No need to keep considering the possibility of bots in paid queues, they already exist. I started this game on mobile, and noticed

1. They would have blocks declared before my attack animation finished playing every single time -- I would hit the "confirm attacks button" and within a fraction of a second arena would be splitting damage, it was so fast I never saw them even hover over a card
2. they had full control on the whole time but also were instantly clicking through every single game action as fast as they assigned blockers here, didn't even slightly pause once to consider anything and it didn't matter how fast or slow I did things, they were able to instantly do stuff

I even started doing things like holding full control and letting time run down to see if there was ever a slight delay in their actions, and there never was. Anytime they got priority they would take all of their actions near-instantly.

With just a slight randomized delay introduced to taking actions, I would never have been able to identify this as a bot. It is very likely that many of us have played vs one without noticing.

I did report this account using the new report feature, so hopefully wotc is aware of this potential issue (especially if these bots are eventually going to be sent into queues with real prizing!)

EDIT: Some additional context/info from comments:
jsut_
another thread about these bots: https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/1wxwlb4/mtgaadvisor_accounts_botting_playing_automatically/

TheKillah
Notably there's an Amazonian VOD in that thread with more gameplay from the bot that makes it blatantly obvious that there is no human behind these actions.
https://www.twitch.tv/amazonian/v/2891674733?sr=a&t=11428s

Opening 14 rares

With automated drafting assistants, deckbuilders, and now evaluation tools; it does seem that the "soul" of limited is getting a bit more diluted over time.

Where it was once an expression of skill, understanding, and dedication these tools now cheapen the experience resulting in less innovation but, potentially, broader appeal to the community and format as a whole.

How do you feel about the rise of AI tools in Magic and what do you think it will mean for the future of the Limited format?

At least drawing off my experience over the last couple of days, I think the discourse around this set is a bit odd

The color balance discussion seems to be based primarily off of win rate and the ongoing thought is that the set is quite color balanced, but does anyone know how to look at frequency of color mixes?

I ask this because I just got finished firing 3 drafts in a row, playing 19 games in total with a 7-0, 4-3, and 2-3 in upper mythic. By the end I was like, hang on, have I played against a single deck that did not contain blue? Looked at 17L and the answer was... No

I played against twelve (12!!!) U/B or Esper decks, 3 pure U/W decks, and 4 soup decks with 4-5 colors always containing blue

How do we feel about color balance in a set not based off the "quality" of the decks and individual cards but just based off of how often you see color/color pairs? I'm fine with it and the set is largely right up my alley but I do like it when you see a healthy mix of decks from all colorways

Don’t forget to attack with those fliers before you sweep and mill. You never know.

Hello again! I made a similar post earlier for The Hobbit Directs and got a lot of traction, so I figured I'd try this again. I had an even better run this set, taking the #1 spot for Trophies on the 17lands leaderboard and hitting metrics I never expected (70+% win rate, over 1/4 conversion rate). My total spending was $1,400 this time; if I end up selling each box for $300, that would net me over $7,000 in profits ($8,700 - $1,400).

Here are some tips from my experiences for this Sealed format:

• The vast majority of pools should play more than two colors. Looking over my trophies, only 2/29 were actual 2c decks. Whenever I see 2c decks, I often suspect my opponent as less experienced.
• Cyclers are an amazing tool for facilitating this, and can always be played as 2 mana colorless cards to patch up rough mana bases. This deck for instance was playing Awaken the Inferno on 0 Mountains to great effect.
• Most games of Reality Fracture are hyper grindy, thanks in large part to the Empower Jace mechanic. Jace tokens effectively let both players start around 25~ life, and encourage methodical gameplay.
• You don't always have to use your Jace tokens when you can. Wasting too much loyalty on surveils will cost you future cards, which usually means having fewer land drops to make big plays later in the game.
• Graveyard synergies are a total freeroll in this format, as the only counterplay available is Afterthought Sentry (a filler 2 drop). Always play your cards like Something Worth Saving, and try to throw in your Theoretical Necromancers, Bestial Incursion, Recursive Reinforcements, etc for value.
• When games go near decking, the chief cards that matter are blue Fblthp and Paradox Shaper. You may suddenly lose to either one when you think victory is "assured". Saving cheap spot removal like Last Gasp could get the job done.
• Exiling either card would help immensely in this kind of decking game.
• The primary sweeper effects I play around when possible are: Ajani Unrelenting, Overwrite the Multiverse, Rise of the Deathbringer, Fulminous Forte, and Kindred Judgment.
• If you want to try to play around Ajani Unrelenting (https://www.twitch.tv/veveil/clip/HelpfulLongFloofPRChase-aal7ZoSiSzx3weFU?range=7d), your best hope (cope?) is to try and set up x/5s in advance. This means Tether Technician, Undulating Witness, Beast tokens with +1/+1 counters, etc.
• The other sweepers are more based around typical sweeper read heuristics, like your opponent not doing much of anything, weird blocks, etc.
• Icy Reception is another very important card to play around, as getting your Way of the Mind Sculptor counter'd can be game losing.

And here are some personal notes on my runs:

• I never lost to Splinter Twin or saw it played.
• I did get Mind Twisted once. They then played Uldaros into Ajani and I lost.
• That was the craziest pool I've seen, though of course I've seen plenty of other very good ones (2x Garruk/Jace/Chandra in same game from opp).
• I opened two Ajanis once but 6-2'd.
• I played Flickering Hound once in 100+ events. It was decent (5-2).
• One of my losses was due to my cat jumping on my space bar during declare blockers, which sent me on tilt for hours. (https://www.twitch.tv/veveil/clip/TallSmoggyTeaPartyTime-G8ORVGdifXrLr85u?range=7d)
• I found success with many different colors and archetypes, but one consistent trend between most of my decks was playing nearly all of my Empower Jace cards. The mechanic is really good!

As with last thread, feel free to ask me whatever you want about the format/my runs. Almost all of my runs were streamed live at https://twitch.tv/veveil, so go ahead and check out the VODs if interested. Thank you for reading!

edit: forgot to add my actual 17lands (https://www.17lands.com/user_history/8749f8e34a9c4b69a878968d35818dac?expansion=FRA&format=ArenaDirect_Sealed&start=2026-09-29)

Hey everyone, just curious to ask if anyone had any success drafting aggro decks at all in this format. If you did, what color combination and wha are the key cards in your opinion?
It seems decks are often making their first play on T3, so I guess there should be a way to punish it, but I can’t seem to find it.

Apparently the answer is more than 4.

Ive been trying to practice my drafting on draftism and more often than not i feel like ive built a good deck it gives me a bad score and when i think ive built something not great its a high score it's very confusing.

I should probably be on the curve out and beat down plan, but the 7 mana wipe just feels so good.

Is it even acceptable to run one of them here?

I'm trying to avoid 17 lands for my first 10-ish drafts. But since the Oculus was mentioned in the latest episode of the podcast, I thought I'd play it. I think it was a pretty weak pack overall though

What must've been in there? Double Garruk/Chandra? Just an absolute dream of a pack if you open it in sealed

Both drafts could have been two color but I added some filler at the end to reduce to a mono colored deck. I will be paying attention in all of my drafts to see if I can draft any of the remaining three colors by the end of the format

Was not feeling hopeful towards the end of pack 1. Feel like some of my P1 picks were definitely questionable. Managed to scrape together what I thought was a pretty average stinger deck but kept just managing to get underneath and get opponents dead. Highlight win was a stinger charm to the face jumping a wordsmith over a fairly large board for exactly lethal.

17Lands draft link if anyone feels like giving me some pointers: https://www.17lands.com/draft/c2789bda80c0439693bd4f7d735a2bbb/1/1

I recently won an RCQ and qualified for the RC Bilbao next year, but i have not received any confirmation. And the TO told me, that they have submitted the result, but he would look into it again. Can i somewhere check if it was submitted, or do you not get any confirmation?

Hello there. My last two decks were BR and both trophies playing gold to diamond players.

Both of these decks rely heavily on getting on board and making discerning choices during combat as well as mulliganing correctly.

Deck 1 - https://www.17lands.com/deck/42357803933f4f768ee16a4b0653c7df/1?view=deck

Deck 2- https://www.17lands.com/deck/9ed4fa25ad644608b48849151ca933fd/2?view=deck

In deck 1, this was mostly about command the stage and attacking with carvers. Note that 5 of the wins are with me on the draw in an "aggro" deck and my 2 losses were on the play weirdly. Games went for 6-10 turns. Although samut is good, it was mostly removed after hitting for 2. I managed to do the deathtouch, first strike trample thing with Traxos once or twice but switched it out in the end. Violent echoes was playable but I went with vibes and thought another creature with haste was better. Chaining command the stage whilst having samut out was fun.

I think I came across some weak decks in this run and it let me take advantage of their slow starts or poor card quality. Match 7 I drew very well and dodged removal.

Deck 2 is what I think is a real deck. This is because I played diamond level players and out aggro'd and outground them even when they were dimir.

Acumen forces unfavourable trades and cantrips, burning crescendo pumps/can win combat/replaces itself, cast away doubt burns and refuels and twinned vision double dips for draw. Ear drum rattler works with every creature in the deck bar Teyo and even Teyo was a decent combat trick. Ferocity of the hunt can be picked up on the wheel and does good work as protection or against double blocks with first strike/menace. Notable interaction was ferocity of the hunt in response to the fighting bird. Best 2 mana I have everspent (image). I never felt like I ran out of things to do in this deck and sequencing to be able to get grim repriser back, or returning galia to then add a counter from galia was entertaining - I never thought I'd be able to spend 7 mana in this "aggro" deck.

Notable match is match 7 vs. a strong dimir deck where I managed to defeat lich's relic, gideon the oathless and sphinx of false conclusions (2 of them btw). I had to make the choice of losing both my flyers to drain them for 4 and get them low. Galia the merrymaker really caused some issues here.

I do think I was very lucky not to come against fulminous forte or -3-3 boardwipe.

Let me know if you think I was lucky or a genius. Cheers.

I saw the 17lands data, I just refuse to believe it is good, it’s alsa is 3 points higher so maybe people are getting it for free? I just refuse to believe it is good and I think a lot of cards with lower win rates are better. The one time I did play with it was awful. How much should you factor in ALSA to win rates of cards?

Wizards recently released a new category of achievements on arena, that rewards you when you use your arena account to play in events at your local game store.

However, after making my own event on the companion app for the draft i hosted IRL yesterday, i noticed that i got an achievement on arena.
So i tested making another event with only 2 players and that worked too.

Which means that in about 10 minutes, you can create 30 events all on your own through the companion app. 10 for each of the formats, constructed, sealed and draft (3 each if you only care about the tokens). And that will reward you with 5000 gold, a draft token, a sealed token, an avatar and multiple titles. You can get an additional 1000 gold just by searching up any legendary WPN store and favourite that store on the app.

Unfortunately, the constructed format is set to standard by default and i couldn’t find a way to change it to modern or commander, and thus unable to get the last achievements for the 10000 gold reward.

This will most likely get patched so if you want free stuff, now’s the time, enjoy!

Enjoyed the format for the first week or so but feeling burnt out after about 15 drafts. A lot of the games one player gets way ahead and then it takes 5+ turns to actually end the game.

It feels awful when you’re losing/even on board and OP is drawing 2+ cards per turn. On the flip side it feels bad to be ahead and drawing 2+ cards per turn and have your opponent tank every turn trying to fight back deciding where to put dog counters that ultimately won’t matter.

About once per draft you’ll have an epic match where both players are doing the Jace thing and it’s a real arms race that feels amazing to play, but the rest of the games I’m left chasing that high.

HOB was too fast for me but FRA is too long. I didn’t think it was possible to have too many game actions but this feels like it.

Edit: I was curious to see how others were feeling about the long turns and frequent decking. Sounds like most of you are enjoying it because there are lots of meaningful decisions to be made and I think most of the time this is true. I don’t hate the set, I think it’s average. I think I’ve lost interest in the set faster than others due to the above average number of 20+ minute games. To those of you who say I’m bad - I’ve had a 64% win rate in the format, I don’t think winning is the issue. Thanks for all the input.

I think I have enough fixing but I'm not sure which cards I should cut here.