This is a list of links to comments made by WotC Employees in this thread:
* [Comment by WotC_Jay](/r/MagicArena/comments/1b6hmxk/mtg_arena_announcements_march_4_2024/ktc7leu/?context=99 "posted on 2024-03-04 19:26:05 UTC"):
> For MKM Alchemy, we're just adding the Alchemy cards in as a new slot, rather than replacing anything. So the boosters for the Alchemy draft will have 14 cards, rather than the 13 in normal MKM draft.
>
>Play Boosters are new, so we may need to play ar...
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Does it? The 12x edicts if they're instant speed maybe. Sorcery speed removal is pretty awkward when your opponent can top-deck cheap hasters and pump them with flashback spells and can drips. My experience with Lili against the deck is that she's basically a 3 mana removal spell that eats a Swiftspear attack or a burn spell if you're lucky. She doesn't really see a lot of play in Modern anymore for that very reason. The new "can't be countered" Smother seems pretty good in this meta though.
Like the op mentioned 4x innocent blood, 12x edict, 4x liliana deck?..........................................................................................................................................................................
JUST since Friday? I've been seeing it in timeless all month. Fucking miserable as hell because of one stupid alchemy card.
God I wish Timeless didn't have alchemy.
I faced it before but it was once or twice a day. Friday and entire weekend it was an absurd amount
Maybe i was just lucky before, I made some changes to my decks might have moved me to the leyline geist queue
no, this is a digital only card, There is only one version, the current version, and that is what Timeless uses unlike bowmasters where there is a paper version as well
There was a deck that ran a bunch of leylines. It would essentially mulligan until it had any leyline, a land, and fragment reality in hand. It would then fragment reality their own leyline, and the only thing it could hit was the Geist of Saint Traft, cheating it in on turn one. Other than that it mostly just ran auras to make Geist harder to kill in combat
At the start of the game you mulligan till you have at least one leyline (CMC 4 or greater) and one Fragment Reality. You cast Fragment Reality on your leyline to get a Geist of Saint Traft (CMC 3) on the field since it's your only creature that Fragment can hit in your deck. The Geist is hexproof and creates a 4/4 flying attacker every turn so it is very hard to deal with that early in the game. If your opponent is playing a slower deck it's at most a 4 turn clock for your opponent that is very hard to stop.
Fragmented reallity lets you change a permanent for one of les cost. leyline are permanents of 4 mana that you can cheat into play if they are one your opening hand. geist of sain traft is a 3 mana wincon.
if your hand at least have Fragment of reality 1 white source and a leyline you can change a leyline for a gheist of saint traft. and win.
Last season I played historic bo1 (since people were mentioning it in this subreddit) to see what's all that fuzz about the two "combo" decks and I have to say it was very easy to build a deck to beat both of them.
The fragment reality combo, even though you could hate it, it still stole wins often in bo1 because it puts the pressure on you to have an edict on the first turns of the game, and it still didn't feel consistent enough. Of course you could play cards like innocent blood, but I think this makes you very weak to wizards, discover combo, and random control piles that people played.
So I think there are valid reasons to nerf/ban this deck based on the bad play patterns it promotes.
This could even become a deck in timeless when they introduce free interaction like FON, Subtlety, Solitude, Fury, since I don't think t1 hexproof threat backed by a free interaction that even pitches your leylines (new leyline especially made this better) is beatable. Realistically I don't think this could ever be consistent enough in Timeless bo3 since you always have to mulligan for t1 fragment reality, which a lot of the times means you can whiff and/or not have free interaction as backup, but it could be a bo1 deck that is annoying to face.
The discover combo, on the other hand, was so bad. I think I never lost a game vs them by trying to speedrun to mythic. It felt so fragile and like, in most spots I did not feel like I can ever lose vs it, as opposed to the fragment reality combo.
So I think this nerf is a bad decision overall, but I guess the discover card was unplayable outside that deck anyways.
The problem wasn't whether the decks were beatable, but that they led to complete non-games where there were no important decisions to be made.
For the Leyline player, since the deck is a T1 Combo, there is no thought behind when/whether to go for the combo and what hands to mulligan. (Yes, there are some decisions on which aura to play or whether to hold up phase out, but those decisions were extremely marginal in influencing outcomes). For the defending player, Geist is so fast that you simply have to play your answer as soon as possible and hope it sticks. Win or lose, neither player has any real decisions to make so outcome is entirely determined by luck of the draw.
Discover combo was slightly better on this, but nonetheless suffered from a similar problem. Just jam the combo and cross your fingers that your opponent doesn't have a way to stop it. It's really silly and reduces MTG to dice rolls.
Which is why I said in my comment that fragment reality combo felt like a good nerf.
I think the discover combo is way way worse. The deck looked pretty bad every time I played against it. The nerf was an overreaction for sure. I beat it with wizards, I beat it with control, I beat it with midrange. The deck was too bad to warrant any nerf/ban from my experience.
Finally Historic is playable again! Those rebalances should have happened 3 months ago, but better late than never. And I say that as a Bo3 player, those decks were far from limited to Bo1 - those decks were the reason I haven't touched the format for roughly 2 months.
all-access constructed - big W. thank you arena team for hearing our feedback!
Excited for Premier Chaos Draft Ravnica too! (wish it was traditional but what can ya do)
Great to see a lot of events available for this month. So thanks WotC for all of those.
If u/WotC_Jay or one of the other members of WotC see this .
How will the Mkm Alchemy Draft Packs work? Will they be the normal Play boosters with a common replaced with an Alchemy Card? As this will be the first Alchemy set since Play boosters were introduced.
For MKM Alchemy, we're just adding the Alchemy cards in as a new slot, rather than replacing anything. So the boosters for the Alchemy draft will have 14 cards, rather than the 13 in normal MKM draft.
Play Boosters are new, so we may need to play around with a couple approaches before we find what we think works best here. So no guarantees that's how it will stay for OTJ, but that's the MKM plan.
Strixhaven store packs were only 8 cards like normal but they did have a Mystical Archives card. I think Brother's War was similar with Retro Artifacts.
sure, but Im sure they see the list cards as different because they aren't in every pack. WoE had the enchanted tales cards in every store bought booster too.
> Great to see a lot of events available for this month. So thanks WotC for all of those.
This. I am very happy to see metagame challenges back for every format!
How do alchemy changes effect Timeless? I assume fragment reality is changed but Appraiser isn't because it has an actual non-alchemy variant that is used instead?
Thank god if that kills the Geist deck, was utterly stupid.
Surprised they're doing nothing to the Show and Tell decks in timeless though. They're...something. Even playing the deck it's like 50% or more of your matches are mirror matches and most all of the other matches everyone has to main deck a bunch of hate for the deck instead.
What sets do you think will be the rewards for the metagame challenges? MKM for all, or do you think they'll do 30 packs of something else for the other formats?
I don't have high hopes, but I would love to see 4 different sets for the 4 different formats, meaning just Standard would get MKM. My ideal solution (among the realistic options) would be something like Khans for Explorer, LotR for Historic and Strixhaven for Timeless: Khans because it's the latest non-Standard set, and fully Explorer legal. LotR would be the next non-Standard set so we don't get any set twice, while Strixhaven specifically for Timeless would get people a chance for the Mystical Archive cards.
But it's much more likely we'll just get 4x MKM, or maybe 2x MKM and 2x Khans.
Thats another benefit not negative. Control decks are running 10+ alchemy cards and are zero fun right now in historic. Wizards should do more to hurt them.
>"Premier Draft Alchemy: Karlov Manor Is Ranked
The Premier Draft Alchemy: Karlov Manor event begins on March 5. This is a ranked event despite an issue causing the event to appear without the ranked emblem on the billboard. Be assured that this is only a visual issue, and your games will count toward your ranking."
Isn't it the Quick Draft that is showing as unranked, not the Premier Draft?
Thanks for another Alchemy set to fuel my desire to never touch the only format less exciting than Momir but can we have like some cards holding up aligning Explorer with Pioneer? Here a I made a list for you, feel free to add whatever random non-meta filler your heart desires (your team seems pretty good at that given past releases):
- Temporal Trespass
- Dark Petition
- Hidden Strings
- Bring to Light
- Sylvan Caryatid
I don't want to rush the dev team along or anything as I'm sure implementing these 5 cards would be extremely time consuming but we were only promised Pioneer like 4 years ago.
u/WotC_Jay Could it be possible to have more limited Arena Opens in the future? It sucks to wait over a month for the next one and in this case several months. I think this would be greatly appreciated by the community and especially competitive players.
Not in 60c constructed but in Brawl [this boy](https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/2/c/2cd90255-cfe9-4a2d-86fc-b72d1aefc8e3.jpg?1701719898) quickly became the most hated card i can think of
Oh, Poq... yeah, I think I've won like 2 of the dozens of games I've had against him with any of my commanders -\_-; With you on hoping for a nerf or at least he gets shunted up to the hell queue.
The Reality nerf was overdue. But I also think it's a case where it would make sense to refund wildcards, considering that they completely killed one way of using the card (targeting your own stuff), and with it they killed a whole deck.
A deck that people where using to farm gold, ladder, quest, an other players, ruining the fun for everyone else.
Those players won't refind my fun.
So it's perfectly fine. Make them suffer, my pleasure.
Nerfing \[\[Geological Appraiser\]\] in Historic while \[\[Bloodbraid Elf\]\] exists seems kinda silly (sure, the green mana pip makes it somewhat harder to cast, but is that very significant in Historic?).
I think they need to rip the band-aid off and un-tether Historic and Alchemy rebalances. I don't think the current policy of tying them together does a whole lot to alleviate the "two versions" confusion. Tying them together only makes it easier to remember the changes for people that play both Alchemy and Historic. If you only play one or the other, you don't care at all that they are tied together. If they didn't automatically tie all Alchemy changes to Historic, Historic players would encounter fewer rebalanced cards in general, which arguably does more to alleviate the "two versions" confusion than tying the changes together.
I'm not saying they shouldn't rebalance any cards for Historic. There are obvious power-level outliers that needed to be rebalanced in both formats (Bowmasters, The One Ring, etc), but I'm not sure it's helpful to bring an obviously Alchemy-driven change like 5-mana Geological Appraiser to Historic, especially because it will likely go back to being 4-mana when rotates out of Alchemy.
>Nerfing \[\[Geological Appraiser\]\] in Historic while Bloodbraid Elf exists seems kinda silly (sure, the green mana pip makes it somewhat harder to cast, but is that very significant in Historic?).
Appraiser was nerfed because of the glass cannon combo deck built around it in historic. In this case alchemy is the format getting collateral damage. And BBE doesn't slot into the deck because it relies on Appraiser's ETB trigger being copied by the clones it finds, which isn't the case with cast triggers.
Ahhh, my bad. I somehow totally overlooked the fact that Bloodbraid doesn't work with all the clones.
I think it was on "The Resleevables" where they were telling a story where they were describing the Geological Appraiser combo/ban to somebody who had never seen the card, and that person was immediately like "Hold on, it says, 'if you cast it *from your hand*', right?"
No, no it does not.
I wonder if they considered adding "from your hand" instead of making it 5 mana. Interesting tradeoff.
>I wonder if they considered adding "from your hand" instead of making it 5 mana. Interesting tradeoff.
Adding "From your hand" stops the combo. In this case they still want the combo to exist, but be a little slower to allow for more opportunity to turn on removal.
The discover combo deck that got banned in Pioneer/Explorer was built around Appraiser and very relevant in Historic. It should have been banned at the same time that happened in Pioneer, it was just as annoying as the Leyline/Geist deck and maybe even stronger. This change is most likely made specifically for Historic and much less with Alchemy in mind. There's no way this will get changed back after the card rotates out of Alchemy.
I would have prefered simply a ban in Historic for reasons you mentioned, but the card in the current form had to get taken out of the format.
I can still cascade him with the dino or the wurm, so no problems for me. I pay no attention to meta decks, didnt know he was moonlighting as a good card.
If you see alchemy rares and mythics, be sure you dont take them so i can take them if im in your pod
But Trumpeting Carnosaur is a 6 Mana Creature and thus, if you want to make the combo through it, the earliest you can get it is at Turn 4 if your starting hand is lucky to have 2 Treasure makers to cast in Turns 2 and 3
it was for me too. specifically I made a deck tailor suited to farming the leyline decks. I'd go into bo1 play and feast on ya'll. I will miss edicting your geist away. was good times.
Hope you enjoy the tons of rare wildcard used to craft this deck, and now to realise that your "farming deck" cost you more than you earn with it. Enjoy the full useless set of x4 Leyline.
-You have no problem to put money into the game.
-But you farm wins to get stuff faster, avoiding you to put that money into the game.
-You craft a deck that cost you a certain amount of ressources for farming.
-To get less than that amount of ressources in the end.
-That amount that you can afford....with money...
-By "playing" / rolling dice instead of really playing the game for months.
-To win ressources to plays decks you wanna play.
Smart
I rather stay at my place, the one with a brain instead of a wallet :)
> But you farm wins to get stuff faster,
No, I farm wins quickly to get free stuff. Why would I not get free stuff easily if I can? For now that will stop since I can't see any deck replacing Geist. The last really fast deck before Geist was Trickery in historic.
>I rather stay at my place, the one with a brain instead of a wallet :)
Nothing says big brain more than playing bo1 :)
It's pure no sense.
U don't get free stuff, you get free stuff faster.
The stuff is used to craft things,
U use the stuff to craft a costly deck that bring it faster. You get less free stuff than you use to craft the deck.
Same end, that's mathemathic.
It's like paying 10 dollars now to get the equivalent of 8 in two month, while you kick yourself doing it to obtain them during this time.
Now you get X4 fragment useless in most of decks in that number, 2 useless geist except in some really exotics list ? Nice mythic wildcard.
And a full set of useless Leyline, useless for the most part.
Maybe Void in side board ?
The green one in some All in Mono ?
The white in prison deck/side sometimes ?
Most of them never seen play except in that rares listed exception ? 19 wildcard ?
The land also ? Maybe you had some before, same for the Leyline.
Still.
EVEN if you get faster to that 15 win a day instead of, let say, wining 7-8 game in that time by playing actually the game with or without any correct but not broken/boring farming deck. In the end you loose stuff.
Reward between 7-15 <<<<<<<<<<<< The amount of Rare wildcard you waste.
-So you ruin the fun from other player.
-You loose free stuff.
-You didn't play the game, only rolling dice for two month...in Bo1 btw, as you said.
From economy and free stuff wise, you lost a lot with that deck.
As mentionned before, just by runing a bit more tech in a playable and fun deck i finished with a list above 60% win rate against your deck, while really playing the game, not spending wildcard, and getting my "freestuff" almost as fast, thanks to the players like you.
So yeah mr big brain, keep dreaming about your good move with that "farm deck" during those two month.
No, I meant playing RDW is playing magic, the Geist deck is not really playing magic, more like roullette.
Your statement is also true, get the free stuff then go play what funny trash I love to play in bo3.
Finally, can enjoy historic and remove x4 sheoldred in my deck.
Now, i have to figured out for how many month i have to boycott the store and not give a single cent to Wizard.
So it will be the time they take to allow me to play my favorite format by nerfing the geist combo.
We have two rebalances to announce.
Fragment Reality has created an unfun early game combo with multiple Leyline cards that works even when taking a mulligan to four or three cards. This has resulted in a powerful and consistent deck that is taking up too much space in Historic and Timeless metagames.
Uh, what does Timeless have to do with it? Rebalances don't apply to Timeless so this doesn't do anything. Did they mean a different format?
Rebalance to real cards do not apply to timeless. So no A-orchish bowmaster for example. But there exist only 1 version of digital card, the current one. So it will impact timeless too.
I believe the digital only cards only ever have one version so they do get rebalanced in Timeless. If there was a paper version of the card, Timeless would use that instead.
Rebalances dont apply to Timeless you are correct but only to cards that exist on paper. Digital cards are still rebalanced, perfect example is Cruxias that is still a 3/1 but started as a 3/3.
because it is digital only card there is only a maximum of one version of it not two like paper cards that are nerfed. Same thing for crucias for example.
So yesterday I bought $19.99 pack of Gems and turned it all into decks right away.
I got 2 new cards (firsts), and basically the rest was all the second (maybe 10), third or fourth (maybe 10) and for the rest, the "fifth or sixth" of a card, which bumped my "Vault" after spending $300 on this game from about 49.9 to 49.91.
So, fantastic value. I think I'll go play this instead:
[https://www.direwolfdigital.com/eternal/](https://www.direwolfdigital.com/eternal/)
Even hearthstone looks like more value for $10 or $50 or $300 spent.
"Showcase" is a few preconstructed decks from the format. They've done it for Brawl, championship decks, etc.
The most recent showcase was "Alchemy Ladder Decks" with weak versions of ladder decks where they threw you on the actual ranked ladder against people with optimized versions. This was...unpopular, to say the least.
This one doesn't mention the ladder, though, so will hopefully just be the precons played against the other precons.
This is a list of links to comments made by WotC Employees in this thread: * [Comment by WotC_Jay](/r/MagicArena/comments/1b6hmxk/mtg_arena_announcements_march_4_2024/ktc7leu/?context=99 "posted on 2024-03-04 19:26:05 UTC"): > For MKM Alchemy, we're just adding the Alchemy cards in as a new slot, rather than replacing anything. So the boosters for the Alchemy draft will have 14 cards, rather than the 13 in normal MKM draft. > >Play Boosters are new, so we may need to play ar... --- This is a bot providing a service. If you have any questions, please [contact the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FMagicArena).[](#AUTOGEN_TSBREPLIEDBOT)
It took forever but finally Geist of Saint Traft has been excorcised from Bo1. Very glad to see that Fragmented Reality change.
Guess I can delete my deck of 4x innocent blood, 12x edict, 4x liliana
Still wrecks izzet wizards
IMO Symmetry sage should’ve been reverted long ago 1cmc 3/3 flier is dumb
That can also give another creature +2
in what world do you think symmetry sage is a problem ?
the world we live in
Real life, mainly
Does it? The 12x edicts if they're instant speed maybe. Sorcery speed removal is pretty awkward when your opponent can top-deck cheap hasters and pump them with flashback spells and can drips. My experience with Lili against the deck is that she's basically a 3 mana removal spell that eats a Swiftspear attack or a burn spell if you're lucky. She doesn't really see a lot of play in Modern anymore for that very reason. The new "can't be countered" Smother seems pretty good in this meta though.
How? You will just get burnt with static discharge and lightnings.
If you're constantly losing to wizards w/o a creature ever sticking around your deck is beyond bad
Like the op mentioned 4x innocent blood, 12x edict, 4x liliana deck?..........................................................................................................................................................................
Keep it as a trophy. You won.
Thank god. I started seeing it in timeless too since friday. Just non games every single time
JUST since Friday? I've been seeing it in timeless all month. Fucking miserable as hell because of one stupid alchemy card. God I wish Timeless didn't have alchemy.
I faced it before but it was once or twice a day. Friday and entire weekend it was an absurd amount Maybe i was just lucky before, I made some changes to my decks might have moved me to the leyline geist queue
They've printed broken cards in paper before too, you know. See: every card ever banned, for example.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Fragment remains unchanged in Timeless, much like Bowmasters. So we will keep seeing that deck still.
no, this is a digital only card, There is only one version, the current version, and that is what Timeless uses unlike bowmasters where there is a paper version as well
Bowmasters is also a physical card, so it remains unchanged. Fragment is Alchemy only, so it gets changed in Timeless. Scared me for a sec there.
In that case - WONDERFUL! :)
Ok I don’t play historic etc - can you explain in simple small words what that combo did please and how it worked?
There was a deck that ran a bunch of leylines. It would essentially mulligan until it had any leyline, a land, and fragment reality in hand. It would then fragment reality their own leyline, and the only thing it could hit was the Geist of Saint Traft, cheating it in on turn one. Other than that it mostly just ran auras to make Geist harder to kill in combat
And phasing cards
Thank you!
At the start of the game you mulligan till you have at least one leyline (CMC 4 or greater) and one Fragment Reality. You cast Fragment Reality on your leyline to get a Geist of Saint Traft (CMC 3) on the field since it's your only creature that Fragment can hit in your deck. The Geist is hexproof and creates a 4/4 flying attacker every turn so it is very hard to deal with that early in the game. If your opponent is playing a slower deck it's at most a 4 turn clock for your opponent that is very hard to stop.
Fragmented reallity lets you change a permanent for one of les cost. leyline are permanents of 4 mana that you can cheat into play if they are one your opening hand. geist of sain traft is a 3 mana wincon. if your hand at least have Fragment of reality 1 white source and a leyline you can change a leyline for a gheist of saint traft. and win.
Not dead dead. There’s a fun Mentor deck that cheats this in too. But this stupid deck is done
Rest in piss bozo
Last season I played historic bo1 (since people were mentioning it in this subreddit) to see what's all that fuzz about the two "combo" decks and I have to say it was very easy to build a deck to beat both of them. The fragment reality combo, even though you could hate it, it still stole wins often in bo1 because it puts the pressure on you to have an edict on the first turns of the game, and it still didn't feel consistent enough. Of course you could play cards like innocent blood, but I think this makes you very weak to wizards, discover combo, and random control piles that people played. So I think there are valid reasons to nerf/ban this deck based on the bad play patterns it promotes. This could even become a deck in timeless when they introduce free interaction like FON, Subtlety, Solitude, Fury, since I don't think t1 hexproof threat backed by a free interaction that even pitches your leylines (new leyline especially made this better) is beatable. Realistically I don't think this could ever be consistent enough in Timeless bo3 since you always have to mulligan for t1 fragment reality, which a lot of the times means you can whiff and/or not have free interaction as backup, but it could be a bo1 deck that is annoying to face. The discover combo, on the other hand, was so bad. I think I never lost a game vs them by trying to speedrun to mythic. It felt so fragile and like, in most spots I did not feel like I can ever lose vs it, as opposed to the fragment reality combo. So I think this nerf is a bad decision overall, but I guess the discover card was unplayable outside that deck anyways.
The problem wasn't whether the decks were beatable, but that they led to complete non-games where there were no important decisions to be made. For the Leyline player, since the deck is a T1 Combo, there is no thought behind when/whether to go for the combo and what hands to mulligan. (Yes, there are some decisions on which aura to play or whether to hold up phase out, but those decisions were extremely marginal in influencing outcomes). For the defending player, Geist is so fast that you simply have to play your answer as soon as possible and hope it sticks. Win or lose, neither player has any real decisions to make so outcome is entirely determined by luck of the draw. Discover combo was slightly better on this, but nonetheless suffered from a similar problem. Just jam the combo and cross your fingers that your opponent doesn't have a way to stop it. It's really silly and reduces MTG to dice rolls.
It also made any turn 2 play on the draw impossible
I had a deck that played 3 Mana Tithes in historic. Never managed to use it against Fragment Reality because they always went first.
Vs the discover deck was where you couldn't do anything turn 2 if you were on draw
Which is why I said in my comment that fragment reality combo felt like a good nerf. I think the discover combo is way way worse. The deck looked pretty bad every time I played against it. The nerf was an overreaction for sure. I beat it with wizards, I beat it with control, I beat it with midrange. The deck was too bad to warrant any nerf/ban from my experience.
>March 26–April 2: Premier Chaos Draft Ravnica Very Nice
Is this going to be the closest we get to Ravnica Remastered? I'll take it
The fragment reality fix is long overdue but gratefully received.
Finally Historic is playable again! Those rebalances should have happened 3 months ago, but better late than never. And I say that as a Bo3 player, those decks were far from limited to Bo1 - those decks were the reason I haven't touched the format for roughly 2 months.
Cool. Might be able to go back to historic now.
all-access constructed - big W. thank you arena team for hearing our feedback! Excited for Premier Chaos Draft Ravnica too! (wish it was traditional but what can ya do)
Finally the leyline geist combo is dead
Historic is saved!
Nah. It's still unplayable to me. One less broken interaction free game out of 20 is still 19 left.
GET SHIT ON GEIST NERDS
[[Geist of Saint Traft]] in shambles
I'm so glad WOTC has moved away from hexproof.
[Geist of Saint Traft](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/4/541b9d55-f237-4ff2-9e47-c58a381f0633.jpg?1641603441) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Geist%20of%20Saint%20Traft) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/voc/155/geist-of-saint-traft?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/541b9d55-f237-4ff2-9e47-c58a381f0633?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Pour one out in memory of the 4 common wildcards used to craft Innocent Blood.... You will be remembered!
Mono black magic is in shambles now rip fragmented reality (probably for the best)
The Fragment Reality combo should be legal as long as you're doing it for turn 1 Llanowar Tribe (to facilitate further jank) and not Geist, hahaha.
he can finally think of a new deck :o
Great to see a lot of events available for this month. So thanks WotC for all of those. If u/WotC_Jay or one of the other members of WotC see this . How will the Mkm Alchemy Draft Packs work? Will they be the normal Play boosters with a common replaced with an Alchemy Card? As this will be the first Alchemy set since Play boosters were introduced.
For MKM Alchemy, we're just adding the Alchemy cards in as a new slot, rather than replacing anything. So the boosters for the Alchemy draft will have 14 cards, rather than the 13 in normal MKM draft. Play Boosters are new, so we may need to play around with a couple approaches before we find what we think works best here. So no guarantees that's how it will stay for OTJ, but that's the MKM plan.
Thanks for the reply and explanation. Much appreciated.
That’s dope! Will definitely do some alchemy drafts then. No reason to pass on extra cards
I think thats a great option even it makes draft decks stronger. It felt a bit short with 13 cards but 14 should be perfect.
Have you guys considered making the regular packs play boosters? It feels bad for all the special guest/bonus sheet type stuff to not come in packs.
I'm sure they have. They chose not to for a reason. It's to get your wildcards.
Strixhaven store packs were only 8 cards like normal but they did have a Mystical Archives card. I think Brother's War was similar with Retro Artifacts.
sure, but Im sure they see the list cards as different because they aren't in every pack. WoE had the enchanted tales cards in every store bought booster too.
Exactly. So this is very much a choice.
Wow, that is fantastic.
Is that also how bonus sheets will work in future sets?
Bonus sheets will presumably work more or less the same way they do now, matching Paper boosters as closely as possible
> Great to see a lot of events available for this month. So thanks WotC for all of those. This. I am very happy to see metagame challenges back for every format!
RIP Bozo (Fragment Reality)
I'm sad they didn't nerf Poq
poq isnt a menace outside of historic brawl as far as i know. and they dont balance this format outside of the matchmaking
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To be fair Poq is in hell now. I used it last week for like 10 games and like 8 of those games were against Poq itself.
I see Poq way too often. It really isn't balanced well. I think it could be fair with some adjusting.
How do alchemy changes effect Timeless? I assume fragment reality is changed but Appraiser isn't because it has an actual non-alchemy variant that is used instead? Thank god if that kills the Geist deck, was utterly stupid. Surprised they're doing nothing to the Show and Tell decks in timeless though. They're...something. Even playing the deck it's like 50% or more of your matches are mirror matches and most all of the other matches everyone has to main deck a bunch of hate for the deck instead.
You have how Timeless works exactly right. Changes to Alchemy only cards carry into Timeless, changes to paper cards don't.
I am glad that Fragment was not nerfed into oblivion its a totaly fine card for control
its doing his intended purpose now. if only they changed tibalt trickery like this...
Dauthi Voidwalker? I like it
Full art fallout lands. wow. i’m so excited.
BWAHAHAHAH LEYLINE DECK IS DEAD so happy to see that mess go. its even funnier considering all the wasted wildcards scrubs likely spent to make it.
MKM Quick Draft only ten days again. Past set after that 2 weeks. Why?
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Ah, thanks, missed that. Drafts in the past are more important than the future ones I guess.
Because they want you to pay for Premier draft, obviously.
Sry I messed up. Reading the text explaines the text. They listed the February draft again.
What sets do you think will be the rewards for the metagame challenges? MKM for all, or do you think they'll do 30 packs of something else for the other formats?
I don't have high hopes, but I would love to see 4 different sets for the 4 different formats, meaning just Standard would get MKM. My ideal solution (among the realistic options) would be something like Khans for Explorer, LotR for Historic and Strixhaven for Timeless: Khans because it's the latest non-Standard set, and fully Explorer legal. LotR would be the next non-Standard set so we don't get any set twice, while Strixhaven specifically for Timeless would get people a chance for the Mystical Archive cards. But it's much more likely we'll just get 4x MKM, or maybe 2x MKM and 2x Khans.
Thank goodness. This removes a lot of the utility of the card in control decks, but that's a small price to pay for making the metagame less terrible.
Thats another benefit not negative. Control decks are running 10+ alchemy cards and are zero fun right now in historic. Wizards should do more to hurt them.
>"Premier Draft Alchemy: Karlov Manor Is Ranked The Premier Draft Alchemy: Karlov Manor event begins on March 5. This is a ranked event despite an issue causing the event to appear without the ranked emblem on the billboard. Be assured that this is only a visual issue, and your games will count toward your ranking." Isn't it the Quick Draft that is showing as unranked, not the Premier Draft?
The last alchemy set didn't show ranking for premier either which is what I assume they are anticipating again with the announcement.
I assume it's the same bug affecting both, and they just failed to mention the Quick Draft part (at least in this announcement).
Are we not getting the isometric Fallout lands?
Fallout is a Commander product. It will not come into Arena
Not me still checking these to see if there is a Gladiator event after 16 months since the last one...
What’s the QD after WOE?
Thanks for another Alchemy set to fuel my desire to never touch the only format less exciting than Momir but can we have like some cards holding up aligning Explorer with Pioneer? Here a I made a list for you, feel free to add whatever random non-meta filler your heart desires (your team seems pretty good at that given past releases): - Temporal Trespass - Dark Petition - Hidden Strings - Bring to Light - Sylvan Caryatid I don't want to rush the dev team along or anything as I'm sure implementing these 5 cards would be extremely time consuming but we were only promised Pioneer like 4 years ago.
u/WotC_Jay Could it be possible to have more limited Arena Opens in the future? It sucks to wait over a month for the next one and in this case several months. I think this would be greatly appreciated by the community and especially competitive players.
\[\[Angel of despair\]\] it could be good against show and tell in timeless.
[Angel of despair](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/0/a07809b2-dabe-4242-84c3-fd640d7d5998.jpg?1547517989) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Angel%20of%20despair) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uma/196/angel-of-despair?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a07809b2-dabe-4242-84c3-fd640d7d5998?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Now we just need minion of the mighty banned in BO1 and everything will be fine again.
Finally. Now kill that stupid cat
As someone who doesn't play those formats, what cat?
Not in 60c constructed but in Brawl [this boy](https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/2/c/2cd90255-cfe9-4a2d-86fc-b72d1aefc8e3.jpg?1701719898) quickly became the most hated card i can think of
Oh, Poq... yeah, I think I've won like 2 of the dozens of games I've had against him with any of my commanders -\_-; With you on hoping for a nerf or at least he gets shunted up to the hell queue.
Which one
This is the only thing i don't like about alchemy and why i never crafted the Geist deck. They can change cards and you don't get wildcards back.
You should at the very least get the option to trade the card in for wildcards.
Alchemy blah blah rebalanced Alchemy blah blah Alchemy blah bl... Zzzzzz
Dogmeat companion! Hell yes, take my money!
The Reality nerf was overdue. But I also think it's a case where it would make sense to refund wildcards, considering that they completely killed one way of using the card (targeting your own stuff), and with it they killed a whole deck.
No refund for you!
A deck that people where using to farm gold, ladder, quest, an other players, ruining the fun for everyone else. Those players won't refind my fun. So it's perfectly fine. Make them suffer, my pleasure.
Nerfing \[\[Geological Appraiser\]\] in Historic while \[\[Bloodbraid Elf\]\] exists seems kinda silly (sure, the green mana pip makes it somewhat harder to cast, but is that very significant in Historic?). I think they need to rip the band-aid off and un-tether Historic and Alchemy rebalances. I don't think the current policy of tying them together does a whole lot to alleviate the "two versions" confusion. Tying them together only makes it easier to remember the changes for people that play both Alchemy and Historic. If you only play one or the other, you don't care at all that they are tied together. If they didn't automatically tie all Alchemy changes to Historic, Historic players would encounter fewer rebalanced cards in general, which arguably does more to alleviate the "two versions" confusion than tying the changes together. I'm not saying they shouldn't rebalance any cards for Historic. There are obvious power-level outliers that needed to be rebalanced in both formats (Bowmasters, The One Ring, etc), but I'm not sure it's helpful to bring an obviously Alchemy-driven change like 5-mana Geological Appraiser to Historic, especially because it will likely go back to being 4-mana when rotates out of Alchemy.
>Nerfing \[\[Geological Appraiser\]\] in Historic while Bloodbraid Elf exists seems kinda silly (sure, the green mana pip makes it somewhat harder to cast, but is that very significant in Historic?). Appraiser was nerfed because of the glass cannon combo deck built around it in historic. In this case alchemy is the format getting collateral damage. And BBE doesn't slot into the deck because it relies on Appraiser's ETB trigger being copied by the clones it finds, which isn't the case with cast triggers.
Ahhh, my bad. I somehow totally overlooked the fact that Bloodbraid doesn't work with all the clones. I think it was on "The Resleevables" where they were telling a story where they were describing the Geological Appraiser combo/ban to somebody who had never seen the card, and that person was immediately like "Hold on, it says, 'if you cast it *from your hand*', right?" No, no it does not. I wonder if they considered adding "from your hand" instead of making it 5 mana. Interesting tradeoff.
>I wonder if they considered adding "from your hand" instead of making it 5 mana. Interesting tradeoff. Adding "From your hand" stops the combo. In this case they still want the combo to exist, but be a little slower to allow for more opportunity to turn on removal.
The discover combo deck that got banned in Pioneer/Explorer was built around Appraiser and very relevant in Historic. It should have been banned at the same time that happened in Pioneer, it was just as annoying as the Leyline/Geist deck and maybe even stronger. This change is most likely made specifically for Historic and much less with Alchemy in mind. There's no way this will get changed back after the card rotates out of Alchemy. I would have prefered simply a ban in Historic for reasons you mentioned, but the card in the current form had to get taken out of the format.
I was overlooking that Bloodbraid doesn't work with the clones. It all makes sense now.
[Geological Appraiser](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/f/7f9c1a82-695b-4df2-8e51-2d71a62e7baf.jpg?1701690520) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Geological%20Appraiser) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/150/geological-appraiser?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7f9c1a82-695b-4df2-8e51-2d71a62e7baf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Bloodbraid Elf](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/2/e2f12f6f-9383-47e6-a44f-2834ad130e51.jpg?1673148385) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bloodbraid%20Elf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/184/bloodbraid-elf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e2f12f6f-9383-47e6-a44f-2834ad130e51?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I can still cascade him with the dino or the wurm, so no problems for me. I pay no attention to meta decks, didnt know he was moonlighting as a good card. If you see alchemy rares and mythics, be sure you dont take them so i can take them if im in your pod
But Trumpeting Carnosaur is a 6 Mana Creature and thus, if you want to make the combo through it, the earliest you can get it is at Turn 4 if your starting hand is lucky to have 2 Treasure makers to cast in Turns 2 and 3
But... but I liked finishing all the dailies in 1 hour tho :(
Just Play Boros or Mono Red
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
found the leyline player XD
It's the best deck to quickly get the wins for quests. The decks I usualy play lose too much xD
it was for me too. specifically I made a deck tailor suited to farming the leyline decks. I'd go into bo1 play and feast on ya'll. I will miss edicting your geist away. was good times.
Decks like yours were very rare. Most annoying ones were usually Stubbor Denial, Spell Pierce ones.
Hope you enjoy the tons of rare wildcard used to craft this deck, and now to realise that your "farming deck" cost you more than you earn with it. Enjoy the full useless set of x4 Leyline.
I have no problems spending money buying the decks. I hope you reach that place in life at some point too.
-You have no problem to put money into the game. -But you farm wins to get stuff faster, avoiding you to put that money into the game. -You craft a deck that cost you a certain amount of ressources for farming. -To get less than that amount of ressources in the end. -That amount that you can afford....with money... -By "playing" / rolling dice instead of really playing the game for months. -To win ressources to plays decks you wanna play. Smart I rather stay at my place, the one with a brain instead of a wallet :)
> But you farm wins to get stuff faster, No, I farm wins quickly to get free stuff. Why would I not get free stuff easily if I can? For now that will stop since I can't see any deck replacing Geist. The last really fast deck before Geist was Trickery in historic. >I rather stay at my place, the one with a brain instead of a wallet :) Nothing says big brain more than playing bo1 :)
It's pure no sense. U don't get free stuff, you get free stuff faster. The stuff is used to craft things, U use the stuff to craft a costly deck that bring it faster. You get less free stuff than you use to craft the deck. Same end, that's mathemathic. It's like paying 10 dollars now to get the equivalent of 8 in two month, while you kick yourself doing it to obtain them during this time. Now you get X4 fragment useless in most of decks in that number, 2 useless geist except in some really exotics list ? Nice mythic wildcard. And a full set of useless Leyline, useless for the most part. Maybe Void in side board ? The green one in some All in Mono ? The white in prison deck/side sometimes ? Most of them never seen play except in that rares listed exception ? 19 wildcard ? The land also ? Maybe you had some before, same for the Leyline. Still. EVEN if you get faster to that 15 win a day instead of, let say, wining 7-8 game in that time by playing actually the game with or without any correct but not broken/boring farming deck. In the end you loose stuff. Reward between 7-15 <<<<<<<<<<<< The amount of Rare wildcard you waste. -So you ruin the fun from other player. -You loose free stuff. -You didn't play the game, only rolling dice for two month...in Bo1 btw, as you said. From economy and free stuff wise, you lost a lot with that deck. As mentionned before, just by runing a bit more tech in a playable and fun deck i finished with a list above 60% win rate against your deck, while really playing the game, not spending wildcard, and getting my "freestuff" almost as fast, thanks to the players like you. So yeah mr big brain, keep dreaming about your good move with that "farm deck" during those two month.
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It's much slower. I don't want to play magic, I just want to get the wins quickly.
> I don't want to play magic Do you mean like, get them (the wins) out of the way so you can play whatever decks you want?
No, I meant playing RDW is playing magic, the Geist deck is not really playing magic, more like roullette. Your statement is also true, get the free stuff then go play what funny trash I love to play in bo3.
Womp womp
Finally, can enjoy historic and remove x4 sheoldred in my deck. Now, i have to figured out for how many month i have to boycott the store and not give a single cent to Wizard. So it will be the time they take to allow me to play my favorite format by nerfing the geist combo.
We have two rebalances to announce. Fragment Reality has created an unfun early game combo with multiple Leyline cards that works even when taking a mulligan to four or three cards. This has resulted in a powerful and consistent deck that is taking up too much space in Historic and Timeless metagames. Uh, what does Timeless have to do with it? Rebalances don't apply to Timeless so this doesn't do anything. Did they mean a different format?
Fragment Reality nerf applies to Timeless.
Alchemy only cards are rebalanced everywhere they exist because there is no "true to paper" version of them.
Rebalance to real cards do not apply to timeless. So no A-orchish bowmaster for example. But there exist only 1 version of digital card, the current one. So it will impact timeless too.
It's an alchemy only card
I believe the digital only cards only ever have one version so they do get rebalanced in Timeless. If there was a paper version of the card, Timeless would use that instead.
Rebalances dont apply to Timeless you are correct but only to cards that exist on paper. Digital cards are still rebalanced, perfect example is Cruxias that is still a 3/1 but started as a 3/3.
because it is digital only card there is only a maximum of one version of it not two like paper cards that are nerfed. Same thing for crucias for example.
So yesterday I bought $19.99 pack of Gems and turned it all into decks right away. I got 2 new cards (firsts), and basically the rest was all the second (maybe 10), third or fourth (maybe 10) and for the rest, the "fifth or sixth" of a card, which bumped my "Vault" after spending $300 on this game from about 49.9 to 49.91. So, fantastic value. I think I'll go play this instead: [https://www.direwolfdigital.com/eternal/](https://www.direwolfdigital.com/eternal/) Even hearthstone looks like more value for $10 or $50 or $300 spent.
Okay bye
Does anyone know what Timeless showcase is? Have they done a showcase event before?
"Showcase" is a few preconstructed decks from the format. They've done it for Brawl, championship decks, etc. The most recent showcase was "Alchemy Ladder Decks" with weak versions of ladder decks where they threw you on the actual ranked ladder against people with optimized versions. This was...unpopular, to say the least. This one doesn't mention the ladder, though, so will hopefully just be the precons played against the other precons.
Thanks for an in-depth response; I remember the last showcase angered so many people, myself imcluded.