My favorite thing about the shuffler is the absurd number of times my starting hands includes all spells of one color and all land of another.

MTG Arena has a habbit of forcing you to play with only 2 lands the entire time

I love how if anyone mentions the shuffler on Reddit, people will jump to its defense as though you attacked their family...

After a couple of years of playing 100% free to play and constantly going 2nd, I decided to start tracking my go first/second. I tracked 557 games and went first just under 18% of the time. I also started paying attention to the decks I would be paired with and realized after a span of 8 out of 9 games being against the deck that hard countered mine, I changed to a deck with a much better matchup and then the next 15 games were against a completely different hard counter. They intentionally try to push ppl into spending money on the game by rewarding whales and punishing free to play players.

Arena really does just feel like "did my opponent draw enough removal or can I have fun?"

All I know is when I play my white weenie deck, for some reason I'm placed against all kinds of red or red green aggro decks, the VERY SECOND I switch to my mill deck, suddenly all of the decks are 120 cards plus and almost entirely black or black/red removal.

Thanks for your research on this Des. I've stopped caring about winning and I am just interested in jank and goofy decks. I've had a few games where my opponent allowed me to crank up my life total or counters just to see how ridiculous we could get it. Arena is just a slot machine.

So you're telling me the shuffler problem has been fixed? Because I haven't noticed it. The pattern is still there.

So I play mostly Historical Brawl In decks with 100 cards, it’s phenomenal how often I see certain cards be in the opening hand or at least within the first five turns. Play against someone with white and watch how often they have Esper Sentinel, Authority of the Consuls or Swords to Plowshares. Someone splashes green? Watch how often they have Gala Greeters by turn 3. I just built an H Brawl deck around Koth the other day. Watch how often, after using his +2 to thin your deck of mountains, you keep drawing mountains two or more turns in a row

If you've ever played magic in real life consistently (tournament or not, doesn't matter), you can tell when something is janky

My mill deck ALWAYS get matched against green with a Gaea's Blessing. Never fails

I'm still trying to figure out why this game crashes at least once every time I play.

How I know the shuffler is fixed is because you can update ANY deck and your first game will ALWAYS have those cards in your first hand. I’m not one to call cheats when I’m loosing and I’m aware or mana flooding but how you can just feel your next draw will be a land while your opponent so happens to pull a card then have a perfect combo happens way more to be a coincidence

Arena often ends up being unplayable and frustrating. The game just feels bad. And now that I've seen your video they won't get an extra penny from me.

I don't know about the shuffler being fixed. You still see a lot of grouping of cards and other cases where it seems to ignore certain cards in your deck for multiple games.

If you never want to play against mill in historic, just play Gaea’s Blessing

I've def experienced everything in this video. Hand spy, 200 card deck that drew perfect with EVERY answer turn for turn, being able to call out when you are going to draw a land instead of ANY spell to win the game...etc. It really does come down to profits, game retention (the more you lose, the more you have to play to get that mission reward done) and just pure lazy coding. Ain't nothing "random" about draws. Too many times have I said to myself 'if this was paper, this wouldn't happen or happen as much etc.' The thing that drives me crazy the most is when your deck is scanned by the system and you get intentionally paired up with someone that 'counters' your deck. You can make a brew and never see a meta deck, just other "brews" that happen to have all the main deck answers to what you're playing! Too often for it to be a coincidence...

Here's my biggest beef lately with the shuffler: *every* opening hand I get is guaranteed to include at least 2 special lands, like Field of Ruin, Mirrex, Eiganjo, Otawara, etc. It happens so much I'm just sickened by it.

Bruh that feel when it takes until 33 minutes in to get out of the confirmed section. That is a ludicrous amount of proven shenanigans Arena is doing

Nothing could get me to come back to Arena at this point, and I see I made the correct decision.

The first issue is definitely not gone. I run into it all the time. So many times I start with 1-2 mana in hand and I never get the chance to draw another, it's infuriating...! Or the other way around, having 3-4 mana in hand at the start and almost exclusively getting mana during the draw phases.

I’m barely 10 min. You reference lots of stats and posts but don’t show pics on screen. Whatever you’re referencing may be 100% factual but the audience can’t take your word for it unless you actually show and prove it.

The random 200 card opponent thing is so real It's actually very funny everytime I get that because you can sorta game the system if you know they'll always have it, can be a challenge run Arena is the toxic abusive relationship that is just convenient enough for me to lose couple hours every week

Most people that spend money mostly are KZfaqrs that pay so they can show off decks

That drafting tool you theorized? Already exists in Hearthstone, there was a draft assistance tool for their draft mode (Arena) years ago. Told you the best card by pick/win percentage out of the 3 presented to the player. Definitely possible. Could be done in MTG:A very easily, though the result would often not be as straightforward as 90% or 70% pick/win as it was in Hearthstone's tool.

Play control for 10 games vs mono red aggro 10 games. Play mono red aggro 10 games, vs boardwipe tribal 10 games. I hate how you have to WIN the games to do the daily then they just pair you against your kryptonite to maintain player retention.

I have noticed recently, I am matched with people with 250 card decks and they always top deck exactly the specific card they need to counter what I got or win. Every single time without fail.

@me: boy howdy, I sure do seem to be playing against Mill a whole bunch. I'll add a Gaia's Blessing, just in case. And then suddenly I never see mill again.

I quit playing arena 6 months ago because i can spent whole night playing with only go first for less than 20% of the games(BO1) and this situation continued for about 10 days. you can cheat anything else, just at least give me a 50-50 play/draw ratio.

I will be adding this as I watch along. I’m not any sort of official source but I do have my own site that I run so I should be considered at least a reputable source on this since I’ve been playing for a long time now- in arena since I’m not able to play paper magic in person. ******EDITING****** 1:18- I have known that there were issues with shuffler since I have quit affectively 70 to 80% of all of the games that I have ever played on Arena due to issues, to constant bad hands or to just being put on a turn 4-5 clock from my first or second turn. While that sucks- some decks just get precisely what they need to win early. There were just too many times when I had taken a Mulligan and had gotten the exact same cards back in my hand that I shuffled away. This happened too many times unfortunately. 13:15 I have noticed that as well, but my ratio is a little bit different than yours. Either way I am still going second significantly less than 50% of the time. 39:00 I’ve noticed issues with the matchmaker system as well since I consistently play monoblack zombies and five color slivers. I’ll try my five legendary deck, which is my favorite from time to time but that’s completely random right there. Usually the opponents are four or five color decks.

What's funny is even after this and everything else, there will still be people that defend this nonsense, just build fun decks on Arena and hope you don't get fucked over, that's what I do.

After I brewed a deck a started winning a few matches, magically, after entering an standard event paid 2500 coins, I only drawn lands for about 20 games (in a 24 land deck with 60 cards). It only stopped after getting away from the game for a few days. But the worst for me was when I played against a gay with a 2/2 monster and a decayed zombie who took waaay more damage than his power 2. I blocked the decayed zombie with a 4/4, my monster died and I took damage as he had trample

Going first disparity is so bad that I only play Bo3 on arena except when I draft. I never used a tracker, I just paid attention to how often it happens. It started getting worse and worse on the Bo1 ladder so I only was farming events. Then after a certain number of events(maybe a couple dozen of so) I started going second an unusually high amount. I then stopped playing events. I suspect it is tied to win rate, and people that say it isn’t a thing don’t have a 60%+ win rate. I have not noticed a huge disparity in going first in Bo3 even when I am in the top 1,000 of mythic. Not sure if it happens in draft since I draft so sporadically. Great video by the way. It is a very controversial topic but I am glad you made it anyway.

I downloaded mtga the other day but then delted it because i just cant do it anymore i have way more fun on mtgo due to the amount of cards and modes and it doesnt have all the bs manipulation

Sadly, mtga has just always been a huge pain, and I've experienced almost everything you've mentioned. Win too much because you're using mono red aggro? Start getting land flooded turn 4 on your 13 land deck. So then I just swap from ranked to standard, lose a bunch on purpose, engine sees my deck is actually "bad" go back to ranked, miraculously, my deck performs as it should (win by turn 3), repeat until mythic, I hate it. I just *wish* the game was fully random, I'd rather lose to rng, than have a guaranteed loss match 4 or 5 because my win ratio is at 50.00000000000000000000000001% due to my last win.

Thanks for this, really cathartic to hear someone else saying the same things I've been suspecting. Also it's 100% in WotC interest to control win rates based on EOMM research as well as controlling gems since that's their ROI. Anyone who doesn't think there's some shady shit going on after learning about the MM algorithms and hand smoothing (which prove they can do a lot of other things since systems are already in place) is crazy.

I've experienced everything from this list! I've been playing magic since revised, so I can def tell a difference in the shuffler.

I have 100% seen them literally match me with the counter to the deck ive picked loads of times, if I play mill, I magically play against players who have 100+ card decks with gaea's blessing, I switch decks magically never see those decks again, same if I play elves, 8 out of 10 matches will be mono red, if I switch to white, I don't see mono red at all.

my friend tried to get me to play arena and i already was against playing MTGO strictly cause if im gonna throw money away on a hobby ima make it the IRL physical hobby lol... but digital magic just isnt for me.. paper magic 4Lyfe.

Just clucked in your channel looking for a rant, didn’t expect this, though! And brand new! Merry Christmas indeed

Oh my God thank you so much for making this video so many of my suspicions have been voiced in this video and it makes me a little bit happier to know that I'm not alone

I've experienced a significant number of topics you covered. I've played MTGA since its release. I'd get frustrated and quit, forget about all the issues, and then come back. One thing you didn't mention that I've experienced many, many, many times is: I'd construct a completely random jank deck and my very first game would almost always be a mirror match. (This happens even if I net deck, but it's more obvious that it isn't a coincidence with jank) Historic, explorer, standard... doesn't matter. I'm highly convinced there is matchmaking based on specific cards as well as overall rarity. I will say this happens more frequently outside of ranked play so it could just be a really weird coincidence. I've also taken a new strategy to playing my draft games. If I don't get matched with an opponent within 10 seconds, then I cancel the queue and go play a different format and try again later. My theory is the matchmaking, while broken, prioritizes your ELO/MMR but if it can't find a good match for you then it will force a less desirable match up to keep players from waiting too long. Since starting this strategy, I've had significantly more 5, 6, and 7 win drafts.

I just played a game where on my last draw any of 42 (85%) of the 49 cards I had left wins me the game. So of course I draw one of the seven cards that I cannot play.

I played all plains and won once Also, question: do new players get the 3 pack in the mail system for all of standard? If not the change from the "play*set*" codes to the mail system cheats players out of packs.

I have noticed I do significantly worse at quick drafts than I do at premier drafts. Was starting to wonder if there was something going on behind the scenes. Figured it was because they don't want me turning gold into gems. Would love to see the discrepancy of how many times I've ended quick drafts with 1-2 wins vs premier drafts where I have 4+.

Recently it has gotten worse for me. No matter what kind of deck I play I get always either specific card counters or mana-screwed to keep my WR around 50%. When I see some youtubers playing the exact same decks it's night and day difference how they seem to always draw their combo, I go dozens of games without seeing the both cards in my hand. I don't pay for cards so I think it treats us plays-for-free players as some sort of glorified bots giving wins for paying customers.

8:35 Ohh, so that's why I keep getting 2 lands, I have around 5% more chance to have less land than I want

I was really sick the other day and played magic arena for nearly 8 hours, to have something to focus on, I played the same deck the whole time, it was a mono black, made as a hard counter to the historic wizards deck, I only played wizards twice in all those hours, twice, one of the most played historic bo1 decks I only played twice in 8 hours. What would you make of that?

I remember the shuffler algorithm in MTGO being a Knuth shuffle which can have some issues with it. While it is good for poker/blackjack if you know the seed (usually the server time) you can "predict" the hand/cards of not only yourself but other players (playing on the same deck). The only way to really get a Fisher-Yates or Knuth shuffler to be random is to have the seed be external to the machine running the algorithm (something like a rotating fob that rotates every second or faster). With decks that have 4 of or more (lands) it is hard to really "predict" if you know the seed but actually it is somewhat easier with a poker deck you have a 1/52 shot (1 of card) of each item. If I hear something is "random" i question it always unless an external device is feeding the seed to the randomization algorithm. If it isn't and you can figure out the server time (Pacific time for servers in washington state) and then use an algorithm to go through the different seeds for that hour minute second and millisecond. The PC should come up with the different combos in a matter of seconds (100,000 +) and then using the opening hand and next draw can figure out the next draws (about 100 possible) and then keep feeding the cards into the algorithm to get the next set of cards drawn. It basically can go to about 5 possible draws. (Me and a few friends broke the shuffler algorithms for online poker prior to black monday and it is the same algorithm used in MTGO).

I'm currently 9-0 in explorer platinum with UW spirits and I have gone first 8 of those games. What is happening?

When you know your card game's resource design is flawed, so you cheat it in your digital version so new players won't rq.

Awesome video man, that leaves me with a question though, given that the shuffler on MTGA works not fully randomized, what happens with MTGO? Is it the same algorithm? Or it works different? Would like to know if maybe would be better to move to MTGO instead of Arena.

Sources man, sources, would love some links to investigate further

One thing that I have noticed is that I'll make a few different historic brawl and maybe a standard deck or two where I do not have all of the cards. I do notice that when I start opening packs, I never pull any of the cards that I need and am forced to open enough packs to get a wild card or two. I'm not sure if there is anything in the system for it, but I can't recall a time i've ever pulled a card I've needed for any of my pending decks.

yeah arena is trash for sure. I quit over a year ago. Got sick of the shuffler and the going 2nd 60% of the time. The other thing that pissed me off was the servers couldn't handle the big damage big life gain or big numbers of counters or tokens... the fix they used was to just prevent the triggering of the abilities. i.e. scute swarm. I shouldn't lose the game because i made 400 scute tokens with a cathar's crusade in play just because your servers cant handle it and times me out.

This is the MTG youtube video of the year right here. Thank you

Im confused. I've been playing arena drafts for at least a year, and I've never seen player names until after the table locks in. Is this patched?

I recently joined a premier draft with a token. I drafted a decent golgari value pile with good sac synergies etc. I basically never draft in arena but used to draft nearly every week for years in paper. The deck I built for this event was decent, quite strong actually, and heavy on removal. The very first game I played I was up against some three or four color bullsh*t and somehow managed to mulligan to 5, brick on Lands, then exclusively draw non of my removal+wincons all the way down below 10 cards in library! In all my years of drafting, I've never had a deck that solid where I've lost SO BADLY game 1. It's totally anecdotal and also a laughable sample size but I agree they use some sort of algorithm to rig draft games based on deck composition. (I am currently and was at the time of that draft bronze in limited ranking lol) I just stopped playing the event because it truly left a sour taste in my mouth.

So when should I play limited? New to magic and only times I've played I get wiped out (usually midnight lol)

I did a study on my own when tracking 100 games. If you surrender you are less likely to go first. I found it to be 73 out of 100 times.

I hate when I build a new deck and they throw me at life gain or something completely similar, like a dragon deck vs dragon deck, or toxic vs toxic or tokens vs tokens, life steal vs life gain it all feels counter productive to why I play it. You can throw toxic up against my mutate deck at least im not fighting myself

on an unrelated note and inconsequentially: you're pretty toxic with your emotes huh?

This is the huge issue with chance that many may not realize. It is math and numbers so it is extremely easy to fudge around and still be within legal bounds. This is best shown with an example and Des presents one, as well, in a similar fashion. Something has a stated drop rate of 1 in 15. In actuality it is a sliding chance with the 1st attempt being 5% and the 15th attempt being 100%. In reality it does work out to 1 in 15. Guaranteed. Here is the rub, though. They want the chances but they don't want the luck. 1 in 15 could streak out to several dozen failed attempts. Who wants to do that?!(they think from a business perspective)Too easy to lose money that way. So, how do you give the house an advantage and stay within "realistic" boundaries? Sliding chances as shown above. Begins as outright fraud for the first who knows how many attempts. Then they give you a "deal" later and it is supposed to make up for the initial dishonesty? 😒

Do you have any sources on the land smoothing thing you said is proven? I couldn't find any statements on it after 2019.

It's refreshing to see someone actually address the issues with Arena instead of coping and telling everyone they're wrong and delusional for suggesting that maybe there's something not quite right behind the scenes. Most of the large Arena KZfaqrs are guilty of this, and I'd be willing to bet that it has something to do with their sponsors.

Thank you for this video. Finally I am able to find comfort somewhere other than in my own rantings seeing how, only having 2 copies of one card (always expensive at that, of course), like Cityscape Leveler or Etali, I draw BOTH of them in the opening hand but, not only that, after taking a mulligan, I still draw one, if not both of them again. And I kid you not when I say this has happened multiple times in the course of not so many games, and there is 0 reason for that happening playing 23 lands and having a curve of barely over 3. Absolutely 0 reason other than, of course, a shuffler being rigged. Just how many f*ing decks have I had to discard or rework almost entirely so that the curve would stay lower than 2.4 (from my experience, that's a threshold where the shuffler stops messing that frequently with your draws) and the deck could actually pull its tricks off. Man, I never copy decks from anywhere, I always come up with decks on my own (which probably have a twin somewhere, not trying to coin any of them) and spend the time and effort to test them and see how they do, and I have very strict and specific requirements for each metagame according to what's most threatening to the decks themselves and what's mostly played in it, like answers to artifacts/enchantments, ways to make certain cards uncounterable, etc., just to see all of that crushed and thrown away by a stupid shuffler who can't even give a REALISTIC hand not only in the opener, but after a mulligan or even two. I really hate the fact that they made the shuffler this way to prevent newcomers from quitting out of frustration and whatnot. Man, if newcomers are not aware of how randomisation works in real life (which is what the shuffler should be mimicking), that's on them. Me, as a semi new player (joined Arena in 2021 but "played" the game as a kid), joined the game, suffered the absurdities of the shuffler without ever knowing for certain it was rigged, and here I am. If in WOTC they're not smart enough to keep newcomers hooked to the game by what it is on paper, that's them being bad at their job, and none of us, including the newcomers that stay, should suffer the consequences by having the game being manipulated in such a way that it encourages and discourages certain draws when real randomisation has nothing to do with that. Just disgusting to be honest

3 color token deck (w/g/b) 4 games of 5 Initial hand-> lands of 2 colors and cards of 2 colors with the one color that the lands don't have Mulligan-> the same but with the other colors Mulligan-> the same Mulligan-> finally a hand i can play Get 3 lands 1 mana dork... mana dork destroyed... no more lands for the rest of the game and only 4 or more cost cards...

We need your video on the deck weighting discovery. But like don't rush it because your tirades are a form of calming energy for me.

It’s become an hours long process to record useable footage for decks I make for my channel. I have a Jank non ranked Ancetral Mask deck, I draw zero creatures for 10 turns. Took several recordings to get a game where I wasn’t shuffle-fookd

The clumping problem still exists. I’ve noticed after I mulligan, the draw is way better. It doesn’t always clump, but often enough to be really annoying.

Update on MTGA being rigged. Made a mill deck, my first opponent was a player named ‘Sean’ with a 200 card deck. I’m leaning towards that was a bot. Updated. Got 5 more 100+ card deck opponents against my mill deck.

So the spend more money win more games thing I play fixed winota in historic I played against over 40 matches stright with where my opponent had turn one thoughtsize spent 200 bucks on gem DIDNT CHANGE DECK but I didn't see turn 1 thoughsize for a hole week

Man, I'm glad i dropped Arena super quickly back in the day. I remember when i first joined, had a decent white/black lifelink deck that generated +1/+1 counters on lifegain. Wracked up a decent winrate, encountering mostly mirror matches and some Green/Red deck i don't remember the specifics of... And then, suddenly, every opponent was running that Green/Black oven loop. Every single opponent, for multiple days in a row. You cannot expect me to believe that I was the only person still playing the lifelink deck, and everyone else was playing oven, y'know?

I KNEW IT LMAO It's like you said Des after hundrends of games you just notice things off about the shuffler and I knew I wasn't crazy. Thanks for the info

game made by predominately math nerds... for a player base predominately math nerds and they say "they'll never figure out we are messing with the math" sigh

The 200+ card deck thing happens to me a lot too, when I'm using a mill deck or my turbofog deck.

I think going first is based on how much you spend. My friends that cash often seem to go first a lot. I F2P and I definitely have long runs where I'm going first 30-40% of the time. I've tracked hundreds and thousands of games with different decks and it is especially true when I use draft tokens.

People and Diamond and Platinum won't blindly attack into my settle the wreckage is a weird note. I'm bronze and I know not to swing into settle. You leave 4 mana free in your white deck and I will send probing attacks. Unless I'm playing my red deck, then fuck it.

you think anything is going on in historic brawl? i havent played it in a long time

If shuffling and pairing isnt random, wouldnt it be that way for everyone? Which kinda negates the argument.

You can definitely tell (at least in Stand Bo1) if your opponent is new to the game because the algorithm will try to shaft you at every turn. First, itll make sure you need to mulligan at least once. Then, youre going second, of course. Lastly, youll flood or drought depending on which is worse for your hand. You can feel it happen sometimes and you just have to move on, it sucks.

This is such great confirmation for many things I have experienced in Arena! The shuffler screwing you on colour happened so many times I stopped playing on Arena.

How would you suggest someone program a computer to find the perfect draft pick? Draft is extremely difficult

Could you provide some sources? I havent been able to find over half of what you're claiming here. not saying you're wrong, just asking for some sources.

One more think... 5 color decks and decks full of 4 copies of a few legendary creatures, that are most of the meta(excluding mono red), shouldn't have the consistancy that they have right now... but I guess that the person that spen so much money for mytic wild cards should have a reason to continue doing it... Also I'm at a point to belive that the amount of the lands in your deck doesn't matter in arena.. You'll drow as much as they decided... Last time that I tried to play mono red with only 18 lends.. I draw 10 of them in the first 15 cads 2 times in a row... and then I played against mill I saw 16 of them in the top half of the deck... mostly as a big block of lands. One game is not a statistic, but when you draw 2 lands in a row, then the openent mills 6 lands(nothing else) and next 2 cards are also lands in a deck with 18 lands total.. someting is very wrong... My unproven theory (if we exclude the treory that they make it on purpose) is that the deck is sorted in the DB(with is normal), the shuffler it shuffleling card by card(with is fine algorithm), but it's possible to timeout because the pottato servers can handle someone that makes a lot triggers at same time and just give you not fully shuffled deck very offten... but this somehow never happens for esper legends and atraxa decks, so I don't know...

There is at least 2 different queues in bo1 events. People with less than 5 wins and people with more than 5 wins. I have played thousands of drafts and usually end up in diamond or mythic at the end of the season, depending on how much I draft and there is a significant jump up in gameplay skill, deckbuilding skill and/or number of game winning cards at the 5 win mark. It also coincidentally the point where you start generating gems. And all of Arena is designed to make you not go infinite. So it would only make sense for them to give you harder opponents at that point so either of you lose. To clearify I do not believe your exact score matters for matchmaking as you described it. There is 2 seperate queues one for 4 or less wins, one for 5 or more wins.

they will not fix the scams because i would bet that the majority of players are not thinking about this stuff so they don't even know to ask the questions. most are just casuals who wanna sling some cards.

Arena is trash anymore. I can’t count how many times the games has crashed because it can’t handle triggers adequately or if there’s too many triggers, the token cap issues etc

I rarely ever earn gems on arena. Play a fair bit. Can't ever join any events because of it. But I'm not gonna spend money on non paper cards. Especially when I was already suspicious of a rigged system in the arena. Shameful

Arena cheats, I have done my own research with this and the matchmaker. If you play Brawl with specific commanders you only see certain ones within a win/lose rate ratio. Then if you switch decks with a different commander you will never see the first batch ever. I have gotten 2 of my friends to try this with me over about 1000 games and yeah there is no diversity when playing online

I am glad someone is finally confirming arena is trash. When arena was in its early stages i played it quite a bit in conjunction with playing standard locally and modern. I can tell you right now that playing locally with good players was way different than mtg arena and I knew it was rigged. I would get no landers to the point i would have to concede games before they started. Something I have never had to do in paper.

There was one night a few days ago I went second 5 or 6 games in a row, I got so frustrated with that alone that I just quit the game before my opponent decided to keep their hand and haven't logged back on since to play. Regardless if I would have won or not, it's frustrating when you just can't go first at all

Magic is a VERY high variance game. If you play enough games over enough time you will notice VERY weird things happen. Once, IRL, my opponent and I rolled the exact same number combination on 2d6, 6 times in a row. Could that have been the devil at work? Or is it just variance...

One more unconfirmed: Getting a starting hand with more tap lands than statistically possible. Several games in a row.

Something I was always curious about was if the game tracks card position information in your library could third party software find and display that data? Would explain some of the "Wow did they just top-deck the perfect card . . . again" games I would get.

enjoyed the video, I have wondered more than once why they would not actively cause parity in going first by showing where a player is at on a particular day plus minus zero on going first, awarding the go first to the player with the relative disadvantage. When the two are equal either randomize at that point or use longer term data. It is in their interest to do this. The total dissatisfaction from going second too often is greaater than the positive feelings from going a similar disparity to the go first end. Going second is a major problem with the game in general, and they have chosen not to address it

Serious question. So are the drafters with 600k gems doing this on there other screen while they stream. Or is it possible to reach some of the winrates they achieve 65%+ w/o cheating

Ever since I added more Praetors to my Brawl deck to make Realmbreaker more useful, I draw it in my opening hand/free muligan so often it's spooky.

The actual word I would use to describe what goes on behind the scenes is: ""Manipulation" Win or Lose the games are too easy to predict. I'd rather have it ALL be totally random no matter what - they continue to destroy the three decade legacy of the "Game" for their own selfish insanity (continue to do something and expect a different result - manipulate and expect us not to notice)

I think that every single session now I get a streak of 5 going second, a feat I never achieved ever going first. During match of the machines I wanted to test some stuff out. Save up gems, no money buys outside the normal pass and see how the ratio was. Results: Going first 33 times, second 117 times. The "randomness" is telling me that I'm either insane due to the consistency of improbable outcomes or that I just turned simply turned unlucky when i stopped paying for any gems whatsoever.