match ups, but costs money. With everything going on right now, I don't think I mind throwing a little money at it to try out. I heard some folks mention renting an account or something...is this worth it? Any good tutorials out there for xmage or cockatrice? Thanks again for the discussion, hope you are all staying healthy out there
Responds well to spells and abilities

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Post by Toshi » 4 years ago

WolfWhoWanders wrote:
4 years ago
Any good tutorials out there for xmage or cockatrice?

I only took quick glances, but at first sight i liked this one - especially given it comes with an index. It is a little dated, but as far as i could tell it covered the basics.

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Post by Inkeyes22 » 4 years ago

If you want to rent cards I would recommend https://www.manatraders.com/subscriptions, but you can build a decent deck online for like 5-10 tix ($5-10). Even if you want to play around with what would normally be a crazy expensive deck in paper, it would be way less. For example I have a Dakkon Blackblade deck that in paper is a crazy $1,500 deck but building the same thing would be $35/month or about $137 to buy outright.

This is the list if you are interested: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=24051

My Anax and Cymede deck does really well and it costs about $13 viewtopic.php?t=23263

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Post by 3drinks » 4 years ago

For those on the fence about modo, here is a totally innocent start to a game
harmless introduction
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Man I should grab some screenshots from the Maelstrom Wanderer games I played yesterday. :)

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