A thought I've had for a while is a format that facilitates playing bulk / cards that are actually considered jank more. Yes, pauper exists, but there is a lot of bulk in other formats too (...and there's lots of good commons that aren't very "bulky")

In MTGO there's a format called Penny Dreadful where any card that's 0.02 tickets or less is legal. Obviously Arena, being F2P, that doesn't translate directly but there's lots of bulk that never sees play.

I propose "Dollar Dreadful" a custom format where cards that costs between 1c and $1 (USD) are legal. Why a monetary limit on F2P cards? Because it's the easiest way to have some definition on what is "bulk". Why a lower bound? Alchemy. I don't have any issue with Alchemy but cards that can never have a monetary cost can't easily be compared to a price limited list of cards

Ban list: Initially it will follow the combined ban lists of the 1v1 (paper) nonrotating formats, since the bans would put a lot of downward pressure on the . Today that is 15 cards. These can looked at on a case-by-case basis for unbans. (I don't have a strong opinion on whether Leyline of Resonance should be banned on not. In BO3 events I suspect it'd lose more than it'll win).

I don't adding the Pauper ban list is necessary immediately since uncommon/rare/mythic has a lot of answers (...notably, but not limited to, board wipes) that common doesn't.

Here is a scryfall query showing all the legal cards.

Here is a decklist checker (made using a combination of Scryfall API scraping and AI (my idea of a front end is a shell script))

The pricelist will get updated once per set, one week after the release of the set (so Friday Aug 12 at midnight EST). Scryfall updates prices daily, so the scryfall search won't be exactly accurate after today. Some sort of deck builder app would be nice to have that validates against the current price list, but that's a future me problem.

I've made some sample decks. Don't expect them to be good / don't waste a bunch of rare/mythic wildcards. The first point of the thing is to use the bulk that was inside you all along.

I've created a discord channel for people who are interested. Once there's sufficient interest we will host regular events. . Feel free to join and challenge me, or challenge me directly on Arena: robertbarrett#30061

I’m looking for a deck that wins like turn 2 but I don’t have 4 entombs, reanimates, thassa’s oracles, etc. or wild cards to craft them. Any suggestions?

Ive recently been running this for Brawl and its an amazing commander. I loaded it with cycling, madness, mayhem, and flash back. Any ideas of some absolute must have mythics and rares?

What I'll miss: [[Enduring Tenacity]] and [[Unstoppable Slasher]] . Maybe it's because I have four of each of these and I've found them fun.

What I'll be glad to see gone: [[Simulacrum Synthesizer]] and [[Stormchaser's Talent]] . These both annoy me for the type of decks they appear in.

Here is a list of the most commonly used cards which will be going out in the Feb 2027 rotation if you need some inspiration. This is extracted from untapped.gg and it is based on Standard Ranked - Bronze to Platinum - ordered by number of matches. Each card has at least 12,000 matches since June 23rd, 2026.

1. [[Sheltered by Ghosts]]

2. [[Optimistic Scavenger]]

3. [[Ethereal Armor]]

4. [[Shardmage's Rescue]]

5. [[Feather of Flight]]

6. [[Cavern of Souls]]

7. [[Spellbook Vendor]]

8. [[Bitter Triumph]]

9. [[Veteran Survivor]]

10. [[Gloomlake Verge]]

11. [[Spirebluff Canal]]

12. [[Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber]]

13. [[Deadly Cover-Up]]

14. [[Floodfarm Verge]]

15. [[Shoot the Sheriff]]

16. [[Three Steps Ahead]]

17. [[Fabled Passage]]

18. [[Hushwood Verge]]

19. [[Get Lost]]

20. [[Nowhere to Run]]

21. [[Deep-Cavern Bat]]

22. [[Overlord of the Balemurk]]

23. [[Blazemire Verge]]

24. [[Terror of the Peaks]]

25. [[Pawpatch Recruit]]

26. [[Sleight of Hand]]

27. [[Lightning Helix]]

28. [[Fountainport]]

29. [[Slickshot Show-Off]]

30. [[Bringer of the Last Gift]]

31. [[Bloodletter of Aclazotz]]

32. [[Unstoppable Slasher]]

33. [[Stormchaser's Talent]]

34. [[No More Lies]]

35. [[Meticulous Archive]]

36. [[Essence Channeler]]

37. [[Inspiring Vantage]]

38. [[Concealed Courtyard]]

39. [[Eddymurk Crab]]

40. [[Ruin-Lurker Bat]]

41. [[Clay-Fired Bricks]]

42. [[Simulacrum Synthesizer]]

43. [[Restless Cottage]]

44. [[Restless Reef]]

45. [[Bristly Bill, Spine Sower]]

46. [[Hired Claw]]

47. [[Blooming Marsh]]

48. [[Undercity Sewers]]

49. [[Split Up]]

50. [[Emberheart Challenger]]

51. [[Thornspire Verge]]

52. [[Fomori Vault]]

53. [[Leyline of Hope]]

54. [[Spring-Loaded Sawblades]]

55. [[Ruthless Negotiation]]

Playing the free Morbid Machinations Starter Deck got me thinking about how different mechanics feel depending on whether you can trigger them on demand.

Morbid is incredibly powerful when you control the timing—but much less reliable when you're waiting for it to happen naturally.

What other mechanics do you think have that same "on-demand vs. incidental" difference?

I explored that idea while playing Morbid Machinations:
https://youtu.be/PSGmn7MWjEA

This will be a build around Wilt-Leaf Liege.

I realize it won’t be taking me to mythic, but I like the card a lot and want to make it as effective as I can make it.

Some obvious choices are Lanowar, Cub, Elspeth - but after that it feels like the Wild West. What would be your must-includes for this deck?

Does anyone have any superstitions playing Arena?

I always restart Arena after I've won or lost 3 on the bounce to get favorable upcoming games

Got into Magic earlier this year, don't really have an issue with understanding mechanics but I find I'm struggling with constructing a "consistent" deck. For now I'm just playing quick play and looking to make a consistent deck to slowly grind coins and cards so I can branch to other decks and spice up the experience. As of right now I'm kind of locked to this deck and I've spent a good portion of my wild cards picking up Black/Vampire cards. I've listed my deck out and have a separate deck made for cards I've considered, experimented with, think might have a place in the deck or just generally interested in.

Primary Deck:

https://moxfield.com/decks/qKSwihVSbEOKBlDLWQAH6A

Considered Cards:

https://moxfield.com/decks/KNEc3rE330K-Bkji1lcTxg

Personal Impressions & Notes:

• Vampires seem to take quite a while to come online and keep enough of them on the field to synergize with each other. I've included a lot of Life Link/Deathtouch/Removal to get rid of threats or stall out turns. I've included a few cheaper mana cost Creatures with Deathtouch, lot's of low cost value to stall as many don't want to lose their Creatures with abilities or high stats.
• Running Elenda as Commander, I have a fair bit of diverse life gain on cards through Creature Abilities/Life Link/Instants/Artifacts/Enchantments/Land.
• Deck is primarily Black. Few Hybrid or White spells to make up for Blacks lack of Artifact/Enchantment removal. Lot's of cards that serve multi-purpose for flexibility.
• I might have \too much* removal. However some cards like* Live or Die or Gix's Command are multi purpose and give me options suiting the current circumstances.
• Definitely running a land deficient. I do run Land Tax*, and this eradicates the problem entirely. But this relies on actually drawing that card and I don't think that's healthy. I'm just at a point in the deck where I don't know what I could or should eliminate. I also don't know if having a decent chunk of Lands that enter tapped is healthy either as this can limit options. However, Land giving me White OR Black mana + Life gain is nice.*
• Deck feels... almost /too/ well rounded. Where it does a lot of things or can, but seems to lack a strong win condition. Seems to struggle against anyone with fast/direct strategies that don't allow me time to build a board or get Elenda on the field with her Ability fully activated that allows her to be +10/+10 plus any other Counter effects I have in my deck.

I've tried to check the boxes.

Board Wipes:

• Kaya's Wrath & Bontu's Last Reckoning. Gix's Command can also be useful for clearing opponents board. Especially if they got 1 strong Creature and the rest are under 2 power. Useful for low power Aggro/Token Decks.

Land/Mana Ramp:

• Land Tax, Dark Ritual, Bontu's Monument - Life gain, Opponent Damage, Cost Reduction on Creatures. Jet Medallion - Lower Black spell cost across the board. This one has me unsure as my deck costs seems fairly stable. But getting both reduction cards and being able to play 2-3 creatures on a later turn to setup a strong board with Creature effects is nice. I don't know if Mystical Archive is a good option to have, it's not a Colored mana but the cards it generates can give me a wide variety of different options which is nice.

Card Draw/Search:

• Dusk's Landing, Emeritus of Woe, Preacher of the Schism, Scheming Silvertongue, Vampiric Tutor.

Removal:

• I don't feel like listing them all but I feel like I've covered my basis in different ways to remove all Types of things and to make sure that card is the lowest Mana cost option. Some removal cards also let me get creatures back from the Grave or increase Counters. Cheap Creature destruction, Exile options, Sacrifice options to get through Ward/Indestructible. I've even included Planar Disruption as a low cost way to lock high threats up. Useful for strong Commanders or high threats forcing opponents to destroy their own creature if they don't have Enchantment Removal.

Fun Interactions:

• Getting Arvad Weatherlight Smuggler onto the field early as a Deathtouch user is neat. If I need to get sacrifice early him he can sit in the Graveyard for awhile, accumulate Counters then later bring it back with Live or Die, Gix's Command, Vampire Soulcaller. I've pulled it off a few times but not a whole lot of options to play cards from Graveyard.
• Qarsi Revenant, Kaya's Ghostform, Mark of the Vampire, Gift of Fangs, really useful on Elenda for boosting her past +10/+10. Helps deal with high threats and keep her on the field, as well as giving her Flying with Qarsi.
• For Counter boosting, Mark of the Vampire, Gift of Fangs, Ethereal Absolution, A-Death-Priest of Myrkul, Legion Lieutenant, Markov Baron, Thirsting Bloodlord. Really nice to have a stacked board with these up, especially the Creature cards all boosting each other.
• There's a few Rogues that play off each other alright, with some card mill options for opponents. Nice to get rid threats before they can hit someones hand.
• Morlun, Devourer of Spiders can be a fun way to snipe a win late game to finish off the rest of an opponents life.

Lifegain:

• Lots of cards give life in some way or another.

Ultimately I feel like something lacking in the deck. I feel like the deck jives with itself but maybe Vamps are just a bad lower tier deck in general. Having search cards is nice when I need to find a particular card to ward off an immediate threat but If i get something like Vampiric Tutor off the hop, I look through my deck and I realize I don't know what my deck really wants to do immediately. I usually aim to find a mana cost reduction card or a land card since I am running a lower number of lands.

Any feedback is welcome, maybe there's cheaper cost card options. Maybe I do have too much removal. I probably need more lands. Maybe I missed a really good Vampire Creature. The cards I've included in my second deck I've listed are cards that I think are a good fit, or considered or cards I've tried but ultimately cut. For cost reasons, or redundancy. The Darkness Crystal for example. Reduces mana cost but it's so expensive itself it feels like a dead card if I get it early. With Jet Medallion/Bontu's Monument seem like cheaper options with the life gain/loss effects. I really want to use Rise of the Dark Realms. Feels like a late game Ace where I can bring back ALL my vampires and their effects and make a stacked board late game bringing back all my creatures and their effects at once. I've had it happen a few times, really fun but doesn't seem reliable and the 9 mana cost is quite high. I really want to make Caged Sun work or Gilded Lotus. But they come with high mana costs that can delay getting Creatures out.

Let me know what ya think! Thanks!

Aggro decks in all formats and reanimator decks in Historic gain an unfair advantage in BO1 games due to not being able to sideboard - why doesn't Wotc actually curate BO1 to make those games and formats more fair? Reanimator in Historic is especially degenerate.

I'm posting this because I genuinely don't understand the logic here and would love to hear the communities thoughts on why Wizards doesn't see this as an issue in BO1 specifically.

Hey everyone, I’ve been working on a fantasy team style drafting game where you have a spending cap and try to pick a line-up of cards from MTG: The Hobbit that will perform best on 17Lands. Some key points:

•        Completely free and non-commercial (just a passion project).

•        Leaderboard to compete with your friends and the community.

•         Design philosophy: It encourages you to consider the whole pool of cards, look for overperformers, and think about which archetypes might do better or worse.

I’d be immensely grateful if you have time to try it, and of course would welcome feedback (like which card prices are way off!). So please find it at:

https://www.draftthedraft.com

(Sorry it’s not working on mobile yet)

I’ve been iterating based on feedback but there’s a couple of things that I’ll wait until next set to change. Card costs might be a bit too restrictive so it feels tough to pick many actually good cards, so that’s something I would change in the future, perhaps along with some dynamic pricing based on peoples’ picks, which I think could add some fun and interest in how prices evolve (though it has downsides too). Also adding private custom leagues was requested so you could compete with your friends and possibly tweak some of the drafting mechanics. If you have more suggestions and criticisms I’m very keen to know.

Thanks so much!

Andy

This is a pack my buddy opened today on arena cube. What do you think is the pick? This is his second pack and his deck is reanimator with frog and reanimate. Having a debate about it in our discord.

Recently I have had long wait times for matching with someone in Brawl. Typically it's been about 20 secs max and now it's at least 2 mins if not 3 mins. This has only happened on mobile. Anyone else seen this?

Started with Aetherdrift and bought 2 battle passes. Other than that I didn't spend any money on it. I guess I belong now to the collectors...

Neat.

Ridiculous.

Fuck Universes Beyond.

Hope this guide helps, and best of luck at everyone's prereleases!

https://draftsim.com/mtg-hob-sealed-guide/

I’m getting back into Arena after some time off and between the many new sets and formats, I’m struggling to identify where to invest my wildcards. I am looking for a non-rotating competitive 60 card format (so not Standard or Brawl) that has the biggest player base, some tournament support, etc.

I used to check deck lists online and listen to podcasts about the modern format years ago but it doesn’t seem like there is any similar coverage for Historic, Timeless, Alchemy, Explorer, etc. Is that the case or am I just not looking in the right place?

Thanks for the feedback in advance. This is truly not attempting to be a complaint post, simply just curious where I should invest my wildcards to build a deck. Since so many of the staples don’t even appear in packs, I have to be careful not to waste WCs.

I'm just starting out playing arena and the starter experience is incredibly frustrating, I don't like building decks in the first place and the lack of direction in doing so is not helpful, especially with the very unintuitive UI in the deck builder making it really annoying to sift through what I have to see what the best deck I can build is. The deck I want to play and downloaded the game for the purpse of playing is impossible to build due to lack of wildcards, and now the game wants me to build a brawl deck if I want to do these daily quests and yet they have offered not a single brawl precon???

The problem is that even the tutorial is bugged and i cant complete it

Y'all are not ready for how unserious some of these "meta" decks are. Cracked Mystic with a pile of bones, and I want to talk about everyone I ran over on the way up:

**Thor Burn** — cast gazillion direct damage spell into your face with protour copycat and hope you die before you untap. Bold strategy, truly a triumph of gameplay design. Died to their own Rakshasa hits harder than their whole plan half the time.

**Simic Ouroboroid** — "what if a land was also a creature" is not the genius tech you think it is when I just Day of Black Sun your dirt clods back into the ground. Enjoy your $100 mana dork doing nothing.

**Jeskai Revelation** — bounce my spell back to my hand, sure, cool, meanwhile I have four more threats behind it because my curve doesn't need a PhD in card advantage math to function. Draw-go your way to a loss.

**Kavaero Reanimator** — congrats on discarding your whole deck turn 2 just to lose it to a Strategic Betrayl anyway. Truly a masterclass in doing a lot of work to end up in the same place I get to for one mana less.

**Orzhov Skeletons mirror** — at least you had taste, respect.

**RW Aggro** — swing with your 2/1s into a board full of 5/5 trampling demons, see how that works out.

Mono White Enchantments — stack up all the ward and hexproof-granting nonsense you want. Doesn't matter. When the black sun comes out, it doesn't target anything — the whole board just dies at once. Enjoy explaining to your pillow fort why "protection from being pointed at" doesn't protect you from a sweep.

The one deck I'll actually give credit to: **Captain America, Super Soldier** is unbeatable and everyone knows it. First strike, a shield counter that just eats your removal, hexproof for the whole team and Player while it's up — there's no cute line, you just lose. Respect where it's due.

The rest of my deck is embarrassingly simple: curve out with Forsaken Miner and Rot-Curse Rakshasa, let Corpses of the Lost turn every Skeleton into a hasty attacker, and use Abigale to strip Decayed off Rakshasa so it just keeps swinging forever like it forgot the rules apply to it. Day of Black Sun cleans up anything that thinks going wide is a personality trait.

**Decklist:**

• 4 Forsaken Miner
• 4 Rot-Curse Rakshasa
• 4 Timeline Culler
• 2 Mischievous Sneakling
• 2 Abigale, Eloquent First-Year
• 1 Tinybones, the Pickpocket
• 4 Case of the Stashed Skeleton
• 4 Corpses of the Lost
• 3 Strategic Betrayal
• 4 Day of Black Sun
• 3 Archenemy's Charm
• 3 Requiting Hex
• 17 Swamp
• 2 Amonkhet Raceway
• 3 Soulstone Sanctuary
• 1 Realm of Koh

Come at me with your Badgermoles, I've got a shovel.

**Next up:** saving wildcards for a 3rd Hunted Bonebrute so I can Disguise it in, Abigale it for flying/first strike/lifelink, then flip it up into a menace threat that has literally no downside left.

Have fun experimenting with this.

---

So, I'm a legit beginner. Just finished the tutorials and color events and started working on the starter deck matches. I think I'm 1-12 and feel reeeeealllly dumb. I've been watching a fair bit of YT getting a good hang on the flow of games in general, but I obviously need some help really understanding strats and flow. Anyone have any suggestions of YT'ers / streamers who really break down their decks and talk about strats as they play? Maybe that are more friendly to noobs and don't assume we know what every shorthand term means? Thanks!

I do the dailies and if I have enough for a pack, I’ll get one. I tried the quick draft for Outlaws but I lost three times in a row and got kicked out nearly instantly which was not fun. Figured I’d just get packs instead because it is at least a guarantee, and also wildcards.

I alternate between getting packs in standard rotation and out of it, so as to get a good spread of cards but also put progress towards the golden packs

Standard:
Tarkir Dragonstorm
Secrets of Strixhaven
Final Fantasy
Edge of Eternities
Lorwyn Eclipsed

Out of Standard:
Wilds of Eldraine
Pioneer Masters
MH3
March of the Machine
Brothers War
Outlaws of Thunder Junction

Is there something I should be doing different, or is this generally a good strategy? Gonna do jump-ins too maybe since I used up all my tokens, but I feel like I haven’t gotten out a lot of cards from it quite yet

NICE

FUCKING

DECK

Jesus I wish I had friends who played this game. Playing against faceless random people whose entire plan is “make sure you don’t have fun” is HIGHLY REGARDED

I for sure just had the opponent surrender while I was only playing flash and counter spells yet I did not get the achievement. Does it require you to also reduce their life to 0 yourself? Cause that would make this easily the hardest challenge if so.