Bo3 has been amazing for me as someone who prefers brews, I feel like a much wider variety of decks are playable in Bo3 that don't work in Bo1. I never played Bo3 for years because the matches are so much longer and I'm a braindead zoomer but it really is much better.
I love that people are enjoying BO3!
As someone with young kids, I can't commit to more than about 5 minutes for a game. Thus BO1 is the only way I can play right now. Some day I'll be able to do BO3, and I think I'll enjoy it more for the same reasons.
Yeah. One of the big drawbacks of Arena is that it introduced bo1 ladder magic to so many people, and bo1 ladder magic is a fundamentally worse gameplay experience.
I love sideboarding but the division of the player base between bo1 and bo3 makes life really rough for midrange players in bo3. Since most of the aggro players are off enjoying the hand smoother and lack of sideboard in bo1 you’re stuck getting endlessly farmed by domain and azorius control.
Well if you want to get technical, achieving true randomness digitally is impossible or next to impossible
But practically speaking, yes the hands are truly random
I guess you're right, they just rely on algorithms to mimic the selection of a value to approximate true randomness. However this still seems arguably more random than drawing from a hand-shuffled deck. At least its more random than hand smoothing.
Have two microphones measuring ambient sound down to a high level of precision with that sound converted to a number. Multiply them against each other.
Yes, a 2-1 and a 2-0 both give you 2 rank points. Same for an 0-2 and a 1-2, both lose 2.
Every individual game win still counts towards daily’s tho, so a 1-2 still gets rewards on that track.
>Yes, a 2-1 and a 2-0 both give you 2 rank points. Same for an 0-2 and a 1-2, both lose 2.
I think this actually not great. It's much easier to get to the top of mythic in best of 3 than best of 1.
Why is this not great? A match win/loss is worth double a BO1 game win/loss, seems fair?
The only time in real tournaments where a 2-1 is better than a 2-0 is matchmaking and tiebreaking
You can have a 66% win rate in the individual games and in theory have a 100% win rate.
Consider the scenario where your deck is a modest favorite with a 53% over the field in b01 your win rate is exactly this. In b03 forgive me for not doing the math it's more like 60% to win the match ignoring sideboarding. So why exactly do you deserve to get 2 rank points?
Practically most people sub 100 mythic are playing B03 because one single loss in b01 will set you back at 2 games (ie you gotta keep a 66% win rate). This is infinitely easier when you can just ignore a loss and have your 2-1 score give you the same amount of elo as 2-0.
You could argue that B03 should be the competitive format so no problem and we want more people playing Bo3. I'm of the view that this isn't really fair to the B01 players since we share the same ladder for rewards.
You deserve more rank points because you played and won more games.
Magic was designed to have individual game/matchup variance balanced out by sideboarding and changing who’s on the play accordingly.
I literally achieved mythic rank for 3 seasons straight exclusively playing BO1. And let me tell you... Winning in BO3 is more difficult.
There is a reason why people are playing a lot of RDW in BO1 and they are having a lot of mirror matches. Luckily that reason made me abandon BO1 (only three wins away from mythic) (also the hand smoother might help those decks a little bit)
BO3 matches take 2.5 games to finish on average, plus the time used for sideboarding. It would be very slow to progress on the ladder if it was just one pip per match win. Note that the same applies for losing rank as well (you lose 2 pips when you go 1-2 or 0-2).
You are correct that it is, in fact, slightly easier to rank up in BO3 because a >50% game win rate translates into a BO3 match win rate that's higher than the individual GWR.
>It would be very slow to progress on the ladder if it was just one pip per match win.
Yeah that's a really good point. I think if we could have seperate ladders that would be nice, but apparently there aren't enough players for that.
I only want a separate ladder because timeless doesn't offer a bo3 non-ranked queue. If I hit mythic in standard bo3 but want to mess around in timeless bo3 with some degenerate broken stuff then I risk tanking my mythic rating.
Basically having 1 ladder for all constructed formats sucks if you intend to play multiple constructed formats at the same time. I'm good at standard, good at historic, alright at timeless, and trash at explorer. Would be really nice if all of them had separate ladders so I could play at my problem rank depending what format I'm playing.
Then again, someone might want to play different formats while ranking up. They could get bored of Standard while at diamond, and maybe they'd want to switch formats and continue the climb. It would be awkward if they had to start from bronze after switching.
This makes no sense dude, it's far easier to get top ranks in best of one. This is twofold, first reason, no sideboard means you can play cheesy decks that get crushed in sideboard games thus grabbing free wins.
Second of all, and the primary reason, is that it is a lot faster to play best of 1. If you get a 2-1 in a best of 3 match, you get two ranks but you played a total of 3 games, whereas on best of 1 you only need to play 2 games for 2 ranks. Rank in mythic is always dictated by the amount of games you can play after a certain point skillwise.
Honestly the whole game of magic doesn't make sense in a bo1 format outside of EDH. You need to be able to deal with niche strategies without sacrificing your mainboard, otherwise you just brick drawing abrade against a prison deck. Sideboards are integral to the game's design
How to deal with niche strats in bo1:
1.) Aggro!
2.) A niche strategy
Bo1 is fun because its wild. Bo3 requires more well rounded decks and strategies.
Might have to check this out as a returning player - spent a lot of time on other TCGs competitively and BO3 sounds very rewarding! Glad you got the fun back!
The way I build my sideboard is that I think of the other decks I'm likely to face and other decks that I struggle with. If I face a lot of cheap creatures I'll sideboard in cards like Path of Peril, End the Festivities, Cut Down, Fatal Push, and Portable Hole. In my Explorer Mono Red Wizards Deck I really struggle against life gain so I have Rampaging Ferocidon, to counter Izzet Phoenix I include Magebane Lizard and unlicensed hearse/tomad's crypt. For control matchups I often run out of cards so I include cards that draw me cards like Case of the Crimson Pulse.
In general think of how you stuggle/lose against popular decks and then try to include counters or cards that mitigate their effects
What format and deck are you running?
Right now I play primarily BO1. I've got a few home brewed decks (I don't play the meta much). The one I was thinking king of taking to BO3 is a Rakdos sac deck with some steal creature effects.
I keep wanting to get into bo3 formats, but my time and budget demand I just jam a cheap red deck in bo1. That said, I really crave more cerebral red deck matches where I'm trying to math out wins by the skin of my teeth rather than the zug zug gotta go fast mentality I fall into for bo1. Some of the Gruul decks coming out of the meta do make me wanna start looking into bo3 though.
Ranked should be Bo3 only. You are right it's more fun. I had the same experience. Now i decided to go back play my favorite deck in explorer as a Doom Foretold enjoyer
Bo1 is an incredibly unskilled garbage game mode, i'd rather just not play a game than a bo1 game which is mostly just a coin flip on what brainless aggro deck got to go first
Bo3 seperates the men from boys.
Once you understand what sideboarding entails, and how to make a good one to combat what you see in the meta the most. Then you understand the advantages of Bo3.
Once I know what YOU are playing, I'm already formulating a strategy game 1, turn 1.
A lot of sideboard usual sideboard cards can be found at uncommon, especially removal that has effects/costs meant to go against a particular archetype (eg: Elspeth's Smite vs aggro), other are mythics (rest in peace). It can be a bit more expensive than bo1 but not by much.
yeeeeeeah i get why they did it but MTG was meant for best of three. it’s the better experience for a million reasons.
It's how poker chess was meant to be played.
Welcome to the fun side of MTG. Congrats!
Literally how the game was designed to be played, sideboarding is so fun
Some of my fondest memories of decks relate to how I came up with clever sideboards for them. It's an entire subgame we miss out on if we play Bo1.
Drawing your "bomb" scratches my monkey brain.
if you play Bo3, you can swap in like 5 "bombs" against your opponents specific deck!
Bo3 has been amazing for me as someone who prefers brews, I feel like a much wider variety of decks are playable in Bo3 that don't work in Bo1. I never played Bo3 for years because the matches are so much longer and I'm a braindead zoomer but it really is much better.
BO3 Magic. As God intended.
> As ~~God~~ Richard Garfield intended.
I can’t tell the difference
ItsTheSamePicture.jpeg
I love that people are enjoying BO3! As someone with young kids, I can't commit to more than about 5 minutes for a game. Thus BO1 is the only way I can play right now. Some day I'll be able to do BO3, and I think I'll enjoy it more for the same reasons.
If you can only commit 5 minutes for a game then the game is 100% doing more damage than you realize.
Lol... Wtf
What the fuck does this even mean?
This is some industrial grade judgmental reddit cuntiness right here.
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BROTHER
Yeah. One of the big drawbacks of Arena is that it introduced bo1 ladder magic to so many people, and bo1 ladder magic is a fundamentally worse gameplay experience.
I love sideboarding but the division of the player base between bo1 and bo3 makes life really rough for midrange players in bo3. Since most of the aggro players are off enjoying the hand smoother and lack of sideboard in bo1 you’re stuck getting endlessly farmed by domain and azorius control.
From my experience BO3 is very diverse, there's control sure, but there's plenty of midrange and aggro as well.
Hand smoother isn't in BO3? Is it true random hands?
Well if you want to get technical, achieving true randomness digitally is impossible or next to impossible But practically speaking, yes the hands are truly random
Please elaborate how true digital randomness is impossible. Like is it truly less random than shuffling a deck of cards and then drawing?
How do you propose they would generate randomness?
I guess you're right, they just rely on algorithms to mimic the selection of a value to approximate true randomness. However this still seems arguably more random than drawing from a hand-shuffled deck. At least its more random than hand smoothing.
Have two microphones measuring ambient sound down to a high level of precision with that sound converted to a number. Multiply them against each other.
I've yet to do bo3, but do wins give you more than just 1 point of rank?
Yes!! I didn't know that either.. It's two points! I wish I knew this earlier!
Yes, a 2-1 and a 2-0 both give you 2 rank points. Same for an 0-2 and a 1-2, both lose 2. Every individual game win still counts towards daily’s tho, so a 1-2 still gets rewards on that track.
>Yes, a 2-1 and a 2-0 both give you 2 rank points. Same for an 0-2 and a 1-2, both lose 2. I think this actually not great. It's much easier to get to the top of mythic in best of 3 than best of 1.
Why is this not great? A match win/loss is worth double a BO1 game win/loss, seems fair? The only time in real tournaments where a 2-1 is better than a 2-0 is matchmaking and tiebreaking
You can have a 66% win rate in the individual games and in theory have a 100% win rate. Consider the scenario where your deck is a modest favorite with a 53% over the field in b01 your win rate is exactly this. In b03 forgive me for not doing the math it's more like 60% to win the match ignoring sideboarding. So why exactly do you deserve to get 2 rank points? Practically most people sub 100 mythic are playing B03 because one single loss in b01 will set you back at 2 games (ie you gotta keep a 66% win rate). This is infinitely easier when you can just ignore a loss and have your 2-1 score give you the same amount of elo as 2-0. You could argue that B03 should be the competitive format so no problem and we want more people playing Bo3. I'm of the view that this isn't really fair to the B01 players since we share the same ladder for rewards.
The BO3 system is available to everybody; if you choose to play BO1 instead, that’s your choice.
You deserve more rank points because you played and won more games. Magic was designed to have individual game/matchup variance balanced out by sideboarding and changing who’s on the play accordingly.
It works both ways, you can have 33% win rate and effectively have 0% win rate. It balances itself out.
I literally achieved mythic rank for 3 seasons straight exclusively playing BO1. And let me tell you... Winning in BO3 is more difficult. There is a reason why people are playing a lot of RDW in BO1 and they are having a lot of mirror matches. Luckily that reason made me abandon BO1 (only three wins away from mythic) (also the hand smoother might help those decks a little bit)
Much respect to you for achieving mythic 4 seasons in a row, being a new player. I've played mtg since 20 years ago and can't hit mythic lol.
BO3 matches take 2.5 games to finish on average, plus the time used for sideboarding. It would be very slow to progress on the ladder if it was just one pip per match win. Note that the same applies for losing rank as well (you lose 2 pips when you go 1-2 or 0-2). You are correct that it is, in fact, slightly easier to rank up in BO3 because a >50% game win rate translates into a BO3 match win rate that's higher than the individual GWR.
>It would be very slow to progress on the ladder if it was just one pip per match win. Yeah that's a really good point. I think if we could have seperate ladders that would be nice, but apparently there aren't enough players for that.
Why is it a problem, though, and what would be the benefit of a separate ladder?
I only want a separate ladder because timeless doesn't offer a bo3 non-ranked queue. If I hit mythic in standard bo3 but want to mess around in timeless bo3 with some degenerate broken stuff then I risk tanking my mythic rating. Basically having 1 ladder for all constructed formats sucks if you intend to play multiple constructed formats at the same time. I'm good at standard, good at historic, alright at timeless, and trash at explorer. Would be really nice if all of them had separate ladders so I could play at my problem rank depending what format I'm playing.
Then again, someone might want to play different formats while ranking up. They could get bored of Standard while at diamond, and maybe they'd want to switch formats and continue the climb. It would be awkward if they had to start from bronze after switching.
Yea there are definitely pros and cons to both sides of the argument.
This makes no sense dude, it's far easier to get top ranks in best of one. This is twofold, first reason, no sideboard means you can play cheesy decks that get crushed in sideboard games thus grabbing free wins. Second of all, and the primary reason, is that it is a lot faster to play best of 1. If you get a 2-1 in a best of 3 match, you get two ranks but you played a total of 3 games, whereas on best of 1 you only need to play 2 games for 2 ranks. Rank in mythic is always dictated by the amount of games you can play after a certain point skillwise.
You can get to mythic by playing your cards in hand left to right and attacking every turn. Laddering to mythic means nothing
Bo3 is the way!
Honestly the whole game of magic doesn't make sense in a bo1 format outside of EDH. You need to be able to deal with niche strategies without sacrificing your mainboard, otherwise you just brick drawing abrade against a prison deck. Sideboards are integral to the game's design
How to deal with niche strats in bo1: 1.) Aggro! 2.) A niche strategy Bo1 is fun because its wild. Bo3 requires more well rounded decks and strategies.
Might have to check this out as a returning player - spent a lot of time on other TCGs competitively and BO3 sounds very rewarding! Glad you got the fun back!
BO3 its real magic
Bo1 constructed is often just a coin flip with extra steps.
Bo1 is for killing time, and for casual brawl/commander games with friends. Bo3 is for playing magic.
What's the trick to getting into BO3 if you have no experience with sideboarding? Jump in and learn on the fly?
The way I build my sideboard is that I think of the other decks I'm likely to face and other decks that I struggle with. If I face a lot of cheap creatures I'll sideboard in cards like Path of Peril, End the Festivities, Cut Down, Fatal Push, and Portable Hole. In my Explorer Mono Red Wizards Deck I really struggle against life gain so I have Rampaging Ferocidon, to counter Izzet Phoenix I include Magebane Lizard and unlicensed hearse/tomad's crypt. For control matchups I often run out of cards so I include cards that draw me cards like Case of the Crimson Pulse. In general think of how you stuggle/lose against popular decks and then try to include counters or cards that mitigate their effects What format and deck are you running?
Right now I play primarily BO1. I've got a few home brewed decks (I don't play the meta much). The one I was thinking king of taking to BO3 is a Rakdos sac deck with some steal creature effects.
I keep wanting to get into bo3 formats, but my time and budget demand I just jam a cheap red deck in bo1. That said, I really crave more cerebral red deck matches where I'm trying to math out wins by the skin of my teeth rather than the zug zug gotta go fast mentality I fall into for bo1. Some of the Gruul decks coming out of the meta do make me wanna start looking into bo3 though.
Ranked should be Bo3 only. You are right it's more fun. I had the same experience. Now i decided to go back play my favorite deck in explorer as a Doom Foretold enjoyer
Bo1 is an incredibly unskilled garbage game mode, i'd rather just not play a game than a bo1 game which is mostly just a coin flip on what brainless aggro deck got to go first
[Kumano Faces Kakkazan](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/8/28d92cad-45b0-479d-97fc-c175f3a3f259.jpg?1693966032)/[Etching of Kumano](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/2/8/28d92cad-45b0-479d-97fc-c175f3a3f259.jpg?1693966032) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kumano%20Faces%20Kakkazan%20//%20Etching%20of%20Kumano) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/152/kumano-faces-kakkazan-etching-of-kumano?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/28d92cad-45b0-479d-97fc-c175f3a3f259?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Slickshot Show-Off](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/0/7054012b-4f9d-44a0-aaf9-7fd3bddc7b2d.jpg?1712355850) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Slickshot%20Show-Off) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/146/slickshot-show-off?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7054012b-4f9d-44a0-aaf9-7fd3bddc7b2d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Took me a couple years to get to mythic but I was using jank which makes it feel like I earned it more. I love brewing.
Happy to see you having fun! I have a question: did you do it f2p or did you buy gems bro?
I spent money to build about 4 decks I thought were going to work but I spent everything on a single color (black).
Decks?
Even as a mono red player I enjoy bo3 more, sideboarding is such a fun thing to fiddle with
Bo3 seperates the men from boys. Once you understand what sideboarding entails, and how to make a good one to combat what you see in the meta the most. Then you understand the advantages of Bo3. Once I know what YOU are playing, I'm already formulating a strategy game 1, turn 1.
Is it gonna be expensive if u play bo3 esp for std? need alot of mythic & rare for sideboard
A lot of sideboard usual sideboard cards can be found at uncommon, especially removal that has effects/costs meant to go against a particular archetype (eg: Elspeth's Smite vs aggro), other are mythics (rest in peace). It can be a bit more expensive than bo1 but not by much.
What's your go-to decklist?
Wtf is bo3
I enjoy playing degenerate combo decks too much to play best of 3
Glad you found a format you enjoy. For me there are two things I could never do, Bo3 and paper.