I’m primarily a paper edh player, but I’ve been dabbling in arena lately. There’s so many different formats, it’s hard to know where to start and I don’t want to waste my wild cards on a standard deck only to realize I like historic or brawl more.
So my question is what formats do you all play in MTGA and why?
Depends on what you’re looking for. Do you want to play competitively and gain ranks for the season rewards, or just have fun with it?
For just having fun with it I’ll echo the recommendations of Brawl (probably Historic Brawl). For competitive, Explorer is probably the safest bet. It’s a bit more competitive than Standard, but Standard is pretty high power nowadays anyway.
I somewhat reject the “play competitive” vs “play for fun” distinction. I’d call the later casual play or similar. I mostly play competitive, but for me, that’s playing for fun. It’s not a decision between fun and competitive.
As for the formats, I enjoy explorer a lot. In competitive formats, make sure to play BO3, as that’s what they are balanced around.
Many people enjoy historic as well, but I dislike the Alchemy exclusive mechanics and also like that explorer is close to Pioneer paper.
Fair point. While I mostly play Brawl, I do have a mono-Red Standard deck, a Rakdos sacrifice Explorer deck, and a Golgari Elves Historic deck; I wouldn’t play them if i didn’t have fun doing it, even if it is competitive. I guess I mean just for fun as opposed to playing for rewards too.
I know BO3 is more balanced and all, but I’ll admit I do prefer quicker matches with BO1.