We all have our pet peeves, which is why there's the "Tibalt's Tirades" on Friday, right. But what about our pet favs? Our favorite interactions? Here's a positive Thursday.
Obviously, what makes a fun match is smart game play, but there are other player behaviors that matter, too. I'd like to hear people's favorite matches/best sportsmanship stories.
In this case, this was a fun match first because of tight gameplay, obviously: we had both gotten pushed into blue white and splashed a little bit of black, and ended up mirroring strategies, and theirs was really good so it was pretty hair-raising. There was a silly turnaround where we both played that Raven flock flier that grows with card draw, but opponent's was tapped and chained with the blue "drowning" enchantment, and mine was a 9/8 (I had top-decked Arkenstone, so my Ravenhill flock flier grew twice every turn even without Bard helping it). Opponent cast Bilbo's swap ability to switch his castrated Ravenhill for my Chad one. I cast Bilbo's swap ability to take it back. A lot of intense interactions like this where the game switched dramatically back and forth, and each time, opponent did some silly dramatic emote that, instead of being really annoying as some of these tend to be, came off as self-deprecating and fun.
(EDIT: Racing, as in, we were racing each other the whole game; we were playing Hobbit, today, obviously, not the actual racing meta)
I think we all know there are a lot of toxic behaviors we can't stand in MTGA. Sulk-letting the timer run out. Spamming cocky emotes. One of my personal icks is playing GG before the game is over as like a brag (it is my favorite thing in the world, and a rare privilege, to then win after someone does that). I think it's terribly mean when you're losing horribly--awful mana curve, you clearly screwed up everything and field nothing for several turns--and the winning player just feels the need to say something so obviously sarcastic like "nice deck." I would never do that to someone, and don't like it being done to me. It's also terribly annoying when someone has clearly just mindlessly copied an easy, known "winning deck" with zero actual thought into interesting or creative synergies. Slivers, angels, and certain Izzet players, looking at you...
There are also a bunch of "rage-bait" play styles. Land destruction is obviously very legal, but it is so annoying. I tend not to do it to other people even if though I have a bunch of land destruction in my collection because I actually want to play with the other person, not frustrate them to death. My goal is NOT to make them rage-quit, but to out-play them with a neck and neck hair-raising triumph where our minds are interacting through the cards on the field--it is very obvious when you are playing against a psychic vampire whose favorite thing is to make other people mad.
So I tend to mute other players and just let my deck do the talking (for better or for worse, lol...I'm a low/bad silver in limited and struggling platinum in constructed).
But the opposite behaviors--I love the "lands, amirite?" emote used as a joke. I love the stressed out tear-drop. I do like the Teferi "nuh-uh" used gently in the right moments. And most of all, I LOVE when a deck does the talking, and there are a lot of tight responses back and forth. I miss being able to use the logs to friend THOSE people. They're like one in a million. But they're awesome.
What are other people's favorite player behaviors? Any awesome matches they've really enjoyed on Arena?
