What's the most enjoyable way to Master your cards?

shteev

Anyone hit on a fun way to master your cards?

Grinding away at the Heroic levels because it's the fastest way of doing it is rather dull.

QuickBattle, on the other hand, requires you to have a decent deck. It doesn't take long before you've mastered your Tier 1 cards, and your good mana acceleration cards, and if you then try and play with a deck largely filled with unmastered cards you're playing with a pretty poor deck.

Malcrof

Doing the win with each planeswaker for crystals. Choose a few colorless whatever cards, add to each PW and go do your rainbow achievements. Lots of easy mastery points.

Barrelrolla

So far I've just grinded the Heroics.
Not only it is boring, but I realized that the cards I think are total ****, are even worse than I thought. Some of them might be kinda okayish, but they don't work properly and that ruins everything.
Did anyone find a diamond in disguise, a card he total was bad and realized it's great trying to master it?

shteev

I think I'm just going to give up mastering cards, and just play tier 1 decks in levels I want to play with a variety of planeswalkers and see how high that takes me. I imagine I should be able to get to got to Silver Tier, anyhow.

shteev

Barrelrolla wrote:

Did anyone find a diamond in disguise, a card he total was bad and realized it's great trying to master it?

Not even slightly. I have so much sympathy now for the poor bastards who have to play with Separatist Voidmage because they haven't got Harbinger of the Tides yet.

I mean, I know they want the rares to be more exciting than the commons, but do they really have to be THAT much more powerful? Stripping even a couple of tier 1 cards out of a deck for mastering purposes just makes me feel depressed...

EDHdad

Did anyone find a diamond in disguise, a card he total was bad and realized it's great trying to master it?

I'll admit I never read Veteran Warleader's wall of text carefully enough to realize how bonkers he is in Gideon II. It's a 1/1 for 15, but has a habit of becoming a 30/30 first strike berserker trample vigilance by the end of the game.

Scatter to the Winds is also much better than I originally thought. It's kind of like Transgress the Mind, but it can leave you with a 6/6 hasty elemental.

span_argoman

I've been mastering cards in the following format to maximise the speed of mastering:

1. Pick a Mythic combination that has some synergy (Thopter Spy Network + Drowner of Hope) or is a combo card itself (Greenwarden of Murasa) and add it into your deck.

If you don't have the luxury of picking Mythics just split your good Mythics of the same colour over:
Two mastery cycles if you're targeting gold tier
One mastery cycle if you're targeting silver tier.
I define a mastery cycle as how long it takes to master a Mythic.

2. Throw in one or two useless / less useful Mythics. You want to spread out your good ones so that your decks are at least serviceable.

3. Add in rares that have some synergy with the Mythic(s) you already added.

4. Add in the most suitable commons and uncommons you have.

5. Play the deck in Planeswalker Challenges. Play against:
Chandra if your deck is fast, your creatures have high toughness or if you're playing with Eldrazi Scions
Nissa / Gideon if your deck can't stand burn, the trade-off is they have more health to whittle down. Beware their Hangarback Walker.
Liliana if you have decent draw to soak her first ability.
Jace if your deck keeps drawing such that you are near worried about bounce.

6. Swap out any cards that are mastered. Try to keep a manageable mix of R/UC+C. Don't spam all your good rares in the first half of the first mastery cycle or you'll have a painful time in the second half.

By the end of a mastery cycle you should have earned 160 mastery points for your target colour.

Of course you have to deduct 8 points per slot (in a full mastery cycle) occupied by colourless card(s). But considering two mastery cycles give 320 points, that's 70 points buffer for Gold Tier for colourless cards which means you can play 8.75 slots of colourless cards over the two mastery cycles. Likewise, the buffer for Silver Tier and one cycle is 60 points which is 7.5 slots.

Alternatively if the going is too tough and you figure you NEED certain cards in the deck to function, you can keep them in the deck and deduct from the buffer above. Just remember that each slot locked is 16 points lost (unless the card isn't mastered yet then you add that back).

Also subsequent colours you start on will have an additional buffer from the colourless cards mastered in the mastery cycle(s) of the first colour so start with your strongest colour first.

Good planeswalkers for the job
Strong mana gain
Red: Koth (his mana gain is so high that you'll be blazing through your cards and throwing out whatever you draw into)
Red / White: Ajani (aside from mana gain, his abilities are best against Chandra; all her creatures except Avaricious Dragon fall to Lightning Helix)

Those who can summon tokens with planeswalkers abilities
White: Ally Gideon
Green: Garruk / Kiora
Because if your deck fails you can still try to win with your planeswalker.
(Sarkhan doesn't really count cause you need to sacrifice a creature for his ability.)

Planeswalkers with alternative win conditions or damage boosters
Red: Chandra
Green: Nissa
Black: Ob Nixilis / Liliana
Blue: Tezzeret
White: Origins Gideon (all your abilities boost your creatures, and vigilance/defender comes in nifty when you're in a pinch) *thanks majincob*
Sarkhan comes under here if and only if you're mastering dragons in that mastery cycle.

And yes, I'm aware I basically named every planeswalker except Jace and Sarkhan. The point is you have options to suit the deck you're trying to master.

Have fun testing out card interactions and challenging your deckbuilding skills. Best of luck people!

tm00

Barrelrolla wrote:

So far I've just grinded the Heroics.
Not only it is boring, but I realized that the cards I think are total ****, are even worse than I thought. Some of them might be kinda okayish, but they don't work properly and that ruins everything.
Did anyone find a diamond in disguise, a card he total was bad and realized it's great trying to master it?

I think I will be swapping the origin common spell that deals 3 damage to creature or player with touch of the void, I completely forgot about that card and slowing down the opponent with ingest might help, especially when combined with avaricious dragon and the common kill spell.
It was the tenth slot in my deck however.
mostly used to complement the other damage dealers and kill some extra stuff.

Got a little underwelmed by the bushwacker, but I still plan to give it another shot over valakut invoker some day .

majincob

span_argoman wrote:

And yes, I'm aware I basically named every planeswalker except Origins Gideon, Jace and Sarkhan.

I've been using Gideon 1, his second ability turns all your **** creatures into okay creatures plus he can make defenders out of your dudes.

I used Lilliana as my first leveler because her first ability destroys decks with high mana cost spells and her third lets you play all those ridiculously high costed colorless creatures.

span_argoman

majincob wrote:

span_argoman wrote:

And yes, I'm aware I basically named every planeswalker except Origins Gideon, Jace and Sarkhan.

I've been using Gideon 1, his second ability turns all your **** creatures into okay creatures plus he can make defenders out of your dudes.

I used Lilliana as my first leveler because her first ability destroys decks with high mana cost spells and her third lets you play all those ridiculously high costed colorless creatures.

That sounds pretty good! I guess as long as you spread out Iroas's Champion, Consul's Lieutenant and Knight of the White Orchid you have one full mastery cycle covered. I'll add Origins Gideon under Planeswalkers with Damage Boosters.

Now we just need people to step up for Jace and Sarkhan haha.

I admit Black is the colour I have least experience playing. Good to hear how Liliana can be used to work around overcosted creatures of which there are plenty . Personally for the overcosted colourless cards I used Koth. His crazy mana gain makes everything seem affordable.

Jazzpha

For Sarkhan, I could see using removal, burn and some common/uncommon creatures as fodder for making dragon tokens as a nice way to level up lower-quality cards. Once you have a big dragon on the board, use ability 3 to close out the game-- and between black removal and red burn, your creatures should stick long enough to be sacrificed, and then the dragon token could still be alive.

Something like this, maybe?

Complete Disregard
Grip of Desolation
Lightning Javelin
Chasm Guide
Revenant
Goblin Glory Chaser
Sure Strike

And then some other common/uncommon cards to round out.

If you're not trying to level lower-power cards, feel free to go bananas with Akoum Hellkite, Dragonmaster Outcast, Smoldering Marsh, Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, etc. etc.

shteev

I just reached Silver Tier after that last event, and I feel I should try and make the effort to get to Gold just so the poor casuals don't have to play against my l33t ha><or Kiora deck...

So I'm going to start doing the color challenges (which I've held off on until now, they didn't seem worth the effort for 10 crystals) with Dual planeswalkers + plenty mana acceleration + as many mythics as I can get away with, and I'll see how it goes.

[edit] Apparently it's 15 crystals...

Morphis

shteev wrote:

I just reached Silver Tier after that last event, and I feel I should try and make the effort to get to Gold just so the poor casuals don't have to play against my l33t ha><or Kiora deck...

So I'm going to start doing the color challenges (which I've held off on until now, they didn't seem worth the effort for 10 crystals) with Dual planeswalkers + plenty mana acceleration + as many mythics as I can get away with, and I'll see how it goes.

[edit] Apparently it's 15 crystals...

It's 15 crystals for heroics and last chapters.
10 elsewhere, if I remember correctly.

alextfish

shteev wrote:

I just reached Silver Tier after that last event, and I feel I should try and make the effort to get to Gold just so the poor casuals don't have to play against my l33t ha><or Kiora deck...

Speaking as a casual, thank you! I went up against some decks in Nodes of Power that normally I don't see, and man were a couple of them annoying. I realised I really shouldn't have played in the very first PvP event if it's meant to be striated by mastery tier but mastery has only just come in... >.<

Barrelrolla

shteev wrote:

so the poor casuals don't have to play against my l33t ha><or Kiora deck...

Willing to share?

On topic, I just reached gold with Blue. I really want Oath of Jace, don't really care about the other prizes, but I am a bit afraid I won't be able to make 25 victories, if I have to fight against Golds

majincob

Barrelrolla wrote:

shteev wrote:

so the poor casuals don't have to play against my l33t ha><or Kiora deck...

Willing to share?

On topic, I just reached gold with Blue. I really want Oath of Jace, don't really care about the other prizes, but I am a bit afraid I won't be able to make 25 victories, if I have to fight against Golds

You can do it! You get 40 chances if you keep on top of the games. It's not too different from QB matches if your PW'ers are lvl 60.

Barrelrolla

majincob wrote:

You can do it! You get 40 chances if you keep on top of the games. It's not too different from QB matches if your PW'ers are lvl 60.

Oh I have no issues with Kiora, Sarkhan and Nissa, but my Chandra and Ajani decks need some work, especially Chandra, since it currently is a goblin deck which and can be wiped with one use of Chandra's second ability
But I suppose that even with 3 planeswalkers it is achievable.

shteev

Barrelrolla wrote:

shteev wrote:

so the poor casuals don't have to play against my l33t ha><or Kiora deck...

Willing to share?

Can do!

Disciple of the Ring
Sword of the Animist

Harbinger of the Tides
Reflector Mage

Talent of the Telepath
Nissa's Revelation

Day's Undoing
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Natural Connection
Fertile Thicket

Barrelrolla

shteev wrote:

Can do!

Disciple of the Ring
Sword of the Animist

Harbinger of the Tides
Reflector Mage

Talent of the Telepath
Nissa's Revelation

Day's Undoing
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Natural Connection
Fertile Thicket

Seems nice. Maybe I should add Disciple of the Ring to my deck too. I don't have Day's Undoing tho

EDHdad

Right now, my basic formula for any deck is:

* 3 pieces of creature removal (kill their guys bounce their guys, give your guys reach / berserker) - these are mostly cards I've already mastered.

* 7 cards I haven't already mastered, in Alphabetical order.

Then spam the Heroic challenges. I usually avoid Liliana, because I like to have removal in my hand and her habit of making me discard is annoying. I usually avoid Jace because his bouncing and Nerfing my stuff slows things down. Nissa and Gideon are good because they can't do anything without creatures.

My preference for planeswalkers are those which can win on their own - Ob Nixilis with his Emblem, Garruk and Gideon II with their token creatures, Kiora with her Octopus. Ajani is also good because he can deal direct damage, gain life and disable stuff.

If I master a card, I remove the card from the deck and put another one in which I haven't mastered.

It's pretty fun, because it's random and janky. In paper Magic, I sometimes play pack wars with my son, where we open a booster, throw in 3 of each basic land and then play the packs as a 30-card deck. This is kind of like that.

madwren

Gideon and Nissa are the heroics I like to go up against as well.

I basically have 7-card core decks, and then just switch in a handful of other cards. The matches are easy enough that you can play them or ignore them. In some cases, I find cards are surprisingly useful or fun.

Anyway, I try to rotate in one common, one uncommon, and one rare, then play a set of 8 games, rotating them out as they get mastered. That nets 24 mastery points, which I think is true no matter what combination of the three cards you use. Most of my mythics are part of core decks, so they xp up just from regular usage.