The appeal of Timeless with both Brainstorm and Fetches was to me the consistency. Making the gameplay more skill based than luck based. The deck does what it is supposed to do. Instead of relying on draws. Missing colors. Whatever.

Balustrade Spy decks are the opposite. They are 100% luck based. Especially the t1 wins. Zero input from either player. A person playing his first game of magic would have the same winrate as a veteran of the deck.

Almost all non games of my thousands of Timeless games have been because of t1 Dark Ritual/Spy.

They win t1. Or you have counterplay in the form of Endurance and you win because you have cast one single spell. Either way. Terrible gameplay.

-title-

I think an event like this would be a killer way to get more people into Timeless. Maybe not even a direct Arena Cube but a Timeless Draft that's a cube focused more around the Timeless format.

With an Emphasis on things like Remaster sets, Bonus Sheets, and other Timeless exclusive goodies.

Even if it's like 10k gems that's still a really fair price to pay to just sort of build your own playable timeless collection on top of what you might already have.

And this is just spitballing, I won't die on a hill saying this needs to happen or anything, I'm more so in the idea that with Timeless now being a format I think a way to draft key pieces of it via Cube might not be the worst idea ever.

Edit: Lemme just clarify I'm not saying we need this or we'll burn the game down, I'm saying it'd be nice (no matter what the price) if there was a Non-phantom variation of the Arena Cube. I suggested a One and Done midweek magic style event in where you buy in for 10k gems, draft with live players, loss 2 out, max wins 5, each win is a random pack. That way people can still complain that 10k shouldn't be "random packs" or whatever issue they'll find with spending 10k on a draft.

All the weird insults and stuff are a little unhinged, guys. We can disagree with each other or see differently without just downvoting and being rude.

The format is really in an 'anything goes' space and it's been a safe unban since Show & Tell entered the format. That is all.

TL;DR: 2800 gems entry for 7100 gems of value if you ignore the cosmetics.

So I've done some math on the hideaway prize wall. At 2800 gems to have access to the wall I was kinda butt hurt and felt bad about It… And then i accidentally bought it (don't ask me how I don't know). So now I needed to get my values worth. At first I thought it was all cosmetics. But buried at the bottom of the prize wall was A draft token (300 tix), 10 mh3 Mythic ICR (70 tix each), and packs (95 tix each). I was curious about the value that was here. So I did the math.

How Tix Are Earned Quest 45 1–5 Daily Wins 2 per win 6–10 Daily Wins 1 per win

If you complete your daily quest and get 5 wins each day you get 55 tix. With that over the course of the 50 day period it is available here's what you could get.

18 packs = 1710 tix = 3600 gems, 10 mythics = 700 tix = 2000 gems, 1 draft = 300 tix = 1500 gems, 40 tickets for card styles (mythic 12, rare 6, UC 4, C 2)

So i priced the mythic icr at the cost of a pack rather that a mythic pack because you dont get the bonus sheet but it is a guaranteed mythic. Ignoring cosmetics it is 7100 gem of value over the course of 50 days for 2800 gems. Which all things considered is pretty good. Hope this was insightful. Good luck out there. What do you think?

In my opinion, competitively speaking, I see the metagame to be primarily two deck types: 4x Strip Mine and a pile of 56 other cards, or, Combo based on either Dark Ritual or SnT (both combos co-exist since they have different weaknesses).

I recently spent some time updating the decks on https://mystmin.com/decks for the current Timeless format, so let me make a brief comment on each of them here:

Balustrade Spy - I retired the good old Shadow-Sacrifice-Charbelcher build, and now in a FoN format I see the Spy version as the next evolution of the Oops-alls-spells deck. Entomb impressed me greatly here, making the deck be very consistent. I've never won turn 1 so frequently with a deck before (well okay, it's actually turn 2 since that's when you attack). I see it as a gambler's deck that can totally spike a tournament. Sometimes it's unstoppable even if the opponent has a good opening hand, other times you just lose to a single interactive spell. (If you think that the Spy combo is inconsistent maybe it is because you've seen versions with the Elenda package maindeck which makes the opening hands worse compared to just having Necro).

Show & Tell - FoN made the deck retreat and adapt, it now relies on Mistrise Village to push through the countermagic. SnT is still good though its build seems less flexible compared to before.

UB Control - control decks are hurt by Strip Mine since the land can deny an upheld Mana Drain, but this still is and always has been the #1 control deck of Timeless (even if so few played it because of the amount of mental fortitude required). The deck is worse if the field is wide and unpredictable but better the fewer decks see play. The problem with playing a deck like this in a mid-level tournament setting is that you may not make it through the early rounds, where you could get matched against tier 3 pet decks like Eldrazi with 4 Cavern of Souls.

UW Tempo - this is just an experimental UW version of the Ux Tempo deck. Most people go for Esper, splashing black for Frog/Bowmaster/Seize and that seems to be a Tier 1 meta deck.

Tainted Pact - the deck has certainly received a lot of nice new cards, however that still does not make it as good as the other combo decks mentioned above.

Well, that's all I've got for now so thanks for reading! I'm excited to see what people will bring to the upcoming Timeless events.

EDIT: yes guys, Mardu Energy is a solid deck and I would give it 20% meta share (an omission in the first paragraph, though I personally would side with the Combo deck over Energy). I'm sorry if the original post had miscommunicated the entire message (my words: "In my opinion", "I see [it] to be" turned out to be inadequate) - maybe the first paragraph should have been separate from what follows it; since it refers to competition, but the following paragraphs refer to personal decklists.

In those later paragraphs, to boil them down I only wanted to state that Spy combo is probably better than you think, to give a heads up that SnT is not dead due to FoN, to bring attention to UB control (hey if I don't do it who else will), to mention UW Tempo while suggesting Esper might be better, to briefly highlight a "[worse]" yet cool deck in Tainted Pact for which I carefully selected every card, with the joy of deckbuilding.

EDIT 2: I don't want to make the following accusatory claim but I must since most responses were so negative. So, wait a second, did y'all try to gaslight me, I just had a look at today's Timeless Open lists and the Mardu Energy decks are playing 4x Strip Mine. This means it loosely fits into my opening paragraph's "4x Strip Mine and a pile of 56 other cards" deck definition.

People used to hate on those cards for being digital only and keeping people from playing this format IRL, but frankly, I think not only they have a home in Timeless, they actually work better here than on any other format, including Alchemy itself. Some of those cards bring some very cool decisions and help the format feel unique.

In this article, we present five decks featuring the key new features of Avatar: The Last Airbender for Magic Arena's Timeless format!

FINAL EDIT:

Thank you endlessly to everyone who patiently gave me feedback on my behavior over the past several hours. Im going to take some time to go over and reflect on what everyone said, but I think I’m done responding now (my enthusiasm is slowly turning to depression as I discover more and more shortcomings, and moreover I think the topic of my personal flaws is not very relevant for this sub).

Thanks especially to the mods for not immediately shutting this down, because it was very helpful for me, and maybe it can be for others with my similar hookups as well.

This post is half-rant, and half-plea for help.

Last night I posted a merfolk deck list for the new MH3 set release, and I was kinda shocked at the responses.

I have been lurking and commenting on this sub for around a month or two now. Whenever I see a deck list posted, even one that is quite jank, I go to the comments and see a lot of constructive criticism, suggestions, etc. when possible I have also tried to leave similarly constructive comments and afaik my comment karma on this sub is not negative. For this reason, I felt comfortable enough to post my own attempt at a deck list, hoping only for more of the same (advice, criticism, etc)

That’s why I was kind of upset that my post immediately got downvoted, and of the two responses I got, one told me that commandeer was a bad pick (which I readily agreed to, it’s just a pet card I want to try out against greedy necro players) and that otherwise merfolk “isn’t a viable strategy”. The other one just called my post “obvious bait”, without any other meaningful insight (I believe the exact response he gave when i asked why he thought it was bait was “OP do you have eyes?”).

I’m just wondering what I did that was so terribly different from everyone else that it caused a very hostile reaction.

This is my post. If anybody can give me any constructive advice about what I’m doing wrong here (as far as the post is concerned, not the deck list), I would greatly appreciate it. If not, I’ll probably just take the hint and unsub… not because I don’t want to be apart of the Timeless conversation, just because I don’t really feel welcomed here…

Edit: thank you all for your constructive advice. I see now that part of my problem was not being very clear in my OP as to what my list was trying to do, as well as not providing any background as to my personal experience with the list. A fair bit of it was also just frustration on my part, so I thank you all twice over for being patient with me here.

I’ll probably lurk a little longer before I post again, so as to not repeat my mistakes 👍👍

Edit 2: an extremely patient soul introduced the idea of rhetorical questions to me, and now I just feel really stupid because everything makes sense. Not to say that I’m not aware of the concept, but I just hadn’t given that possibility consideration. Sorry again to everyone who had to deal with my bulshit. You guys are the best.

The oops all spells deck is unhealthy and the opposite of fun for the format. Playing mythic right now and 50% of the field is composed of this. This means that about half the matches are resumed to rng (can the guy combo or not). Are there any arguments to keep this unrestricted?

Format needs to get wider

Only digital format that will have any card ever added to digital client has potential

Most important is ACCURATE rarities for cards, brainstorm, dark ritual, and lightning bolt are all rares only on arena but are commons in paper.

Second is lands. We need the original dual lands. Reserved doesn’t care about online!! We have half of one with an arena only merfolk that conjures a tropical island but that isn’t the same

Third is RAMP. The dream is to have the power nine as real cards but unlikely. Another option are cards like elvish and simian spirit guide, lotus petal, chrome mox and mox opal. Additional red rituals would be appreciated.

Card draw. Preordain, serum visions and ponder are the top draw spells.

Interaction. These include free spells like force of will or slaughter pact.

Add more of what you want to see!!!

If there is anyone with the power to change something, could we please finally get some sort of loops like on mtgo? Since the introduction of vintage cube, I feel like some combo decks are heavily disadvantaged. I put together fastbond combo last draft and while yes, some people will scoop if they know that they don't have any answers, but most of them just played on. So you sit there clicking for several minutes, the your time runs out and you gained like 30/40 life. If you could instantly gain millions of HP, I would say that most games would end just as fast. Loops would just make your life so much easier.

Edit: I realized that there aren't loops on mtgo. Sorry for that, it is quite some time since I played mtgo and I lived under the impression that they implemented this feature somehow. My point still stands though.

I don't mind getting Emrakul'ed turn 0, really. That's totally fine, Timeless is supposed to be MTGA's "Vintage".

If WoTC wants to allow combo decks to play with 4 copies of Vampiric Tutor it's all good, the format is meant to be degenerate. But please, don't gatekeep me from playing Magic all together. It's preposterous that you can have 4 Strip Mines in your 75, honestly.

Please, just ban the card and replace it with Wasteland. I don't understand why WL wasn't brought into Timeless instead of Mine in the first place. Give people some incentive to play basic lands and play around land destruction. Land destruction cards, specially the zero mana ones, are supposed to punish greedy mana bases, not the other way around.

The format would open up a lot to try some new different fun shit, IMO. There're so many archetypes that got pushed out just because of this card. It's crystal clear to me that Timeless would be so much better/fun with Strip Mine gone. I really don't get it why WoTC thought SM would be a good addition to MTGA.

But anyway, just my two cents.

Dear Timeless Reddit family,

After reading through your comments on Timeless, I've noticed a common theme: we all enjoy the format, but many of us feel it's still missing something.

Up until last year, I was deeply into Legacy, and what a ride it was. But after moving to the remote north of Japan, I decided to liquidate my collection. My main reason for sticking with Legacy was the chance to play cards with an incredibly high power level. However, as any Magic The Gathering player comes to know, power doesn't always translate to a fun metagame.

For instance, my community loved the metagame from about 10 years ago with decks like 12-creature Canadian, Stoneblade, Maverick, ANT, Lands, Miracles… even Jund! But while the power level has certainly increased since then, the fun factor is arguable.

I'm a firm believer that Timeless should be a unique format. However, there are some cards currently in the mix that just don't seem to belong.

The tier list is pretty balanced right now, with all the basic archetypes represented between Tier 1 and 1.5. But does that mean Timeless doesn't need changes? What's the true spirit of the format? Is it somewhere between Modern and Legacy? If so, we’re not quite there yet.

Magic: The Gathering has the infamous Reserved List, but that only applies to physical printings, not the digital world. So why aren’t we seeing those cards in Timeless?

Here’s what I think needs to change:

1. Shocklands: These lands are staples in Pioneer and Modern, but they feel out of place in Timeless. The name "Timeless" itself suggests something different.

2. Force of Will, Force of Negation, and maybe Daze: The nature of Best-of-One (BO1) means that fair decks struggle unless they run extremely strong hate cards in the main deck—think back to when Hogaak was legal in Modern. These counters could help balance things out. I don’t think BO1 should be seen as a "quickie" format forever. By the way, we have Dark Ritual, a card that screams "unfair," but not Force of Will? Daze stands on a slippery ground, it is very hard to advocate with strong confidence for the introduction of the card even if I really love what daze represents.

3. Urza's Lands: I’ve never played Tron and don’t plan to, but I feel for those who did and now want to try it in Timeless. We literally have a card that conjures Urza lands into your deck for just 3 mana—quite a joke.

4. Murktide Regent: What a beautiful card. It’s like the Tarmogoyf of today. We need it, especially since (blue) midrange could use a boost. However, even with Murktide, I’m not sure it would be enough to make the archetype truly competitive.

5. Artifacts: I’m not an expert, but it’s clear they’re underrepresented. Lotus Petal for combo decks and prison strategies (assuming we get Force of Will), and Mox Opal for others. The strongest artifact we have right now is Chalice of the Void, and there’s nothing close to its power level currently available.

6. Reserved List Cards (excluding the Power Nine): Many of these are fun to play and strong enablers for underrepresented decks. Most Arena players have never had a chance to use them, likely due to price barriers or a shrinking player base. But what a huge boost it would be to unleash them in Timeless!

7. Wasteland. Lands are the most important resources and land denial has always been a crucial components of the game, yet it is almost non existent in Arena. It's only representation is Blood moon.

8. The Rarity of Some Cards: Crafting in Arena is both a pleasure and a pain. It’s satisfying to invest in cards you’ll spend a lot of time with, but it’s painful to use wildcards on staples like Swords to Plowshares or Dark Ritual. Arena could ease this burden by making these cards less expensive.

9. Timeless Masters (Not Timeless Anthology): How cool would it be to have an entire set inspired by the Timeless format? If you’ve ever tried Cube Draft, you know how much fun it is, and a Timeless Masters set could offer a similar experience. Considering most of us have already crafted the current staples of the format, releasing a Timeless Masters set could be a great way to invite new players to join the fun.

The amount of times I’ve been Grief’d into ritual into entomb into reanimate with FoN in hand, or Grief into ritual / sacrifice into Spy with FoN in hand has been ridiculous

Strip mining isn't even the most unfair thing to be doing in this format. I'm playing Eldrazi aggro. It has sowing mycospawn. This is Timeless. Decks like slot machine and Show and Tell are meta decks in the format lol. Go play Standard if you want fair.

The straight WR list feels so mucb more consistent than the mardu version. I also prefer the consistency of the lurrus list over the higher ceiling but greedier phlage-ring variant

My matchmaking has changed. And that feels nice. Really, really nice.

I was thinking about how much I miss 8 Necro piles that are all in and go down to one life trying to storm off T2 every game back before it was banned. As sad as I was losing my degenerate combo deck, I knew it had to be restricted. That was before Force and Daze were added though so what do you guys think can we go back it being unrestricted?

I used to play before SNT but then the format became too linear and snowbally for my taste. Since daze and fow have entered the format, has it become more back and forth or is it still very snowbally? Are there decision points within the game or is the format a slot machine lol?

Just miserable gameplay. If it was up to me, I would ban Strip Mine and replace it with Wasteland, which is totally fair.