I’m primarily a paper edh player, but I’ve been dabbling in arena lately. There’s so many different formats, it’s hard to know where to start and I don’t want to waste my wild cards on a standard deck only to realize I like historic or brawl more.
So my question is what formats do you all play in MTGA and why?
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I play historic brawl. It can be slow to get into for someone new to Arena, but here are some ideas for budget decks: https://mtgazone.com/budget-historic-brawl/. Once you’ve been playing for a while, historic brawl is the cheapest, least wildcard intensive format. That’s because it’s singleton and non-rotating. I also like the randomness that 100-card singleton provides.
I should mention, however, that it’s not as similar to edh as you might expect. For starters, it has a smaller card pool, 25 life instead of 40, and no commander damage rule. What makes a bigger difference, though, is that it’s 1v1. Effective historic brawl decks usually pack more interaction, because you can’t rely on the table to keep an opponent in check. Some people start historic brawl expecting to be able to use edh-style decks that build their position slowly or focus heavily on the commander without much protection for it. They are quickly disappointed, because those decks don’t work nearly as well in historic brawl. Control is prevalent, aggro is fairly viable, and if you want your commander on the battlefield, be sure to run things like Slip Out the Back, Tamiyo’s Safekeeping, etc.
Good writeup, my answer is Historic Brawl as well. It definitely requires more interaction than Commander.
I do like it as something of a middle-ground: it’s still the most casual format on Arena. Importantly, the matchmaking system is nice (if imperfect) because you can play jank without getting murdered by Kenrith/Golos/Rusko or other hell queue commanders in every match.
I play mostly standard, but like to draft whenever I have enough gold or gems to do so. Be aware that the Historic format in Arena will include Alchemy which has some digital only cards and mechanics that don’t exist in paper. Some people like it, I don’t care for it.
Be sure to redeem all the codes for free packs before spending wild cards.
I think brawl is the best if you’re looking to be effective with wild cards. It’s a less competitive format that you’ll be familiar with if you have played edh, and you will spend less wildcards solely because you can only have 1 of each.
As for what I play, when I started I crafted the best mono red standard deck I could and farmed my 15 wins of the day until I could afford to build any brawl/standard deck i wanted with my wildcards. But that path requires you to really like playing red.
Historic is expensive and the only format I do not recommend.
Depends on what you’re looking for. Do you want to play competitively and gain ranks for the season rewards, or just have fun with it?
For just having fun with it I’ll echo the recommendations of Brawl (probably Historic Brawl). For competitive, Explorer is probably the safest bet. It’s a bit more competitive than Standard, but Standard is pretty high power nowadays anyway.
I somewhat reject the “play competitive” vs “play for fun” distinction. I’d call the later casual play or similar. I mostly play competitive, but for me, that’s playing for fun. It’s not a decision between fun and competitive.
As for the formats, I enjoy explorer a lot. In competitive formats, make sure to play BO3, as that’s what they are balanced around.
Many people enjoy historic as well, but I dislike the Alchemy exclusive mechanics and also like that explorer is close to Pioneer paper.
Fair point. While I mostly play Brawl, I do have a mono-Red Standard deck, a Rakdos sacrifice Explorer deck, and a Golgari Elves Historic deck; I wouldn’t play them if i didn’t have fun doing it, even if it is competitive. I guess I mean just for fun as opposed to playing for rewards too.
I know BO3 is more balanced and all, but I’ll admit I do prefer quicker matches with BO1.
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Historic Brawl is my go-to. It’s closest to EDH. Being a crazy Johnny player, I’ll throw together a standard deck every once in a while if I see something with interest interactions on a CGB or Legend video.
90% of the time I’m playing Explorer since I like my decks always being available, and I’m not a big Alchemy fan, but I do dabble in Historic/Standard/Historic Brawl on occasion.
Red aggro decks would be a good starting place, they’re good enough to keep you playing and cheap enough that you arent burning tons of wildcards on most decks. Then as you build up your wildcards and test out other modes you’ll have a better starting place.
Standard and limited for me.
Mostly standard, since I don’t like drafting to much. And due to the not rotation I finally have a solid land base to try a lot of different stuff.
I enjoy Explorer lately although the meta is very stale some days.
Otherwise Historic Brawl is fun. When I feel particularly casual I just skip opponents on there if I stare down the 6th Atraxa pile in a row.
Also, for me Explorer feels nicer than Historic lately due to the digital only mechanics taking hold in the meta. Just not my favourite style of play.
Same, I enjoy Explorer, I cannot stand the digital mechanics. Greasefang decks are almost as bad though.
Yeah i aggressively sideboard for greasefang.
Genrally the meta-removed is pretty rough, especially on low ranks.
I just wanna sling my colorless ramp and see how far i can push it
I mostly play Historic on there, because it lets me build with (almost) all the cards. But if I face three Elfball decks in a row, I’ll throw in a couple rounds of Standard or Explorer.
I used to grind Standard, but for the past few months been only doing drafts.
If i were new player i’d suggest just playing some casual/ranked standard and maybe dipping your toes into draft. Building a collection is far easier if you draft, but it can be pretty intimidating if you’re new to the game.
I usually play Historic Brawl, because with the commander and the 100 card deck limit it’s the closest thing I have to paper commander while I don’t have any room to play paper commander!
I do sometimes play other formats like limited quick draft or other constructed formats in order to finish off my daily quests
I tend to stick with non-ranked historic because I’m an endless fan of unplayable jank.
The nice thing with non-ranked historic is that it’s honestly very much unplayable jank, the format.
Every match you see some different deck with a different win condition (or like, no condition) instead of it just being all netdecked meta, all the time.
Would recommend.
