Thursday 25 June 2020

MTGA: Core set 21 out on Arena today.

Magic the Gathering Core Set 21 launched today and I'm halfway through my first draft. I drafted Black/Red in the first pack but I got a Baneslayer Angel in pack 2 pick 1 so I pivoted. As a result I'm a little creature light.



In the first game I got punished for this, barely seeing a single creature as my opponent ran over me.

The next two games I won with powerful high end creatures doing particularly well. (Although as so often seems to be the case when you get a bomb Mythic Rare I have yet to see it). The expensive but Common 7 mana Gloom Sower has done the job for me twice.

I think Core sets are innately less attractive than the other sets because they miss a theme, a story, such as the delightful faerie tale themed Throne of Eldraine and because they reprint a lot of rather dull cards. This is because it's aimed to be more accessible so simpler and/or familiar cards make the game easier for new or casual players. I can see why they do it, I'm just not the target audience for a dumbed down blander offering.

That said it remains a game of deep strategy and I'm very satisfied that I made no error in the game I lost and won games 2 and 3 by making better decisions than my opponents.

Many Magic players, even some reasonably good streamers don't evaluate combat well. They will attack with a good creature into two medium creatures of which they get to kill one. That's not a good decision, it's probably better to be patient. In the last game in particular I was able to use an equipment and good defensive double blocking to whittle down a far superior army of creatures from the other side then turn the game around once I could play my 7 mana big monster.

I'm expecting to be deeply absorbed in Magic Arena for the next couple of weeks as the period just after a launch is very fun for relatively competitive players.

Rabbit season!


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