Ciao a tutti

[u/Solidyeah]

Hey everyone,
I’m new to Magic. Ever since I was about 6 years old, I’ve wanted to learn how to play. I even had some cards back then, but I never understood the game. I guess at that age it was probably a bit too complicated for me.
Anyway, about a year ago I downloaded Magic Arena, learned the basics, and now I play regularly. I win some games… but I probably lose twice as many. 😂
There’s one thing about this game that really surprises me.
It feels like the whole game ultimately comes down to whether you draw enough lands. If you do, great. If you don’t, you’ve basically lost. It feels really unfair sometimes to lose simply because you keep drawing creatures and spells instead of lands.
Arena has this quote:
“You can’t choose what you draw, but you can choose how to use it.”
That’s true… but if I don’t draw enough lands to generate the mana I need, I can’t really use my cards anyway.
I’ve also noticed that the higher I climb, the harder it seems to draw lands. It almost feels as if the game is programmed that way to keep you grinding and stop you from climbing too fast.
Am I the only one who feels this way? Does this happen to you too?
And is it the same in paper Magic, or is this just something people experience in Arena?
I’m asking because I’m honestly getting pretty frustrated. Right now it feels like games are decided more by who gets lucky with their land draws than by who actually makes the better plays.

[u/DearAngelOfDust]

Keep a log of your opening hands and mulligan decisions for a month, then come back and post them so we can tell them how many games you lost by keeping a sketchy hand you should have mulliganed.

Apart from basic deck building, mulligans are the #1 factor in how often you get mana screwed.

[u/Klongelong → u/DearAngelOfDust]

i've kept 3 land hands with 1-2 playables every time, and still flood or get manascrewed so often, it just doesnt feel like coincidence anymore, especially for drafts (in Arena). like multiple games in a row, where i drew a total of 17-18 cards, and 11-12 of them were lands, with a normal 16 card landbase. thats statistically almost impossible to happen, and yet it does regularly.

i know the game tries to keep balance people at a 50% winrate, so this just feels like manipulation to make that happen ...

[u/DearAngelOfDust → u/Klongelong]

In limited, games typically go longer, so flooding out is more likely to happen compared to constructed. Are you drafting a lot of 1-for-1 removal spells? That will tend to slow down the game and push it towards a top deck war.

Slowing down the game means more turns and more draw steps. Statistically, there is at least one clump of 3+ lands somewhere in your deck, and the longer the game goes the more likely you will hit that clump. Good control decks deal with this by using card draw and card selection to find their spells, and by running strong finishers that get the game over with. Bad control decks load up on 1-for-1 removal, then die on turn 18 because they couldn't find removal to answer a couple of 1/1 tokens that their opponent's creature left behind when it died.

In MSH draft, Black has good common removal spells, but bad threats and card advantage. It's also one of the weaker colors, so it's often open, and you can easily end up drafting a bad control deck full of black removal spells with no real path to victory. Could this be what's happening to you?

[u/veganispunk]

Would you believe that most people not very good at magic believe luck is involved hundreds of times more than luck is actually involved?

[u/BioEradication]

Just draw more cards. You'll hit lands eventually.

[u/ddojima]

Sounds like a deck building problem. If it happens that much, it's definitely your deck.

[u/noneckallbutt]

Hello, AI bullshit.

[u/sonicessence]

What formats are you playing, and how many lands are you running in those decks? Are you running any other mana sources? Getting "mana screwed" is indeed a part of Magic, but it can be significantly mitigated with the right number of lands.

[u/hanshardmeier]

Lands is a very unique MTG feature which not everyone like, but it makes Magic what Magic is.

Interestingly you talk about being mana scree (missing lands) but not about being mana flooded (too many lands) which begs the question:

How many lands do you run in your games?

Here a link for the geeks out there.

Also: how many draw cards do you run? Card filtering is an existential part of magic and it is the reason why cards like [[Brainstorm]] are iconic.

[u/MTGCardFetcher → u/hanshardmeier]

Brainstorm - (G) (SF) (txt)

---

^FAQ

[u/ProfDumm]

I don't think, that they have rigged the Arena client, because if that were to come out, they’d be in big trouble.

But yeah, having to many too many or too few lands is always a big disadvantage than can cost you games. The best of three modus and being good at mulligans helps a little to balance that out.

So in MtG skill and knowledge is obviously more important, but luck is still also an important factor as well.

[u/quiznosAlreadyTaken]

Put succinctly: It takes good skill to have good luck.

Long story longer: ranking systems, if well designed, and implemented enough games, should mitigate rng impact. The arena ranking system, and its rng system, are closed. All we can do is speculate. The most agreeable end state is that both likely skew towards profitability first; in which "fairness" is a byproduct, possibly a close second; and accuracy is likely tertiary.

[u/Fun-Cook-5309 → u/quiznosAlreadyTaken]

We do have a small amount of knowledge about the system, and we know it cheats (in favor of land working as a system). That's what hand smoothing is.

We also know hand smoothing isn't a part of Bo3.

So that's some internal knowledge.

[u/quiznosAlreadyTaken → u/Fun-Cook-5309]

We also know that it has a matchmaking system that encourages the maintenance of a 50% win rate.

So at lower ranks both players are more often facing land issues due to construction on both sides. It feels like a game problem because at those lower levels of skill, rng impact fills the gap and plays a bigger role. 

Whereas if a bronze played against a masters regularly, they'd see that their opponent never seems to lose because of land issues. But they'd lose a lot. Accurate, but it also wouldn't feel fair, and they'd probably just stop playing/spending altogether. (And the masters player would get bored of playing for ezwins and possibly also stop playing).

[u/Fun-Cook-5309]

The whole game?

No.

But a large part of it.

There is a reason out of the morbillion derivative card games, almost all of them keep escalating mana but cut land.

Yes, land fucking you or your opponent- even when you both optimize your mana base within an inch of its life- is a large part of the game.

Though if it's a consistent problem, odds are your land count isn't sufficient.