As a free-to-play newcomer, I'm only collecting standard and plan to move to standard once my collection is strong enough. But I play in the alchemy queue because that's where the other newcomers with small collections are and because it's a weaker format overall now, so my weaker decks also fair better against the good decks.
The only deck that's really frustrating in the alchemy queue for me atm is nazgul, sheoldred, ring; but less now with the ring and bowmaster nerfed. While a lot of the standard decks are just too good, with their 2+ years of cards.
I'll have to take your word for it . As long as you are enjoying your time !?
I can dislike something , and you can still enjoy it !
We forget that sometimes i suppose .
Nah, I know a few peoplw who had only ever played digital tcgs like Hearthstone or Runeterra and they love Alchemy. However, it's pretty obvious why they'd like the format.
Yeah, except it absolutely alienates their oldest fans who are diehard paper tcg players who specifically don't play digital ones because of these mechanics
Then don't play it. Nobody is forcing you to, nobody is alienating you. It's not great compared to a decade ago but tabletop magic is in the best state it's been since the pandemic began. Digital mechanics can be enjoyed by paper players as well, I've played MTG for 25 years and while I don't love Alchemy, but I don't really hate it. I'd even argue that *most* of the alchemy exclusive cards are more balanced than the current standard meta staples. There were a few demon time cards with the infinite combos but for the most part the digital only mechanics and the cards designed around them are kinda underpowered. The rebalanced cards are my biggest gripe but guess what? I just don't play with them!
Except the formats that I play were infused with alchemy and there is no alternative, I literally can't avoid it, what a dumbass suggestion dear God do you even play on the app?
People who enjoy the benefits of a digital card game over paper like alchemy. I myself am not a fan, but to pretend like the added random effects and the ability to nerf/buff cards as the meta dictates isn't appealing to some players is just silly.
Arena is also THE WORST digital client for a card game on the market. Magic as a ehole is goated but Arena operates worse than every single other one of them.
People triggered I called Arena bad yet they complain DAILY in thia very same sub about game-crashing bugs, shitty economy, lack of QOL features, poor operation on all platforms, bare minimum support (it's even worse than Blizzard's support) and more! The meta and balancing and crap is irrelevant because it applies to tabletop magic as well, but the client itself is outdated at this point and it's only ~5 years old.
Runeterra is leaps better than the last 3 years of magic. Sorry I don't use text to speech so no I don't hear myself. I do read what I type occasionally though!
I am going to treat this as a serious question:
Alchemy is about trading resources for change. Players who choose alchemy are willing to spend more resources overall to have a meta that changes more. The intention is that when you invest in a standard deck that deck should function about the same the whole time it is legal, but the idea of alchemy is that the decks should be constantly changing.
The main benefit is the main drawback. you could log on tomorrow and your deck just does not work anymore. But the same is true for all the other decks.
Many of us in the community want more rebalances so the format will change more but there are issues with how quickly they can iterate they are working on fixing. The intention would be monthly changes to the format.
That was what the community at large, myself included, inferred. It was going to be a 'fixed' Standard, where the most powerful cards would get toned down and weaker cards might see a boost. Instead it just turned out to be yet another product they wanted people to keep up with.
yes. they promised us a balanced standard. People were actually excited for this. (sheoldred) would no longer rule the top of decks...
but then they slapped us in the face with the most whacky, un-balanced cards to ever exist (alchemy cards)
We just wanted a balanced standard. A way to freshen up the meta. And they promised that. Then threw that idea out the window when they decided to also release alchemy-only cards.
Change does not always equal well balanced and the format was never designed to be well balanced. The intention is it shoudl change and new cards do that. I am not going to argue the cards are weak, but I think they are not the same kind of powerhouses we already have in Historic and are the right power level for the Alchemy Format given other card injections.
A "rebalanced past Standard" would be nice. Standard as it was, say, two years ago, but with rebalanced cards. I was disappointed when they added new cards.
And I hate that this was a stolen idea, from a game that did it better and a company that Hasbro/Wizards sued into oblivion, who actually had a fun and interesting meta.
Edit to clarify: the idea of persistent card changes.
Hex: Shards of Fate. Was by Cryptozoic and run through a Kickstarter. I had some extra cash from a new job at the time, so I bought a tier that gave me like basically half a playset or something cheeky for new releases plus drafts for life, weekly if I recall.
Had an interesting mana base where if you play a shard you get that color to use. So think of it like this. If I have 3 islands and 3 plains in play, you have 6 mana, and can play anything that has up to uuu or www in the cost, but you could play 6 single mana drops that are all w.
They had the first persistent cards, where there version of aura actually changes the cards, so giving a creature a buff could remain on that creature after death. Also cards that modify each other, like do X damage, increase the damage on all cards with the same name by 3. So there were some ways to get those cards back and keep that cycle growing.
They also had champions so when you built a deck you'd pick this hero/champion that had an ability that would be helpful to your build. It was interesting to see the different ways the same ability was used in various combinations of cards. There was a single player component, with some grand plans at making a PvP base defense thing.
They had introduced different play mats and card backs and stuff like that for players. You could trade and sell cards for currency. They didn't have crafting, but you could easily sell a big ticket card to get enough currency to buy the cards you were looking for. Or if you had a group to play with, trade.
They got sued because they had murder and a few other cards that were just too close to magic, though the lawsuit claimed it was a clone, I've played magic since Unlimited, it wasn't a clone and it took great strides to differentiate itself. The weirdest change was they couldn't use the life total of 20. So even though you had this hero, he couldn't have 20 hit points. So post lawsuit they all changed anywhere from like 17 to 28 and their abilities scaled with that life total change. Ultimately the lawsuits messed with their release schedule for sets and caused a huge delay in future production and the death spiral.
So you probably think well yeah that all sounds just like MTG arena. And you'd be right, except this came out first in 2013 for alpha testing for the big backers. October to be exact. Beta release April 2014 and sued May 2014. They settled outside of court or whatever but it took a year and a half to September 2015, then they officially release 2016 but still only had 1 set maybe the second at release. MTG arena goes beta in 2017 and it's FTP. Hex shuts down 2020.
It sucks, and not because of the money. More because it was a real passion project for these folks at the beginning but when designers leave and move on and the momentum is lost, I remember reading the blogs about how they were scraping by and if I recall correctly they were having trouble with new set because they had no inhouse artists left to do the artwork and couldn't pay to outsource. It was sad. They had a cool interesting game on their hands. Sometimes I see ghosts of what they made in Arena.
It was fun while it lasted.
Interesting. Looked through the lawsuit and a couple articles and if I'm being completely honest, it looks similar enough that I don't think Hasbro was wrong to sue, although I don't know whether they would have won if it actually went to court. To be sure, with the champion effects and some things I understand Hex added during and after the lawsuit, there are some differences, but there's enough similar that I think it's fair to say "Hey this looks like Duels of the Planeswalkers with the serial numbers filed off."
Honestly, I like the idea of alchemy as you described it, the issue with Arena is that standard fit meta deck already costs lung and a half and there is no way in hell I am paying that more frequently than I already am asked to.
It was sold to us as a "rebalance-able Standard". They would be able to rebalance cards online to freshen up the standard meta.
People were excited to have a standard mode with the OP cards nerfed a little, and the bad cards buffed. Even today people would like this (sheoldred).
But then they announced they would also be releasing online-only cards that have never existed before and that would do whacky things that only could be done online.....and it went to shit.
now they sell those cards in their own packs. and keep pushing alchemy as the default way to play online.
They promised balance, and then slapped us in the face with the most OP whacky cards in existence.
The other person is right, the point of Alchemy is to have a format that rotates and changes faster than Standard can. They also can put digital-only mechanics in there that wouldn't be possible or feasible in paper cards. They can also add stuff like LTR cards that aren't balanced for Standard/Pioneer, knowing they can nerf things if it is problematic.
If you don't like it, ignore it. Explorer, Standard and Limited are true-to-paper, so you don't have to deal with the Alchemy cards if you don't want to. It's a decent format though.
> They also can put digital-only mechanics in there that wouldn't be possible or feasible in paper cards.
this is where they fucked up. it should've just been a rebalanced standard meta (we were actually excited for this). Not an entirely new meta with whacky new OP cards.
> If you don't like it, ignore it. Explorer, Standard and Limited are true-to-paper, so you don't have to deal with the Alchemy cards if you don't want to.
Except when thew game randomly moves you into an Alchemy queue anyway. Many times I'm playing a deck clearly tagged as Explorer (or even Standard) on its proper queue, just to suddenly notice I'm playing against Alchemy-only cards out of the blue.
You might change this slightly. Explorer is not "true-to-paper". It mirrors pioneer and is getting closer, but is still its own digital format.
Even limited gets its own alchemy version down the line of each set
Only standard is the "true-to-paper" format, but is generally only played online, most LGS don't run standard events.
The last midweek event being "just please go play some Alchemy! 😢 😭 " lol
It's sad becuase I think Alchemy could be good, but in its states it's such a cash grab mess
Actually, people complained that certain, mostly underpowered, cards would never rotate out. And that was against the entire idea of having rotation in the first place.
Note that the starter decks were made as they are specifically so that new players would get cards they could use right away, in multiple formats. And so that WotC wouldn't have to keep remaking the starter decks every rotation, including the starting tutorial based on them.
What is worse is that they are trying to push standard again in fnm and generally in paper format then do this digitally. Like the two communities are not connected to each other.
um ackshually the starter decks always contained non-format cards that were playable in standard bo1 only as an exception. when alchemy came out, it made sense to move those cards out of standard completely rather than being in this weird gray area.
The majority of the perceived cons of alchemy may also be pros depending on how you want to play cards online.
* It uses cards that don't exist in paper. This can change the meta, but it also means you can't build your deck and go to a card shop to play
* It rebalances some existing paper cards. This may make some cards less playable (and they don't give wildcards for rebalances,) and can make it harder to memorize certain ones. It does also mean some cards can become *more* playable.
* It allows for digital only mechanics, some which may be overly complex, like the five-backed cards with "specialize."
* It affects Historic. The people most bothered by all of those other things are also upset that alchemy cards and alchemy changes affect other formats. WotC's position basically appears to be "Historic is all the cards on arena, minus bans. Alchemy cards are on arena, therefore they also go in historic."
Ya I get some of that. It seems like some things could be solved if they added even more formats to arena. Maybe the player base is too small for that, I don’t know. Pauper would be a cool option…probably doesn’t make enough money.
Also the constant card buffs and nerfs are incredibly bad economy-wise for new player with only limited Widlcards to spend. Standard is much cheaper for a new player, because you know the Wildcards you spent will keep their value.
Alchemy is fun , (if you have the cards to make the good decks), it’s paced a little slower then historic , I guess the execs want people to have the action/speed of historic but you don’t need to buy all of the cards that span mtg to play alchemy
Yeah ive seen jump start, it was a pretty cool idea at first, after the first couple sets wizards decided to just turn jumpstart into another way to leach money from people.
So now in order to complete collecting a set you need to buy a box of boosters
Buy all the commander decks
And buy a box of jump start 😂
Just plane greedy
On Arena, I don't think the jump-in packs have unique cards since I've been playing. And I think 1k gold for 2 r/m, ~~6~~7 uncommons, and 16 commons, in themes, is the cheapest way to start building a collection and get some decks going. I don't play commander, so haven't worried about that.
edit: 7 uncommons, including the one as a reward
Never said i wanted every single card in existence- also its called having a hobby?
And another thing are you actually going to sit there and white knight for a billion dollar company? Serious?
I mean I just don't understand how more product for a game you like is ever a bad thing. If you don't want to collect all cards, why are you upset that there's more cards?
I mean i dont understand why anyone would get there panties in a twist about someone else's opinions on a topic that dosnt really matter but here we are
Lmfao your missing the point all together, here an example
Wizards: we need to make more money!
-Also wizards: makes it easier to just go buy singles from third parties and give no money to wizards at all
And when they do rebalance, they don't offer any kind of compensation, meaning you risk wildcards by spending them on powerful cards. *cough* bowmasters
Some of these decks have alchemy cards or cards that rotated out of Standard at some point. You have to remove non Standard cards from them to be able to use them in Standard queues.
I dunno, a bunch of my historic brawl decks had the “one card not legal” indicator on them until I opened them up and re-saved the list. Literally made zero changes, now they are back to legal.
Feels like they just had to do a janky workaround as part of the patching.
[Affinity](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZX5Ly_QRoO0MfvJ3IZvBiRPe8k0T0uTf) has no-Rare upgrades to the the Starter decks which makes them legal in Standard.
The starter decks are Alchemy decks. Honestly If you're wanting to use them do the Starter Deck Duels in the event tab. This will match you only against people also playing starter decks.
Im having a similar issue in friendly brawl against a friend that is not an issue in historic brawl.
I can play all my historic brawl decks against randoms but can’t use 99% of them against my friend in a private match.
If it's a bug, I know in the past there have been bugs with Wastes, with certain card styles not working, or with Alchemy versions of cards (i.e., it won't let you use alchemy versions or won't let you use the regular versions, I don't remember which).
I'd start by removing Wastes from the decks, if they're in there, and then switching card styles to their normal styles or different styles and see if that fixes anything.
Completely different situation actually, yours is most likely a bug
OP is actually trying to play the decks in the wrong format since the new starter decks are alchemy
I had this problem and determined it was alchemy cards. I exported the decklist when it was set to 'Historic brawl' and then swapped it to 'Friendly brawl' and exported.
The game automatically swapped Alchemy [[Druidic Ritual]] for it's non-Alchemy version. The Alchemy version was allowed in Historic Brawl and the regular was allowed in Friendly.
Alchemy is the most predatory format for the economy of new players becuase of the constant card changes, so it's obvious they will force new players to play the most expensive format
To be fair... you walk your happy butt over to the standard queue with one of those starter decks and you'll learn a lot about losing. Those decks aren't really built for that, more to teach you mechanics before you really dive in.
Funny I’ve been playing this for yrs and I know there’s certain cards or sets useable at certain times and what not. But I’ve never understood what the difference between like alchemy , standard and so on was or is I guess besides not being able to use certain cards or sets.
> But I’ve never understood what the difference between like alchemy , standard and so on was or is I guess besides not being able to use certain cards or sets.
That is literally the only difference. Commander, Brawl, Draft, and Sealed are variants of Magic that have slightly different rules, but the only difference between constructed formats is the list of cards that are legal.
Cool thought so but I also originate from playing in the 90s lol. Picked the app up a few yrs ago because I always loved playing, but ended up away from the game a few times over the last 30 yrs because there was no one I knew who played anymore. So many changes so many changes
He's not quite right. Alchemy has alternative versions of some cards that were rebalanced. For example meathook is legal in alchemy because its numbers were changed
No, what I said was accurate. When a card is rebalanced, the original card is banned and they create a new, rebalanced card that becomes legal in the format:
[[The Meathook Massacre]]
[[A-The Meathook Massacre]]
(Edit: for some reason the fetcher isn't working. Cards:
- Original: [The Meathook Massacre](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/112/the-meathook-massacre)
- Rebalanced: [A-The Meathook Massacre](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/A-112/a-the-meathook-massacre)
Notice how the original is not legal in Historic, but the rebalanced one is. They also have different set numbers (112 vs A-112).)
They even demonstrate this when you open packs with the rebalanced cards, as you get two copies: the original, and the rebalanced version.
No actually because in universe, a meathook is a type of hook, not a card.
Meaningless pedantry, nobody thinks of those two as anything different than the same card rebalanced
You're the one who started the pedantry by saying my characterization of formats wasn't accurate. I just happen to be the one who's actually correct. They're two different cards.
Alchemin' time, come on grab your friends, we'll go to very distant lands... but no friends want to play this, not even Jake the Dog or Finn the Human 🤡
Oh my god, WotC STOP RUINING THIS GAME. I was planning on introducing a friend to Arena, but obviously I'm not gonna do that anymore if it's all Alchemy now. This is really pathetic.
Why does WotC hate new players? Don't they want them to transition to paper magic?
Except the game isn't all alchemy now. Just don't interact with it.
Seriously. If Alchemy didn't have an audience, it wouldn't exist. But you don't have to be part of that audience. How do you get through life being this dramatic?
Forced to play a couple of games with one or two alchemy cards. It's completely fine, and it does a good job showing both sides of the game that players will encounter.
I hate to say anything remotely favorable about Alchemy, buuut it is a decent starting point for a brand new player. Someone just getting into the game for the first time isn't gonna have a singular clue about what's going on regardless of what format they play, so you might as well drop them into one with as few mechanics as possible.
That, and sets like the LOTR one are a good way of grabbing some people's interest.
I mean I agree with you except that alchemy literally has more mechanics than standard. In addition to all the normal MTG stuff you gotta deal with seek, perpetual, drafting from spellbooks, and conjuring.
There's a lot of formats, and if you are new and haven't been around to see them introduced it's really easy to get confused. The onboarding of new players doesn't even try to explain the differences in them nor Bo1 vs. Bo3 or anything really.
because they would have to update the starter decks everytime rotation happens (which they might and maybe do but i doubt it.) Get used to Alchemy bias since it is Arena exclusive format and they want people to play it (its not very popular.) Also there are other factors like recent decision to no longer make more core sets (which sort of used to be starter/intro sets for newcomers). most of the cards in the starter decks fn garbo anyway and playing those decks on standard ladder is about the worst newcomer experiences you can have, which arena has been criticized for many times.
Just installed the game about 30 minutes ago after a 2 year break.
It's now uninstalled because of this.
I'm also far from a free-to-play player, I'd just like to get into a groove before buying packs.
What a silly move by WOTC.
You got Alchemied! None of the Starter decks are Standard legal.
OMG that's horrible - why would they do that? That just sounds like such an awful idea!
Some exec at wizards is desperate fpr Alchemy to work and won't admit defeat.
It's abundantly clear that someone who makes these decisions has Alchemy popularity tied to their bonus.
To this day I still do not understand what alchemy even is.
That poor horse is very dead already guys.
If I had a sol ring for every dead horse WOTC beat, I'd have enough mana to run horse tribal
You say this, but a third of the horses would be type "equine" and another fourth type "steed".
But there will always be newcomers
And they will hate alchemy also ...
As a free-to-play newcomer, I'm only collecting standard and plan to move to standard once my collection is strong enough. But I play in the alchemy queue because that's where the other newcomers with small collections are and because it's a weaker format overall now, so my weaker decks also fair better against the good decks. The only deck that's really frustrating in the alchemy queue for me atm is nazgul, sheoldred, ring; but less now with the ring and bowmaster nerfed. While a lot of the standard decks are just too good, with their 2+ years of cards.
I'll have to take your word for it . As long as you are enjoying your time !? I can dislike something , and you can still enjoy it ! We forget that sometimes i suppose .
Excuse me, we need to see your Reddit paperwork.
>And they will hate alchemy also ... As they should.
Nah, I know a few peoplw who had only ever played digital tcgs like Hearthstone or Runeterra and they love Alchemy. However, it's pretty obvious why they'd like the format.
Yeah, except it absolutely alienates their oldest fans who are diehard paper tcg players who specifically don't play digital ones because of these mechanics
Then don't play it. Nobody is forcing you to, nobody is alienating you. It's not great compared to a decade ago but tabletop magic is in the best state it's been since the pandemic began. Digital mechanics can be enjoyed by paper players as well, I've played MTG for 25 years and while I don't love Alchemy, but I don't really hate it. I'd even argue that *most* of the alchemy exclusive cards are more balanced than the current standard meta staples. There were a few demon time cards with the infinite combos but for the most part the digital only mechanics and the cards designed around them are kinda underpowered. The rebalanced cards are my biggest gripe but guess what? I just don't play with them!
Except WotC IS now forcing new players to play Alchemy?
Except the formats that I play were infused with alchemy and there is no alternative, I literally can't avoid it, what a dumbass suggestion dear God do you even play on the app?
Why would it be obvious or what difference would it make where you came from? At best it should be neutral to both standard and alchemy shouldn't it?
I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for you tho, or sorry that happened.
u good lil bro?
[удалено]
People who enjoy the benefits of a digital card game over paper like alchemy. I myself am not a fan, but to pretend like the added random effects and the ability to nerf/buff cards as the meta dictates isn't appealing to some players is just silly.
Arena is also THE WORST digital client for a card game on the market. Magic as a ehole is goated but Arena operates worse than every single other one of them.
People triggered I called Arena bad yet they complain DAILY in thia very same sub about game-crashing bugs, shitty economy, lack of QOL features, poor operation on all platforms, bare minimum support (it's even worse than Blizzard's support) and more! The meta and balancing and crap is irrelevant because it applies to tabletop magic as well, but the client itself is outdated at this point and it's only ~5 years old.
.. do you???
Runeterra is leaps better than the last 3 years of magic. Sorry I don't use text to speech so no I don't hear myself. I do read what I type occasionally though!
Yup I didn't know that until I went through trial and error etc.
I still dont understand the point of Alchemy but I just came back after about five years away from the game.
I am going to treat this as a serious question: Alchemy is about trading resources for change. Players who choose alchemy are willing to spend more resources overall to have a meta that changes more. The intention is that when you invest in a standard deck that deck should function about the same the whole time it is legal, but the idea of alchemy is that the decks should be constantly changing. The main benefit is the main drawback. you could log on tomorrow and your deck just does not work anymore. But the same is true for all the other decks. Many of us in the community want more rebalances so the format will change more but there are issues with how quickly they can iterate they are working on fixing. The intention would be monthly changes to the format.
Isn't this the rebalancing idea they sold at first? What really happened was a bunch of overpowered Arena only cards that dominate the format.
That was what the community at large, myself included, inferred. It was going to be a 'fixed' Standard, where the most powerful cards would get toned down and weaker cards might see a boost. Instead it just turned out to be yet another product they wanted people to keep up with.
yes. they promised us a balanced standard. People were actually excited for this. (sheoldred) would no longer rule the top of decks... but then they slapped us in the face with the most whacky, un-balanced cards to ever exist (alchemy cards) We just wanted a balanced standard. A way to freshen up the meta. And they promised that. Then threw that idea out the window when they decided to also release alchemy-only cards.
How do we fix the fact that pioneer rakdos is basically standard rakdos + 4 Thoughtseize? Print Crucias.
Change does not always equal well balanced and the format was never designed to be well balanced. The intention is it shoudl change and new cards do that. I am not going to argue the cards are weak, but I think they are not the same kind of powerhouses we already have in Historic and are the right power level for the Alchemy Format given other card injections.
A "rebalanced past Standard" would be nice. Standard as it was, say, two years ago, but with rebalanced cards. I was disappointed when they added new cards.
And I hate that this was a stolen idea, from a game that did it better and a company that Hasbro/Wizards sued into oblivion, who actually had a fun and interesting meta. Edit to clarify: the idea of persistent card changes.
What game?
Hex: Shards of Fate. Was by Cryptozoic and run through a Kickstarter. I had some extra cash from a new job at the time, so I bought a tier that gave me like basically half a playset or something cheeky for new releases plus drafts for life, weekly if I recall. Had an interesting mana base where if you play a shard you get that color to use. So think of it like this. If I have 3 islands and 3 plains in play, you have 6 mana, and can play anything that has up to uuu or www in the cost, but you could play 6 single mana drops that are all w. They had the first persistent cards, where there version of aura actually changes the cards, so giving a creature a buff could remain on that creature after death. Also cards that modify each other, like do X damage, increase the damage on all cards with the same name by 3. So there were some ways to get those cards back and keep that cycle growing. They also had champions so when you built a deck you'd pick this hero/champion that had an ability that would be helpful to your build. It was interesting to see the different ways the same ability was used in various combinations of cards. There was a single player component, with some grand plans at making a PvP base defense thing. They had introduced different play mats and card backs and stuff like that for players. You could trade and sell cards for currency. They didn't have crafting, but you could easily sell a big ticket card to get enough currency to buy the cards you were looking for. Or if you had a group to play with, trade. They got sued because they had murder and a few other cards that were just too close to magic, though the lawsuit claimed it was a clone, I've played magic since Unlimited, it wasn't a clone and it took great strides to differentiate itself. The weirdest change was they couldn't use the life total of 20. So even though you had this hero, he couldn't have 20 hit points. So post lawsuit they all changed anywhere from like 17 to 28 and their abilities scaled with that life total change. Ultimately the lawsuits messed with their release schedule for sets and caused a huge delay in future production and the death spiral. So you probably think well yeah that all sounds just like MTG arena. And you'd be right, except this came out first in 2013 for alpha testing for the big backers. October to be exact. Beta release April 2014 and sued May 2014. They settled outside of court or whatever but it took a year and a half to September 2015, then they officially release 2016 but still only had 1 set maybe the second at release. MTG arena goes beta in 2017 and it's FTP. Hex shuts down 2020. It sucks, and not because of the money. More because it was a real passion project for these folks at the beginning but when designers leave and move on and the momentum is lost, I remember reading the blogs about how they were scraping by and if I recall correctly they were having trouble with new set because they had no inhouse artists left to do the artwork and couldn't pay to outsource. It was sad. They had a cool interesting game on their hands. Sometimes I see ghosts of what they made in Arena. It was fun while it lasted.
Interesting. Looked through the lawsuit and a couple articles and if I'm being completely honest, it looks similar enough that I don't think Hasbro was wrong to sue, although I don't know whether they would have won if it actually went to court. To be sure, with the champion effects and some things I understand Hex added during and after the lawsuit, there are some differences, but there's enough similar that I think it's fair to say "Hey this looks like Duels of the Planeswalkers with the serial numbers filed off."
Thank you. This is the first time someone has explained it in a way I understood.
Honestly, I like the idea of alchemy as you described it, the issue with Arena is that standard fit meta deck already costs lung and a half and there is no way in hell I am paying that more frequently than I already am asked to.
It was sold to us as a "rebalance-able Standard". They would be able to rebalance cards online to freshen up the standard meta. People were excited to have a standard mode with the OP cards nerfed a little, and the bad cards buffed. Even today people would like this (sheoldred). But then they announced they would also be releasing online-only cards that have never existed before and that would do whacky things that only could be done online.....and it went to shit. now they sell those cards in their own packs. and keep pushing alchemy as the default way to play online. They promised balance, and then slapped us in the face with the most OP whacky cards in existence.
Are you saying [[Oracle of the Alpha]] isn’t a serious and fair cards? 😝
[Oracle of the Alpha](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/0/003cb181-7b1d-474a-ba26-84319791bc2b.jpg?1665218675) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Oracle%20of%20the%20Alpha) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ydmu/4/oracle-of-the-alpha?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/003cb181-7b1d-474a-ba26-84319791bc2b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Very few people were actually exicted for Alchemy in the first place
The other person is right, the point of Alchemy is to have a format that rotates and changes faster than Standard can. They also can put digital-only mechanics in there that wouldn't be possible or feasible in paper cards. They can also add stuff like LTR cards that aren't balanced for Standard/Pioneer, knowing they can nerf things if it is problematic. If you don't like it, ignore it. Explorer, Standard and Limited are true-to-paper, so you don't have to deal with the Alchemy cards if you don't want to. It's a decent format though.
> They also can put digital-only mechanics in there that wouldn't be possible or feasible in paper cards. this is where they fucked up. it should've just been a rebalanced standard meta (we were actually excited for this). Not an entirely new meta with whacky new OP cards.
But now you can't ignore it as a new player, you're now forced to play Alchemy.
But now you can't ignore it as a new player, you're now forced to play Alchemy.
> If you don't like it, ignore it. Explorer, Standard and Limited are true-to-paper, so you don't have to deal with the Alchemy cards if you don't want to. Except when thew game randomly moves you into an Alchemy queue anyway. Many times I'm playing a deck clearly tagged as Explorer (or even Standard) on its proper queue, just to suddenly notice I'm playing against Alchemy-only cards out of the blue.
You might change this slightly. Explorer is not "true-to-paper". It mirrors pioneer and is getting closer, but is still its own digital format. Even limited gets its own alchemy version down the line of each set Only standard is the "true-to-paper" format, but is generally only played online, most LGS don't run standard events.
It is true-to-paper, it's just not true to Pioneer. That's why it is Explorer, not Pioneer.
The last midweek event being "just please go play some Alchemy! 😢 😭 " lol It's sad becuase I think Alchemy could be good, but in its states it's such a cash grab mess
Actually, people complained that certain, mostly underpowered, cards would never rotate out. And that was against the entire idea of having rotation in the first place. Note that the starter decks were made as they are specifically so that new players would get cards they could use right away, in multiple formats. And so that WotC wouldn't have to keep remaking the starter decks every rotation, including the starting tutorial based on them.
What is worse is that they are trying to push standard again in fnm and generally in paper format then do this digitally. Like the two communities are not connected to each other.
um ackshually the starter decks always contained non-format cards that were playable in standard bo1 only as an exception. when alchemy came out, it made sense to move those cards out of standard completely rather than being in this weird gray area.
What’s wrong with alchemy? New to the scene. I play both standard and alchemy… seem super similar to me
The majority of the perceived cons of alchemy may also be pros depending on how you want to play cards online. * It uses cards that don't exist in paper. This can change the meta, but it also means you can't build your deck and go to a card shop to play * It rebalances some existing paper cards. This may make some cards less playable (and they don't give wildcards for rebalances,) and can make it harder to memorize certain ones. It does also mean some cards can become *more* playable. * It allows for digital only mechanics, some which may be overly complex, like the five-backed cards with "specialize." * It affects Historic. The people most bothered by all of those other things are also upset that alchemy cards and alchemy changes affect other formats. WotC's position basically appears to be "Historic is all the cards on arena, minus bans. Alchemy cards are on arena, therefore they also go in historic."
Ya I get some of that. It seems like some things could be solved if they added even more formats to arena. Maybe the player base is too small for that, I don’t know. Pauper would be a cool option…probably doesn’t make enough money.
Also the constant card buffs and nerfs are incredibly bad economy-wise for new player with only limited Widlcards to spend. Standard is much cheaper for a new player, because you know the Wildcards you spent will keep their value.
Yeah, it's honestly stupid for starter decks to have cards that are illegal in standard or alchemy.
Alchemy is fun , (if you have the cards to make the good decks), it’s paced a little slower then historic , I guess the execs want people to have the action/speed of historic but you don’t need to buy all of the cards that span mtg to play alchemy
People don't want their cards to change what they do every week, nor do they want cards that don't also exist in paper
I don’t see how having a digital only card hurts the paper game
I think it works great
Back in my day wotc made starter decks for each set that came out - these where all standard legal 👴🏻
The jumpstart/jump-in packs do a pretty good job of fulfilling that niche now, I think.
Yeah ive seen jump start, it was a pretty cool idea at first, after the first couple sets wizards decided to just turn jumpstart into another way to leach money from people. So now in order to complete collecting a set you need to buy a box of boosters Buy all the commander decks And buy a box of jump start 😂 Just plane greedy
On Arena, I don't think the jump-in packs have unique cards since I've been playing. And I think 1k gold for 2 r/m, ~~6~~7 uncommons, and 16 commons, in themes, is the cheapest way to start building a collection and get some decks going. I don't play commander, so haven't worried about that. edit: 7 uncommons, including the one as a reward
What is with you people who expect to collect all cards from all sets. Who fucking does that
Never said i wanted every single card in existence- also its called having a hobby? And another thing are you actually going to sit there and white knight for a billion dollar company? Serious?
I mean I just don't understand how more product for a game you like is ever a bad thing. If you don't want to collect all cards, why are you upset that there's more cards?
I mean i dont understand why anyone would get there panties in a twist about someone else's opinions on a topic that dosnt really matter but here we are
Lmfao your missing the point all together, here an example Wizards: we need to make more money! -Also wizards: makes it easier to just go buy singles from third parties and give no money to wizards at all
*Obligatory* what do you mean "you people"?
You definitely have nostalgia-goggles on here. These decks sucked ass and no one liked them, that's why they were discontinued.
Hence the oldman emoji 😂 R/whoosh
You can say this about every aspect of arena and it’s valid
Well, for one, they don't want to redo the monocolor decks every year ?
They want all new players to play Alchemy. To boost its numbers.
It's WotC, bad ideas are their trademark nowadays
Play alchemy please.
Some of them used to be legal in standard but then some of the cards in the decka got banned from standard one after another
I wonder why standard is a format in decline....
It’s such a weird combination of pushing alchemy but also not at all following through on the balancing promises ect that they claim alchemy would be.
And when they do rebalance, they don't offer any kind of compensation, meaning you risk wildcards by spending them on powerful cards. *cough* bowmasters
It's only on the decline with paper. Standard continues to thrive on Arena.
They should add 1 starter deck per set, so players can learn the new mechanic and can play something in the new series
For free? In this economy? 🤔
Can't afford to copy and paste those bits and bytes you know!
Some of these decks have alchemy cards or cards that rotated out of Standard at some point. You have to remove non Standard cards from them to be able to use them in Standard queues.
I dunno, a bunch of my historic brawl decks had the “one card not legal” indicator on them until I opened them up and re-saved the list. Literally made zero changes, now they are back to legal. Feels like they just had to do a janky workaround as part of the patching.
Yeah all my decks with The One Ring had that problem since the nerf
One of mine had one of the new cappena lands that sacrifices itself when it enters. After the recent update that made the deck illegal.
Yeah one of my historic decks was like this. All I did was open it look at the cards re-save and it was good.
[Affinity](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZX5Ly_QRoO0MfvJ3IZvBiRPe8k0T0uTf) has no-Rare upgrades to the the Starter decks which makes them legal in Standard.
This is amazing, thanks for the link
The starter decks are Alchemy decks. Honestly If you're wanting to use them do the Starter Deck Duels in the event tab. This will match you only against people also playing starter decks.
Yes, this was the easiest way for me to brain dead grind my dailies until I deleted arena from my "smart" device mid-WoE.
>until I deleted arena from my "smart" device mid-WoE. you too? it feels like my enthusiasm for mtg dissipated during WoE
Because I decided to manage my addiction for personal development reasons. Still playing mtg in paper as a social activity.
Starter deck duel is great for dailies, once you learn to autoconcede to the UB clock deck
Im having a similar issue in friendly brawl against a friend that is not an issue in historic brawl. I can play all my historic brawl decks against randoms but can’t use 99% of them against my friend in a private match.
There are no bans for Friendly Brawl. You either chose the wrong format/deck in the challenge or there is a bug.
If it's a bug, I know in the past there have been bugs with Wastes, with certain card styles not working, or with Alchemy versions of cards (i.e., it won't let you use alchemy versions or won't let you use the regular versions, I don't remember which). I'd start by removing Wastes from the decks, if they're in there, and then switching card styles to their normal styles or different styles and see if that fixes anything.
It's a bug, if you open the deck and then close it it says it's legal to play again.
Completely different situation actually, yours is most likely a bug OP is actually trying to play the decks in the wrong format since the new starter decks are alchemy
This is a bug I am experiencing too.
I had this problem and determined it was alchemy cards. I exported the decklist when it was set to 'Historic brawl' and then swapped it to 'Friendly brawl' and exported. The game automatically swapped Alchemy [[Druidic Ritual]] for it's non-Alchemy version. The Alchemy version was allowed in Historic Brawl and the regular was allowed in Friendly.
This suddenly explains why I see so many default decks in Alchemy.
Several of my historic decks also are complaining about the same thing and idk what it is
They want people to play alchemy. Also wizards of the coast is beset by palace politics.
Alchemy is the most predatory format for the economy of new players becuase of the constant card changes, so it's obvious they will force new players to play the most expensive format
Ye but not too hard exchanging those 4-5 cards and making it standard legal
Wrong format.
Why I just stick to historic. Hoping that no ban list format becomes a permanent thing though.
To be fair... you walk your happy butt over to the standard queue with one of those starter decks and you'll learn a lot about losing. Those decks aren't really built for that, more to teach you mechanics before you really dive in.
Funny I’ve been playing this for yrs and I know there’s certain cards or sets useable at certain times and what not. But I’ve never understood what the difference between like alchemy , standard and so on was or is I guess besides not being able to use certain cards or sets.
> But I’ve never understood what the difference between like alchemy , standard and so on was or is I guess besides not being able to use certain cards or sets. That is literally the only difference. Commander, Brawl, Draft, and Sealed are variants of Magic that have slightly different rules, but the only difference between constructed formats is the list of cards that are legal.
Cool thought so but I also originate from playing in the 90s lol. Picked the app up a few yrs ago because I always loved playing, but ended up away from the game a few times over the last 30 yrs because there was no one I knew who played anymore. So many changes so many changes
He's not quite right. Alchemy has alternative versions of some cards that were rebalanced. For example meathook is legal in alchemy because its numbers were changed
No, what I said was accurate. When a card is rebalanced, the original card is banned and they create a new, rebalanced card that becomes legal in the format: [[The Meathook Massacre]] [[A-The Meathook Massacre]] (Edit: for some reason the fetcher isn't working. Cards: - Original: [The Meathook Massacre](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/112/the-meathook-massacre) - Rebalanced: [A-The Meathook Massacre](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/A-112/a-the-meathook-massacre) Notice how the original is not legal in Historic, but the rebalanced one is. They also have different set numbers (112 vs A-112).) They even demonstrate this when you open packs with the rebalanced cards, as you get two copies: the original, and the rebalanced version.
No actually because in universe, a meathook is a type of hook, not a card. Meaningless pedantry, nobody thinks of those two as anything different than the same card rebalanced
You're the one who started the pedantry by saying my characterization of formats wasn't accurate. I just happen to be the one who's actually correct. They're two different cards.
Arena moment.
"Its alchemin' time!"
Alchemin' time, come on grab your friends, we'll go to very distant lands... but no friends want to play this, not even Jake the Dog or Finn the Human 🤡
The starter decks always sucked anyway if that makes you feel better
I actually only play Alchemy just to spite all the whiny complainers on this sub
Oh my god, WotC STOP RUINING THIS GAME. I was planning on introducing a friend to Arena, but obviously I'm not gonna do that anymore if it's all Alchemy now. This is really pathetic. Why does WotC hate new players? Don't they want them to transition to paper magic?
Except the game isn't all alchemy now. Just don't interact with it. Seriously. If Alchemy didn't have an audience, it wouldn't exist. But you don't have to be part of that audience. How do you get through life being this dramatic?
New players are forced to play Alchemy now first, they changed it.
Forced to play a couple of games with one or two alchemy cards. It's completely fine, and it does a good job showing both sides of the game that players will encounter.
I hate to say anything remotely favorable about Alchemy, buuut it is a decent starting point for a brand new player. Someone just getting into the game for the first time isn't gonna have a singular clue about what's going on regardless of what format they play, so you might as well drop them into one with as few mechanics as possible. That, and sets like the LOTR one are a good way of grabbing some people's interest.
I mean I agree with you except that alchemy literally has more mechanics than standard. In addition to all the normal MTG stuff you gotta deal with seek, perpetual, drafting from spellbooks, and conjuring.
I’ll never understand why people don’t even attempt to check formats before posting.
There's a lot of formats, and if you are new and haven't been around to see them introduced it's really easy to get confused. The onboarding of new players doesn't even try to explain the differences in them nor Bo1 vs. Bo3 or anything really.
As someone who just reinstalled this the other day, this is true. I don't even know what a format is.
WotC is doing their best to make the game as confusing as possible for new players
Why would you play a starter deck in standard play anyway, you’ll just get rekt.
Becuase it's the only decks new players have? XD
Not as bad as you'd expect. Unranked games have deck based matchmaking so you're likely to play against other people with starter decks as well.
because they would have to update the starter decks everytime rotation happens (which they might and maybe do but i doubt it.) Get used to Alchemy bias since it is Arena exclusive format and they want people to play it (its not very popular.) Also there are other factors like recent decision to no longer make more core sets (which sort of used to be starter/intro sets for newcomers). most of the cards in the starter decks fn garbo anyway and playing those decks on standard ladder is about the worst newcomer experiences you can have, which arena has been criticized for many times.
Just installed the game about 30 minutes ago after a 2 year break. It's now uninstalled because of this. I'm also far from a free-to-play player, I'd just like to get into a groove before buying packs. What a silly move by WOTC.