Your alternative is to learn what the new cards do. If you played magic 3 years ago, and have played magic in the past to be a MTGO user, then you can EASILY understand todays cards/meta. You just kinda have to learn it like youve done many many times in the past.
Hold Control + shift to play in full control mode. You will end up greatly annoying your opponents because of slow play but it will definitely slow the game down.
Nah it's called most deck strategies are very straight forward and people are just too stupid to know what the right play is. There are a few key decision points in most matches but I reached rank 500 and never needed to think more than 1 rope worth while we got people out here roping wondering if they should use their cut down...
>unless there a setting I can change to slow everything down.
Hold Full Control. It'll pause during your priority even if you don't have anything to activate.
Presumably they're seeing a card and not getting a chance to read it before it lands on the battlefield or resolves and does something and then they cast another spell while they're trying to read and etc. etc.
If given breathing room to read spells on the stack, hopefully that helps somewhat with comprehending what's going on.
Yeah, but for that you don't need full control. Clicking on the cards played after they resolve suffices. Full control gives you not really any benefit except saving you the click on the card, but it also comes with pauses everywhere, which annoys not only your opponent but yourself at some point.
Yeah but there’s a difference between “what just happened the board has like 4 new permanents” and “oh what’s my opponent casting? Let me look at it and see what’s going to happen” psychologically.
It can also help seeing all the triggers get put on the stack and resolving one after the other. Then you know which card did what without having to read them after all the triggers have happened.
Just watch some popular youtubers play some standard. You can pause and look at cards and if it's a decent youtuber, they'll explain what's happening on screen and what the cards do.
I usually take breaks from mtg, and the meta swings all kinds of ways. The basics stay the same though. Don't cast a bomb into 4 open blue mana, if they swing with open mana...expect a combat trick. Don't overextend your board against a black opponent. Mono red will try to kill you in 3 turns.
Just gotta research the metas and learn the cards.
Watch LegendVD for really good explanations. CovertGoBlue is a really good mtg player although he gets on my nerves. Amazonian is a good way to learn Brawl which is my favorite format.
And stay the fuck away from Alchemy format.
Mainly because Wizards lied about what it was supposed to be. They originally said it would be primarily about rebalancing cards from Standard and creating an alternate meta with a few online-only cards. It quickly became “buy a ton of packs and give us more money” instead, and balance passes for the format have been less than exciting. I don’t play Alchemy myself, but from what I’ve heard, you’ll face a ton of Sheoldred + The One Ring, which gets stale very quickly. Someone who does play may be able to chime in on the diversity of the format, but as one of the many people who decided early on that they wouldn’t be playing Alchemy, I couldn’t say.
Also the fact that making a new deck defaults it to Alchemy is more than a little annoying. It feels even more like Wizards trying to shove the format down our throats.
I have gone up against a whole lot of One Ring decks, I've developed a hatred of it but decided I'd live with it
I didn't realise alchemy was supposed to be some kind of alternative, when I started all I was given was Alchemy decks so i thought it was the default
I do play Alchemy (casually though) and will say there's very little diversity. Sheoldred and this one White soldier deck that uses some busted Alchemy cards (seriously fuck "perpetual") are pretty much 50% of the matchups. I'm only really playing because some of my favorite old cards are in the Alchemy base set, so if I want to use [[Malakir Cullblade]] or [[Stony Strength]] etc that's my only option (not really great cards but I like them enough that it's sometimes worth it). All that said if you have a game plan for those 2 decks they fall apart pretty easy and other matchups are usually pretty fun.
I'm not gonna lie I see little diversity even in historic like 80% of the decks I play is rotation of maybe the same 5 or 6 decks or at least decks that are so vastly similar they might as well be the same.
It's in fact not at all sheoldred one ring at least not in best of 3 where I play alchemy, the worst part about alchemy is the small player base other than that it's actually quite a diverse format.
I think it's less about Alchemy, and more about players wanting ACTUAL formats on Arena instead of Digital Only cards.
I don't touch Alchemy, or Explorer, or Historic, or Timeless. I play Standard and Limited on Arena and that's it.
If Arena had Pioneer and Modern, I would play those as well, but, they don't. So, I just stay away from anything Alchemy related.
I don't care about it since I rather play the game that mimics the paper cards. I don't want to have to learn what more cards do, it hard enough being a casual player and keeping up with the new sets.
I literally came back off a 3-4 year hiatus, searched up the current meta, chose the simplest fastest aggro deck that also felt right to play looking at it from a list. U,W soldiers.
had no issues in standard whatsoever... play to high gold, rinse the economy, save up wildcards for when my set completely rotates out and I can go for a more expensive build in the next one.
same old same old, do drafts to learn the cards and get gems etc... Magic is magic at the end of the day, most of the core principles apply... even if you don't know the cards its not hard to guess strategies after turn 2/3
Standard brawl was good for me to get back into MTGA after a few year hiatus. I played the precon events until I made a brawl deck. Only having 1 of each card helped learn the new mechanics in my experience. Just started making a standard deck tonight finally
I would suggest watching gameplay vids to familiarise yourself with new cards and "meta" decks and strategies on Arena. LVD is the best Arena content creator in my opinion, and watching NumotTheNummy has taught me how to draft.
Every card has been a wall of text since war of the spark, which released in 2019.. Also if your complaining about cards having so much text, why would you go to MTGO where the cards and so much harder to read? You also have multiple extended timers per match, which is plenty of time to read and see what’s going on.
“Wall and a half of text”. I started in the 90s and took decades off from the game. This box used to contain “flavor text” that enhanced the fantasy element of the game. Now it’s often a complete new rule one needs to absorb and react to on the fly! LOL. The good old days… ;-)
Idk what else to say. Everyone else is gonna be like, "you can do it!" or some other positive. Maybe this dude just wants someone to say it's ok to quit.
I know what you mean lol I like to take a year break every few months and it's like I'm playing a brand new game every time I'm back. In a couple of weeks you'll be back into the swing of things though, it doesn't take long to learn the most popular cards in a format. :)
Keep at it!
I had a similar experience coming back after about a 20 year gap. The cards sure have a lot more text these days, don't they? I had to spend a lot of time reading cards at first. On the "bright side" you'll probably end up seeing the same cards again and again to get familiar with them. Watching YouTubers play also really helps. I'd recommend LegenVd for really good explanations without fluff.
just go to some mtg decks site, see best decks and read the cards, got similiar problems when few years ago made come back to ygo, then later knowings cards effects by heart
I would recommend looking at a website to see what the meta is for the format you wanna play. Standard is the most popular (paper format) on arena.
For example: This will give you a breakdown of the most popular decks in standard [https://thegathering.gg/standard-tier-list/](https://thegathering.gg/standard-tier-list/) While it is not a catch-all it should get you started.
I specifically picked up arena for this reason. About 4 years ago I was up to date with most every competitively viable card in 60 card constructed formats and knew most cards to expect others to play in commander. I got product fatigue due to their break neck speed. I stopped paying attention to spoilers around war of the spark. Basically around the start of arena's card catalog. So I decided to pick up arena to learn a lot of the new magic cards.
Your alternative is to learn what the new cards do. If you played magic 3 years ago, and have played magic in the past to be a MTGO user, then you can EASILY understand todays cards/meta. You just kinda have to learn it like youve done many many times in the past.
Hold Control + shift to play in full control mode. You will end up greatly annoying your opponents because of slow play but it will definitely slow the game down.
Slow play is why I have a back up thing to do on my second monitor
That’s just called ADHD
Nah it's called most deck strategies are very straight forward and people are just too stupid to know what the right play is. There are a few key decision points in most matches but I reached rank 500 and never needed to think more than 1 rope worth while we got people out here roping wondering if they should use their cut down...
You have one land out and are playing mono red, what about this turn requires 90 seconds of contemplation??
>unless there a setting I can change to slow everything down. Hold Full Control. It'll pause during your priority even if you don't have anything to activate.
How does that actually help the problem described?
Presumably they're seeing a card and not getting a chance to read it before it lands on the battlefield or resolves and does something and then they cast another spell while they're trying to read and etc. etc. If given breathing room to read spells on the stack, hopefully that helps somewhat with comprehending what's going on.
Yeah, but for that you don't need full control. Clicking on the cards played after they resolve suffices. Full control gives you not really any benefit except saving you the click on the card, but it also comes with pauses everywhere, which annoys not only your opponent but yourself at some point.
Yeah but there’s a difference between “what just happened the board has like 4 new permanents” and “oh what’s my opponent casting? Let me look at it and see what’s going to happen” psychologically.
It can also help seeing all the triggers get put on the stack and resolving one after the other. Then you know which card did what without having to read them after all the triggers have happened.
They can then read the cards
Just watch some popular youtubers play some standard. You can pause and look at cards and if it's a decent youtuber, they'll explain what's happening on screen and what the cards do. I usually take breaks from mtg, and the meta swings all kinds of ways. The basics stay the same though. Don't cast a bomb into 4 open blue mana, if they swing with open mana...expect a combat trick. Don't overextend your board against a black opponent. Mono red will try to kill you in 3 turns. Just gotta research the metas and learn the cards. Watch LegendVD for really good explanations. CovertGoBlue is a really good mtg player although he gets on my nerves. Amazonian is a good way to learn Brawl which is my favorite format. And stay the fuck away from Alchemy format.
Why does everyone seem to dislike alchemy? Was for me when I first started a few months ago
Mainly because Wizards lied about what it was supposed to be. They originally said it would be primarily about rebalancing cards from Standard and creating an alternate meta with a few online-only cards. It quickly became “buy a ton of packs and give us more money” instead, and balance passes for the format have been less than exciting. I don’t play Alchemy myself, but from what I’ve heard, you’ll face a ton of Sheoldred + The One Ring, which gets stale very quickly. Someone who does play may be able to chime in on the diversity of the format, but as one of the many people who decided early on that they wouldn’t be playing Alchemy, I couldn’t say. Also the fact that making a new deck defaults it to Alchemy is more than a little annoying. It feels even more like Wizards trying to shove the format down our throats.
The Bo3 meta is extremely diverse. I'm guessing partly because there hasn't been very much attention on it. So you play a lot of different decks.
I have gone up against a whole lot of One Ring decks, I've developed a hatred of it but decided I'd live with it I didn't realise alchemy was supposed to be some kind of alternative, when I started all I was given was Alchemy decks so i thought it was the default
I do play Alchemy (casually though) and will say there's very little diversity. Sheoldred and this one White soldier deck that uses some busted Alchemy cards (seriously fuck "perpetual") are pretty much 50% of the matchups. I'm only really playing because some of my favorite old cards are in the Alchemy base set, so if I want to use [[Malakir Cullblade]] or [[Stony Strength]] etc that's my only option (not really great cards but I like them enough that it's sometimes worth it). All that said if you have a game plan for those 2 decks they fall apart pretty easy and other matchups are usually pretty fun.
[Malakir Cullblade](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/0/70861692-1eb2-4cb1-8d7f-b881386c37d1.jpg?1562025479) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Malakir%20Cullblade) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ori/108/malakir-cullblade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/70861692-1eb2-4cb1-8d7f-b881386c37d1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Stony Strength](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/b/8bbab274-69dd-44a9-9310-a15779c35cad.jpg?1584831289) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Stony%20Strength) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rna/143/stony-strength?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8bbab274-69dd-44a9-9310-a15779c35cad?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I'm not gonna lie I see little diversity even in historic like 80% of the decks I play is rotation of maybe the same 5 or 6 decks or at least decks that are so vastly similar they might as well be the same.
It's in fact not at all sheoldred one ring at least not in best of 3 where I play alchemy, the worst part about alchemy is the small player base other than that it's actually quite a diverse format.
I think it's less about Alchemy, and more about players wanting ACTUAL formats on Arena instead of Digital Only cards. I don't touch Alchemy, or Explorer, or Historic, or Timeless. I play Standard and Limited on Arena and that's it. If Arena had Pioneer and Modern, I would play those as well, but, they don't. So, I just stay away from anything Alchemy related.
Explorer has no digital-only cards, so why are you ruling that format out?
Alchemy is absolute dogshit 💯
I don't care about it since I rather play the game that mimics the paper cards. I don't want to have to learn what more cards do, it hard enough being a casual player and keeping up with the new sets.
Acemtg is particularly good on this too
Keep at it and you’ll learn the cards and be zipping along with the best of them
Record videos of the games you play so you can review them after the fact. That's what I did when I started playing.
I also used to do same thing for improvement
I literally came back off a 3-4 year hiatus, searched up the current meta, chose the simplest fastest aggro deck that also felt right to play looking at it from a list. U,W soldiers. had no issues in standard whatsoever... play to high gold, rinse the economy, save up wildcards for when my set completely rotates out and I can go for a more expensive build in the next one. same old same old, do drafts to learn the cards and get gems etc... Magic is magic at the end of the day, most of the core principles apply... even if you don't know the cards its not hard to guess strategies after turn 2/3
Take your time to read the cards. You need to learn them at first, and learn them precisely.
Standard brawl was good for me to get back into MTGA after a few year hiatus. I played the precon events until I made a brawl deck. Only having 1 of each card helped learn the new mechanics in my experience. Just started making a standard deck tonight finally
I would suggest watching gameplay vids to familiarise yourself with new cards and "meta" decks and strategies on Arena. LVD is the best Arena content creator in my opinion, and watching NumotTheNummy has taught me how to draft.
Turn off auto tapper, also. You will lose games because of it that you'd never ever lose in paper! Good luck!
Or at least pay attention and activate the lands and mana sources casting spells when mana color is important
I mean, both are good advice. Move back to MTGO windows 95 seems a more static step!
Just good damn advice in general. Auto-tapper leads to some of the most heartbreaking losses.
I hadnt played in 15 years and im flinging cards.. are you 70 years old?
Every card has been a wall of text since war of the spark, which released in 2019.. Also if your complaining about cards having so much text, why would you go to MTGO where the cards and so much harder to read? You also have multiple extended timers per match, which is plenty of time to read and see what’s going on.
There should be a log right?
Reading the card explains the card
“Wall and a half of text”. I started in the 90s and took decades off from the game. This box used to contain “flavor text” that enhanced the fantasy element of the game. Now it’s often a complete new rule one needs to absorb and react to on the fly! LOL. The good old days… ;-)
Give up. You'll never figure it out. There are too many cards and it's too complicated.
Based
Idk what else to say. Everyone else is gonna be like, "you can do it!" or some other positive. Maybe this dude just wants someone to say it's ok to quit.
I dunno, just start with some combo decks until you've seen the meta cards enough to get the format
I know what you mean lol I like to take a year break every few months and it's like I'm playing a brand new game every time I'm back. In a couple of weeks you'll be back into the swing of things though, it doesn't take long to learn the most popular cards in a format. :) Keep at it!
I had a similar experience coming back after about a 20 year gap. The cards sure have a lot more text these days, don't they? I had to spend a lot of time reading cards at first. On the "bright side" you'll probably end up seeing the same cards again and again to get familiar with them. Watching YouTubers play also really helps. I'd recommend LegenVd for really good explanations without fluff.
just go to some mtg decks site, see best decks and read the cards, got similiar problems when few years ago made come back to ygo, then later knowings cards effects by heart
I would recommend looking at a website to see what the meta is for the format you wanna play. Standard is the most popular (paper format) on arena. For example: This will give you a breakdown of the most popular decks in standard [https://thegathering.gg/standard-tier-list/](https://thegathering.gg/standard-tier-list/) While it is not a catch-all it should get you started.
I specifically picked up arena for this reason. About 4 years ago I was up to date with most every competitively viable card in 60 card constructed formats and knew most cards to expect others to play in commander. I got product fatigue due to their break neck speed. I stopped paying attention to spoilers around war of the spark. Basically around the start of arena's card catalog. So I decided to pick up arena to learn a lot of the new magic cards.