n00b in need of help

only1wolz

So I've a few questions but first let me give some background. I've been a MTG player since the inception of its game with a 15 year hiatus. I like many were brought back to the MTG fold in adulthood in my downtime, I started playing Duels. I own every card and ground it out the Mikey way, never paying a red cent for a single card. I was an original first invite batch to Arena Beta. I play paper standard at an LGS.

I picked MTGPQ sometime back and my interest in it would wax and wane. I was accepted into a couple of heats here Eldrazi and Dragon war. Now that's out of the way. 

I am extremely frustrated trying to figure out how to compete with the level 90 planeswalkers in the third stage of the Zendikar block. I've beaten most of the heroic encounters and have beaten and completes the missions to 100% for the rest of origins. I still cannot play anything past Zendikar because I assume this unlocks the next block and so on and so on. I've got 10 planeswalkers. Elspeth can take on AI at level 200+ in certain events but because of ingest I'm eaten alive in the Eldrazi block. I consider myself a strong deck builder and fairly intelligent human. So, how do I jump the hurdle? Will I be able to play all the other old blocks once there obstacles are defeated? Any advice?

I have:
Nissa, Worldwaker
KOTH, Hammer of Rath
Elspeth Tirel
Jace,  Unraveler of Secrets
Lilliana, The Last Hope 

My mythic and masterpieces are limited in standard block I have a very competitive Izzet Deck with Niv Mizzet, Tibor & Lumia, Crackling Drake and I bought the Niv Mizzet pack as well as the Jumpstart package. 

In non-standard events my Naya is very healthy. I have a strong collection of mythics and rates and many of the top notch historics in white, red and green. 

Any suggestions for a fellow player? The help would be greatly appreciated

Mburn7

First of all, the Zendikar Story mode has some of the hardest fights in the game.  There is also no other blocks that have story mode made yet (we've been asking for more for years to no avail, but maybe one day), and the Heroic Encounters (boss-ish level matchups against the Origins 5 walkers) should already be unlocked for you.  If you need to pass on the Zendikar story fights for a while while you build up your collection, that's fine too.  Don't worry about it too much.

As for strategy, getting a dual-colored walker should be a top priority for you.  I'd personally recommend Kiora (UG), Nahiri (RW), Teferi (UW), or Huatli Radiant (WG).  Getting Bolas (UBR) would be nice, but the resources it takes to acquire and level him are probably beyond what you can do right now.

There are 2 different (general) methods to beat boss-level fights:

Blitz:  Works best with some high power mythics and an aggressive walker like Nahiri or Samut or Koth.  Basically you put your heaviest hitters in and try out race your opponent.  This is very difficult without some solid creature cards.  If you can't get a super quick win, having some lifegain and removal options is a must

Lockdown:  Fill a deck with kill spells and stall your way to win.  Works best with Ob Nixlis or Teferi, but any Black, White, or Blue (or combination thereof) can manage it.  Fill your deck with lots of cheap kill or exile spells and slowly eat away at their health.  There are a lot of really good rare and uncommon supports scattered across the sets in White and Blue that help with this.  Drowner of Hope is an amazing mythic for this strategy too, but he's almost impossible for a new player to get without some serious luck nowadays.

Also, are you in a coalition yet?  The top teams (I'm on the #3 coalition Extinction) are always recruiting new players (us included), and they have a lot of resources to get new players going, especially deck help and resource management help.

only1wolz

First thank you.

I'm purchasing Ral Izzet Viceroy when he's available again but I have enough for any 650 gold PW. I was also thinking of getting two dual colored 295 cost walkers though Teferi is awfully appealing. 

Deck building is probably my biggest strength and why I was able to find all of my stock planeswalkers to 50+. I understand the archetypes and meta quite well and also peruse the boards for builds. Is the reddit forum or another place more active than this forum?

Mburn7

only1wolz said:

First thank you.

I'm purchasing Ral Izzet Viceroy when he's available again but I have enough for any 650 gold PW. I was also thinking of getting two dual colored 295 cost walkers though Teferi is awfully appealing. 

Deck building is probably my biggest strength and why I was able to find all of my stock planeswalkers to 50+. I understand the archetypes and meta quite well and also peruse the boards for builds. Is the reddit forum or another place more active than this forum?

I'm not on Reddit, although there is definitely a group there.  There's also a Facebook page.

As best as I can tell, though, coalitions make up most of the strategy talk.  The forums are mostly for general information about changes (both actual and suggested by us) and other conversation about the game (there is a Strategy subforum here, but its not really used much).

If you don't mind waiting, last year there was a Christmas sale where almost all of the walkers in the game were available at discounted prices.  It may be a good idea to stockpile runes for a month and see if you can get the discounted rates (we don't know for sure if they'll run the sale again, but I can't think of a reason not to).

Laeuftbeidir

You can also join one of the Slack or discord servers, that are run by various groups of players. Those are the most active and responsive platforms.

If Slack is something for you, you're very much welcome to join us (joining one of our coalitions is optional, we have the capacity, but also just like hanging around and discuss deck building with pretty much everyone). I would enjoy building for the encounters with the cards you have available!

If Slack isn't your thing, but discord is, just mention it and 'someone like me' will pop up fast. 

Lastly, you'll get some activity in the reddid as well, but it's a bit more random!

only1wolz

I'm going to do just that I also picked up another $100 play card that redeem around christmas. 

EvilDead

You need to be able to get a ton of cards played in a hurry or have a ton of stalling tactics. If you don't have the huge mana ramps then make sure every card counts twice in your deck. For example, creature kill/steal/exile spells or supports plus creatures that kill/steal/exile creatures. Support destruction spells plus creatures that destroy supports. Healing helps a ton if you have it. But it's really all about the cards. Once you get the right cards and have a PW that can dish them out it get's pretty easy.

Since none us can see your cards it would be hard to give advice.

I did all five colors with Angrath, Kiora and Gideon but not until I had the cards to do it. It was frustrating until then. Kiora and Angrath were a bit better at it since they have better mana bonuses.

Just keep plugging and you'll get there. Just fyi most of the mono color base PWs are harder to play. If you have the cards, Koth is a beast and can easily complete them. Hope that helps.

Kinesia

With the void stuff focus on your planeswalker off colours (like Elspeth has good mana in Green and Blue if they keep destroying all the white!)
Them hurting the colours also hurts your supports too I believe, so focus on colourless supports and creatures and spells.

Personally I go for longevity and recovery. I _plan_ for having everything destroyed. So I think about ways to bring stuff back and ways to gain life so I can keep going and have a long long fight.

only1wolz

Yeah Elspeth and that legendary lifelink enchantment are the main reasons I was able to level and grind. She was the first PW I purchased IIRC. I've used things like blighted Woodlands Zalphirin Void and Powerstone Shard and Thaumatic Compass and while her white is insanely boosted her blue and green are still +3 at max level IIRC. I also use seal away in conjunction with historic legendaries in the bant colors and Glorious Rebirth. I've beaten the heroic encounters almost completely with every color (grinding gold). From what I understand the heroic encounters are meant to he very difficult and I can beat all of the AI challenges even when they throw opponents at level 200+ and thrice my life count but I can't beat a single level 90 Eldrazi with even my strongest characters. I'm in Gold Tier and win ranked matches 75% of the time. I'd be in Platinum if I master one more card in black but I've been purposefully not doing so because I only recently started playing alot of ranked matches and winning eith such a high percentage and I've played against players with literal God collections compared to mine and I have a pretty decent collection I think. If I was playing against those decks more often I'd never win and thr rewards have o ly recently been getting better from what I can tell (perhaps it's also that I'm playing in more paid [gold] events. Pardon the lack of grammar and proper structure here but I'm more focused on elaborating so that perhaps someone can point out what it is that I'm missing.

rafalele

Kiora is a must have.

For starting also Sorin helped me a lot.

I would forget monocolor planeswalkers and invest in dual color.

madwren

only1wolz said:

. I'd be in Platinum if I master one more card in black but I've been purposefully not doing so

A good choice.

You definitely want to invest in multicolored planeswalkers. The versatility they offer makes them almost strictly superior; Kiora in particular has been one of the top planeswalkers since her inception.  If you like versatility in PVE, I highly recommend Karn, although he's expensive to level and restricted in PVP events to the node color.

It's funny, I haven't looked at the Zendikar block story mode in forever, and your post prompted me to do so--I remember it being excruciatingly difficult, and apparently never finished some of the objectives. I'm only at 95%. I'll have to finish that.

Anyway, since you're a paper veteran, let me make a suggestion different than the "blitz" and "lockdown" ones that MBurn mentioned above:  Tempo.  You're probably familiar with aggro-control as an archetype; it's my primary deckbuilding style and the one I've traditionally had the most success with.

The downside to the Zendikar decks is that many of their cards and creatures are expensive; if you can remove them efficiently, you can leverage the cost advantage incrementally to gain the upper hand. This is where multicolored planeswalkers shine, in that they have ample card selection to mix-and-match appropriately. The advantage that mono-colored walkers have is that ingest only targets one color, which is great--Elspeth still has strong green/blue (as mentioned above), and Nissa has relatively balanced mana gains. Koth, of course, is ill suited to oppose ingest, though anything's possible.

If you have anything that creates recurring blockers, I recommend it; also, you can cheese a lot of content with the original Gideon, by using his first ability with first strike creatures. You know about card advantage; it's similar here. Maximize your investments.

Also, for some bosses, simply shutting off their abilities off with Immortal Sun is very viable. I don't know if you have it, but it was an event reward for awhile, thus you might.

DBJones

First strike, deathtouch, defender/reach/vigilance, and lifelink in various combinations were how I got past those battles when I didn't have many rare+ cards. Prevent Damage is more available now, Dauntless Bodyguard would be a great choice. Multi-color Planeswalkers are the biggest necessity though, having a bigger card selection is a huge advantage. Also, for PvP, having a level 20-30 Planeswalker that's good for the objectives is much better than having level 60 that's mediocre to bad. Especially because people with really good collections usually also have high level Planeswalkers.

only1wolz

Thank you for all of this feedback. I'd post my card collection but that would be laborious. I feel like some folks glazed over some of what I wrote but it was admittedly long-winded.

First off I'm planning on purchasing a couple of dual color walkers. Nahiri and Kiora have absolutely slaughtered me in PVE though I'm fairly certain at least one of the users was using a hack with a Nahiri Zoo deck. I kept getting matched against them four times in a row and the deck was so consistently devastating that it honestly seemed like cheating. I've seen my deck and others go off doing what they are supposed to do but this was insane. 

I really only bought Koth and Elspeth to win objectives and cards so I could work my way up to where I am now.

All of that being said I do have a few masterpieces a ton of mythics and rates just not a ton of the legacy stuff that I see go insane and rightfully so they are ungodly powerful modern and legacy paper staples and the gamemakers have nailed functionality in the PQ format with many of them. I'm quite happy with a 75% win percentage in PVE.

Thanks again. 

Also anyone have any coalitions? I joined one called Esper Bros but I think it's mostly inactive. I could be wrong. I just love playing esper control on paper and they accepted my invitation to join.

madwren

only1wolz said:

Also anyone have any coalitions? I joined one called Esper Bros but I think it's mostly inactive. I could be wrong. I just love playing esper control on paper and they accepted my invitation to join.

You can check here for coalitions. https://forums.d3go.com/categories/mtgpq-coalitions

Mburn7

only1wolz said:

Also anyone have any coalitions? I joined one called Esper Bros but I think it's mostly inactive. I could be wrong. I just love playing esper control on paper and they accepted my invitation to join.

Also, check your inbox (top right on the Forums page, between the globe and the flag).

You may have gotten some offers already

madwren

Mburn7 said:

only1wolz said:

Also anyone have any coalitions? I joined one called Esper Bros but I think it's mostly inactive. I could be wrong. I just love playing esper control on paper and they accepted my invitation to join.

Also, check your inbox (top right on the Forums page, between the globe and the flag).

You may have gotten some offers already

Also, I highly recommend joining a coalition (or group of coalitions) that use a client like Slack or Discord. The in-game client is paltry and insufficient.

only1wolz

I did get invited to join a coalition indeed. Thanks for pointing out looking to the inbox. 

Too bad I didn't join earlier I've been tearing through the dragon war PVE event.

only1wolz

I cracked the top 500 in the Dragon War and reached the 251-500 bracket in am event again!

only1wolz

Well this is the first time I've cracked the 100-251 bracket!

morgue427

honestly the best solution is just play, yes you lose sometimes, everyone does(regardless of how good their decks are) play win get rewards buy upgrades that the wins supplied and enjoy your self, platnium is feared but with good planning it is just another level and the prizes are better. best advise is play and grind deck beats you steal ideas from it mercilessly lol

morgue427

remeber not all dual color planes walkers are created equal, some have better abilities and i usually only buy them when i have the runes to level them up to 60 unless it is on special sale