Time bubbles / denial are making me seriously consider quitting this game.

Smokincookz

First off, I should say, I really do love this game. Played since 2018, was VIP for a while, and have quite a large card collection.

However, as of late, I keep facing decks (usually under Teferi, Chronoclast) that nearly always revolve around Ambiguity, in combination with other "lockdown" effects.

Often, I end up unable to play cards at all, or, when I do get a (lucky) chance to board wipe, these denial decks are designed to bring everything back within a mere turn or two. Sometimes, I'm able to hold on for a while, making progress, only for the game to freeze up.

I've also had the opponent's Ambiguity trigger during my turn, so long that the loop timer came up- I stupidly chose to stop the loop, but this only deactivated my own cards!

My first match in Skoti this morning went terribly due to this, dragging on for quite a while (35 rounds!), only to finally freeze up, thus robbing me of the best potential rewards, plus however long I spent trying to win.

Let's consider for a second, this is all from my perspective: level 306, 6,938 cards collected, and 73 planeswalkers to choose from. Putting myself in the shoes of a new player, I really doubt I could tolerate this enough to keep playing.

Just my 10 cents, and restating some that was posted by others. IMHO, Oktagon left us with some awfully unbalanced design within PMA, and I think denial is the worst of them.

JTK421

I’m just going to copy my other post here for solidarity:
“As I’ve played against the PMA Walkers, I've realized that they don’t play similarly. For example, Ajani's Enlisted, Chandra's Ignited and Nissa's Seeded all give their benefits to the enemy Walker when matched (I don't know if Liliana works this way as well, as I've never had a Buried card in my graveyard while playing her). Teferi, on the other hand, only benefits that player. Is there a bit of bias? Maybe, but he denies (pun intended) both the cards and the mana that would be useful to fight him. Any of the other five, and you can draw your answers to and claw your way back, but even if you manage to not have your cards discarded to Time Bubble, then you have to make do on tiny amounts of mana while Teferi continues to make Time Bubbles or get mana when you play your deck.

My solution would be to let either player matching a Deny gem make a Time Bubble, and reduce the Time Bubble to draining only. This would allow opponents to at least have a fighting chance by going after the Deny gems, much like going after Enlist when you're low on life, or Seed when you need to boost your token deck's mana output.”

akira1

Corrupted gems can benefit either player but Buried is not very prominent in standard.