Magic the Gathering: Arena - Pay to ... buy cards you can't trade (or don't).

Bumping this thread because there’s a fun event started that’s running until the first of October where you can play 12 games with cards you don’t own and then on the 5th of October you get one shot to win 12 games in a row to get 1 of every card in the current cycle (With lesser prizes for less wins, although everyone gets an event limited card back).
 
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Thread exhumation, I'm wondering what everyone is thinking about Field of the Dead being banned in MTG arena. I always used Assassination Trophies in most of my decks so I never had an issue dealing with them.
 
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Thread exhumation, I'm wondering what everyone is thinking about Field of the Dead being banned in MTG arena. I always used Assassination Trophies in most of my decks so I never had an issue dealing with them.

I guess they wanted everyone to play Oko decks because that's definitely what happened.
 
I guess they wanted everyone to play Oko decks because that's definitely what happened.

I'm someone who can't grasp standard. I don't get why he's so strong. Is it the synergy with other cards in the current standard?

Edit; I mean to say current standard
 
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I'm someone who can't grasp standard. I don't get why he's so strong. Is it the synergy with other cards in the current standard?

My guess is that he's cheap and nearly impossible to kill when he first hits the board. Turn 3 he's a six health planeswalker who just produced a food token. Turn 4 he's now seven health and turned the food token into a 3/3 green elk.

Or maybe turn 3 he's five health and just turned a throwaway artifact into a 3/3 elk, so you were essentially able to shit out eight health worth of creatures/planeswalkers on turn 3.

By turn 5 in either scenario, he has enough loyalty to safely shut down anything his opponent might summon to fight him.
 
Thread exhumation, I'm wondering what everyone is thinking about Field of the Dead being banned in MTG arena. I always used Assassination Trophies in most of my decks so I never had an issue dealing with them.
Field of the Dead needed to go, Assasin's Trophy was the only way to really deal with it, but it's downside is also a huge advantage for the Golos decks that played it because you probably gave them the last colored mana they needed to activate Golos' ability, they should have learned their lesson with Primeval Titan and not made a creature that can fetch any land.

The only thing that really kept it in check before was field of ruin from Ixalan, which sort of makes me think that Field of Ruin should be a core set card.
 
My guess is that he's cheap and nearly impossible to kill when he first hits the board. Turn 3 he's a six health planeswalker who just produced a food token. Turn 4 he's now seven health and turned the food token into a 3/3 green elk.

Or maybe turn 3 he's five health and just turned a throwaway artifact into a 3/3 elk, so you were essentially able to shit out eight health worth of creatures/planeswalkers on turn 3.

By turn 5 in either scenario, he has enough loyalty to safely shut down anything his opponent might summon to fight him.

The fact he can turn opponent's creatures and artifacts into elk as well. Oko just does everything you want a walker to do and for only 3 Mana and the only deck building cost you have is being in blue and green. A color combo that gets Once Upon a Time and Hydroid.

Big Karn is similar in Modern in that it pressures both you opponent's hand and board while being able to force a game reset. Karn can come down on turn 3 but forces you to be in a deck that can find all 3 Tron lands in order to have the 7 Mana to cast it and can actually kill your opponent.
 
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The fact he can turn opponent's creatures and artifacts into elk as well. Oko just does everything you want a walker to do and for only 3 Mana and the only deck building cost you have is being in blue and green. A color combo that gets Once Upon a Time and Hydroid.

I'm more of a commander player- just gotta get that MTG itch though- so I've been playing with Oko as my commander a Ramp Good stuff like deck and there's no way this is fair.
I did this right after I got my question answered a second ago, and I'm not noticing what you said. WotC released too many good (potentially broken) cards all at once it seems.
 
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I'm someone who can't grasp standard. I don't get why he's so strong. Is it the synergy with other cards in the current standard?

Edit; I mean to say current standard


Few reasons really

Hes a 3 mana planeswalker who comes down on turn 2-3 and immediately goes to 6 loyalty,

Pretty much any deck will struggle to deal 6 damage to him on turn 3 so hes survivable

Then you get to what he actually does

Against aggro they either waste a turn and some number of spells to kill him buying you time *the most important resource* in order to get to your stablising krasis, or they ignore him and you get to make a 3/3 every second turn who will be bigger than any creature the aggro deck pull out outside of runaway steamkin, the red legendary dawrf and they phoenix, all of whom oko can turn into a 3/3 himself.

he turns your opponents best creature into a 3/3 with no abilities, standard is full of mid range decks that function of the abilities of their creatures, adventure decks are just full of average creatures if your not drawing cards off of inkeeper, aristocrats decks are just a bunch of 1/2s without their sacrifice and dies triggers. etc etc

they also printed a cycle of mythic artifacts that are pretty unplayable (embercleave probably being the sole exception as at least you get a single turn of use from it before it becomes an elk)

and in the control match up he literally just makes a 3/3 every second turn for free.

very rarely do you have a card in standard thats in your top 2-3 cards in your entire deck in your aggro, mid range and control match ups.

But they managed to do that here
 
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Few reasons really

Hes a 3 mana planeswalker who comes down on turn 2-3 and immediately goes to 6 loyalty,

Pretty much any deck will struggle to deal 6 damage to him on turn 3 so hes survivable

Then you get to what he actually does

Against aggro they either waste a turn and some number of spells to kill him buying you time *the most important resource* in order to get to your stablising krasis, or they ignore him and you get to make a 3/3 every second turn who will be bigger than any creature the aggro deck pull out outside of runaway steamkin, the red legendary dawrf and they phoenix, all of whom oko can turn into a 3/3 himself.

he turns your opponents best creature into a 3/3 with no abilities, standard is full of mid range decks that function of the abilities of their creatures, adventure decks are just full of average creatures if your not drawing cards off of inkeeper, aristocrats decks are just a bunch of 1/2s without their sacrifice and dies triggers. etc etc

they also printed a cycle of mythic artifacts that are pretty unplayable (embercleave probably being the sole exception as at least you get a single turn of use from it before it becomes an elk)

and in the control match up he literally just makes a 3/3 every second turn for free.

very rarely do you have a card in standard thats in your top 2-3 cards in your entire deck in your aggro, mid range and control match ups.

But they managed to do that here

Best summation of why Oko is broken. Honestly I think he would have been fine if the elk ability were either a 0 or -1.
 
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I'm mainly a commander player, but I was futzing around with Brawl on Arena with Torbran.

Man do I like him, I dunno if I just got bad opponents, or because I'm much more use to the format with commander, but he just shredded the competition.
 
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I'm mainly a commander player, but I was futzing around with Brawl on Arena with Torbran.

When I play paper; I play commander. I had an Angus Mackenzie superfriends EDH.

The thing with Torban in brawl is that you have infinite access to a creature that makes all your other tiny (crappy) creatures do even more damage. I do think it's been crappy opponents, I haven't found anything about "net decks" for brawl online so a ton of them appear to be home brews.
 
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When I play paper; I play commander. I had an Angus Mackenzie superfriends EDH.

The thing with Torban in brawl is that you have infinite access to a creature that makes all your other tiny (crappy) creatures do even more damage. I do think it's been crappy opponents, I haven't found anything about "net decks" for brawl online so a ton of them appear to be home brews.

I think Torbran is a powerful Commander, maybe not high level meta competitive, but I like playing weird commanders. I'd build him, but I'm going for the 32 deck challenge and I already like my Lovisa Coldeyes as my monored aggro.

He's quite a bit weaker in Brawl, only two tremor like effects at 2R and 3RR, and I think only the one Double Striker in red. I think his biggest strength comes from being underestimated. That two damage doesn't sound like a lot, but when Flame Sweep becomes a 4 damage board wipe that only his your creatures for 2, or Chandra's Outrage hits a creature for 6 and it's controller for 4, he's a very cost effective beast.
 
I'm mainly a commander player, but I was futzing around with Brawl on Arena with Torbran.

Man do I like him, I dunno if I just got bad opponents, or because I'm much more use to the format with commander, but he just shredded the competition.

The problem is, outside of Oko, Teferi and Narset..the current Standard is so weak in terms of cards and mana that "Torbran and a handful of bad red creatures" trumps almost anything, I have a Kiora (Uncommon 3 mana War planeswalker) that works sort of in the same way, I got a bunch of 1-2 ramp things..then I just drop giant fatties with little regard for what is going on because Kiora draws me a card anyways.

I have a 100% win rate against "the dreaded" Oko because sure..chaning my fatties into 3/3s hurts..but it hurts far less when it has 7 +1/+1 counters on it.
 
RIP Green.

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If any of you just want to play with friends, I strongly recommend just using Tabletop Simulator alongside frogtown.me if you have to get your fix but don't want to support Wizards' bullshit they've been up to lately. Then you also don't have to worry about money or ordering. Feels better than Cockatrice.

Sadly, if you're fresh out of friends or like competitive ladders then go ahead, it's your money. The strongest card will always be the credit card. I enjoy a FNM every now and again because I like holding cards but if I'm playing EDH with faraway friends, Tabletop is nice.
 
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