Training Grounds or Flexing Grounds?

davezavu

I will say right off the bat that I do enjoy this game. A lot. Can it get better? Surely. And I see progress all the time. It's not always rainbows, unicorns and cotton candy but the progress is happening. The wizards behind the curtain do care. Which is all that I can ask for.

Now that being said, I do think that Training Grounds should be event specific.

Here's the thing. I'm trying to develop a red/green deck for the red Across Ixalan challenge using Samut and the decks allowed for the challenge. With that PW and deck I go into Training to test it but am put up against a player using Koth. Their first creature out is Olivia. It's followed by Geier Reach. And the cherry on top is Emrakul. All creatures not available in the current challenges. So what am I training for? Don't get me wrong. I think that there should be an event called "Flexing Grounds". Again, I just think that Training Grounds should be aimed at a specific current event and if there happens to be three events going on then there should be three separate Training Grounds. One correlating to each event.

Mburn7

davezavu said:

I will say right off the bat that I do enjoy this game. A lot. Can it get better? Surely. And I see progress all the time. It's not always rainbows, unicorns and cotton candy but the progress is happening. The wizards behind the curtain do care. Which is all that I can ask for.

Now that being said, I do think that Training Grounds should be event specific.

Here's the thing. I'm trying to develop a red/green deck for the red Across Ixalan challenge using Samut and the decks allowed for the challenge. With that PW and deck I go into Training to test it but am put up against a player using Koth. Their first creature out is Olivia. It's followed by Geier Reach. And the cherry on top is Emrakul. All creatures not available in the current challenges. So what am I training for? Don't get me wrong. I think that there should be an event called "Flexing Grounds". Again, I just think that Training Grounds should be aimed at a specific current event and if there happens to be three events going on then there should be three separate Training Grounds. One correlating to each event.

It has been promised that there will be an option to play Training grounds either Standard or Legacy somewhat soon.  That will solve a good number of your issues (no Emrakul's in standard, thankfully)

As for having the special event rules in TG, that may be a bit too much to ask for.  I mean, for Across Ixalan alone you would need 4 different Training Grounds (although since Across Ixalan refreshes, you can just test your decks in the event with no real penalty for losing)

bk1234

I find that decks that stand up to legacy decks in Platinum TG are a breeze in Standard Events -- that being said, building Standard decks to hold up to TG can sometimes cause control or aggro overkill. I do not test cards that might otherwise be fun or interesting because I can't gauge how they will do. 

I do however use AX as my Standard TG for the time being. In lieu of building for objectives, might I suggest trying this? It's quite easy to get all 40 points with very little effort. 

Froggy

TG has become useless - after that 4th game is won. I just use a severely OP Ajani Unyielding to zip right through it. Sometimes I will tinker with decks in TG, but if I see it’s against an OP legacy deck, I usually just quit the game and start over.

I don’t use AX as a standard TG as in AX, there’s all sorts of oddities taking place on the board. But I know that we should have a standard TG soon, so let’s see what happens... 🤞

wereotter

I do agree with you, it's important to have a place you can actually do what Training Grounds says it's for: test decks.

If you're playing standard, and you're facing legacy Kothliviamrakul of the Provinces, then you're at a definite disadvantage and your'e not really learning what your deck needs to be competitive in a standard environment.

I get the argument others make that if your deck is good against legacy, you'll be good against standard, but in my experience this doesn't exactly add up as legacy needs more creature removal than standard, and standard seems to need more support removal than legacy, just as an example.

HarryMason

Training grounds is an odd beast . I test standard decks in it , in platinum , and do fine most of the time . The cards that roll your standard cards will roll your legacy cards . I have those ,too, so I've tested this theory extensively. There's no penalty for losing in tg, and part of testing is usually losing. I wouldn't really worry about the times you get wrecked by cards like Olivia and Emrakul. There's no standard equivalent to those cards, but you're probably weak to things like haste and heavy control elements if they just straight wreck you. People play those cards in tg because a lot of the community puts heavy emphasis on ending their tg as quickly as possible. When I'm not testing, I run a deck that gets through all 4 rounds in less than 10 minutes . If you don't like testing against those cards, heroic encounters in story are a good way to gauge if your deck functions. From there , across ixalan is a good place to test. The only penalty for losing is waiting for a recharge. Personally, I consider training grounds to be my final stress test before an event. If you can survive pigliviarichkul , you're good. 

Gunmix25

Froggy said:

TG has become useless - after that 4th game is won. I just use a severely OP Ajani Unyielding to zip right through it. Sometimes I will tinker with decks in TG, but if I see it’s against an OP legacy deck, I usually just quit the game and start over.

I don’t use AX as a standard TG as in AX, there’s all sorts of oddities taking place on the board. But I know that we should have a standard TG soon, so let’s see what happens... 🤞

That is pretty much the whole point of TG.

I think that over time players had lost sight of TG's initial purpose as a place to test decks and more of a place to grind out 15 crystals daily and quickly out of boredom. This developed into the mentality in which many players, especially new ones, to view TG as an daily "Event" like other events but objectiveless.

TG was never intended to have objectives, Crystals were more of a way to incentivize players to use the new format over a year ago. Not to mention we had a serious crystal shortage a year ago too. Getting a fair amount of crystals and Jewels was not easy. So TG gave us enough crystals to buy a PP once a month on the daily 15c progression awards alone.

The beauty of this system is that it didn't penalize you for just up and quitting when facing an EbtKS build (Everything but the Kitchen Sink). I know I do all the time. I have a Samut build that wins in 2 to 3 mins on avg and once I have all my other events out of the way I go back to TG and create new builds to test out and earn runes. 

Across Ixalan is basically TG with Objectives (one I think that the Devs could variate monthly... i.e. : three sets of objectives on a 3 month rotation cycle to keep things fun since players are asking for variation in TG.. I think this would satisfy that urge IMHO) and Totp is basically TG with color restriction and absolutely no forgiveness for quitting, losing, dying, crying and even whining. It's a hardcore legacy club for the big boys and girls. lol.

What TG does need is a standard version of itself so we can test our standard builds against other standard builds to see how viable it is without having to worry about every single power card from every single set slaughtering a well thought out build.

I disagree with the idea that if a build holds up in TG it is a strong build. While that maybe true, the fact that you're building to counter legacy cards instills an automatic handicap upon building a deck for standard. While you could be working on countering an encounter with Josu, you're more likely working on something to keep @Mburn7 … uh, Emrakhul or even piggy at bay; both have significantly different effects than Josu.