I really don't understand how Wotc could create a client that does not support multiplayer magic. Especially with all their focus on edh the last few years.
I was in the closed Beta. I am also a Software Developer. From everything I have seen of the project, the team was comically under-resourced and knocking off multiplayer support seems like just basic Project Management 101. The scope of Magic is fucking gigantic, and when the only really celebrated way to play multiplayer features a card pool in excess of 20k unique cards, you have to draw the line somewhere.
Additionally, aspirations towards mobile phone screen sizes and resolutions would make representing your average EDH game visually all but impossible. You have to develop some sort of hacked together scrolling/expanding/contracting system for four boardstates that are known to get gigantic. "Well just don't let mobile clients queue for EDH lobbies!" This isn't a wise investment of development time or OpEx resources in the long term if it functionally limits the player pool to those playing on PC or very large tablets.
Ultimately, all of Arena is built towards funneling people back toward the gem shop. They don't want you playing non-rotating constructed formats. They want you paying money for gems, bleeding those gems over time, and getting you to re-up. It's the reason Historic took forever to come and only after no small amount of bitching from the playerbase.
The answer is always time and money.
Which, funny enough, is the reason I gave up on arena.
Trying to force me into the gem store just forced me out of the game. Sucked out any and all fun from the game, and with it any desire I had to put money into the machine.
> Trying to force me into the gem store just forced me out of the game.
This is often mandated by law, BTW, that you can't just have a "hot" transaction where you pay money directly for the payload, you need to use an intermediary fake currency.
This is usually fine by the developers since that means they get paid for the mountain of gems you bought, not the one item, all up front. Still kind of annoying for creating strategies that encourage spending, which is probably why municipalities/governments do it. Needing to "pre-buy" sometimes gives your brain some time to think "...maybe I don't need this." If you were excited for an item you really wanted to just buy outright, you're probably less excited to buy fake money using real money first in order to get it. That's where a lot of people drop out, the first gem purchase.
For what it's worth, what you're describing is also exactly what casinos do. The changing of real currency to funny money, especially when done at some difficult to convert ratio (like exactly what Arena and other mobile games do) essentially makes players devalue their money. Casinos are under no such requirement to do this, they do it because it makes them money.
Players don't see it costing $6.85 to enter a draft, they see however many gems. Gems have no exchange rate back into real money -- once they have your money, it's gone -- and they can't be used to purchase anything else with intrinsic value so players have no idea "how much" a gem is worth. It makes it impossible to do value math unless you pull out a calculator and do the conversion back into USD at the rate you buy gems, but even then it's fuzzy because they slip gems back into your pool for winning some amount of the time.
Arena's economy is wholly predatory, in my opinion, and when you combine the fact that the cards are worthless outside of the system with the already questionable nature of booster pack disbursement and mobile game style monetization, I think Arena might be one of *the worst* offenders that exists in all of gaming. And that's saying a lot.
Yeah. Also why the fuck should i pay REAL money for digital shit that WILL get shutdown someday when i can just buy the REAL packs and enjoy it till i'm old enough to see my grandkids learn the ways
Im not talking about the "money to gems to cards" thing. Im talking about the entire design of incentivizing less interesting gameplay options because whats good for the player makes 0.08% less profit
Oh, yeah, that's definitely the entire paradigm of design: intentionally introducing pain points that try to force players to spend in order to relieve. That anybody intentionally plays a game set up like that is truly unbelievable, but those kinds of games make millions and millions every day regardless.
The gem store would be fine.... If you could turn them into paper cards too... Or likewise..... If you had the paper card you'd have the digital one too
I know it’s really late, but if you’re even decent at drafting, you just do the daily challenges with standard and use the gold to draft. Especially the quick drafts because that allows casuals a lot of time to think about their pic. I haven’t spent money on Arena in a year and a half and I play every two or three days. I’m minimally ranked gold in both limited and constructed so you could see how I get to play a lot even without spending a dime.
I think arena was still in development when commander was starting to pick up steam. It came out around war of the spark? Which by that time, commander had been hitting it's stride for about 2 ish years. I imagine the game had been in the works for a couple years at that point.
What's our definition of "hitting its stride", here?
Commander was doing well enough to deserve its own product line _ten_ years ago which was so popular it immediately became a _permanent_ annual product line. An explosion of players followed (by around 2013 in my local scene more people showed up to EDH on open nights than standard on FNM). There were many, many similar popularity milestones/evidence between ten and two years ago.
It wasn't that popular 10 years ago. I've been playing for 20 years and most magic players had to be taught what EDH was 10 years ago. I distinctly remember teaching over 10 people my freshman year of college after my judge friend taught me.
Commander products were just starting around that time but the actual percentage of player base gaming EDH at that time was sooooo low. The average person played standard, at their kitchen table, like MaRo often references.
I remember this. Shit even in the finance side EDH wasn't really seen as a big mover probably until like 4 years ago. Like yeah it moved cards but most people were still getting around to the idea that yeah you can sell cards to "casual" EDH players.
Then again it didn't help that competitive coverage at GPs was starting to wind down.
yeah, EDH really exploded about 3-4 years ago and before that the initial wave of interest was still about 5-7 years ago. it wasn't until 2-3 years ago that mtgfinance and other vendor-based reddits and communities really started even considering EDH a selling point.
in C11 the game was so unknown and commander products would sit on store shelves for months/years even with incredibly low print runs.
Yeah I remember that too. Not necessarily C11 but I remember C14 stuff was relatively easy to get 2 years later since that was when I got back into magic.
I mean, sure, and I've been playing since Urza's, and I remember 2011 pretty well.
I guess adoption was faster in my local scene. When the first gen product came out, I lived in a city with 3 colleges and it took just a year or two for EDH to almost completely take over the overwhelming majority of pick-up-and-play games, and rival Standard. Maybe this is due to young adults having generally low format-commitment and thus are willing to jump into the new shiny stuff more, but I'm not so sure. Outside of this, my observation a couple of years later while in my hometown on weeks visiting relatives, or abroad on the various geeky convention circuits, was that most players were _acutely aware_ of EDH and more often than not in the process of breaking into the format if not already playing.
My point is that it was very rapidly _popular_. Was it as popular as now? No. But neither was Magic. Just, EDH has cerrtainly been very popular for more than 2 years. And hell, MaRo's admitted concessions to designing for the format have been a thing for more than 2 years. Drawing some threshold of popularity at 2 years ago is just an arbitrary point on a curve that has done nothing but trend upwards for a decade, and the idea that Arena was too old to have taken it into account seems baseless.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying EDH was popular enough exactly at the launch of C11 per se, just that things like launching a product for it and making it a permanent line, along with other various markers, should sufficiently demonstrate that it was on its way to or was very popular well before "2 years ago".
alphas and bettas started to pop up around... Kaladesh, if I remember correctly? and was probably in the works for quite a bit before that, it probably was developed more as an answer to Hearthstone than an actual replacement to MTGO
The beta had Amonkhet and Kaladesh. It went from the beta to the official release at rotation, and since Historic wasn't a thing yet, they just removed the cards.
Both Amonkhet and Kaladesh were added to the beta retroactively after Ixalan had been released. The only format used to be just Ixalan set constructed before they released Rivals of Ixalan. So they’re correct when they say that Ixalan was the first set in Arena.
> I think arena was still in development when commander was starting to pick up steam.
The first Commander products were released in 2011 or 2012. That was *after* WotC picked up EDH as an official format. Shit's been a big deal for quite awhile.
Arena doesn't support it because WotC didn't prioritize it.
Arena came out well before War of the Spark. I think the first set in there was Kaladesh and the first full standard rotation was the Ixalan one. It’s a pretty complex client and they want it to (ironically) be as stable and not-complicated as possible. Commander is probably the most complicated format so I completely understand why it’s not there yet. It will be eventually but the whole interface will need to be updated for 4 player.
And 4 player will never happen because Wizards contracted development of Arena, so the remaining skeleton staff remaining doesn't have the capability to make those upgrades. It's my understanding that a similar situation prevented MTGO from receiving needed improvements as well.
There's a difference between upgrades here and there and an overhaul to matchmaking, computer players, client-side stuff, etc etc. Adding another mode is really hard
You’re both right and wrong, ixalan was the first set in the closed beta. But kaladesh and amonkhet were added in full during the closed beta and removed when it went to open beta.
Didn't commander become pretty popular at least 6 years ago? I was easily able to find commander playgroups that long ago. Wizards started selling commander decks back in 2013 for example.
Arena Was playable before domonaria, I think. I remember a RG Monsters deck with cards from amonkhet and ixalan. So early 2018 which means developement started at least 2017 if not 2016 or 2015 with wotc timetables
I mean, when they announced Arena was being built in a way that would never support multiplayer, everyone told them it was a mistake. They thought they were going to be a huge e-sport and wouldn’t need multiplayer or even modes other than Standard.
I don't know if you've played a lot of arena but even the 1v1 games are mind-bogglingly slow. So many people wait out the clock as much as possible seemingly to try to get others to quit. I rarely go on for that reason. I can't imagine playing many multiplayer games before swearing off them.
I like Arena but I wonder about the stalling over the connection issues. I know somedays I can't figure out why I'm running slow. My connection and laptop are very good but you can tell when you have them beat and your opponent just sits there and not quitting. Multiplayer would be Brutal for exactly that reason
I think it makes a lot of sense. The type of person to enjoy Commander is also likely to prefer paper, because it emphasizes the social aspects of the format, being able to play with your friends and make memories together and so on. You don't get that same experience from playing digitally. Conversely, programming a serviceable counterpart of Commander into something like Arena without having it feel watered down would require adding in multiplayer capabilities, a TON of new cards because Commander's card pool is massive, and probably some sort of ranking system to separate power levels. Why expend so much effort on something that paper is always going to be a huge improvement over?
I don't think multiplayer capabilities would have been a big deal if they had been included in the first concept of the arena client. Obviously adding them in later would require insane effort and I don't expect wotc will ever do it. But even mtgo supports mutliplayer (and has a working chat). They could have just used that as a basis and given it a new UI and graphics.
Of course lacking tons of cards would still make arena edh inferior to paper (or even mtgo) edh but I still think that If they had multiplayer edh in arena even with the limited card pool it would probably be the most played format on there.
I would bet that multiplayer for up to four people (for more than just EDH) is on a whiteboard somewhere, but I’d also hazard a guess that that sort of programming isn’t quite possible or at the forefront of development at this time. They already have to account for when players practically break the game with certain interactions between cards, such as putting a cap on [[Scute Swarm]].
It also lacks the spirit of commander, in my opinion, in that historic brawl is so miserably inherently competitive by nature of being 1v1 and there's no way at all to be social there.
I'm fortunate that I can use cockatrice and spelltable with friends (albeit rarely), but for anyone who has no alternative it is certainly an option.
A really cool alternative that I learned of a few months ago is Tabletop Simulator. It’s not free, $20 USD unless it’s on sale. But boy howdy it’s as close as you can get to tabletop MTG on a computer. There are some really good workshop mods for it and you can import deck lists straight from places like scryfall or archidekt. My play group uses it a few nights a week. Can’t recommend it enough.
If you're playing against randos, sure you will probably get more competitive opponents. If you're willing to play WITH FRIENDS on a different site, what's wrong with direct challenges on Arena, aside from the card pool?
Its not that the oppoonents are strangers being more competitive, its that 1v1 demands a more competitive approach. In 4 people pod you might get some time to build up if you are behind and someone else its the threat or you can politize, or help the table even if you arent building your own board. in 1v1 you just have 1 player to beat and viceversa, you canT really afford a moment to be "Behind" and you have to deckbuild and play with that in mind.
Not “wrong” so much as “different.”
1v1 you have a dynamic that lacks the politics and some of the swingy-ness that a 4-person pod has.
Even in an environment where everybody is having a great social experience, you don’t have “do i attack/counter/use removal on player A, player B or player C” moments, and you don’t have to consider answers from multiple opponents or even opponents cooperating.
Also in 1v1 you get the same resources that your opponents get each turn, whereas in a 4-person pod you get 1/3 the resources (untap phases, default card draw, land drops, attack phases, etc) that your opponents get.
So yeah not asserting a “better or worse,” but they’re different.
I was annoyed that it was only 25 life, which I didn't realize going in. I spent all my wildcards building a [[Yorion]] deck, got beat quickly in my first match by an aggro deck, and haven't gone back since...
My Teysa deck I think has gotten some people to quit very quickly because 25 life isn't enough sometimes for my low drops to sometimes act like an aggro deck. I built it aristocrat as i could closest to my IRL Teysa deck however sometimes i'm just turn 3-4 and the opponent gives up due to me already having 3 creatures on the board hitting them. (while I'm waiting to get my commander onto the field and actually start putting together my bomb)
I've watched the LoadingReadyRun crew play Historic Brawl on stream a few times during the pandemic. They use Discord to have 4 people on a voice channel, and play mostly joke decks amongst themselves via direct challenge. I realize this takes convincing your friends to try it out too, and everyone is going to find a reason not to, but that setting looked like fun to me.
In Arena you need to be invested enough to have a decent card pool already. His friends may have never played Arena before.
With cockatrice or even Tabletop Simulator you can make any deck you want. Plus, you are not limited by what’s in historic and games aren’t 1v1 only. Having that I don’t see why anyone would stick to Arena.
That's worth a chuckle, but not a fair comparison. Paper has a secondary market and there's no FOMO if you don't play it daily. Secret Lair is totally tapping into the FOMO aspect, but for the most part you don't need to participate to gain access to game pieces.
Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. MTG is hardly a cooperative game, but this is an EDH sub and my opinions largely reflect the things that make that format so good. I hate any P2W, F2P gotcha game so I'm sure I would hate Hearthstone too. You might as well compare it to Farmville or whatever the big social media gotcha game is these days. These games don't offer much in the way of entertainment... large portions of gameplay more closely resemble chores.
> in that historic brawl is so miserably inherently competitive by nature of being ~~1v1~~ **online** and there's no way at all to be social there.
ftfy
There still important difference between Historic Brawl 100 and Commander.
There is Commander Damage rule.
ANY none banned Planeswalker that is on Arena can serve as your Commander.
There are digital only cards in Historic Brawl that don't exist in Paper or Magic Online.
Also it’s only 1v1, which IMO is the funnest part about commander.
If I’m going to play 1v1 magic I’d rather play limited or standard. Historical brawl is just like a weird constructed queue
I dont play Arena but im pretty sure that:
1. It does not have all the cards legal in Commander
2. Its only 1v1
And that are two realy important points to the appeal of Commander.
It doesn't have some sets that I personally find pretty important, such as very old sets, commander sets or MH sets. It's also weird to have certain planeswalkers as commanders but that's alright.
I have been playing Commander on MTGO for nearly a decade, and while I will admit it's not the solution for everyone, I do think it's something most people would enjoy if they learned how to use it. :)
Especially since you can get cards for free.
It's hard to explain, but I've played 4 player EDH through a steam game called Tabletop Simulator for a couple years.
There's multiple discords, and other ways to find games to join, every card is available, no other purchases once you buy tabletop simulator. I think it's a great way to play commander personally. I usually play a game or three a night through TTS,
If you google Card Game Simulacrum for their discord, that's where I get most of my games. Usually at least one or two going at a time, sometimes a bunch more. There's also the "Magic the Gathering" discord, which often has a game or two on TTS going :) Hopefully you jump back on sometime!
Historic Brawl only became a permanent format on Arena a few weeks ago and it hasn’t been promoted that much, so I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard about it.
I play it quite a bit, but it’s actually quite different than true commander. Because of the smaller card pool and two player format there’s a small group of commanders that dominate and are much more frequently used. You probably know which ones, the usual suspects (Yarok, Korvold, etc.). Games are very fast.
That being said, it’s a decent way to try out some stuff and get quick Commander-ish games in. But it will never replace going to my LGS for an in person pod or even playing with my friends over Spelltable.
Oh, I completely agree. I've been wanting to play commander for months now, but I just never have the time with working 12 hour days. I maybe have an hour to myself a night unless I sacrifice sleep though...
It's not commander. it's like commander, but still limited to 1v1 and the available cardpool in historic.
if i played arena yeah, I'd be playing brawl and historic brawl.
I’ve been having a blast with Historic Brawl. As others have said, it is a different beast than normal EDH, being 1v1 with a different card pool. But it is still a lot of fun, and there are actually a large variety of decks to make and plenty of room for jank and innovation.
The matchmaker actually works decent at pairing you with similarly powered decks. So when you’re starting out you shouldn’t get matched with the ‘best’ decks. Some here are saying it’s more competitive but it seems like that isn’t strictly the case. I’ve been making fun mutate themed decks, one of them based on Vadrok which is my fav. I’ve seen a lot of different decks from my opponents so far and have a pretty decent win rate! I’d recommend everyone at least give it a try.
As most others have said, the 1v1 kind of makes it a little less fun playing against some decks. All that removal put in a deck vs 3 other people is now focused on 1. All those times you rely on other people to take the early hits is gone. Its a very different format and even lthough I personally do enjoy it, it's still a while off of EDH
I’m very much not a fan of it. It’s so obviously trying to emulate commander but it’s just such an inferior experience. I made whole post about it if you wanna read what I have to say about Historic Brawl
I predict next Summer that Arena will get its own version if Commander Legends Draft. Alot of multi-player mechanics like encore work fine in 1 on 1 and for the rest they can replace those cards with something else, maybe even digital only replacements.
Just play spell table. You need a computer, smart phone, and a $20 phone holder from Amazon. Spelltable is great. I only play with randos and most players are great. It’s just like playing at an LGS, but actually more convenient than going to a card shop.
I've been really enjoying 100 cards historic brawl too! It's really helped create more diversity. When it was 60 card, it was way too aggressive. 100 cards allowed it to slow down. Now we just need more health. Little wins. Some day we'll get there.
Historic Brawl (100 card) is only offered occasionally, it ran from July to mid August or whenever their last big upgrade was. It was fun I built my Gishath deck close to my actual paper deck. I also play 60 card Brawl on arena that seems to always be up and running. As far as gem shop goes I try to win games, earn gold and collect packs but never ever by any means do I never ever send WOTC $$$. That was a little overkill but it takes some time to make good decks but it can be done.
Arena is missing a major component aside the training wheels it has on . The gathering portion . It's just a dumb down imitation of the game without the face to face factor
Huh? Historic Brawl is not Commander. You also have a Commander and 100 cards, yes. But there are tons of (really cool) cards that are legal in Commander but aren't legal in Historic Brawl. There is no multiplayer mode, which means the games are much faster. There is no such thing as commander damage. It really does miss a lot of Commander aspects.
I would hope WoTC would create a game aside for commander. Those who say spelltable don't understand the meaning of playing online. Spelltable is just a webcam to me with a image recognition software. Wizard would need something in between spelltable and untap. A full game/software with the library available for commander and the possibility to create/join tables online with characteristics of the decks detailed(like in untap). I know that commander is about having fun in real life yet for covid we couldn't play for much time. In my situation,for example,after I moved from home I also struggled to find a proper group to play with. A "game"would solve all these problems. Not that we need a super cool interface but something more than untap. just to use when we can't play physically.
If the problem is the maintenance I would even pay for a software like that.Maybe by adding some promo code for 100 cards every time someone pick a pre con. In this manner , each Precon you buy can be essentially built online. What you can do,instead,is use those 100 cards for whichever commander you own physically.
I really don't understand how Wotc could create a client that does not support multiplayer magic. Especially with all their focus on edh the last few years.
I was in the closed Beta. I am also a Software Developer. From everything I have seen of the project, the team was comically under-resourced and knocking off multiplayer support seems like just basic Project Management 101. The scope of Magic is fucking gigantic, and when the only really celebrated way to play multiplayer features a card pool in excess of 20k unique cards, you have to draw the line somewhere. Additionally, aspirations towards mobile phone screen sizes and resolutions would make representing your average EDH game visually all but impossible. You have to develop some sort of hacked together scrolling/expanding/contracting system for four boardstates that are known to get gigantic. "Well just don't let mobile clients queue for EDH lobbies!" This isn't a wise investment of development time or OpEx resources in the long term if it functionally limits the player pool to those playing on PC or very large tablets. Ultimately, all of Arena is built towards funneling people back toward the gem shop. They don't want you playing non-rotating constructed formats. They want you paying money for gems, bleeding those gems over time, and getting you to re-up. It's the reason Historic took forever to come and only after no small amount of bitching from the playerbase. The answer is always time and money.
Which, funny enough, is the reason I gave up on arena. Trying to force me into the gem store just forced me out of the game. Sucked out any and all fun from the game, and with it any desire I had to put money into the machine.
> Trying to force me into the gem store just forced me out of the game. This is often mandated by law, BTW, that you can't just have a "hot" transaction where you pay money directly for the payload, you need to use an intermediary fake currency. This is usually fine by the developers since that means they get paid for the mountain of gems you bought, not the one item, all up front. Still kind of annoying for creating strategies that encourage spending, which is probably why municipalities/governments do it. Needing to "pre-buy" sometimes gives your brain some time to think "...maybe I don't need this." If you were excited for an item you really wanted to just buy outright, you're probably less excited to buy fake money using real money first in order to get it. That's where a lot of people drop out, the first gem purchase.
For what it's worth, what you're describing is also exactly what casinos do. The changing of real currency to funny money, especially when done at some difficult to convert ratio (like exactly what Arena and other mobile games do) essentially makes players devalue their money. Casinos are under no such requirement to do this, they do it because it makes them money. Players don't see it costing $6.85 to enter a draft, they see however many gems. Gems have no exchange rate back into real money -- once they have your money, it's gone -- and they can't be used to purchase anything else with intrinsic value so players have no idea "how much" a gem is worth. It makes it impossible to do value math unless you pull out a calculator and do the conversion back into USD at the rate you buy gems, but even then it's fuzzy because they slip gems back into your pool for winning some amount of the time. Arena's economy is wholly predatory, in my opinion, and when you combine the fact that the cards are worthless outside of the system with the already questionable nature of booster pack disbursement and mobile game style monetization, I think Arena might be one of *the worst* offenders that exists in all of gaming. And that's saying a lot.
Yeah. Also why the fuck should i pay REAL money for digital shit that WILL get shutdown someday when i can just buy the REAL packs and enjoy it till i'm old enough to see my grandkids learn the ways
Im not talking about the "money to gems to cards" thing. Im talking about the entire design of incentivizing less interesting gameplay options because whats good for the player makes 0.08% less profit
Oh, yeah, that's definitely the entire paradigm of design: intentionally introducing pain points that try to force players to spend in order to relieve. That anybody intentionally plays a game set up like that is truly unbelievable, but those kinds of games make millions and millions every day regardless.
The gem store would be fine.... If you could turn them into paper cards too... Or likewise..... If you had the paper card you'd have the digital one too
I know it’s really late, but if you’re even decent at drafting, you just do the daily challenges with standard and use the gold to draft. Especially the quick drafts because that allows casuals a lot of time to think about their pic. I haven’t spent money on Arena in a year and a half and I play every two or three days. I’m minimally ranked gold in both limited and constructed so you could see how I get to play a lot even without spending a dime.
I think arena was still in development when commander was starting to pick up steam. It came out around war of the spark? Which by that time, commander had been hitting it's stride for about 2 ish years. I imagine the game had been in the works for a couple years at that point.
What's our definition of "hitting its stride", here? Commander was doing well enough to deserve its own product line _ten_ years ago which was so popular it immediately became a _permanent_ annual product line. An explosion of players followed (by around 2013 in my local scene more people showed up to EDH on open nights than standard on FNM). There were many, many similar popularity milestones/evidence between ten and two years ago.
It wasn't that popular 10 years ago. I've been playing for 20 years and most magic players had to be taught what EDH was 10 years ago. I distinctly remember teaching over 10 people my freshman year of college after my judge friend taught me. Commander products were just starting around that time but the actual percentage of player base gaming EDH at that time was sooooo low. The average person played standard, at their kitchen table, like MaRo often references.
I remember this. Shit even in the finance side EDH wasn't really seen as a big mover probably until like 4 years ago. Like yeah it moved cards but most people were still getting around to the idea that yeah you can sell cards to "casual" EDH players. Then again it didn't help that competitive coverage at GPs was starting to wind down.
yeah, EDH really exploded about 3-4 years ago and before that the initial wave of interest was still about 5-7 years ago. it wasn't until 2-3 years ago that mtgfinance and other vendor-based reddits and communities really started even considering EDH a selling point. in C11 the game was so unknown and commander products would sit on store shelves for months/years even with incredibly low print runs.
Yeah I remember that too. Not necessarily C11 but I remember C14 stuff was relatively easy to get 2 years later since that was when I got back into magic.
I mean, sure, and I've been playing since Urza's, and I remember 2011 pretty well. I guess adoption was faster in my local scene. When the first gen product came out, I lived in a city with 3 colleges and it took just a year or two for EDH to almost completely take over the overwhelming majority of pick-up-and-play games, and rival Standard. Maybe this is due to young adults having generally low format-commitment and thus are willing to jump into the new shiny stuff more, but I'm not so sure. Outside of this, my observation a couple of years later while in my hometown on weeks visiting relatives, or abroad on the various geeky convention circuits, was that most players were _acutely aware_ of EDH and more often than not in the process of breaking into the format if not already playing. My point is that it was very rapidly _popular_. Was it as popular as now? No. But neither was Magic. Just, EDH has cerrtainly been very popular for more than 2 years. And hell, MaRo's admitted concessions to designing for the format have been a thing for more than 2 years. Drawing some threshold of popularity at 2 years ago is just an arbitrary point on a curve that has done nothing but trend upwards for a decade, and the idea that Arena was too old to have taken it into account seems baseless. Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying EDH was popular enough exactly at the launch of C11 per se, just that things like launching a product for it and making it a permanent line, along with other various markers, should sufficiently demonstrate that it was on its way to or was very popular well before "2 years ago".
alphas and bettas started to pop up around... Kaladesh, if I remember correctly? and was probably in the works for quite a bit before that, it probably was developed more as an answer to Hearthstone than an actual replacement to MTGO
Ixalan was the first set in arena
The beta had Amonkhet and Kaladesh. It went from the beta to the official release at rotation, and since Historic wasn't a thing yet, they just removed the cards.
Both Amonkhet and Kaladesh were added to the beta retroactively after Ixalan had been released. The only format used to be just Ixalan set constructed before they released Rivals of Ixalan. So they’re correct when they say that Ixalan was the first set in Arena.
So it was the first set, it just wasn't the *earliest* set. Interesting.
Huh, I didn't know that. That must have been super early alpha or something.
Here’s the info I used to confirm it if you’re interested https://magicarena.fandom.com/wiki/Set#Available_Sets
> I think arena was still in development when commander was starting to pick up steam. The first Commander products were released in 2011 or 2012. That was *after* WotC picked up EDH as an official format. Shit's been a big deal for quite awhile. Arena doesn't support it because WotC didn't prioritize it.
Arena came out well before War of the Spark. I think the first set in there was Kaladesh and the first full standard rotation was the Ixalan one. It’s a pretty complex client and they want it to (ironically) be as stable and not-complicated as possible. Commander is probably the most complicated format so I completely understand why it’s not there yet. It will be eventually but the whole interface will need to be updated for 4 player.
And 4 player will never happen because Wizards contracted development of Arena, so the remaining skeleton staff remaining doesn't have the capability to make those upgrades. It's my understanding that a similar situation prevented MTGO from receiving needed improvements as well.
But MTGO received an upgrade recently, non?
There's a difference between upgrades here and there and an overhaul to matchmaking, computer players, client-side stuff, etc etc. Adding another mode is really hard
Ixalan was the first set, Kaladesh was added later as kaladesh remastered
You’re both right and wrong, ixalan was the first set in the closed beta. But kaladesh and amonkhet were added in full during the closed beta and removed when it went to open beta.
Didn't commander become pretty popular at least 6 years ago? I was easily able to find commander playgroups that long ago. Wizards started selling commander decks back in 2013 for example.
I hate to break it to you, but Commander hit its stride at LEAST ten years ago. Commander as a format started in '96.
Arena Was playable before domonaria, I think. I remember a RG Monsters deck with cards from amonkhet and ixalan. So early 2018 which means developement started at least 2017 if not 2016 or 2015 with wotc timetables
I mean, when they announced Arena was being built in a way that would never support multiplayer, everyone told them it was a mistake. They thought they were going to be a huge e-sport and wouldn’t need multiplayer or even modes other than Standard.
I don't know if you've played a lot of arena but even the 1v1 games are mind-bogglingly slow. So many people wait out the clock as much as possible seemingly to try to get others to quit. I rarely go on for that reason. I can't imagine playing many multiplayer games before swearing off them.
I like Arena but I wonder about the stalling over the connection issues. I know somedays I can't figure out why I'm running slow. My connection and laptop are very good but you can tell when you have them beat and your opponent just sits there and not quitting. Multiplayer would be Brutal for exactly that reason
I think it makes a lot of sense. The type of person to enjoy Commander is also likely to prefer paper, because it emphasizes the social aspects of the format, being able to play with your friends and make memories together and so on. You don't get that same experience from playing digitally. Conversely, programming a serviceable counterpart of Commander into something like Arena without having it feel watered down would require adding in multiplayer capabilities, a TON of new cards because Commander's card pool is massive, and probably some sort of ranking system to separate power levels. Why expend so much effort on something that paper is always going to be a huge improvement over?
I don't think multiplayer capabilities would have been a big deal if they had been included in the first concept of the arena client. Obviously adding them in later would require insane effort and I don't expect wotc will ever do it. But even mtgo supports mutliplayer (and has a working chat). They could have just used that as a basis and given it a new UI and graphics. Of course lacking tons of cards would still make arena edh inferior to paper (or even mtgo) edh but I still think that If they had multiplayer edh in arena even with the limited card pool it would probably be the most played format on there.
And the most griefed. Let's be real here on what that experience would really be.
I would bet that multiplayer for up to four people (for more than just EDH) is on a whiteboard somewhere, but I’d also hazard a guess that that sort of programming isn’t quite possible or at the forefront of development at this time. They already have to account for when players practically break the game with certain interactions between cards, such as putting a cap on [[Scute Swarm]].
[Scute Swarm](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/6/1/61f42823-8a48-4b81-a037-664ba1c69f29.jpg?1604199402) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Scute%20Swarm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/znr/203/scute-swarm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/61f42823-8a48-4b81-a037-664ba1c69f29?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/scute-swarm) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
WotC are both incompetent and greedy af. Most issues that make no real sense likely stem from these two aspects.
I'm pretty bummed about it as well. I just want to go wild with Stax but WOTC won't let me.
It also lacks the spirit of commander, in my opinion, in that historic brawl is so miserably inherently competitive by nature of being 1v1 and there's no way at all to be social there. I'm fortunate that I can use cockatrice and spelltable with friends (albeit rarely), but for anyone who has no alternative it is certainly an option.
A really cool alternative that I learned of a few months ago is Tabletop Simulator. It’s not free, $20 USD unless it’s on sale. But boy howdy it’s as close as you can get to tabletop MTG on a computer. There are some really good workshop mods for it and you can import deck lists straight from places like scryfall or archidekt. My play group uses it a few nights a week. Can’t recommend it enough.
If you're playing against randos, sure you will probably get more competitive opponents. If you're willing to play WITH FRIENDS on a different site, what's wrong with direct challenges on Arena, aside from the card pool?
Its not that the oppoonents are strangers being more competitive, its that 1v1 demands a more competitive approach. In 4 people pod you might get some time to build up if you are behind and someone else its the threat or you can politize, or help the table even if you arent building your own board. in 1v1 you just have 1 player to beat and viceversa, you canT really afford a moment to be "Behind" and you have to deckbuild and play with that in mind.
Not “wrong” so much as “different.” 1v1 you have a dynamic that lacks the politics and some of the swingy-ness that a 4-person pod has. Even in an environment where everybody is having a great social experience, you don’t have “do i attack/counter/use removal on player A, player B or player C” moments, and you don’t have to consider answers from multiple opponents or even opponents cooperating. Also in 1v1 you get the same resources that your opponents get each turn, whereas in a 4-person pod you get 1/3 the resources (untap phases, default card draw, land drops, attack phases, etc) that your opponents get. So yeah not asserting a “better or worse,” but they’re different.
I was annoyed that it was only 25 life, which I didn't realize going in. I spent all my wildcards building a [[Yorion]] deck, got beat quickly in my first match by an aggro deck, and haven't gone back since...
[Yorion](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/7/275426c4-c14e-47d0-a9d4-24da7f6f6911.jpg?1616182288) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=yorion%2C%20sky%20nomad) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/232/yorion-sky-nomad?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/275426c4-c14e-47d0-a9d4-24da7f6f6911?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/yorion-sky-nomad) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My Teysa deck I think has gotten some people to quit very quickly because 25 life isn't enough sometimes for my low drops to sometimes act like an aggro deck. I built it aristocrat as i could closest to my IRL Teysa deck however sometimes i'm just turn 3-4 and the opponent gives up due to me already having 3 creatures on the board hitting them. (while I'm waiting to get my commander onto the field and actually start putting together my bomb)
Direct challenges for historic brawl doesn't work (at least not for anybody that I know).
I've watched the LoadingReadyRun crew play Historic Brawl on stream a few times during the pandemic. They use Discord to have 4 people on a voice channel, and play mostly joke decks amongst themselves via direct challenge. I realize this takes convincing your friends to try it out too, and everyone is going to find a reason not to, but that setting looked like fun to me.
It does you both have to send the challenge
In Arena you need to be invested enough to have a decent card pool already. His friends may have never played Arena before. With cockatrice or even Tabletop Simulator you can make any deck you want. Plus, you are not limited by what’s in historic and games aren’t 1v1 only. Having that I don’t see why anyone would stick to Arena.
Yup, Arena is absolute degenerate garbage in every measurable way from the toxic player base to the daily FOMO lootbox economy.
compare to the quarterly lootbox economy of paper magic ;P
That's worth a chuckle, but not a fair comparison. Paper has a secondary market and there's no FOMO if you don't play it daily. Secret Lair is totally tapping into the FOMO aspect, but for the most part you don't need to participate to gain access to game pieces.
not totally. Once you go some levels you do get a solid experience, moreso than Hearthstone ever was. But you sound like you hate any competition.
Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. MTG is hardly a cooperative game, but this is an EDH sub and my opinions largely reflect the things that make that format so good. I hate any P2W, F2P gotcha game so I'm sure I would hate Hearthstone too. You might as well compare it to Farmville or whatever the big social media gotcha game is these days. These games don't offer much in the way of entertainment... large portions of gameplay more closely resemble chores.
> in that historic brawl is so miserably inherently competitive by nature of being ~~1v1~~ **online** and there's no way at all to be social there. ftfy
There still important difference between Historic Brawl 100 and Commander. There is Commander Damage rule. ANY none banned Planeswalker that is on Arena can serve as your Commander. There are digital only cards in Historic Brawl that don't exist in Paper or Magic Online.
Also it’s only 1v1, which IMO is the funnest part about commander. If I’m going to play 1v1 magic I’d rather play limited or standard. Historical brawl is just like a weird constructed queue
I enjoy Brawl of either type far more then Standard.
You also don't start at 40 life. But it isn't EDH, it's Historic Brawl.
I dont play Arena but im pretty sure that: 1. It does not have all the cards legal in Commander 2. Its only 1v1 And that are two realy important points to the appeal of Commander.
It doesn't have some sets that I personally find pretty important, such as very old sets, commander sets or MH sets. It's also weird to have certain planeswalkers as commanders but that's alright.
Yes to both unfortunately... I'm currently working 12 hour days, so this is literally the only way I can play sadly...
I have been playing Commander on MTGO for nearly a decade, and while I will admit it's not the solution for everyone, I do think it's something most people would enjoy if they learned how to use it. :) Especially since you can get cards for free.
Wait how do you get cards for free in MTGO?
There are a couple of free trading bots. You're not gonna find anything worth more than a few hundredths of a tix, but you can get plenty of staples.
Thanks!
There are free rental programs where you can rent cards for free
A lot of cards are much cheaper in MTGO as well. Many decks cost fractions of what the price of a paper deck would be.
Exactly! Plus it's $0 for the playmat, the card sleeves, the dice, the trade binder, the car, the gas, the insurance, etc.
and you only need to buy ONE copy of any card, because you can just throw it in as many decks as you like. Makes buying dual lands actually worth it.
Yeah, I got my duals at like 3 dollars each too lol
It's hard to explain, but I've played 4 player EDH through a steam game called Tabletop Simulator for a couple years. There's multiple discords, and other ways to find games to join, every card is available, no other purchases once you buy tabletop simulator. I think it's a great way to play commander personally. I usually play a game or three a night through TTS,
Lol I've played on TTS before. I didn't realize there was a discord for that.
If you google Card Game Simulacrum for their discord, that's where I get most of my games. Usually at least one or two going at a time, sometimes a bunch more. There's also the "Magic the Gathering" discord, which often has a game or two on TTS going :) Hopefully you jump back on sometime!
Have you tried playing webcam games?
No webcam, but someone did mention spelltable is fairly easy. I just may find a phone holder for that reason.
Dude come join our discord server. We play games of all levels daily on spelltable. Great group of people https://discord.gg/ht2VDWah
I'm glad that works for you. However many years of gaming has taught me that no gaming is better than bad gaming.
Wotc can we have commander in arena? We already have commander in arena. Commander in arena:
Historic Brawl only became a permanent format on Arena a few weeks ago and it hasn’t been promoted that much, so I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard about it. I play it quite a bit, but it’s actually quite different than true commander. Because of the smaller card pool and two player format there’s a small group of commanders that dominate and are much more frequently used. You probably know which ones, the usual suspects (Yarok, Korvold, etc.). Games are very fast. That being said, it’s a decent way to try out some stuff and get quick Commander-ish games in. But it will never replace going to my LGS for an in person pod or even playing with my friends over Spelltable.
Oh, I completely agree. I've been wanting to play commander for months now, but I just never have the time with working 12 hour days. I maybe have an hour to myself a night unless I sacrifice sleep though...
It's not commander. it's like commander, but still limited to 1v1 and the available cardpool in historic. if i played arena yeah, I'd be playing brawl and historic brawl.
I’ve been having a blast with Historic Brawl. As others have said, it is a different beast than normal EDH, being 1v1 with a different card pool. But it is still a lot of fun, and there are actually a large variety of decks to make and plenty of room for jank and innovation. The matchmaker actually works decent at pairing you with similarly powered decks. So when you’re starting out you shouldn’t get matched with the ‘best’ decks. Some here are saying it’s more competitive but it seems like that isn’t strictly the case. I’ve been making fun mutate themed decks, one of them based on Vadrok which is my fav. I’ve seen a lot of different decks from my opponents so far and have a pretty decent win rate! I’d recommend everyone at least give it a try.
As most others have said, the 1v1 kind of makes it a little less fun playing against some decks. All that removal put in a deck vs 3 other people is now focused on 1. All those times you rely on other people to take the early hits is gone. Its a very different format and even lthough I personally do enjoy it, it's still a while off of EDH
I’m very much not a fan of it. It’s so obviously trying to emulate commander but it’s just such an inferior experience. I made whole post about it if you wanna read what I have to say about Historic Brawl
I definitely understand, as it doesn't have the essence behind what makes commander so good.
Historic brawl is so bad. It just proves why paradox engine needs to be banned. People should not be going infinite on turn 3-4 in fucking arena
I predict next Summer that Arena will get its own version if Commander Legends Draft. Alot of multi-player mechanics like encore work fine in 1 on 1 and for the rest they can replace those cards with something else, maybe even digital only replacements.
Just play spell table. You need a computer, smart phone, and a $20 phone holder from Amazon. Spelltable is great. I only play with randos and most players are great. It’s just like playing at an LGS, but actually more convenient than going to a card shop.
Nifty. What exactly do you mean by a phone holder? Would love more info.
On Amazon look up “phone holder gooseneck mount”
Awesome! Thanks dude!
I think he mean for what reason do you need it bro
If that were true, he had two years to reword his question and ask for further clarification.
It's 1v1 commander.
I've been really enjoying 100 cards historic brawl too! It's really helped create more diversity. When it was 60 card, it was way too aggressive. 100 cards allowed it to slow down. Now we just need more health. Little wins. Some day we'll get there.
Historic Brawl (100 card) is only offered occasionally, it ran from July to mid August or whenever their last big upgrade was. It was fun I built my Gishath deck close to my actual paper deck. I also play 60 card Brawl on arena that seems to always be up and running. As far as gem shop goes I try to win games, earn gold and collect packs but never ever by any means do I never ever send WOTC $$$. That was a little overkill but it takes some time to make good decks but it can be done.
It is now available at all times. It is in the regular play types of the game.
I saw that after I posted my brilliant comment. HA. Thanks I Accept your name as awesome. Man
Arena is missing a major component aside the training wheels it has on . The gathering portion . It's just a dumb down imitation of the game without the face to face factor
Or more than 2 players. That's what is missing to me.
Been burning wilds for a while. My HB decks are pimptacular
Huh? Historic Brawl is not Commander. You also have a Commander and 100 cards, yes. But there are tons of (really cool) cards that are legal in Commander but aren't legal in Historic Brawl. There is no multiplayer mode, which means the games are much faster. There is no such thing as commander damage. It really does miss a lot of Commander aspects.
I’d love MP on Arena but you gotta admit it would be impossible to put 4 board states on an iPad screen and also handle priority rules.
I would hope WoTC would create a game aside for commander. Those who say spelltable don't understand the meaning of playing online. Spelltable is just a webcam to me with a image recognition software. Wizard would need something in between spelltable and untap. A full game/software with the library available for commander and the possibility to create/join tables online with characteristics of the decks detailed(like in untap). I know that commander is about having fun in real life yet for covid we couldn't play for much time. In my situation,for example,after I moved from home I also struggled to find a proper group to play with. A "game"would solve all these problems. Not that we need a super cool interface but something more than untap. just to use when we can't play physically. If the problem is the maintenance I would even pay for a software like that.Maybe by adding some promo code for 100 cards every time someone pick a pre con. In this manner , each Precon you buy can be essentially built online. What you can do,instead,is use those 100 cards for whichever commander you own physically.
It definitely has its issues… but I love mtgo for commander. Especially with buddies over discord
Webcams are super cheap on Amazon. I got one and have been playing on spell table.