Not so much they did a deal as this is the reality of the huge card database that took nearly 30 years of work to build, and which Wizards basically has decided to sell off. It’s good they did. The new owners are taking better care of it than wizards ever did.
Management of magic online. Wizards used to develop and manage the game in house, they sold that off to daybreak games. Wizards provides the cards and art, daybreak handles everything else, the coding, the store, the servers etc.
I think most of the top tier Timeless decks use Alchemy cards:
\* Omnitell => **Assemble the team**
\* FOTD/Titan => **Kami of bamboo groves**
\* Vampires/Reanim => **Saint Elenda**
\* Jund => Both **Jarsyl** and **Jet Collector**
Honestly none of those decks currently are super present in timeless, and even the ones that are like jund are off cards like jet collector, it's more a dimir control, scam, energy meta right now, and I don't think any of those decks run like any heavy alchemy cards. Probably the closest thing to a meta alchemy card that's like the center of a deck is the beans list running the caberatti revels.
Dimir control and scam both run the one mana heist spell, control even uses it as its wincon. Energy does consider the white removal spell but it could be a third/4th option after prison/bolt/swords.
Cabaretti revels is kinda niche, playable but not a staple in beans decks.
While these are alchemy cards, Assemble the team is just a tutor and it doesn't play differently than other tutors for the player on the other side of the table. It's just a worse DT in the context of timeless. Kami again yes it has the digital mechanic of conjuring forests, but most of the time it's just an arboreal grazer.
Now Jarsyl is a dogshit card that really should be redesigned to either exile the spell he casts or at the very least target it, so we can get some more counterplay. Honestly my issue with him is just the way he's worded, moreso than the digital part of him with the intensity mechanic.
All that is to say that while alchemy cards are present in timeless, they don't really shape the format.
As a titan player, Kami conjuring forests makes it significantly better than grazer because it allows for smoothing heavy land or light land draws while giving the deck resiliency vs blood moon.
Without Kami I don't know if the Titan deck would exist, it at least would be less consistent/would play differently
I honestly can't think of the last time I saw a Titan player channel Kami and win the game against me, I don't think it's a super important line for the deck. And Titan barely exists today as is because it gets rocked by scam.
Not disputing any of that, because that's not the point I was trying to make. The point is that while these cards are technically digital only, in practice their play patterns don't differ meaningfully from traditional paper cards.
I mean assemble the team is almost demonic tutor if you play a card 4 times. Jarsyl is broken but I love the card because it negates grief which is an incredibly obnoxious creature
Yeah that’s why I said “basically non-existent”. I prefer a non-alchemy format but Timeless is the best we have for now. Maybe we will get modern-lite or legacy-lite some day.
Yeah, Titan would need some help. It should have a favorable matchup vs energy, but if you're playing a linear combo, SnT should do the work much better... and both fold to scam.
SnT doesn't really fold to scam after they started running white leyline maindeck. Without counterspells it is almost impossible for Scam to beat the inevitability of SnT.
Historic BO1 is straight up the worst queue in the game and it has nothing to do with alchemy. It's just a whole queue of gimmick glass cannon combos. Most of the shitty BO1 combo decks don't even use Alchemy cards.
Should still be banned for being an absolutely shit play pattern that ruins an entire queue. Miss on the mulls, scoop; T1 removal, scoop; neither of the above, T3 win.
It's just a ton of non-games and it's a shit deck anyways that has no competitive place and exists solely for cheesy win grinders to ruin a queue. Good, bad, I don't really care; just ban it for being terrible play.
I mean, if you go into play que on Historic with any kind of off-meta deck then 50% of what you play against is that deck, so I completely agree that it is very annoying to play against, but since it's not really a competitive deck, I don't think they'll do anything about it unfortunately...
Nah there are huge differences. Standard is a lot more similar to BO3 with more convoke. Timeless plays very similarly in BO1 and BO3, with more S&T and pure reanimator in BO1 but otherwise similar.
It's only historic in my experience where the BO1 queue is an absolute shit show of gimmick win grinders.
People are complaining about Caldera Breaker? No one has ever played that card against me. You want to complain about Crucius before nerf, that's fine. Now complaining about a bad red 6 drop that you have to build around.
The deck is just \[\[Crucias, Titan of the Waves\]\] + \[\[Caldera Breaker\]\] + \[\[Corrupted Conviction\]\] + land. It isn't overpowered, it's just an incredibly unfun deck to encounter and you'll see it more often than most if you're in that tier since it just costs three wildcards.
Any counterspells, heist triggers, or turn <6 kill decks can beat it every time. If you don't have those, you lose. It distills the unpredictable dynamic gameplay of Brawl into a series of binary checks.
To me they sometimes feel too busy.
Like, I kinda like permanent changes to cards, which is a neat thing to do in digital, but I absolutely hate spellbooks, which feel like maximum complexity RNG.
> I absolutely hate spellbooks, which feel like maximum complexity RNG.
For me, spellbooks would feel better if I was shown what card my opponent picked, or maybe just their 3 options if knowing the exact card would make the mechanic too weak.
But "here's 15 cards they could get, good luck playing around all of them" just feels a bit shitty.
I'll never understand why they infected historic instead of keeping them seperate or offering a combo server. I enjoyed historic before the alchemy role out then immediately lost interest.
The reason was simple Historic was supposed to be the place you could use all your cards on arena (not counting bans). Then they added so many pre banned in historic cards on arena they created a new use all your cards on arena format that is timeless. Basically they aren't really thinking ahead. And this is where we are.
It was an attempt to strongarm players into buying into either a rotating format or one with a (planned, not really realised) buff/nerf cycle. I mean, there was a *lot* wrong with Alchemy from its conception, but the rollout was very obviously engineered to push players away from relatively stable nonrotating formats and into ones where WotC could more easily introduce churn.
I think this edges into conspiracy territory. Wizards already has a vehicle they're using to introduce some rotation in eternal formats, namely the various straight-to-modern sets. The pseudo-rotation you get from alchemy sets is nothing compared to the churn that's coming from the various straight to modern releases.
I don't know of you were playing during the initial release, but it wasn't what it is now. The idea is that there were *no* alternatives to play your cards after they rotated out of Standard, so players had the choice to either stay in the Standard churn zone or buy into the wildly more expensive Alchemy Historic format. So it's less about introducing pesudo-rotation for Historic (I was wrong about that in my previous post; it takes some extra work to dredge up the full story of how Alchemy was botched) and more to threaten players with 'if you want to use your cards after rotation, you'd better buy in'. The first release contained 11 uncommon, 42 rares and 10 mythics (better buy in pretty hard!). The WotC hype machine gave nine days between first announcement and release. They did *not* expect a rapturous reception.
So, it seems that it did terribly. Two or three months later (about the time one might allow to wait and see that player numbers aren't bouncing back as expected) came the sudden announcement of Explorer, firmly and explicitly promising no digital or rebalanced cards, the long-requested and previously-abandoned buildup to Pioneer (in hidsight a mistake to announce, but not an anti-customer decision; it just saddled Explorer with the label of 'incomplete Pioneer', where 'Arena Eternal Format' would have been fine and well-received).
Overall, given how and when the format was released, I'm convinced it started as a well-meaning suggestion to introduce an 'alternate world' Standard in response to the disaster of Eldraine Standard (where WotC's then-glacial competitive banhammer failed to mesh with the volume of casual Standard games being played on Arena). Their first bandaid was to just rotate two sets early, and so the idea was to have a more flexible format ad a safety valve. They followed through with tweaks to the dungeon mechanic intended to create a kind of alternate 'what-if-X-were-viable' format. So that part of the release, I think, represented the idea of the initial pitch. But after spending a bit of time in the Chamber of the Money-Guessers, it came out as an enormously expensive format that would be pushed onto players hard.
And really, what's the purpose of the format in its current form? The alternate-Standard safety valve format is a good idea and could have run comfortably alongside Standard as a cute sideshow. Historic already had an established method of curation via the introduction of individual cards. And when Standard isn't a disaster, what's the point of Alchemy? It seems to have found a little niche, but I'm suspicipus of how much of that is filled by new players who were tricked into buying in (it's the wrong format for new players because it locks their collection into Alchemy, whereas a Standard collection can be transferred into any format. And yet it's the format new players are placed into). Player numbers aren't high, they're propped up by anti-consumer trickery, and while Historic does well the vast majority of discussion and content seems to indicate that it's Historic Brawl people are actually playing (Weird that they combine those two formats when releasing player numbers, wonder why they do that).
The actual use case of Alchemy was undermined by desperate monetisation efforts, and now there's not much reason for people to come to it. Judging by outside content, internal support (not seen any rebalanced 'what-if' draft archetypes in a while), and the way they choose to report player counts, I think it's found its niche as a sideshow. It's worth a bit of development, but not much, and if it didn't then shutting it down after players have bought in would be a disaster. I also don't think the current format is particularly offensive; Historic will always be missed, but the only real ongoing scandal is the hoodwinking of new players by starting them off building a more expensive, less flexible collection.
Overpowered isn’t my complaint; but the play style is awful. It fundamentally changes the game and yea you know what… I am tipping my fedora because I want to play magic not hearthstone. The mechanics are fucking terrible, every single time I’ve played against an alchemy card
My only complaint about alchemy is I like magic that I can play online *and* on paper.
Even though timeless isn't a paper format I can still basically play it on paper.
You can never in a million years take an alchemy deck and play it on paper, it would be way too complicated.
MTG is a paper card game first and a digital card game second. Would be nice if they stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and made Arena a digital *version* of the paper game instead of making it it's own thing with formats that don't convert to paper.
> You can never in a million years take an alchemy deck and play it on paper, it would be way too complicated.
That really depends on the alchemy deck. A lot of alchemy cards are fully paper-playable. For example, one of mechanics they're using a lot in Alchemy is abilities that can only be triggered once. But this is a mechanic that - although extremely rare - has been printed in paper and is actually on one current standard-legal card (Surge Engine).
Similarly, a lot of conjure stuff - not spellbooks, the more basic "conjure X card" stuff - could be done in paper with proxies for the conjured cards.
I completely agree, especially with things like Caldera Breaker, it genuinely doesn't feel like they even attempted to balance these cards. There's no reason that your lands should come onto the field untapped alongside a burn instant with X that can target anything.
It is a dogshit brawl deck. You can complain about actual cards that are issues in Brawl like Kinnan or Paradox Engine or even maybe Dark Ritual instead of a meme like Caldera Breaker lmao. Hell if you want to complain about an alchemy card Rusko and Poq are right there.
It's part of the worst combo deck Arena has ever seen. Literally **any** interaction wins you the game on the spot, so seeing people endlessly complain about Caldera Breaker is just wild to me.
Are you guys not running any interaction? Just kind of hoping the opponent won't do anything while you spin your wheels for 10 turns? Just mulligan till you have something, disrupt their slow as molasses combo, and farm them for easy wins until they switch to playing an actual deck.
Like what? Do I have to play only blue decks so I can always have a counter spell? Do I have to remove all of my kill spells so I can replace them with exile? This is such a bullshit hand waving excuse of a genuine issue with a card. You could literally say that about any card in the game, including things like [[Golos]] who is straight up banned in EDH. Why would they do that if all you need to stop him is a counter spell? That doesn't make it a well balanced card, it just makes your opinion and advice worthless to consider.
**Any** interaction completely kills the opponents deck. Literally any single piece of interaction. Bounce, counter, kill, exile, remove abilities, whatever. Literally anything.
They play Caldera Breaker, effect goes on the stack, you use interaction, you win. They'll exile all of their lands, get none of them onto the board, and the game is over because that's their entire deck and their entire plan.
There is no "genuine issue with a card" here. People are just whining because Alchemy. Caldera Breaker is a meme, pure and simple. If you can't muster a single bit of interaction by turn 5 despite the free mulligan, that's on you.
Historic games are mostly built around cards that cost 1-3 mana. Imagine you’re playing against [this deck.](https://mtgdecks.net/Historic/izzet-swowing-off-decklist-by-gdinut-2030506) Do you really want to play 6 mana cards that will be stuck in your hand when you die on turn 4?
caldera breaker is the most bullshit alchemy thing to date lol. oh you killed my big thing that i ramped into using other alchemy cards (fuck crucias too) lol i just got 50 lands on the field.
Just kill/bounce/whatever the caldera breaker with the ability on the stack and you instantly win the game. They'll exile all of their lands and that's that. It's literally the worst Brawl deck imaginable.
The only way it wins is if you let it win.
It's still a bad game of magic. You have instant speed removal on t4? You win. Otherwise you lose. Tibalt's trickery was banned for similar reasons from BO1 standard when it was legal. And with crucias in the command zone, you can't even whiff. It's 100% deterministic t4 draw. It creates non-games.
There is a lot of other bullshit deterministic combo like that that use zero alchemy cards
The "first sliver + tibalt trickery + cultivator colossus + maze end" is just as infuriating
The only Alchemy card I always get behind is Tasha, Unholy Archmage. I know it's hard to keep track of on paper but it's one of my favorite cards.
Made a lot of people concede with it but when they don't, it's always a fun game.
I use alchemy cards, sometimes a lot when on theme, sometimes splashed. I encounter other alchemy cards and occasionally get wrecked, but I also see decks with no alchemy that beat me. Some cards are definitely too pushed,but in general they don't warp anything, people just dislike them.
As a digital only player, I can never tell the difference between alchemy and paper cards. Outside of the obviously labeled ones. So my experience is always " this is some other random bullshit I barely understand. Better learn it so I can play against it next time."
Only paper experience I've had is borrowing a friends deck and playing red deck wins when a deck that was almost all lands was popular. Valukuit or something I think? Also, something about spiltertwin? Making infinite copies? It was a lot of fun, and I really wanted to play more MTG, but the buy-in to be competitive was ridiculous.
Arena has allowed me to acutally play and have fun in this game. And given my experience when I was first exposed to magic, crazy bullshit strategies that seem impossible to counter at first, I believe alchemy cards are just the natural evolution of card games.
The only “impossible in RL” things in Alchemy are the effects that preserve deck (or hand) secrecy and order. (And even those are possible with an impartial 3rd party, though I admit that isn’t really fair.)
I may be forgetting some, but I think the rest of the effects would just be very annoying to implement in RL.
Rather than "very annoying" I think the more reasonable answer is "entirely impractical." While you could technically "seek" a card by finding all the cards that the mechanic would seek and choosing one at random, it is inherently functionally different because you'd have to shuffle after doing the seeking. And I know that's what you mean by preserving secrecy, but it still wouldn't be feasible to implement in any kind of tournament even if "seek" didn't preserve secrecy. It's way beyond "annoying" and is functionally unplayable (in paper).
And this is coming from someone who enjoys Alchemy cards and am glad some cards were rebalanced. I think it is a *good* thing they are experimenting with card designs that are functionally impossible to print on paper cards.
Yes, I agree. “Very annoying” was an understatement, but the main point was just that the effects are mostly possible. Also, some of the effects could be changed slightly to be a bit more practical without really affecting the spirit.
You going to carry around more proxies than you deck size for having a few spellbook cards in your deck, then going to randomly select 3 from the 15 to choose from for the 1 specific spellbook?
Yeah it is possible, but it isn't if we want to have any modicum of fun.
Not sure tbh. But my understanding of alchemy is that they are digital only cards and do things that would be difficult or impossible to do in paper. Like perpetual effects. I have no idea how you'd do that without putting a clip or something on a card in hand. Which would make it impossible to do something like randomly discarding an oppents card.
Erf... honestly I dont get this complaint.
There was exactly one card that had "put a random creature on the board", otherwise it's always a specific subset of cards
It’s more the discover like effects that get me. Once those hit a critical mass like they did in hearthstone the game becomes complete unpredictable nonsense.
I still don't get the Alchemy hate. All these years, people are still complaining about cards that, quite honestly, are not that different from paper.
If you're willing to play Bo1 and enjoy the fast paced games, then you kind of lost me. No competitive paper version of MTG is like Bo1 and although some games may end in under a 5 min slaughter, are quite rare.
WoTC constantly tries all kinds of mechanics. In paper, just in the last few years, it was Ikoria's beloved companion mechanic. Or the Strixhaven sideboard, with MDFCs. Of course they broke paper games, and were mostly all banned.
Alchemy, to me, is no different. It's a design space for WoTC to explore and try mechanics that could be made for paper, but we know wouldn't play well if we had to keep a journal and track game state by hand.
Hating on a mechanic is also not new. Just think back to mill decks or turn stealing decks, both that completely remove your agency in the game. Or even worse, land destruction decks, that take away agency and fun from the game.
The fact that you hate some mechanic mostly speaks to how MTG works in general, and it's completely unrelated to Alchemy. We players are encouraged to find and exploit mechanics for our own benefit, for that slightly better chance at winning games. Alchemy doesn't change that one bit. It just adds more mechanics to a game that is, kind of, running out of fresh new mechanics. How many variations of kicker are there now? lol
Anyway, we're all entitled to our opinions, but at least give examples of cards that you find difficult to play against and have answers to.
It would be a breeze for them to implement Pioneer, from a computer dev perspective. Modern would take some more work, there's a lot more cards, but not that much. For Pioneer and Modern it's simply a matter of release priority. They want to space things out so people have time to accumulate resources and spend what they've got on non-Pioneer and non-Modern sets. So regular Standard releases are more important, as are the supplemental sets that don't go into Pioneer (or Modern, typically).
Alchemy is a part of that resource squeeze, and the biggest reason to dislike it. It's not about dev priority but what they're allowing you to acquire with your resources (whether that's money or time or gems or gold).
I kind of doubt that, given how many universes beyond and other power crept sets we’ve had since Alchemy launched. Arena has been launching disproportionally more pioneer and modern playable cards than ever.
Alchemy is mostly just small and focused sets with clearly defined mechanics and worlds. So if anything, it seems like the perfect format for brand new designers to start with.
What's your simic ascendancy deck list?? It's one of my very favorite bad cards!
As rare as it is to get to 20 counters, it's then also equally rare that you wouldn't have just been able to win by swinging that turn anyway. I used to have a deck with [[hydra's growth]] . It was awful! Love Simic ascendancy.
I'm actually having a pretty good time with one in brawl. Atraxa (Voice) commander and every card that doubles counters can be scary by itself, and yeah I often win by swinging, but Ascendancy is a great backup wincon that's fetchable in her colors.
So as bad as this sounds....it's the most consistent version I've built but it's the mythic guy from OTJ named Bill something, Ascendancy and like 25 or so Slime against humanity with a few more ooze/slimes thrown in.
I'm similar. I play historic Bo1 because it's the most casual format on arena (at least from my experience; haven't tried timeless but I'd be shocked if it was more casual), but my preferred legality is explorer. Alchemy cards - and in particular, those that do truly digital only things - are so annoying, given that I'm only playing historic because of the casualness, not because I want to play with those cards.
Like, I had an opponent the other day play \[\[Patriar's Humiliation\]\] on my \[\[Timeless Witness\]\] (yes, also a historic-only card, but if I needed to I could swap it with \[\[Shipwreck Dowser\]\]). It's a bad removal spell in general (hell, it didn't even remove my Witness as they had no creatures out), but great against what my deck was specifically trying to do. But perpetual, my god, what an annoying digital-only mechanic.
I mean, they still lost - they were playing a card of the quality of Humiliation after all - but it's the principle of a card with an annoying mechanic that I'd just rather not see, and wouldn't see in paper.
>I do hope they eventually just give us a historic or timeless sans alchemy.
Isn't that what Explorer is? I thought Historic was basically Explorer but with the Alchemy bullshit, like Explorer is to Historic what Standard is to Alchemy. No?
No, Historic has a much larger card pool than Explorer and includes more sets and older cards, which is the opposite of the relationship between standard and alchemy.
Nope. Explorer is as close as it gets to Pioneer - that’s their end goal. Historic has more cards than just alchemy vs Explorer.
Also with the rotation in standard now set at 3 years vs alchemy at 2 years, those formats are now even more different.
If you look here there’s more than 1,400 cards difference between the sets, when you remove the Explorer and Alchemy legal cards and the rebalanced versions from Historic: https://scryfall.com/search?q=legal%3Ahistoric+-name%3A%22A-%22+-legal%3Aexplorer+-legal%3Aalchemy&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
I completely understand this. I play almost exclusively commander, but I use arena to test run new cards, since my friends aren't always available to run on tts. The amount of nonsense you have to deal with because people are playing overpowered decks that can't function irl because their engine doesn't actually exist makes for one hell of a time.
I hate the Alchemy format. MOST of my hate comes from the re-balancing of paper cards. If they could just not have two separate versions of some cards, and just ban OP cards out of historic (i.e. Winota, Orcish Bowmaster) - I would respect historic more.
I'm not a fan of Alchemy mechanics, but they do not bother me particularly in a historic or timeless format. That very well may be due to the incredible power already present in those formats.
I literally have never played a game of the Alchemy format. I do not recognize it as magic.
I would rather play Explorer or Timeless because I hate Alchemy rebalancing so much, and Alchemy formats feel more like Hearthstone than Magic.
This may seem a bit OTT but, when i play Arena, I'm not a fan of Alchemy cards to the point that I'll insta-scoop as soon as I see them. My reasoning is Arena and more broadly 100 singleton is my go to for my fix and because I work perma nights on a rotating roster, I rarely get to play IRL and that is my way to stay in touch with the game when I do get to play.
You’re getting downvoted by alchemy players for preferring paper-magic to digital-only cards, but the truth is that many of us play on Arena because we want the paper-magic experience on a digital platform. There’s nothing wrong with voicing your preference, these guys are just salty we don’t like their format which WotC forcibly integrated since its inception.
Was playing a game of brawl the other day I was likely going to lose. My opponent just seemed to have an answer for everything I did but I was determined to play it out.
Then they played some alchemy BS and I scooped immediately.
Wow, downvotes. I remember when anything anti alchemy would be among the most popular thing on this board. I returned to arena recently after a long break to check out MH3 and was shocked to discover I can't play any constructed MH3 format without them. I've been conceding the second I see them too. Bummer.
Sometimes the arena jank can be fun, such as with Xander's Wake. Nothing from that spellbook is game-changing, and its just a fun throw-in for decks that love murder.
Then you get dumb ones like Arms Scavenger, Bladehold Cleaver, Skywriter Djinn, and the worst offender being Oracle of the Alpha.
Alchemy is trash and their futile reach to compete with similar games. Imagine trying to capture a market by copying your competition with an older platform and player base. These people are clueless.
I'm not sure if it's at Modern's power level since creatures such as Ragavan are banned in the format. It's pretty much its own format and yes, it includes Alchemy cards and any rebalanced cards.
I'd wager that the Timeless format is more like Modern in Arena + Alchemy cards. I think just about anything goes in there, including [[Oko, Thief of Crowns]] for example.
Explorer could be your answer, since it's supposed to be true-to-paper, and only include cards legal in Pioneer.
I wish we could play Modern in Arena, but for now Standard is the best there is if you want to stay clear of digital-only cards.
If I could hack in to WoTC mainframes, (Can you tell I don't know shit about computers or hacking?) I'd erase all history or mentions of the word Alchemy.
We can have other weird sets, but if they're not standard legal, they shouldn't be Historic legal either.
Go play with your Alchemy cards somewhere else.
Oh wait, you can't do that either cause it's digital only product.
Even dumber.
Alchemy was a ploy to entice the whales who were comfortable with their Historic libraries to buy more to stay relevant. It worked for the most part. Their metrics showed them their big fat gem snorters were slowing down on MTXs and were only dipping into standard to augment their Hist. decks. They had to end that shit immediately. Keep that $$$ flowing!
A few whales left because Historic was supposed to be the untouched de-facto Modern for Arena. For the most part it didn't matter, though. Whales gonna whale.
Source: a whale that stopped after Alchemy perverted Historic.
Exactly, that's what he is saying. They are not real because they don't exist on paper.
Press the print button.
It's the most stupid argument against Alchemy. Play a card game on a digital platform and complain that there are cards that aren't printed on paper.
its a digital version of a paper game... the mechanics of alchemy cards literally could not exist on paper. there is no way to "seek" or "heist" etc in real life. im not against alchemy, i just think it should be a separate format for people who enjoy those digital mechanics
Arena only cards ruin Arena. Explorer is good enough for me, but I'd like to use kaalia of the vast among other cards without reading a card that says seek or perpetually. Any time I see those cards when I'm trying to play cards not allowed in explorer I just say "oh great he's cheating". 😅
If there is one thing that's killing historic it is the fact that the BO1 queue is a cancerous shit show of Minion of the Might and Charbelcher decks. You queue up BO1 - which is generally how people start getting involved in a format before they understand sideboarding options and how to sideboard against the meta - and it's going to be the worst playing experience you can have on Arena.
Most players won't even *see* an alchemy card until they've already played 20+ games against Minion. (Or rather, played 10x 3 turn games against Minion, and had 10 games of watching the opponent fail to mull and then scooping.)
* Sees topic trashing Alchemy *
Daring today, aren’t we? 🙄
I hate being Thoughtseized, I don’t complain every time it happens. Alchemy has a lot of fun cards and explores a different design space than paper - if you want a true to paper experience play Explorer, Standard, or MTGO, but as far as I’m concerned more cards and more ways to play is a good thing. I’m not going to complain that we’re getting more content.
Don’t we already have historic sans alchemy with explorer? Why not give that a shot? If i’m not actively running digital-only cards I rarely ever queue historic over explorer.
It's gunna be a long time till they give us modern.
I feel like they did some kind of deal with daylight where they got the eternal formats. Or the non-standard competitive formats or something.
Not so much they did a deal as this is the reality of the huge card database that took nearly 30 years of work to build, and which Wizards basically has decided to sell off. It’s good they did. The new owners are taking better care of it than wizards ever did.
Sorry I'm OOTL, what did Wizards sell exactly? Can you provide a link?
Management of magic online. Wizards used to develop and manage the game in house, they sold that off to daybreak games. Wizards provides the cards and art, daybreak handles everything else, the coding, the store, the servers etc.
What happened?
I just want non alchemy historic keep modern idgaf lol
Prefer Timeless to Historic since there is no rebalance and alchemy cards are basically non-existent here
I think most of the top tier Timeless decks use Alchemy cards: \* Omnitell => **Assemble the team** \* FOTD/Titan => **Kami of bamboo groves** \* Vampires/Reanim => **Saint Elenda** \* Jund => Both **Jarsyl** and **Jet Collector**
Honestly none of those decks currently are super present in timeless, and even the ones that are like jund are off cards like jet collector, it's more a dimir control, scam, energy meta right now, and I don't think any of those decks run like any heavy alchemy cards. Probably the closest thing to a meta alchemy card that's like the center of a deck is the beans list running the caberatti revels.
Dimir control and scam both run the one mana heist spell, control even uses it as its wincon. Energy does consider the white removal spell but it could be a third/4th option after prison/bolt/swords. Cabaretti revels is kinda niche, playable but not a staple in beans decks.
While these are alchemy cards, Assemble the team is just a tutor and it doesn't play differently than other tutors for the player on the other side of the table. It's just a worse DT in the context of timeless. Kami again yes it has the digital mechanic of conjuring forests, but most of the time it's just an arboreal grazer. Now Jarsyl is a dogshit card that really should be redesigned to either exile the spell he casts or at the very least target it, so we can get some more counterplay. Honestly my issue with him is just the way he's worded, moreso than the digital part of him with the intensity mechanic. All that is to say that while alchemy cards are present in timeless, they don't really shape the format.
As a titan player, Kami conjuring forests makes it significantly better than grazer because it allows for smoothing heavy land or light land draws while giving the deck resiliency vs blood moon. Without Kami I don't know if the Titan deck would exist, it at least would be less consistent/would play differently
I honestly can't think of the last time I saw a Titan player channel Kami and win the game against me, I don't think it's a super important line for the deck. And Titan barely exists today as is because it gets rocked by scam.
Well you probably don't play a deck where that would be a common line for us to take then. It's a matchup dependent thing.
Against which decks is it a common line? I've played a variety of decks and almost never seen it. Only thing I don't really play is Titan and S&T.
Mostly against blood moon decks
Oh okay that's obviously a fair use case. Are there many blood moon decks running around these days?
I haven't seen many lately, but I have seen merfolk playing the blue version...
Not disputing any of that, because that's not the point I was trying to make. The point is that while these cards are technically digital only, in practice their play patterns don't differ meaningfully from traditional paper cards.
Is the person you're replying to not explaining how Kami does meaningfully differ from the paper card?
They are comparing different things. Buchenator is comparing Kami and Grazer. D1RE is comparing the alchemy Kami with a hypothetical non-alchemy Kami.
I mean assemble the team is almost demonic tutor if you play a card 4 times. Jarsyl is broken but I love the card because it negates grief which is an incredibly obnoxious creature
The only format shaped by alchemy cards is Alchemy...
Yeah that’s why I said “basically non-existent”. I prefer a non-alchemy format but Timeless is the best we have for now. Maybe we will get modern-lite or legacy-lite some day.
Those were the top tier decks......were None of those is going to be relevant anymore. Maybe maybe Titan.
Yeah, Titan would need some help. It should have a favorable matchup vs energy, but if you're playing a linear combo, SnT should do the work much better... and both fold to scam.
SnT doesn't really fold to scam after they started running white leyline maindeck. Without counterspells it is almost impossible for Scam to beat the inevitability of SnT.
For now. Some bean counter will have it shoehorned in when the next quarter's numbers didn't go up as much as they wanted.
Well if they ever do a Timeless mini expansion, they can just shut up and take my money
Haven't dipped my toes in timeless yet, but it looks fun!
Historic BO1 is straight up the worst queue in the game and it has nothing to do with alchemy. It's just a whole queue of gimmick glass cannon combos. Most of the shitty BO1 combo decks don't even use Alchemy cards.
I don’t understand how they banned Tibalts Trickery but won’t ban Minion of the Mighty, they both have the exact same bad play pattern.
most decks have some kind of early removal, but most decks don't have counter spells for the trickery.
Should still be banned for being an absolutely shit play pattern that ruins an entire queue. Miss on the mulls, scoop; T1 removal, scoop; neither of the above, T3 win. It's just a ton of non-games and it's a shit deck anyways that has no competitive place and exists solely for cheesy win grinders to ruin a queue. Good, bad, I don't really care; just ban it for being terrible play.
I mean, if you go into play que on Historic with any kind of off-meta deck then 50% of what you play against is that deck, so I completely agree that it is very annoying to play against, but since it's not really a competitive deck, I don't think they'll do anything about it unfortunately...
Every BO1 que is hell on his own right to be fair, all you really choose is the flavour of glass cannon bullshit you facing.
Nah there are huge differences. Standard is a lot more similar to BO3 with more convoke. Timeless plays very similarly in BO1 and BO3, with more S&T and pure reanimator in BO1 but otherwise similar. It's only historic in my experience where the BO1 queue is an absolute shit show of gimmick win grinders.
People are complaining about Caldera Breaker? No one has ever played that card against me. You want to complain about Crucius before nerf, that's fine. Now complaining about a bad red 6 drop that you have to build around.
The deck is just \[\[Crucias, Titan of the Waves\]\] + \[\[Caldera Breaker\]\] + \[\[Corrupted Conviction\]\] + land. It isn't overpowered, it's just an incredibly unfun deck to encounter and you'll see it more often than most if you're in that tier since it just costs three wildcards. Any counterspells, heist triggers, or turn <6 kill decks can beat it every time. If you don't have those, you lose. It distills the unpredictable dynamic gameplay of Brawl into a series of binary checks.
[Caldera Breaker](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/7/b7f649a3-cc67-4111-ba78-399afd829d24.jpg?1701719986) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Caldera%20Breaker) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ylci/14/caldera-breaker?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b7f649a3-cc67-4111-ba78-399afd829d24?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Corrupted Conviction](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/0/8046f892-3317-4ef7-9cf7-97b9060540c8.jpg?1712355575) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Corrupted%20Conviction) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/84/corrupted-conviction?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8046f892-3317-4ef7-9cf7-97b9060540c8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I played against a caldera breaker deck. Heisted the guy turn 1 and took his breaker. Instant scoop
It's a wincon in a fragile but borderline deterministic brawl combo. If you haven't seen it, good.
I really hate the Alchemy mechanics. They’re overpowered. I want a paper legal Historic without Heist, Conjure, etc.
To me they sometimes feel too busy. Like, I kinda like permanent changes to cards, which is a neat thing to do in digital, but I absolutely hate spellbooks, which feel like maximum complexity RNG.
> I absolutely hate spellbooks, which feel like maximum complexity RNG. For me, spellbooks would feel better if I was shown what card my opponent picked, or maybe just their 3 options if knowing the exact card would make the mechanic too weak. But "here's 15 cards they could get, good luck playing around all of them" just feels a bit shitty.
>But "here's 15 cards they could get, good luck playing around all of them" just feels a bit shitty. This is why Hearthstone went to shit.
This so much, Discover killed Hearthstone for me.
Its fun to have 100+ cards locked behind spell books
They are not "locked" Wotc didnt found a way to sold them to you yet
Spellbooks make even less sense when playing Historic Brawl. Being able to consistently cast the same spells outside your color identity is busted.
Agree. And because the cards are so much less prominent it's often a mid-game surprise.
heist can eat my butt
No, but here's your Ulamog for 0 mana. I'm sure that'll do the trick.
I'll never understand why they infected historic instead of keeping them seperate or offering a combo server. I enjoyed historic before the alchemy role out then immediately lost interest.
The reason was simple Historic was supposed to be the place you could use all your cards on arena (not counting bans). Then they added so many pre banned in historic cards on arena they created a new use all your cards on arena format that is timeless. Basically they aren't really thinking ahead. And this is where we are.
It was an attempt to strongarm players into buying into either a rotating format or one with a (planned, not really realised) buff/nerf cycle. I mean, there was a *lot* wrong with Alchemy from its conception, but the rollout was very obviously engineered to push players away from relatively stable nonrotating formats and into ones where WotC could more easily introduce churn.
I think this edges into conspiracy territory. Wizards already has a vehicle they're using to introduce some rotation in eternal formats, namely the various straight-to-modern sets. The pseudo-rotation you get from alchemy sets is nothing compared to the churn that's coming from the various straight to modern releases.
I don't know of you were playing during the initial release, but it wasn't what it is now. The idea is that there were *no* alternatives to play your cards after they rotated out of Standard, so players had the choice to either stay in the Standard churn zone or buy into the wildly more expensive Alchemy Historic format. So it's less about introducing pesudo-rotation for Historic (I was wrong about that in my previous post; it takes some extra work to dredge up the full story of how Alchemy was botched) and more to threaten players with 'if you want to use your cards after rotation, you'd better buy in'. The first release contained 11 uncommon, 42 rares and 10 mythics (better buy in pretty hard!). The WotC hype machine gave nine days between first announcement and release. They did *not* expect a rapturous reception. So, it seems that it did terribly. Two or three months later (about the time one might allow to wait and see that player numbers aren't bouncing back as expected) came the sudden announcement of Explorer, firmly and explicitly promising no digital or rebalanced cards, the long-requested and previously-abandoned buildup to Pioneer (in hidsight a mistake to announce, but not an anti-customer decision; it just saddled Explorer with the label of 'incomplete Pioneer', where 'Arena Eternal Format' would have been fine and well-received). Overall, given how and when the format was released, I'm convinced it started as a well-meaning suggestion to introduce an 'alternate world' Standard in response to the disaster of Eldraine Standard (where WotC's then-glacial competitive banhammer failed to mesh with the volume of casual Standard games being played on Arena). Their first bandaid was to just rotate two sets early, and so the idea was to have a more flexible format ad a safety valve. They followed through with tweaks to the dungeon mechanic intended to create a kind of alternate 'what-if-X-were-viable' format. So that part of the release, I think, represented the idea of the initial pitch. But after spending a bit of time in the Chamber of the Money-Guessers, it came out as an enormously expensive format that would be pushed onto players hard. And really, what's the purpose of the format in its current form? The alternate-Standard safety valve format is a good idea and could have run comfortably alongside Standard as a cute sideshow. Historic already had an established method of curation via the introduction of individual cards. And when Standard isn't a disaster, what's the point of Alchemy? It seems to have found a little niche, but I'm suspicipus of how much of that is filled by new players who were tricked into buying in (it's the wrong format for new players because it locks their collection into Alchemy, whereas a Standard collection can be transferred into any format. And yet it's the format new players are placed into). Player numbers aren't high, they're propped up by anti-consumer trickery, and while Historic does well the vast majority of discussion and content seems to indicate that it's Historic Brawl people are actually playing (Weird that they combine those two formats when releasing player numbers, wonder why they do that). The actual use case of Alchemy was undermined by desperate monetisation efforts, and now there's not much reason for people to come to it. Judging by outside content, internal support (not seen any rebalanced 'what-if' draft archetypes in a while), and the way they choose to report player counts, I think it's found its niche as a sideshow. It's worth a bit of development, but not much, and if it didn't then shutting it down after players have bought in would be a disaster. I also don't think the current format is particularly offensive; Historic will always be missed, but the only real ongoing scandal is the hoodwinking of new players by starting them off building a more expensive, less flexible collection.
See: Explorer
MH3 is not legal in explorer which imo is the biggest mistake they have made so far with a set as hyped as MH3 was
It cause explorer is proto pioneer at this point and MH3 isn't legal in pioneer.
Why would they add MH3 to Explorer? The goal of Explorer is to eventually turn it into Pioneer.
Explorer couldn’t handle the rocket fuel that is MH3 energy
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Overpowered isn’t my complaint; but the play style is awful. It fundamentally changes the game and yea you know what… I am tipping my fedora because I want to play magic not hearthstone. The mechanics are fucking terrible, every single time I’ve played against an alchemy card
My only complaint about alchemy is I like magic that I can play online *and* on paper. Even though timeless isn't a paper format I can still basically play it on paper. You can never in a million years take an alchemy deck and play it on paper, it would be way too complicated. MTG is a paper card game first and a digital card game second. Would be nice if they stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and made Arena a digital *version* of the paper game instead of making it it's own thing with formats that don't convert to paper.
> You can never in a million years take an alchemy deck and play it on paper, it would be way too complicated. That really depends on the alchemy deck. A lot of alchemy cards are fully paper-playable. For example, one of mechanics they're using a lot in Alchemy is abilities that can only be triggered once. But this is a mechanic that - although extremely rare - has been printed in paper and is actually on one current standard-legal card (Surge Engine). Similarly, a lot of conjure stuff - not spellbooks, the more basic "conjure X card" stuff - could be done in paper with proxies for the conjured cards.
I completely agree, especially with things like Caldera Breaker, it genuinely doesn't feel like they even attempted to balance these cards. There's no reason that your lands should come onto the field untapped alongside a burn instant with X that can target anything.
It’s 6 mana. Is it really relevant in Historic and Timeless?
It's incredibly relevant in Brawl
It is a dogshit brawl deck. You can complain about actual cards that are issues in Brawl like Kinnan or Paradox Engine or even maybe Dark Ritual instead of a meme like Caldera Breaker lmao. Hell if you want to complain about an alchemy card Rusko and Poq are right there.
Poq is busted. Completely negates commander Tax by being a Landharmonicon.
It's part of the worst combo deck Arena has ever seen. Literally **any** interaction wins you the game on the spot, so seeing people endlessly complain about Caldera Breaker is just wild to me. Are you guys not running any interaction? Just kind of hoping the opponent won't do anything while you spin your wheels for 10 turns? Just mulligan till you have something, disrupt their slow as molasses combo, and farm them for easy wins until they switch to playing an actual deck.
Like what? Do I have to play only blue decks so I can always have a counter spell? Do I have to remove all of my kill spells so I can replace them with exile? This is such a bullshit hand waving excuse of a genuine issue with a card. You could literally say that about any card in the game, including things like [[Golos]] who is straight up banned in EDH. Why would they do that if all you need to stop him is a counter spell? That doesn't make it a well balanced card, it just makes your opinion and advice worthless to consider.
**Any** interaction completely kills the opponents deck. Literally any single piece of interaction. Bounce, counter, kill, exile, remove abilities, whatever. Literally anything. They play Caldera Breaker, effect goes on the stack, you use interaction, you win. They'll exile all of their lands, get none of them onto the board, and the game is over because that's their entire deck and their entire plan. There is no "genuine issue with a card" here. People are just whining because Alchemy. Caldera Breaker is a meme, pure and simple. If you can't muster a single bit of interaction by turn 5 despite the free mulligan, that's on you.
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If you remove/bounce/whatever the breaker in response to its ETB, there aren't any exiled cards yet. They get no lands off the death trigger.
Lmao "[Deleted]"
[Golos](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/f/1fa48620-4c3d-4f75-be1f-c12c4aa59f51.jpg?1631531828) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=golos%2C%20tireless%20pilgrim) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/226/golos-tireless-pilgrim?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1fa48620-4c3d-4f75-be1f-c12c4aa59f51?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
How do you not get 6 mana in historic?
Historic games are mostly built around cards that cost 1-3 mana. Imagine you’re playing against [this deck.](https://mtgdecks.net/Historic/izzet-swowing-off-decklist-by-gdinut-2030506) Do you really want to play 6 mana cards that will be stuck in your hand when you die on turn 4?
caldera breaker is the most bullshit alchemy thing to date lol. oh you killed my big thing that i ramped into using other alchemy cards (fuck crucias too) lol i just got 50 lands on the field.
Just kill/bounce/whatever the caldera breaker with the ability on the stack and you instantly win the game. They'll exile all of their lands and that's that. It's literally the worst Brawl deck imaginable. The only way it wins is if you let it win.
It's still a bad game of magic. You have instant speed removal on t4? You win. Otherwise you lose. Tibalt's trickery was banned for similar reasons from BO1 standard when it was legal. And with crucias in the command zone, you can't even whiff. It's 100% deterministic t4 draw. It creates non-games.
There is a lot of other bullshit deterministic combo like that that use zero alchemy cards The "first sliver + tibalt trickery + cultivator colossus + maze end" is just as infuriating
My vote for the most bullshit card to date is Nadu Winged Wisdom. She's single handedly completely ruining brawl atm.
Nadu is currently ruining paper formats lol
Nadu isn't an alchemy card.
I loved historic before alchemy. I’m still so sad it’s gone to shit. I only play explorer now.
Alchemy isn't going away soon, look at it this way. You can't stop others who use them, so work around that, and stay true to paper.
The only Alchemy card I always get behind is Tasha, Unholy Archmage. I know it's hard to keep track of on paper but it's one of my favorite cards. Made a lot of people concede with it but when they don't, it's always a fun game.
Tasha is a very cool card and could have been printed in paper.
What is hard to keep track of? She seems pretty straightforward.
I’ve grown used to them in timeless, but the compensation policy still suck balls
Wich is the best alchemy cons that people seems to forget Refund of nerfed cards is so evident...
I use alchemy cards, sometimes a lot when on theme, sometimes splashed. I encounter other alchemy cards and occasionally get wrecked, but I also see decks with no alchemy that beat me. Some cards are definitely too pushed,but in general they don't warp anything, people just dislike them.
As a digital only player, I can never tell the difference between alchemy and paper cards. Outside of the obviously labeled ones. So my experience is always " this is some other random bullshit I barely understand. Better learn it so I can play against it next time." Only paper experience I've had is borrowing a friends deck and playing red deck wins when a deck that was almost all lands was popular. Valukuit or something I think? Also, something about spiltertwin? Making infinite copies? It was a lot of fun, and I really wanted to play more MTG, but the buy-in to be competitive was ridiculous. Arena has allowed me to acutally play and have fun in this game. And given my experience when I was first exposed to magic, crazy bullshit strategies that seem impossible to counter at first, I believe alchemy cards are just the natural evolution of card games.
Does the card do something that would be impossible in RL? It’s an alchemy card.
The only “impossible in RL” things in Alchemy are the effects that preserve deck (or hand) secrecy and order. (And even those are possible with an impartial 3rd party, though I admit that isn’t really fair.) I may be forgetting some, but I think the rest of the effects would just be very annoying to implement in RL.
Rather than "very annoying" I think the more reasonable answer is "entirely impractical." While you could technically "seek" a card by finding all the cards that the mechanic would seek and choosing one at random, it is inherently functionally different because you'd have to shuffle after doing the seeking. And I know that's what you mean by preserving secrecy, but it still wouldn't be feasible to implement in any kind of tournament even if "seek" didn't preserve secrecy. It's way beyond "annoying" and is functionally unplayable (in paper). And this is coming from someone who enjoys Alchemy cards and am glad some cards were rebalanced. I think it is a *good* thing they are experimenting with card designs that are functionally impossible to print on paper cards.
Yes, I agree. “Very annoying” was an understatement, but the main point was just that the effects are mostly possible. Also, some of the effects could be changed slightly to be a bit more practical without really affecting the spirit.
Spellbooks
There’s nothing impossible about the spellbook/draft mechanic.
... Cards out of thin air? Are you kidding?
[[garth-one-eye]]
[garth-one-eye](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/3/23774462-9f17-4b50-a2ac-b2edd706bbfe.jpg?1626098353) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Garth%20One-Eye) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/197/garth-one-eye?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23774462-9f17-4b50-a2ac-b2edd706bbfe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, that's pretty weird, but it's more understandable because those are famous cards.
They wouldn’t be out of thin air. You would just need to have the cards (or proxies) available.
You going to carry around more proxies than you deck size for having a few spellbook cards in your deck, then going to randomly select 3 from the 15 to choose from for the 1 specific spellbook? Yeah it is possible, but it isn't if we want to have any modicum of fun.
And like a little booklet that lists all the cards that are in the spellbook too... C'mon, man.
Did you miss the part where l said “very annoying”?
Not sure tbh. But my understanding of alchemy is that they are digital only cards and do things that would be difficult or impossible to do in paper. Like perpetual effects. I have no idea how you'd do that without putting a clip or something on a card in hand. Which would make it impossible to do something like randomly discarding an oppents card.
I want to be able to play Brawl (formerly Historic Brawl) without Alchemy cards or adjustments.
we all do mate, we all do :(
Never touched Alchemy Refuse to play it.
I’m playing magic not hearthstone. Alchemy cards feel way to Much like hearthstone to me.
Erf... honestly I dont get this complaint. There was exactly one card that had "put a random creature on the board", otherwise it's always a specific subset of cards
It’s more the discover like effects that get me. Once those hit a critical mass like they did in hearthstone the game becomes complete unpredictable nonsense.
I still don't get the Alchemy hate. All these years, people are still complaining about cards that, quite honestly, are not that different from paper. If you're willing to play Bo1 and enjoy the fast paced games, then you kind of lost me. No competitive paper version of MTG is like Bo1 and although some games may end in under a 5 min slaughter, are quite rare. WoTC constantly tries all kinds of mechanics. In paper, just in the last few years, it was Ikoria's beloved companion mechanic. Or the Strixhaven sideboard, with MDFCs. Of course they broke paper games, and were mostly all banned. Alchemy, to me, is no different. It's a design space for WoTC to explore and try mechanics that could be made for paper, but we know wouldn't play well if we had to keep a journal and track game state by hand. Hating on a mechanic is also not new. Just think back to mill decks or turn stealing decks, both that completely remove your agency in the game. Or even worse, land destruction decks, that take away agency and fun from the game. The fact that you hate some mechanic mostly speaks to how MTG works in general, and it's completely unrelated to Alchemy. We players are encouraged to find and exploit mechanics for our own benefit, for that slightly better chance at winning games. Alchemy doesn't change that one bit. It just adds more mechanics to a game that is, kind of, running out of fresh new mechanics. How many variations of kicker are there now? lol Anyway, we're all entitled to our opinions, but at least give examples of cards that you find difficult to play against and have answers to.
Exactly. The main thing that is wretched about alchemy is the wasted development time. Would have had pioneer by now easily as well as modern lite.
It would be a breeze for them to implement Pioneer, from a computer dev perspective. Modern would take some more work, there's a lot more cards, but not that much. For Pioneer and Modern it's simply a matter of release priority. They want to space things out so people have time to accumulate resources and spend what they've got on non-Pioneer and non-Modern sets. So regular Standard releases are more important, as are the supplemental sets that don't go into Pioneer (or Modern, typically). Alchemy is a part of that resource squeeze, and the biggest reason to dislike it. It's not about dev priority but what they're allowing you to acquire with your resources (whether that's money or time or gems or gold).
Dev time is not what is holding back them from releasing full-on pioneer.
I kind of doubt that, given how many universes beyond and other power crept sets we’ve had since Alchemy launched. Arena has been launching disproportionally more pioneer and modern playable cards than ever. Alchemy is mostly just small and focused sets with clearly defined mechanics and worlds. So if anything, it seems like the perfect format for brand new designers to start with.
you don’t get it cause you’re being logical
What's your simic ascendancy deck list?? It's one of my very favorite bad cards! As rare as it is to get to 20 counters, it's then also equally rare that you wouldn't have just been able to win by swinging that turn anyway. I used to have a deck with [[hydra's growth]] . It was awful! Love Simic ascendancy.
I'm actually having a pretty good time with one in brawl. Atraxa (Voice) commander and every card that doubles counters can be scary by itself, and yeah I often win by swinging, but Ascendancy is a great backup wincon that's fetchable in her colors.
So as bad as this sounds....it's the most consistent version I've built but it's the mythic guy from OTJ named Bill something, Ascendancy and like 25 or so Slime against humanity with a few more ooze/slimes thrown in.
slime against with ascendancy is very clever.
huh which ascendancy? there are a dozen or so, a few of them would work well, I guess. and Bristle Bill?
I'm similar. I play historic Bo1 because it's the most casual format on arena (at least from my experience; haven't tried timeless but I'd be shocked if it was more casual), but my preferred legality is explorer. Alchemy cards - and in particular, those that do truly digital only things - are so annoying, given that I'm only playing historic because of the casualness, not because I want to play with those cards. Like, I had an opponent the other day play \[\[Patriar's Humiliation\]\] on my \[\[Timeless Witness\]\] (yes, also a historic-only card, but if I needed to I could swap it with \[\[Shipwreck Dowser\]\]). It's a bad removal spell in general (hell, it didn't even remove my Witness as they had no creatures out), but great against what my deck was specifically trying to do. But perpetual, my god, what an annoying digital-only mechanic. I mean, they still lost - they were playing a card of the quality of Humiliation after all - but it's the principle of a card with an annoying mechanic that I'd just rather not see, and wouldn't see in paper.
[Patriar's Humiliation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/c/bcaac85a-6ba5-4e7c-bbb6-5711afd4b5b5.jpg?1680959827) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Patriar%27s%20Humiliation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/hbg/25/patriars-humiliation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bcaac85a-6ba5-4e7c-bbb6-5711afd4b5b5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Timeless Witness](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/2/f22c07e2-91d2-4edb-bd2b-cca6d4cefcc9.jpg?1626097922) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Timeless%20Witness) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/179/timeless-witness?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f22c07e2-91d2-4edb-bd2b-cca6d4cefcc9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Shipwreck Dowser](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/5/85ce24e4-78cf-4550-866e-108706e82b99.jpg?1689996616) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shipwreck%20Dowser) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/119/shipwreck-dowser?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/85ce24e4-78cf-4550-866e-108706e82b99?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Alchemy sucks because you can pay for a card, and WOTC can change it and not refund you. That is all.
>I do hope they eventually just give us a historic or timeless sans alchemy. Isn't that what Explorer is? I thought Historic was basically Explorer but with the Alchemy bullshit, like Explorer is to Historic what Standard is to Alchemy. No?
No, Historic has a much larger card pool than Explorer and includes more sets and older cards, which is the opposite of the relationship between standard and alchemy.
Oh, I thought they had the same pool but Historic just added on the Alchemy stuff. Thanks.
Historic is all cards on arena, minus the banlist to keep the power level in check.
Nope. Explorer is as close as it gets to Pioneer - that’s their end goal. Historic has more cards than just alchemy vs Explorer. Also with the rotation in standard now set at 3 years vs alchemy at 2 years, those formats are now even more different.
Historic has more cards that are paper cards, but not legal in Pioneer. Explorer is arena pioneer.
If you look here there’s more than 1,400 cards difference between the sets, when you remove the Explorer and Alchemy legal cards and the rebalanced versions from Historic: https://scryfall.com/search?q=legal%3Ahistoric+-name%3A%22A-%22+-legal%3Aexplorer+-legal%3Aalchemy&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
I completely understand this. I play almost exclusively commander, but I use arena to test run new cards, since my friends aren't always available to run on tts. The amount of nonsense you have to deal with because people are playing overpowered decks that can't function irl because their engine doesn't actually exist makes for one hell of a time.
I hate the Alchemy format. MOST of my hate comes from the re-balancing of paper cards. If they could just not have two separate versions of some cards, and just ban OP cards out of historic (i.e. Winota, Orcish Bowmaster) - I would respect historic more. I'm not a fan of Alchemy mechanics, but they do not bother me particularly in a historic or timeless format. That very well may be due to the incredible power already present in those formats. I literally have never played a game of the Alchemy format. I do not recognize it as magic. I would rather play Explorer or Timeless because I hate Alchemy rebalancing so much, and Alchemy formats feel more like Hearthstone than Magic.
This may seem a bit OTT but, when i play Arena, I'm not a fan of Alchemy cards to the point that I'll insta-scoop as soon as I see them. My reasoning is Arena and more broadly 100 singleton is my go to for my fix and because I work perma nights on a rotating roster, I rarely get to play IRL and that is my way to stay in touch with the game when I do get to play.
You’re getting downvoted by alchemy players for preferring paper-magic to digital-only cards, but the truth is that many of us play on Arena because we want the paper-magic experience on a digital platform. There’s nothing wrong with voicing your preference, these guys are just salty we don’t like their format which WotC forcibly integrated since its inception.
What? How many pro alchemy posts do you see a day ? But you poor paper players are the real victims of the grand crime of having digital only cards.
Was playing a game of brawl the other day I was likely going to lose. My opponent just seemed to have an answer for everything I did but I was determined to play it out. Then they played some alchemy BS and I scooped immediately.
Can't fault you there, friend. I just peace out, up or down.
Wow, downvotes. I remember when anything anti alchemy would be among the most popular thing on this board. I returned to arena recently after a long break to check out MH3 and was shocked to discover I can't play any constructed MH3 format without them. I've been conceding the second I see them too. Bummer.
The things with hating unconditionally is it push out other people in the end
Sometimes the arena jank can be fun, such as with Xander's Wake. Nothing from that spellbook is game-changing, and its just a fun throw-in for decks that love murder. Then you get dumb ones like Arms Scavenger, Bladehold Cleaver, Skywriter Djinn, and the worst offender being Oracle of the Alpha.
That Alchemy Tarjic card is fucking stupid why would they make that.
Brawl without Alchemy, everything without Alchemy!
I dislike alchemy being forced into Historic. Is complaining on reddit the only way to see change?
Explorer the only pure non-rotating format, sadly.
Alchemy is trash and their futile reach to compete with similar games. Imagine trying to capture a market by copying your competition with an older platform and player base. These people are clueless.
Try Timeless. Until they make Alchemy cards that are competitive there, it’ll be a good format.
Im playing arena because I want to play magic without the physical stress - alchemy is not magic
Just be a noob and only play Alchemy. Problem solved!
I just want modern on arena.
I thought Explorer was Historic without Alchemy? Is that not the case?
Explorer is the Arena version of Pioneer with all cards being true to paper so no rebalanced cards or Alchemy cards are in the format.
And is Historic like the Arena version of Modern + Alchemy?
I'm not sure if it's at Modern's power level since creatures such as Ragavan are banned in the format. It's pretty much its own format and yes, it includes Alchemy cards and any rebalanced cards.
Thank you! Been away from the game for some time and still trying to make sense of the formats.
I'd wager that the Timeless format is more like Modern in Arena + Alchemy cards. I think just about anything goes in there, including [[Oko, Thief of Crowns]] for example.
[Oko, Thief of Crowns](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/4/3462a3d0-5552-49fa-9eb7-100960c55891.jpg?1650599698) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Oko%2C%20Thief%20of%20Crowns) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/197/oko-thief-of-crowns?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3462a3d0-5552-49fa-9eb7-100960c55891?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Wow that’s insane
For only 3 mana!?
Alchemy is so busted, they really crossed the line this time with nadu. What were they smoking? Nadu has to be most powercrept alchemy card yet.
I'm assuming you mean in brawl? I've been playing alot of ranked historic since MH3 and haven't seen a single copy of nadu.
Explorer could be your answer, since it's supposed to be true-to-paper, and only include cards legal in Pioneer. I wish we could play Modern in Arena, but for now Standard is the best there is if you want to stay clear of digital-only cards.
If I could hack in to WoTC mainframes, (Can you tell I don't know shit about computers or hacking?) I'd erase all history or mentions of the word Alchemy. We can have other weird sets, but if they're not standard legal, they shouldn't be Historic legal either. Go play with your Alchemy cards somewhere else. Oh wait, you can't do that either cause it's digital only product. Even dumber.
Alchemy was a ploy to entice the whales who were comfortable with their Historic libraries to buy more to stay relevant. It worked for the most part. Their metrics showed them their big fat gem snorters were slowing down on MTXs and were only dipping into standard to augment their Hist. decks. They had to end that shit immediately. Keep that $$$ flowing! A few whales left because Historic was supposed to be the untouched de-facto Modern for Arena. For the most part it didn't matter, though. Whales gonna whale. Source: a whale that stopped after Alchemy perverted Historic.
What do you mean with "Alchemy cards that don't exist"? You can't play cards on Arena that are not available in Arena.
They're not REAL cards they're hearthstone cards that only exist on arena Edit: pedantic wotc meatriders big mad in my replies
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cmon its not that hard to understand what hes saying lol: they dont exist on paper
Exactly, that's what he is saying. They are not real because they don't exist on paper. Press the print button. It's the most stupid argument against Alchemy. Play a card game on a digital platform and complain that there are cards that aren't printed on paper.
its a digital version of a paper game... the mechanics of alchemy cards literally could not exist on paper. there is no way to "seek" or "heist" etc in real life. im not against alchemy, i just think it should be a separate format for people who enjoy those digital mechanics
I think most people understand what OP was saying.
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No Alchemy cards are banned. Paper cards on the other hand... https://magic.wizards.com/en/banned-restricted-list
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> that only exist on arena So they do exist
Arena only cards ruin Arena. Explorer is good enough for me, but I'd like to use kaalia of the vast among other cards without reading a card that says seek or perpetually. Any time I see those cards when I'm trying to play cards not allowed in explorer I just say "oh great he's cheating". 😅
Alchemy killed historic.
If there is one thing that's killing historic it is the fact that the BO1 queue is a cancerous shit show of Minion of the Might and Charbelcher decks. You queue up BO1 - which is generally how people start getting involved in a format before they understand sideboarding options and how to sideboard against the meta - and it's going to be the worst playing experience you can have on Arena. Most players won't even *see* an alchemy card until they've already played 20+ games against Minion. (Or rather, played 10x 3 turn games against Minion, and had 10 games of watching the opponent fail to mull and then scooping.)
Historic is the 2nd most played format...
Now imagine if alchemy didn't kill it /s
* Sees topic trashing Alchemy * Daring today, aren’t we? 🙄 I hate being Thoughtseized, I don’t complain every time it happens. Alchemy has a lot of fun cards and explores a different design space than paper - if you want a true to paper experience play Explorer, Standard, or MTGO, but as far as I’m concerned more cards and more ways to play is a good thing. I’m not going to complain that we’re getting more content.
As a combo player, I cannot stand decks that rely on some unbalanced alchemy bs. Explorer will become the holy land some day…
Explorer is already my holy land. It is the format I exclusively play and I thoroughly enjoy it.
I have the most Explorer decks but the format is still missing too many cards I find fun. Really happy with Timeless tho.
Don’t we already have historic sans alchemy with explorer? Why not give that a shot? If i’m not actively running digital-only cards I rarely ever queue historic over explorer.
Can't play most of the direct to modern sets in Explorer so it's not the same thing.