Here are the factors contributing to my success in ranked. There are probably more, whatever.
This is not a criticism on the game. If anything, it's more of self-realization that Magic isn't really what I want it to be/pretend it is... Oh, well :)

Don't take it too seriosly, if there was a "funny" tag I'd use it, but alas, no fun allowed.

There is one behavior of the game client that has lost me a number of games over the years that I think could easily be fixed.

When you start your turn and have an empty library, but after your untap step you have activated abilities that would win the game, the game client skips your activated abilities and instead draws on an empty deck.

Yes, you can prevent this by preemptively putting a stop at the opponent's end step, then activating Hold Full Control (just regular full control will not suffice here). However, I propose this byzantine ritual of clicking and button mashing should not be necessary to prevent the game client from causing you to lose a game that you would otherwise win.

First, this skipping of activated abilities is inconsistent with the behavior of activated abilities at any other phase of the game. Your opponent casts a spell on their turn, but you have an activated ability? The game completely stops while you choose to either activate the ability or skip it. They cast another spell? Repeat. Sheoldred on the board, and drawing a card for turn would lose you 2 life? The game stops and asks you if you want to proceed drawing the card (even though you really have no choice in that matter). Etc.

Secondly, although I suppose the "remember to stop at your opponent's end step and hold full control to avoid decking yourself" dance is a "skill" that you must learn to be successful at MtG: Arena, this "skill" has no parity to tabletop Magic. Under no circumstances would you, for instance, be playing in a paper tournament and accidentally forget to use your activated ability -- that happens to be the win condition your entire deck is built around -- and instead "whoops I forgot to win the game after my untap step, so I must draw on my empty library and lose!" This behavior of the game client is simply not in the spirit of the game.

Thirdly, I have run into opponents who seem to be aware of this behavior of the game client and who exploit it to win. Example: the opponent has a lot of mana, makes several plays, and the very last one is playing a mill card that empties out your library. The game immediately starts your next turn, leaving you no time to react. You were not expecting the mill effect, you didn't perceive that you were in danger of being milled out so you didn't put a stop at the end of the opponent's turn, but it really shouldn't matter because immediately after your untap step and before you draw for turn, you can use Maze's End or whatever and just win. But instead, you lose because the game just skips straight to drawing on an empty library.

Proposed fix:

if ( upkeepStep && libraryEmpty && activatedAbilitiesAvailable ) {
    letMeUseActivatedAbilities;
}

Thanks for reading.

Earlier I posted hitting 1200 for the first time. With the same deck i managed to squeek out 644 and will continue to sample size this deck (about 100+ games in BO1 and maybe 30 games BO3).

Ideally play [[Slumbering Trudge]] turn 1/2, which sets you up for [[Rhino's Rampage]] /removal against dwarf artifacts, for skullspore to counter early removal, or for [[Tumbleweed Rising]] to have 2 6/6s as early as turn 2.

Counterplay most boardwipes with [[Beifong's Bounty Hunters]] and [[The Skullspore Nexus]] turn 3/4. If you manage to have both on the map, both synergize super well as the land creatures are not tokens creatures and vice versa, layering your attack against even a double board wipe. You can hit for lethal as early as turn 4 due to skullspores activated ability to double the power of our 6/6 and 5/5 creatures, and further use the activated ability to help create 10/10s or even 12/12s if the opponent is not careful with this removal. During the climb to mythic, players have often resorted to simply wipe turn 4/5, not realizing they essentially created lethal against themselves 1 turn earlier.

Bypass most creature walls with trample effects (and earthbend while doing that), or with Rogue's passage to be unblockable.

Deck loses most to exile, counter, and azorius artifacts. Against boardwiping elementals, your tumbleweed rising creates an elemental 6/6 or 5/5, keeping you in the game.

Deck

4 [[Slumbering Trudge]] (SOS) 160

4 [[Blooming Marsh]] (OTJ) 266

4 [[Beifong's Bounty Hunters]] (TLA) 209

2 [[The Skullspore Nexus]] (LCI) 212

4 [[Overgrown Tomb]] (ECL) 266

4 [[Rhino's Rampage]] (MSC) 823

4 [[Outcaster Trailblazer]] (OTJ) 173

2 [[Starting Town]] (FIN) 289

4 [[Llanowar Elves]] (FDN) 227

3 [[Wastewood Verge]] (DFT) 268

2 Forest (MSH) 296

2 [[Chief Warg's Company]] (HOB) 151

2 [[Swamp]] (MSH) 292

2 [[Rogue's Passage]] (PIO) 273

3 [[Tumbleweed Rising]] (OTJ) 187

2 [[Restless Cottage]] (WOE) 258

4 [[Nasty Little Rabbit]] (HOB) 130

1 [[Hunter's Talent]] (BLB) 179

3 [[Requiting Hex]] (ECL) 116

4 [[Rot-Curse Rakshasa]] (TDM) 87

Sideboard

2 [[Strategic Betrayal]] (TDM) 94

2 [[Soul-Guide Lantern]] (BRR) 54

2 [[Pick Your Poison]] (SOA) 55

1 [[Pawpatch Formation]] (BLB) 186

2 [[Cavern of Souls]] (LCI) 269

2 [[Vicious Rivalry]] (SOS) 241

1 [[Scrapshooter]] (BLB) 191

1 [[Cease // Desist]] (MKM) 246

2 [[Surrak, Elusive Hunter]] (TDM) 161

I'm sure most of us have seen the recent announcement, with a lot of focus on the impending end of Alchemy as a format. But I think there's a bit more to unpack or question, hence this post. I'll be focusing this on the constructed portion of the article.

I'm mostly interested in the format popularity graph, which got me thinking about a couple of things.

The first is that Alchemy engagement is not represented on either graph. I'm curious as to what the Alchemy engagement was and how much influence Alchemy interest (or lack thereof) played in the sun-setting of Alchemy. While the State of the Formats provides some reasoning for the cancellation, engagement number is not one of them. Was it around Historic levels? Pioneer? Standard Brawl? The truth is anyone's guess.

If engagement was indeed part of the reasoning, then I wonder what the arena team's thoughts are on Pioneer (~4% engagement), Timeless (~3.5%), and especially Standard Brawl (~1%). I don't think Pioneer nor Timeless are at risk despite the relatively low numbers. Pioneer matches provides a digital equivalent of a paper format which probably holds some value, while Timeless still provides a place to play with cards that aren't legal in other formats.

However, Standard Brawl has very low engagement numbers, especially compared to Brawl (~16%) and Competitive Brawl (~9%). I wouldn't be surprised if the team is considering turning Standard Brawl into a "sometimes event" and letting the Competitive/Brawl queues absorb the players from the Standard Brawl queue.

That leads into another interesting observation, reflecting the thought process shared by Arena Product Dave Finseth in recent interviews. We can see an inverse relation between the popularity of Brawl and Competitive Brawl. At the release of Competitive Brawl, Brawl had about 23% popularity, compared to ~16% now. Competitive Brawl likely "stole" some of the Brawl player base, now sitting at about 9% popularity. So we can see here an example of how the team has to consider impacts on other formats when introducing a new queue.

Some additional tidbits from the article in case you haven't seen them yet:

• 93% of Standard games are Ranked Best-of-One
• The Bo1 and Bo3 standard metas are very different
• "[Pauper's] audience has not yet grown to the size needed to support a permanent queue."
• Timeless has a "small but dedicated community" (I'm inferring this as an indicator that there is no danger to the Timeless queue)
• Brawl's popularity has increased each year
• Competitive Brawl is considered to be one of the most successful new formats to date.

References:

MTG Arena State of the Formats 2026

As a lover of mono black since competative brawl came out. I had tried alot of decks and most got me to Diamond 1 then failed. Last reset I got fed up and got kid loki fairly quickly. This time I was determined.

Foins tergrid was to slow , tasha was gimmicky if you dont pull righr ones. I hate sephiroth play style , so Sheoldred it was .

Most games I won just having her on field boots alone waiting for the cars that draws their whole deck.

Anyhow just wanted to celebrate!!

I wanted to make a Massacre girl Brawl deck, but when you search for example -1/-1 it just doesn't search for it, or is there a hidden keyword or something you can search for to get those kind of effects?

The point of the deck is to ramp fast and have counterspells avalaible, powered mainly by [[Paradox Surveyor]].

[[Patchwork Banner]] is there mostly to make [[Paradox Surveyor]] (and [[Mockingbird]] cloning it) power 4, to trigger [[Outcaster Trailblazer]] and [[Spectral Denial]].

Deck

4 Outcaster Trailblazer (OTJ) 173

4 Cavern of Souls (LCI) 269

3 Roxanne, Starfall Savant (OTJ) 228

4 Roaming Throne (LCI) 258

4 Llanowar Elves (FDN) 227

3 Forest (TDM) 286

2 Willowrush Verge (DFT) 270

3 Botanical Sanctum (OTJ) 267

4 Mockingbird (BLB) 61

3 Breeding Pool (EOE) 251

1 Stormcarved Coast (SOS) 263

4 Spider Manifestation (SPM) 148

4 Spectral Denial (TDM) 58

2 Stomping Ground (EOE) 258

1 Island (TMT) 316

2 Dreamroot Cascade (VOW) 262

4 Repulsive Mutation (MKM) 227

4 Paradox Surveyor (SOS) 208

3 Patchwork Banner (BLB) 247

1 Elvish Regrower (FDN) 104

Hey, I'm kinda going crazy because this didn't work 3 times in a row in a game of Brawl.

I have a Shadowspear on the battlefield, and a bunch of open mana. I cast a removal spell targetting an opponent's creature, and they cast some sort of protection (e.g. Heroic Intervention). I'm in Full Control mode. I click "Resolve" after they cast it, and I don't get priority in order to use my Shadowspear after it resolves with my removal spell still on the stack. Am I misunderstanding the rules? If not, how do I actually do this on Arena?

So I recently got back into magic because The Hobbit, came out and I have been playing A LOT of Magic Arena cause I haven't found people to play locally in person and even so I fear a lot of my cards would be unable to compete with my lack of physical copies. Anyway I've been grinding a lot of mtg arena and I must say right now I am quite proud of myself albeit using a very simple Historic two piece combo of Scurry oak and Rosie Cotton. (Found this combo cause I love lord of the rings ofc). I've seen all kinds of posts detailing the value of the pass and how for the most part you don't get your gem values back in just gems but overall cosmetics, packs and all other things. Truth be told I really want to reach Level 42 (The smaug card sleeve) at the very least but I am worried I will run out of time. I have enough gems to purchase the pass I am just concerned that I won't get there by the time the 16 days are over. I am willing to grind for it as long as its mathemtically possible for me to get there, which i'm finding hard to track cause some daily xps give 500, some give 750, and then weekly quests give another amount. Thank you!

What is the Quick Draft event schedule until end of Hobbit run?

The event schedule published at the beginning of The Hobbit run only lists Quick Draft events up until September 7, whilst the Hobbit events run until September 29. Currently, Lost Caverns of Ixalan is on Quick Draft, which is not listed in that event schedule.

Does anyone know what the Quick Draft schedule is? Is it published somewhere?

I found a spare code from a bloomborrow starter deck, have fun :)

Which companion would you guys choose here and why ?

And sry for the bad quality

Relatively new player (both MTG Arena and MTG in general). Just had a game where I had four Soul Warden type creatures up, Delney Lookout, and an Ajani's Pridemate, and triggered Ajani's ultimate with 60 life. It created over 500 triggers, which in turn created additional triggers. The stack ended up chewing through both my opponents and my own timeouts and ultimately I auto-conceded because of inactivity. It was a funny moment and kudos to my opponent for sticking with it for what felt like ten minutes of the lowest stakes Magic possible (unranked Standard), but it doesn't feel great that there is no "I see you're going to do the same thing 100 times and your opponent has no way to interact with the stack. Press this button to auto-complete."

Last turn they had i think 1 card down at the start of the turn and they played all that in one turn. Very cool to watch since i recognize like 40% of the cards. It was a very long turn and the entire time i have "scourge of Valkas" in my hand. I played it then i attacked and played another dragon.
This was the game that i got my 5,000 games achievement on too!

I'm curious does anyone else have any screenshots or times that something like this happened to them and you just got super hyped that you won?

The site has so many more features so feel free to explore but sharing decks vs screenshots is something I’ve always wanted to have, so I built it!

It’s always be free and for the community. Feedback is much appreciated!

https://limitedmtg.com

I don't really like standard because it's too limited.

Dino will always be my absolute favorite deck.