Every Way MTG Arena Cheats You, Known or Suspected - A Documentary 

I love how if anyone mentions the shuffler on Reddit, people will jump to its defense as though you attacked their family...

My favorite thing about the shuffler is the absurd number of times my starting hands includes all spells of one color and all land of another.

Thanks for your research on this Des. I've stopped caring about winning and I am just interested in jank and goofy decks. I've had a few games where my opponent allowed me to crank up my life total or counters just to see how ridiculous we could get it. Arena is just a slot machine.

So you're telling me the shuffler problem has been fixed? Because I haven't noticed it. The pattern is still there.

After a couple of years of playing 100% free to play and constantly going 2nd, I decided to start tracking my go first/second. I tracked 557 games and went first just under 18% of the time. I also started paying attention to the decks I would be paired with and realized after a span of 8 out of 9 games being against the deck that hard countered mine, I changed to a deck with a much better matchup and then the next 15 games were against a completely different hard counter. They intentionally try to push ppl into spending money on the game by rewarding whales and punishing free to play players.

I always love losing to a 250 card deck where the "player" always draws the perfect card they need every single time. All the while I'm playing a standard 60 card deck and can't get a land/creature/spell I need to save my life!

Here's my biggest beef lately with the shuffler: *every* opening hand I get is guaranteed to include at least 2 special lands, like Field of Ruin, Mirrex, Eiganjo, Otawara, etc. It happens so much I'm just sickened by it.

I'm still trying to figure out why this game crashes at least once every time I play.

If you've ever played magic in real life consistently (tournament or not, doesn't matter), you can tell when something is janky

I've def experienced everything in this video. Hand spy, 200 card deck that drew perfect with EVERY answer turn for turn, being able to call out when you are going to draw a land instead of ANY spell to win the game...etc. It really does come down to profits, game retention (the more you lose, the more you have to play to get that mission reward done) and just pure lazy coding. Ain't nothing "random" about draws. Too many times have I said to myself 'if this was paper, this wouldn't happen or happen as much etc.' The thing that drives me crazy the most is when your deck is scanned by the system and you get intentionally paired up with someone that 'counters' your deck. You can make a brew and never see a meta deck, just other "brews" that happen to have all the main deck answers to what you're playing! Too often for it to be a coincidence...

Most people that spend money mostly are RU-vidrs that pay so they can show off decks

Arena often ends up being unplayable and frustrating. The game just feels bad. And now that I've seen your video they won't get an extra penny from me.

If you never want to play against mill in historic, just play Gaea’s Blessing

Bruh that feel when it takes until 33 minutes in to get out of the confirmed section. That is a ludicrous amount of proven shenanigans Arena is doing

Nothing could get me to come back to Arena at this point, and I see I made the correct decision.

The first issue is definitely not gone. I run into it all the time. So many times I start with 1-2 mana in hand and I never get the chance to draw another, it's infuriating...! Or the other way around, having 3-4 mana in hand at the start and almost exclusively getting mana during the draw phases.

My mill deck ALWAYS get matched against green with a Gaea's Blessing. Never fails

The random 200 card opponent thing is so real It's actually very funny everytime I get that because you can sorta game the system if you know they'll always have it, can be a challenge run Arena is the toxic abusive relationship that is just convenient enough for me to lose couple hours every week

I've experienced everything from this list! I've been playing magic since revised, so I can def tell a difference in the shuffler.

Oh my god I was so bored and just playing arena. Thank you for stopping me so I can watch this so I can be reminded

That drafting tool you theorized? Already exists in Hearthstone, there was a draft assistance tool for their draft mode (Arena) years ago. Told you the best card by pick/win percentage out of the 3 presented to the player. Definitely possible. Could be done in MTG:A very easily, though the result would often not be as straightforward as 90% or 70% pick/win as it was in Hearthstone's tool.

So I play mostly Historical Brawl In decks with 100 cards, it’s phenomenal how often I see certain cards be in the opening hand or at least within the first five turns. Play against someone with white and watch how often they have Esper Sentinel, Authority of the Consuls or Swords to Plowshares. Someone splashes green? Watch how often they have Gala Greeters by turn 3. I just built an H Brawl deck around Koth the other day. Watch how often, after using his +2 to thin your deck of mountains, you keep drawing mountains two or more turns in a row

All I know is when I play my white weenie deck, for some reason I'm placed against all kinds of red or red green aggro decks, the VERY SECOND I switch to my mill deck, suddenly all of the decks are 120 cards plus and almost entirely black or black/red removal.

It's funny that the people who deny this behavior from MTGA seem to have some monetary ties that benefit themselves. It was even funnier that when the buzz words " Confirmation Bias" came up a lot from these people. That's usually taught in low-level psychology and people just started saying it because they thought it made them sound intelligent. Anyone who has done lengthy researchs knows not to provide a point and then never back it up. MTGA is a business that wants to make money. As long as it's legal they don't care if it's ethical or morally wrong.

I downloaded mtga the other day but then delted it because i just cant do it anymore i have way more fun on mtgo due to the amount of cards and modes and it doesnt have all the bs manipulation

This is the MTG youtube video of the year right here. Thank you

Thanks for this, really cathartic to hear someone else saying the same things I've been suspecting. Also it's 100% in WotC interest to control win rates based on EOMM research as well as controlling gems since that's their ROI. Anyone who doesn't think there's some shady shit going on after learning about the MM algorithms and hand smoothing (which prove they can do a lot of other things since systems are already in place) is crazy.

How I know the shuffler is fixed is because you can update ANY deck and your first game will ALWAYS have those cards in your first hand. I’m not one to call cheats when I’m loosing and I’m aware or mana flooding but how you can just feel your next draw will be a land while your opponent so happens to pull a card then have a perfect combo happens way more to be a coincidence

I remember the shuffler algorithm in MTGO being a Knuth shuffle which can have some issues with it. While it is good for poker/blackjack if you know the seed (usually the server time) you can "predict" the hand/cards of not only yourself but other players (playing on the same deck). The only way to really get a Fisher-Yates or Knuth shuffler to be random is to have the seed be external to the machine running the algorithm (something like a rotating fob that rotates every second or faster). With decks that have 4 of or more (lands) it is hard to really "predict" if you know the seed but actually it is somewhat easier with a poker deck you have a 1/52 shot (1 of card) of each item. If I hear something is "random" i question it always unless an external device is feeding the seed to the randomization algorithm. If it isn't and you can figure out the server time (Pacific time for servers in washington state) and then use an algorithm to go through the different seeds for that hour minute second and millisecond. The PC should come up with the different combos in a matter of seconds (100,000 +) and then using the opening hand and next draw can figure out the next draws (about 100 possible) and then keep feeding the cards into the algorithm to get the next set of cards drawn. It basically can go to about 5 possible draws. (Me and a few friends broke the shuffler algorithms for online poker prior to black monday and it is the same algorithm used in MTGO).

my friend tried to get me to play arena and i already was against playing MTGO strictly cause if im gonna throw money away on a hobby ima make it the IRL physical hobby lol... but digital magic just isnt for me.. paper magic 4Lyfe.

Oh my God thank you so much for making this video so many of my suspicions have been voiced in this video and it makes me a little bit happier to know that I'm not alone

What's funny is even after this and everything else, there will still be people that defend this nonsense, just build fun decks on Arena and hope you don't get fucked over, that's what I do.

Going first disparity is so bad that I only play Bo3 on arena except when I draft. I never used a tracker, I just paid attention to how often it happens. It started getting worse and worse on the Bo1 ladder so I only was farming events. Then after a certain number of events(maybe a couple dozen of so) I started going second an unusually high amount. I then stopped playing events. I suspect it is tied to win rate, and people that say it isn’t a thing don’t have a 60%+ win rate. I have not noticed a huge disparity in going first in Bo3 even when I am in the top 1,000 of mythic. Not sure if it happens in draft since I draft so sporadically. Great video by the way. It is a very controversial topic but I am glad you made it anyway.

Just clucked in your channel looking for a rant, didn’t expect this, though! And brand new! Merry Christmas indeed

I will be adding this as I watch along. I’m not any sort of official source but I do have my own site that I run so I should be considered at least a reputable source on this since I’ve been playing for a long time now- in arena since I’m not able to play paper magic in person. ******EDITING****** 1:18- I have known that there were issues with shuffler since I have quit affectively 70 to 80% of all of the games that I have ever played on Arena due to issues, to constant bad hands or to just being put on a turn 4-5 clock from my first or second turn. While that sucks- some decks just get precisely what they need to win early. There were just too many times when I had taken a Mulligan and had gotten the exact same cards back in my hand that I shuffled away. This happened too many times unfortunately. 13:15 I have noticed that as well, but my ratio is a little bit different than yours. Either way I am still going second significantly less than 50% of the time. 39:00 I’ve noticed issues with the matchmaker system as well since I consistently play monoblack zombies and five color slivers. I’ll try my five legendary deck, which is my favorite from time to time but that’s completely random right there. Usually the opponents are four or five color decks.

Thank you for this video. Finally I am able to find comfort somewhere other than in my own rantings seeing how, only having 2 copies of one card (always expensive at that, of course), like Cityscape Leveler or Etali, I draw BOTH of them in the opening hand but, not only that, after taking a mulligan, I still draw one, if not both of them again. And I kid you not when I say this has happened multiple times in the course of not so many games, and there is 0 reason for that happening playing 23 lands and having a curve of barely over 3. Absolutely 0 reason other than, of course, a shuffler being rigged. Just how many f*ing decks have I had to discard or rework almost entirely so that the curve would stay lower than 2.4 (from my experience, that's a threshold where the shuffler stops messing that frequently with your draws) and the deck could actually pull its tricks off. Man, I never copy decks from anywhere, I always come up with decks on my own (which probably have a twin somewhere, not trying to coin any of them) and spend the time and effort to test them and see how they do, and I have very strict and specific requirements for each metagame according to what's most threatening to the decks themselves and what's mostly played in it, like answers to artifacts/enchantments, ways to make certain cards uncounterable, etc., just to see all of that crushed and thrown away by a stupid shuffler who can't even give a REALISTIC hand not only in the opener, but after a mulligan or even two. I really hate the fact that they made the shuffler this way to prevent newcomers from quitting out of frustration and whatnot. Man, if newcomers are not aware of how randomisation works in real life (which is what the shuffler should be mimicking), that's on them. Me, as a semi new player (joined Arena in 2021 but "played" the game as a kid), joined the game, suffered the absurdities of the shuffler without ever knowing for certain it was rigged, and here I am. If in WOTC they're not smart enough to keep newcomers hooked to the game by what it is on paper, that's them being bad at their job, and none of us, including the newcomers that stay, should suffer the consequences by having the game being manipulated in such a way that it encourages and discourages certain draws when real randomisation has nothing to do with that. Just disgusting to be honest

I quit playing arena 6 months ago because i can spent whole night playing with only go first for less than 20% of the games(BO1) and this situation continued for about 10 days. you can cheat anything else, just at least give me a 50-50 play/draw ratio.

I've experienced a significant number of topics you covered. I've played MTGA since its release. I'd get frustrated and quit, forget about all the issues, and then come back. One thing you didn't mention that I've experienced many, many, many times is: I'd construct a completely random jank deck and my very first game would almost always be a mirror match. (This happens even if I net deck, but it's more obvious that it isn't a coincidence with jank) Historic, explorer, standard... doesn't matter. I'm highly convinced there is matchmaking based on specific cards as well as overall rarity. I will say this happens more frequently outside of ranked play so it could just be a really weird coincidence. I've also taken a new strategy to playing my draft games. If I don't get matched with an opponent within 10 seconds, then I cancel the queue and go play a different format and try again later. My theory is the matchmaking, while broken, prioritizes your ELO/MMR but if it can't find a good match for you then it will force a less desirable match up to keep players from waiting too long. Since starting this strategy, I've had significantly more 5, 6, and 7 win drafts.

Sources man, sources, would love some links to investigate further

Waiting for Hoogland to admit he's wrong is like waiting for him to admit he ignores his kids while streaming

I have 100% seen them literally match me with the counter to the deck ive picked loads of times, if I play mill, I magically play against players who have 100+ card decks with gaea's blessing, I switch decks magically never see those decks again, same if I play elves, 8 out of 10 matches will be mono red, if I switch to white, I don't see mono red at all.

I have noticed I do significantly worse at quick drafts than I do at premier drafts. Was starting to wonder if there was something going on behind the scenes. Figured it was because they don't want me turning gold into gems. Would love to see the discrepancy of how many times I've ended quick drafts with 1-2 wins vs premier drafts where I have 4+.

I don't know about the shuffler being fixed. You still see a lot of grouping of cards and other cases where it seems to ignore certain cards in your deck for multiple games.

Don't forget to check out Into the AM for Christmas shopping deals! Up to 80% off plus 10% more off on top of it with code DESTHREADS at intotheam.com/DESTHREADS Also I cannot believe I didn't mention that the devs outright admitted that all Brawl matchmaking is rigged based on what commander you choose.

I can tell the shuffler is funky as shit when I get a turn 1 land tax way more often then I actually should. If I don't get it on turn 1, I never see it. Also my favorite video was the guy who built a Mano green deck specifically to break the shuffler. It was epic.

Awesome video man, that leaves me with a question though, given that the shuffler on MTGA works not fully randomized, what happens with MTGO? Is it the same algorithm? Or it works different? Would like to know if maybe would be better to move to MTGO instead of Arena.

yeah arena is trash for sure. I quit over a year ago. Got sick of the shuffler and the going 2nd 60% of the time. The other thing that pissed me off was the servers couldn't handle the big damage big life gain or big numbers of counters or tokens... the fix they used was to just prevent the triggering of the abilities. i.e. scute swarm. I shouldn't lose the game because i made 400 scute tokens with a cathar's crusade in play just because your servers cant handle it and times me out.

I KNEW IT LMAO It's like you said Des after hundrends of games you just notice things off about the shuffler and I knew I wasn't crazy. Thanks for the info

Arena is trash anymore. I can’t count how many times the games has crashed because it can’t handle triggers adequately or if there’s too many triggers, the token cap issues etc

on an unrelated note and inconsequentially: you're pretty toxic with your emotes huh?

It's refreshing to see someone actually address the issues with Arena instead of coping and telling everyone they're wrong and delusional for suggesting that maybe there's something not quite right behind the scenes. Most of the large Arena RU-vidrs are guilty of this, and I'd be willing to bet that it has something to do with their sponsors.

After I brewed a deck a started winning a few matches, magically, after entering an standard event paid 2500 coins, I only drawn lands for about 20 games (in a 24 land deck with 60 cards). It only stopped after getting away from the game for a few days. But the worst for me was when I played against a gay with a 2/2 monster and a decayed zombie who took waaay more damage than his power 2. I blocked the decayed zombie with a 4/4, my monster died and I took damage as he had trample

I've had it in draft where I have bottomed a singleton, only to draw it a few turns later without any shuffle effects.

8:35 Ohh, so that's why I keep getting 2 lands, I have around 5% more chance to have less land than I want

I am glad someone is finally confirming arena is trash. When arena was in its early stages i played it quite a bit in conjunction with playing standard locally and modern. I can tell you right now that playing locally with good players was way different than mtg arena and I knew it was rigged. I would get no landers to the point i would have to concede games before they started. Something I have never had to do in paper.

This is the huge issue with chance that many may not realize. It is math and numbers so it is extremely easy to fudge around and still be within legal bounds. This is best shown with an example and Des presents one, as well, in a similar fashion. Something has a stated drop rate of 1 in 15. In actuality it is a sliding chance with the 1st attempt being 5% and the 15th attempt being 100%. In reality it does work out to 1 in 15. Guaranteed. Here is the rub, though. They want the chances but they don't want the luck. 1 in 15 could streak out to several dozen failed attempts. Who wants to do that?!(they think from a business perspective)Too easy to lose money that way. So, how do you give the house an advantage and stay within "realistic" boundaries? Sliding chances as shown above. Begins as outright fraud for the first who knows how many attempts. Then they give you a "deal" later and it is supposed to make up for the initial dishonesty? 😒

When you know your card game's resource design is flawed, so you cheat it in your digital version so new players won't rq.

Update on MTGA being rigged. Made a mill deck, my first opponent was a player named ‘Sean’ with a 200 card deck. I’m leaning towards that was a bot. Updated. Got 5 more 100+ card deck opponents against my mill deck.

I recently joined a premier draft with a token. I drafted a decent golgari value pile with good sac synergies etc. I basically never draft in arena but used to draft nearly every week for years in paper. The deck I built for this event was decent, quite strong actually, and heavy on removal. The very first game I played I was up against some three or four color bullsh*t and somehow managed to mulligan to 5, brick on Lands, then exclusively draw non of my removal+wincons all the way down below 10 cards in library! In all my years of drafting, I've never had a deck that solid where I've lost SO BADLY game 1. It's totally anecdotal and also a laughable sample size but I agree they use some sort of algorithm to rig draft games based on deck composition. (I am currently and was at the time of that draft bronze in limited ranking lol) I just stopped playing the event because it truly left a sour taste in my mouth.

I think going first is based on how much you spend. My friends that cash often seem to go first a lot. I F2P and I definitely have long runs where I'm going first 30-40% of the time. I've tracked hundreds and thousands of games with different decks and it is especially true when I use draft tokens.

The clumping problem still exists. I’ve noticed after I mulligan, the draw is way better. It doesn’t always clump, but often enough to be really annoying.

One thing that I have noticed is that I'll make a few different historic brawl and maybe a standard deck or two where I do not have all of the cards. I do notice that when I start opening packs, I never pull any of the cards that I need and am forced to open enough packs to get a wild card or two. I'm not sure if there is anything in the system for it, but I can't recall a time i've ever pulled a card I've needed for any of my pending decks.

Theory/Whining - They have started adding weights to wins and losses. Concede Win/Loses don't count as much toward the "balancer" and stacked count even less so. I don't have the sample size to prove this, but in my experience, I have basically run through 25+ matches where I concede vs 25+ where I intentionally throw the game by mulligan down to 0 cards and just not playing to win to trigger make a non concession loss. What I have observed (biased) is enough for me to speculate that when you lose without concession the system tries to net you better draws and worse draws for your opponents (doing a lot of speculation on that end). I have not yet done this by playing friends or staging games myself to validate the opponent draws.

Excellent video Dez. I have been a fan since WotS. Thanks for the quality content! ❤

Recently it has gotten worse for me. No matter what kind of deck I play I get always either specific card counters or mana-screwed to keep my WR around 50%. When I see some youtubers playing the exact same decks it's night and day difference how they seem to always draw their combo, I go dozens of games without seeing the both cards in my hand. I don't pay for cards so I think it treats us plays-for-free players as some sort of glorified bots giving wins for paying customers.

I played all plains and won once Also, question: do new players get the 3 pack in the mail system for all of standard? If not the change from the "play*set*" codes to the mail system cheats players out of packs.

Could you provide some sources? I havent been able to find over half of what you're claiming here. not saying you're wrong, just asking for some sources.

Yup, this confirms a lot of my suspicions.

This was a ... meaningful video on MTGA. That's so brutally rare for me since the firehose of what cards are coming has sometimes worthwhile channels turning into hypebeasts. Thanks a million for putting this together. It pisses me off when a game I'd enjoy becomes nakedly punishing for anyone who won't cheat and the Greek chorus of the subreddit's losers scream denials about what's happening. Definitely subbed.

game made by predominately math nerds... for a player base predominately math nerds and they say "they'll never figure out we are messing with the math" sigh

One more unconfirmed: Getting a starting hand with more tap lands than statistically possible. Several games in a row.

I have had bo1 drafts while in hi-plat where I have been matched up against top-50 mythic opponents after my first few wins. Sooo many shuffler "anomalies" during games of limited that don't occur in paper. Anything to peg you to a 50% wr and try to take your money.

I hate when I build a new deck and they throw me at life gain or something completely similar, like a dragon deck vs dragon deck, or toxic vs toxic or tokens vs tokens, life steal vs life gain it all feels counter productive to why I play it. You can throw toxic up against my mutate deck at least im not fighting myself

enjoyed the video, I have wondered more than once why they would not actively cause parity in going first by showing where a player is at on a particular day plus minus zero on going first, awarding the go first to the player with the relative disadvantage. When the two are equal either randomize at that point or use longer term data. It is in their interest to do this. The total dissatisfaction from going second too often is greaater than the positive feelings from going a similar disparity to the go first end. Going second is a major problem with the game in general, and they have chosen not to address it

Hey Des I was just wanting to say they do have something like that for the draft on hearthstone, It'll tell you what's the most picked card out of the three that you're choosing from and the one with the most win percentage

I was really sick the other day and played magic arena for nearly 8 hours, to have something to focus on, I played the same deck the whole time, it was a mono black, made as a hard counter to the historic wizards deck, I only played wizards twice in all those hours, twice, one of the most played historic bo1 decks I only played twice in 8 hours. What would you make of that?

This is the video I've been wating for. Gonna listen to this over and over and memorize the shenanigans

Today I drew 16 lands (of the 18 of my deck) in the first 24 round (something similar for my opponent). It was incredible. If you want to do the calculation of the probability, it results much more probable to be hit by a meteorite. I started one week ago. In the first 3-4 days I won almost all the matches, then I started to lose. I created for purpose a deck that it is incredible weak against red, an something like 70% of my opponents has now red.

The shuffler kills me i just wish neither didn’t get flooded or locked 80% of the time

Brother I'm glad you made this video to summarize but where are the links to the articles and threads I'm drowning over here

I honestly didn't think today could have gotten any better... thank you Papa Des🙏❤️

Other channels frame such remarks as madness, frustration or conspiracy theory. For me, I answer, as a "popular" game it should at least have the "feel" of a fair match. I know that in chess tournaments we have the construction of ranks and choosing opponents through these means but nothing to the point of interfering in the game itself. In magic arena, I always had the feeling of finding the perfect opponent for the moment I should lose and for the moment I should win and the shuffle as an accomplice to this. I wrote exactly on another channel how far the magic arena shuffle was from the real shuffle, as I never got that feeling in the paper game. When you threw the "odds" statistics in your video, I shouted "in your face". Many arena advocates downplay the "feelings" players have that something is wrong compared to what it was on paper. I spend all my time playing as if I hadn't had a real victory, or a REAL DEFEAT; because when you really lose, you get the feeling that something is wrong with your strategy. Magic Arena takes away from the player the factor of revisiting his collection, an important moment, of revisiting his small box of cards through defeat, of seeking to create better strategies... What's the point of creating strategies and the most different decks, if for each modification the system finds a way for you to win or lose? And worse, not only the illusory feeling of victory and defeat, but that is facing more of a system than necessarily an adversary, regardless of the discussion about "virtual" and "reality". You fight the player selection and shuffling system much more than a real opponent. Is this feeling a conspiracy theory? So why has someone who has played on paper since the third edition never experienced this feeling? It wasn't because it was in person and not virtual. When you have these sensations and compare them to the experience with the paper, everything is lost. They don't question that in the end, you didn't have a real victory, nor a real defeat, beyond your ego, contaminated with needs for which you say you don't have time, I need my daily victories quickly. Your comparison to Odds was everything I hoped to see. While others are too busy with daily victories and how get them quickly or even how to achieve the shuffle, instead of questioning whether for each match I played I had a real match (even in the virtual one) within a satisfactorily fair system (I'm not saying perfect ), so in the end, my experience with magic arena would have been as satisfying (or at least close) as playing on paper? It's a wonder that whoever created magic arena didn't take or will take these issues seriously (because the feeling I have that it was not created to take them into consideration, anything, just make excuses, as the magic players themselves currently make in their place)

There is at least 2 different queues in bo1 events. People with less than 5 wins and people with more than 5 wins. I have played thousands of drafts and usually end up in diamond or mythic at the end of the season, depending on how much I draft and there is a significant jump up in gameplay skill, deckbuilding skill and/or number of game winning cards at the 5 win mark. It also coincidentally the point where you start generating gems. And all of Arena is designed to make you not go infinite. So it would only make sense for them to give you harder opponents at that point so either of you lose. To clearify I do not believe your exact score matters for matchmaking as you described it. There is 2 seperate queues one for 4 or less wins, one for 5 or more wins.

Just don't mention any of this stuff on reddit unless you like seeing your karma melt away and possibly get a ban ontop of it.

So who are all the people that get to go first 70% of the time? Everyone can't be going second 70% of the time.

I'm currently 9-0 in explorer platinum with UW spirits and I have gone first 8 of those games. What is happening?

I have noticed recently, I am matched with people with 250 card decks and they always top deck exactly the specific card they need to counter what I got or win. Every single time without fail.

I did a study on my own when tracking 100 games. If you surrender you are less likely to go first. I found it to be 73 out of 100 times.

Something I just saw this week, playing some midrange life gain deck. 10 times out of 10 that I played full control, I had 2 creatures in my opening hand, then drew nothing but lands and removal for the rest of the game. Also love, playing on a weaker computer, that every time you experience some lag, there's a 10% chance that Arena just completely shits itself. Your turn gets skipped even when you still have time, your lands gain summoning sickness or you can't attack and block properly.

Nice Video. 👍 I've made a Facebook threat a while ago in the german MTGA group about this topic. And got mostly backlash from players with way less gaming experience.

they will not fix the scams because i would bet that the majority of players are not thinking about this stuff so they don't even know to ask the questions. most are just casuals who wanna sling some cards.

I actually have been an unaware but suspected the win rate vs rank issue you mentioned at 21ish minute mark. Couple sets back, Neon Dynasty was flashback for draft. I drafted the craziest red black artifact aggro and went the fastest 6-0 in my life. Mind you I was in high silver after the wins, immediately paired with a mythic player in top 150. Still won but next draft I went blue red same strat and lost to the mythic player and beat a diamond for the 7th win. It felt good even though I was very confused.

Do you have any sources on the land smoothing thing you said is proven? I couldn't find any statements on it after 2019.

You can definitely tell (at least in Stand Bo1) if your opponent is new to the game because the algorithm will try to shaft you at every turn. First, itll make sure you need to mulligan at least once. Then, youre going second, of course. Lastly, youll flood or drought depending on which is worse for your hand. You can feel it happen sometimes and you just have to move on, it sucks.

I’m not playing Arena again until there’s a rotation.

I've been tracking my initiative rolls since July, I'm negative 180, I always joked the best looking deck I draft usually goes 0-3 or 1-3

Define irony the game complained about(rightfully so i might mention ) puts a commercial on your youtube video

Great video! One last thing and this seems the right place to put it. File it uder Conspiracy for now. I brew all my own Decks, I do not use a Deck Builder and the only wedsite I use is Gatherer. Though many of my Decks share themes and elements with the Top Decks they are all mine. Now comes the crazy I think Ive had people Clone my Deck remotely then turn around and Match up with me using my own Build. See Im an old head, at 51 Ive played since Magics Inception, every deck I build has a card or two in it that serves no real purpose but to tag the Deck "Mine" and more and more those Odd Cards are ending up in Decks that are damn or are Mirrored

The 200+ card deck thing happens to me a lot too, when I'm using a mill deck or my turbofog deck.

We need your video on the deck weighting discovery. But like don't rush it because your tirades are a form of calming energy for me.