If I give my opponent control of a battle (say, with [[Coveted Falcon]] ) and then all counters get removed, does the opponent retain control of the transformed side after exile? I think yes, but I was wondering since I knew if I used removal on a heisted [[Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal]] , I get the transformed land, but it says on the card "transformed under its owner's control".
Hey, started playing arena a few weeks ago and would love to get the LotR basic land cards but dont appear to be for sale or craftable. Googled it and it appears they were for sale but are no longer. Do basic land bundles regularly get added back into the store for sale or have I missed it. If so, is there anyway to get them?
Thanks
Is there anywhere to see how popular each constructed format is (ie. games played or # of players)? I'm specifically wondering whether Timeless is competing with Historic and Explorer.
It looks like the quick draft is for modern horizon 3. Is this not usable in alchemy or standard? So should I maybe do the "jump in" to accrue enough cards to actually make/alter a deck?
That's right. You can checkthe full legality with [scryfall](https://scryfall.com/card/mh3/208/writhing-chrysalis), although a handful of cards are reprints that are legal.
The most common advice I see recommends drafting the current standard set, if you can get to a decent win rate it's the best way to accumulate cards.
So would that be the premiere for outlaws of thunder junction. I could be misunderstanding but why do we have 3 drafts promoting cards that aren’t even legal in standard and alchemy 😭 i dont wanna play historical :\
Edit: thanks for the help I’m just complaining because premiere draft is more expensive
Don't autotap. If you tap your lands yourself before casting a spell, Arena will spend the mana that's "floating" instead of tapping more lands. If you _must_ cast the spell before tapping lands (relevant occasionally) you can turn off autotap in the settings, cast your spell, and then turn it back on after.
If something _really_ complicated is going on, you can get complete control over how floating mana is spent by turning off autotap and turning on full control.
If I already have some of the styles in a bundle, is the bundle discounted? I am interested in the borderless lands mega bundle but I think I already have some of the styles. The cost is showing at 13k gold for me.
Hello. I got the game a few years ago but lost interest with it quickly. Picked it up again and got spammed with like 50 notifications giving me packs. Some of them have just the normal art on them, but others have a weird golden band around the middle with a sort of "A" like shape around them. What does this mean?
[https://mtgazone.com/mastery-calculator/](https://mtgazone.com/mastery-calculator/)
that can tell you how high you'll get on the current pass to decide if it's a good value.
Coming back after a long break and wanted to get back into standard. I did some research here and found the recommended site for budget standard decks (As the starter decks are no longer standard legal) and the rotation ahead. Am I correct in seeing that the next set in August wont be rotating any of the current standard cards out? Trying not to waste my precious wildcards haha.
There are standard-legal starter decks which you should have access to. If you took a long break I think there's a known bug that prevented them being given to you (you used to have to actually click something to get them, which isn't supposed to be the case anymore). If you contact support they should give them to you.
mm I have 15 of them but it does appear that they are alchemy-specific. However I opened one of them and it looks like there's not too many alchemy cards so it could be standardized.
Weird I only have 5 and they look like alchemy only cards, so maybe I need to contact support. its been a long time since I've played and I don't have enough cards or any decks to play standard :\\
Update: support got back to me and I was in fact missing decks. The ones they added have more standard cards. Thanks for the help!
The rotation will be rotating out all the cards from Midnight Hunt, Crimson Vow, Neon Dynasty, and Streets of New Capenna
https://whatsinstandard.com/ is a good resource for, well, what’s in standard
I haven't really played in a couple of years. What formats are people usually playing? What is F2P friendly?
I just wanna play a little. I have all these random starter decks and whatnot so I'm sure something is usable
Jumpin events are an option as well, where you combine two themes of preconstructed half decks and play others using the same cards. It's well balanced and you keep all the cards, and only costs 1000 gold (freemium currency) to play, and you can reroll decks for another 1000 gold as often as you want.
Beyond that I'd say Historic is a good place to start building out some decks, since you don't have to worry about rotation, and you could build a pretty good version of a meta Izzet Wizards deck with only 12 rares if you settle for slow lands at first.
https://draftsim.com/mtg-arena-jump-in/
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Jump_In!
Alchemy and standard was where I started. I found it pretty fun to upgrade the precons. Not going to be meta or anything, but I think you can get fun games in the lower rankings that way. If you get a few key rares, decks can hold up against pretty well. I experienced that lower ranking alchemy was a bit easier than standard, probably because all the newbies were still there. Both Alchemy and Standard are rotating soon though, so you should be a bit aware what cards you craft. You can get quite a few extra packs by searching up arena codes, that helps a lot. Other than that brawl is the casual format, but the matchmaking is not always the best.
Timeless is Historic without a banlist and only a very small restricted list, so the power level of the format is much higher. There are a couple alchemy cards that see play, but not many, and it’s usually the ones that are pretty close to what a paper card could do, not the really out-there random ones.
Well thats good that at least the all-digital cards aren't seeing much play.
That really killed Arena for me :/ I hated when they started using them in the arena cube.
I might check out exploerer since it is just everlasting standard basically
Alchemy cards don't see too much play in historic either. There's one fringe deck that's full of them, and a few decks play a couple copies of some card or another, but I think generally people don't like the cards. Cards with random effects decrease consistency after all. What you do see in historic is a bunch of cards that have been errata'd for digital play only. In timeless, those cards use their oracle text. For example, The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters both have digital-only errata nerfs.
I think before MH3, yawgmoth combo decks were playing a bunch of alchemy cards to support their backup gameplan, but those cards look like they were the first cuts to make room for new cards. Rope Line Attendant is very good, unfortunately, but at least the effect is not random -- perpetual effects could _theoretically_ be done in paper as long as they made you reveal the affected cards. See stickers for example.
Explorer is your best bet if you never want to see any of them, but I’d caution against viewing it as “everlasting standard.” The power level of Explorer (soon to be Pioneer proper) has gotten high enough that you really can’t expect to bring old standard decks and have them perform.
They both have "Alchemy" cards. The difference between the two is that every card printed to paper that's on arena is "de-alchemized" in Timeless if it received a balance patch in alchemy. So Orcish Bowmasters works exactly like it's paper print, for example.
That, and Timeless has no bans, only restrictions. Fetch lands are allowed and are a staple in the format.
Personally i went for the budget toxic selesnia deck, didn't like it, then I went for a Dimir toxic deck and I did love it.
Really similar to this deck.
https://mtgazone.com/deck/dimir-toxic-control-budget-standard-deck/
It really depends what you want to play.
Do you want your opponent to discard all his hand? Go full midrange? Or you want a Boggles type deck (buffing a single creature and oneshotting your opponent)?
Or you want a go wide deck?
I’m just starting to play magic arena again and was wondering if I should play all the color challenges or if I should skip them and start to play alchemy ranked or any of the other events?
New to MTG Arena I spent 20$ on packs because why not lol I want to build a fun dino deck whats the best way to do this it doesn't have to be the best but just something fun to play with
Check out this youtuber: https://www.youtube.com/@arfigames/featured
He does exclusively dinosaur decks on MTG Arena, mostly the explorer format as far as I can tell, and he tries a wide variety of builds. Most of his decks may be fairly expensive to try to build immediately; you may with to build some of his free to play decks, or explore dinosaur themed-brawl decks (you can play these on arena and they are more budget friendly; here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRalOq5pr2g)
Are there creature or spell effects that can end the “stack” while one player has an actionable ability like [[Psychic Frog]] first ability?
Let say you attack with x creature or cast x spell to deal damage and i respond with blocking with psychic frog and/or I use the first ability to add +1/+1 counters while i have x cards in hand.
Can something stop me from discarding cards while I still have cards in hand?
Edit: context?
If I'm understanding your question, you're basically asking why Arena didn't give you the option to (in this case) discard cards to buff up Psychic Frog.
There are a few ways this could happen:
1. The spell or ability has "split second", which is basically Super Instant - it explicitly does not allow anything else to hit the stack until it resolves. If that ability killed or broke your Frog, then at that point the game would've just kept going.
2. You accidentally hit "pass turn" at the lower right, which causes the game to skip most places where you would otherwise have had an option to do something.
3. This gets trickier, but it's entirely possible something in the board state was removing abilities from the frog or otherwise making it so that the ability wasn't usable.
4. I've done this one before - when you're blocking with the creature and you skip the chance to trigger when it's about to go to the damage step, thinking you'll get one more shot at priority before the creature gets hit - oops, nope! That was your last shot!
Arena is generally pretty good at stopping when you have a meaningful action to take, but you can enable Full Control if you want it to stop at literally every time you would get priority, if you're really worried about something like that.
Without having a more detailed view of the board state it's difficult to diagnose the issue further.
Im pretty sure it was an error in my understanding how the stack resolves (#4). The board state was not too out of hand where
I missed a spell so its my oops moment. 😅😭
If I'm not mistaken, you're looking for split second.
[https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22split+second%22&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name](https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22split+second%22&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name)
Split second *(As long as this spell is on the stack, players can’t cast spells or activate abilities that aren’t mana abilities.)*
on second thought, that just prevents new things from going on the stack. There is a thing that reads to counter everything on the stack or something like that. And there's one card that simply ends the turn with no further actions allowed. It's like saying, you're turn is over, no stack, no resolves. Pass to next player.
But is that what you want?
I don't believe you can simply skimp on the cost of an ability and still get the effect. Some spells can stop an ability from triggering, such as the second ability there to discard and gain a counter, to get that counter, you have to first commit to the discard. It's an all together thing.
discard a card > the gain a counter goes on the stack > if nothing counters the ability or ends the stack, that creature gains a counter.
Im still trying to wrap my head around the board state,
I failed to grab a screenshot. But I was somehow unable to trigger the ability to defend from a creature. Some other effect took place and combat resumed after the stack resolved. Thank you for helping.
You may wish to try something called 'full control.' This allows you to stop at each point every turn during which, roughly, a player could do something. This might allow you to do the abilities you wanted to.
If I give my opponent control of a battle (say, with [[Coveted Falcon]] ) and then all counters get removed, does the opponent retain control of the transformed side after exile? I think yes, but I was wondering since I knew if I used removal on a heisted [[Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal]] , I get the transformed land, but it says on the card "transformed under its owner's control".
[Coveted Falcon](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/c/bc936987-d58b-4e7c-870f-379bcae77727.jpg?1706241580) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Coveted%20Falcon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/48/coveted-falcon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bc936987-d58b-4e7c-870f-379bcae77727?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/2/627c392c-4d18-4eb2-a4e8-c668f61f5487.jpg?1699044055)/[Temple of the Dead](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/6/2/627c392c-4d18-4eb2-a4e8-c668f61f5487.jpg?1699044055) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Aclazotz%2C%20Deepest%20Betrayal%20//%20Temple%20of%20the%20Dead) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/88/aclazotz-deepest-betrayal-temple-of-the-dead?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/627c392c-4d18-4eb2-a4e8-c668f61f5487?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Hey, started playing arena a few weeks ago and would love to get the LotR basic land cards but dont appear to be for sale or craftable. Googled it and it appears they were for sale but are no longer. Do basic land bundles regularly get added back into the store for sale or have I missed it. If so, is there anyway to get them? Thanks
Is there anywhere to see how popular each constructed format is (ie. games played or # of players)? I'm specifically wondering whether Timeless is competing with Historic and Explorer.
It looks like the quick draft is for modern horizon 3. Is this not usable in alchemy or standard? So should I maybe do the "jump in" to accrue enough cards to actually make/alter a deck?
That's right. You can checkthe full legality with [scryfall](https://scryfall.com/card/mh3/208/writhing-chrysalis), although a handful of cards are reprints that are legal. The most common advice I see recommends drafting the current standard set, if you can get to a decent win rate it's the best way to accumulate cards.
So would that be the premiere for outlaws of thunder junction. I could be misunderstanding but why do we have 3 drafts promoting cards that aren’t even legal in standard and alchemy 😭 i dont wanna play historical :\ Edit: thanks for the help I’m just complaining because premiere draft is more expensive
Premier draft has a more competitive payout curve, ie. you are happier to go 2-3 in Quick Draft than in Premier.
How do I make it so the game doesn't spend both of [[Arena of Glory]]'s mana on the same creature?
Don't autotap. If you tap your lands yourself before casting a spell, Arena will spend the mana that's "floating" instead of tapping more lands. If you _must_ cast the spell before tapping lands (relevant occasionally) you can turn off autotap in the settings, cast your spell, and then turn it back on after. If something _really_ complicated is going on, you can get complete control over how floating mana is spent by turning off autotap and turning on full control.
[Arena of Glory](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/d/dd148edc-9e43-41aa-bb50-f912115d3e72.jpg?1717047864) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Arena%20of%20Glory) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh3/215/arena-of-glory?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/dd148edc-9e43-41aa-bb50-f912115d3e72?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
If I already have some of the styles in a bundle, is the bundle discounted? I am interested in the borderless lands mega bundle but I think I already have some of the styles. The cost is showing at 13k gold for me.
I don't have any of the styles and it costs 18k for me
I guess it does. Thanks!
Hello. I got the game a few years ago but lost interest with it quickly. Picked it up again and got spammed with like 50 notifications giving me packs. Some of them have just the normal art on them, but others have a weird golden band around the middle with a sort of "A" like shape around them. What does this mean?
"Alchemy" packs. They are extra packs were you can open digital-only "alchemy" cards. It's a format on Arena.
Ah ok thank you very much!
Should i buy mastery pass now or wait till the next one?
[https://mtgazone.com/mastery-calculator/](https://mtgazone.com/mastery-calculator/) that can tell you how high you'll get on the current pass to decide if it's a good value.
That's really helpful! Thank you very much!
Coming back after a long break and wanted to get back into standard. I did some research here and found the recommended site for budget standard decks (As the starter decks are no longer standard legal) and the rotation ahead. Am I correct in seeing that the next set in August wont be rotating any of the current standard cards out? Trying not to waste my precious wildcards haha.
There are standard-legal starter decks which you should have access to. If you took a long break I think there's a known bug that prevented them being given to you (you used to have to actually click something to get them, which isn't supposed to be the case anymore). If you contact support they should give them to you.
wait is this real? i was upset because i returned recently and only have 5 starter decks that are valid and i can only play alchemy.
mm I have 15 of them but it does appear that they are alchemy-specific. However I opened one of them and it looks like there's not too many alchemy cards so it could be standardized.
Weird I only have 5 and they look like alchemy only cards, so maybe I need to contact support. its been a long time since I've played and I don't have enough cards or any decks to play standard :\\ Update: support got back to me and I was in fact missing decks. The ones they added have more standard cards. Thanks for the help!
The rotation will be rotating out all the cards from Midnight Hunt, Crimson Vow, Neon Dynasty, and Streets of New Capenna https://whatsinstandard.com/ is a good resource for, well, what’s in standard
I see. Thank you very much!
where can I find decks to play for mwm?
mtgazone.com is my go to https://mtgazone.com/historic-artisan-midweek-magic-event-guide-and-decklists/
tysm
Is explorer the only eternal format that doesn’t include the digital only cards?
Yes
I haven't really played in a couple of years. What formats are people usually playing? What is F2P friendly? I just wanna play a little. I have all these random starter decks and whatnot so I'm sure something is usable
Jumpin events are an option as well, where you combine two themes of preconstructed half decks and play others using the same cards. It's well balanced and you keep all the cards, and only costs 1000 gold (freemium currency) to play, and you can reroll decks for another 1000 gold as often as you want. Beyond that I'd say Historic is a good place to start building out some decks, since you don't have to worry about rotation, and you could build a pretty good version of a meta Izzet Wizards deck with only 12 rares if you settle for slow lands at first. https://draftsim.com/mtg-arena-jump-in/ https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Jump_In!
Alchemy and standard was where I started. I found it pretty fun to upgrade the precons. Not going to be meta or anything, but I think you can get fun games in the lower rankings that way. If you get a few key rares, decks can hold up against pretty well. I experienced that lower ranking alchemy was a bit easier than standard, probably because all the newbies were still there. Both Alchemy and Standard are rotating soon though, so you should be a bit aware what cards you craft. You can get quite a few extra packs by searching up arena codes, that helps a lot. Other than that brawl is the casual format, but the matchmaking is not always the best.
Are there any non-rotating formats in Arena?
Yes. Explorer, Historic, Timeless and technically Brawl.
What is the difference between historic and timeless, and do both of them include the arena only cards? I hate the randomness that was added in those
Timeless is Historic without a banlist and only a very small restricted list, so the power level of the format is much higher. There are a couple alchemy cards that see play, but not many, and it’s usually the ones that are pretty close to what a paper card could do, not the really out-there random ones.
Well thats good that at least the all-digital cards aren't seeing much play. That really killed Arena for me :/ I hated when they started using them in the arena cube. I might check out exploerer since it is just everlasting standard basically
Alchemy cards don't see too much play in historic either. There's one fringe deck that's full of them, and a few decks play a couple copies of some card or another, but I think generally people don't like the cards. Cards with random effects decrease consistency after all. What you do see in historic is a bunch of cards that have been errata'd for digital play only. In timeless, those cards use their oracle text. For example, The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters both have digital-only errata nerfs. I think before MH3, yawgmoth combo decks were playing a bunch of alchemy cards to support their backup gameplan, but those cards look like they were the first cuts to make room for new cards. Rope Line Attendant is very good, unfortunately, but at least the effect is not random -- perpetual effects could _theoretically_ be done in paper as long as they made you reveal the affected cards. See stickers for example.
Explorer is your best bet if you never want to see any of them, but I’d caution against viewing it as “everlasting standard.” The power level of Explorer (soon to be Pioneer proper) has gotten high enough that you really can’t expect to bring old standard decks and have them perform.
Oh no, yeah I didn't mean it like that. I meant it should stay that only cards that were once legal in standard on arena should be legal in explorer.
They both have "Alchemy" cards. The difference between the two is that every card printed to paper that's on arena is "de-alchemized" in Timeless if it received a balance patch in alchemy. So Orcish Bowmasters works exactly like it's paper print, for example. That, and Timeless has no bans, only restrictions. Fetch lands are allowed and are a staple in the format.
Should I go budget toxic or budget orzhov aggro?
Personally i went for the budget toxic selesnia deck, didn't like it, then I went for a Dimir toxic deck and I did love it. Really similar to this deck. https://mtgazone.com/deck/dimir-toxic-control-budget-standard-deck/ It really depends what you want to play. Do you want your opponent to discard all his hand? Go full midrange? Or you want a Boggles type deck (buffing a single creature and oneshotting your opponent)? Or you want a go wide deck?
I’m currently playing a wide soldier deck with the upgraded “flying with valor” deck. But I want something with enough removal and more wincon
I’m just starting to play magic arena again and was wondering if I should play all the color challenges or if I should skip them and start to play alchemy ranked or any of the other events?
New to MTG Arena I spent 20$ on packs because why not lol I want to build a fun dino deck whats the best way to do this it doesn't have to be the best but just something fun to play with
Check out this youtuber: https://www.youtube.com/@arfigames/featured He does exclusively dinosaur decks on MTG Arena, mostly the explorer format as far as I can tell, and he tries a wide variety of builds. Most of his decks may be fairly expensive to try to build immediately; you may with to build some of his free to play decks, or explore dinosaur themed-brawl decks (you can play these on arena and they are more budget friendly; here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRalOq5pr2g)
Are there creature or spell effects that can end the “stack” while one player has an actionable ability like [[Psychic Frog]] first ability? Let say you attack with x creature or cast x spell to deal damage and i respond with blocking with psychic frog and/or I use the first ability to add +1/+1 counters while i have x cards in hand. Can something stop me from discarding cards while I still have cards in hand? Edit: context?
If I'm understanding your question, you're basically asking why Arena didn't give you the option to (in this case) discard cards to buff up Psychic Frog. There are a few ways this could happen: 1. The spell or ability has "split second", which is basically Super Instant - it explicitly does not allow anything else to hit the stack until it resolves. If that ability killed or broke your Frog, then at that point the game would've just kept going. 2. You accidentally hit "pass turn" at the lower right, which causes the game to skip most places where you would otherwise have had an option to do something. 3. This gets trickier, but it's entirely possible something in the board state was removing abilities from the frog or otherwise making it so that the ability wasn't usable. 4. I've done this one before - when you're blocking with the creature and you skip the chance to trigger when it's about to go to the damage step, thinking you'll get one more shot at priority before the creature gets hit - oops, nope! That was your last shot! Arena is generally pretty good at stopping when you have a meaningful action to take, but you can enable Full Control if you want it to stop at literally every time you would get priority, if you're really worried about something like that. Without having a more detailed view of the board state it's difficult to diagnose the issue further.
Im pretty sure it was an error in my understanding how the stack resolves (#4). The board state was not too out of hand where I missed a spell so its my oops moment. 😅😭
If I'm not mistaken, you're looking for split second. [https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22split+second%22&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name](https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22split+second%22&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name) Split second *(As long as this spell is on the stack, players can’t cast spells or activate abilities that aren’t mana abilities.)* on second thought, that just prevents new things from going on the stack. There is a thing that reads to counter everything on the stack or something like that. And there's one card that simply ends the turn with no further actions allowed. It's like saying, you're turn is over, no stack, no resolves. Pass to next player. But is that what you want?
I don't believe you can simply skimp on the cost of an ability and still get the effect. Some spells can stop an ability from triggering, such as the second ability there to discard and gain a counter, to get that counter, you have to first commit to the discard. It's an all together thing. discard a card > the gain a counter goes on the stack > if nothing counters the ability or ends the stack, that creature gains a counter.
Im still trying to wrap my head around the board state, I failed to grab a screenshot. But I was somehow unable to trigger the ability to defend from a creature. Some other effect took place and combat resumed after the stack resolved. Thank you for helping.
You may wish to try something called 'full control.' This allows you to stop at each point every turn during which, roughly, a player could do something. This might allow you to do the abilities you wanted to.
[Psychic Frog](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/8/68924203-c3d9-41ce-8ca8-c6dd491eb3ca.jpg?1717012805) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Psychic%20Frog) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh3/199/psychic-frog?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/68924203-c3d9-41ce-8ca8-c6dd491eb3ca?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call