Oh Alchemy, you really don’t make it easy to love you. Not only are the weird and wonderful cards and mechanics you create often controversial, but occasionally you just break things. Sadly, this rare latter problem has reared its head once again following the latest update. Worryingly, there’s a new and rather problematic bug wreaking havoc on MTG Arena.
While it’s unclear what’s gone wrong behind the scenes, the latest update has created a literally broken combo. Weirdly utilizing a seemingly innocent card from Kaladesh, this combo is capable of dishing out insane early damage. Sadly, it seems some MTG Arena players are already, rather rudely, exploiting this bug. Considering what it can do to Sparky, I’m not at all surprised why.
Convoke But Insanely Broken
Night Market Lookout is a pretty innocent MTG card most of the time. When it becomes tapped, your opponent loses one life and you gain one life. This can be used in some combos, alongside Cryptolith Rite and Freed from the Real, but the latter of these isn’t on Arena. Even if it was, this combo is too slow and cumbersome to be any good.
As you can see above, however, Night Market Lookout is currently obscenely powerful on MTG Arena. Capable of making Sparky experience sadness, this card is completely broken when used alongside Convoke effects. For whatever reason, using one, or more, Night Market Lookouts to pay for Convoke causes the triggers to be bizarrely multiplied.
Currently, it’s unclear what’s causing triggers to be multiplied, as the results get strange very quickly. I’ve Convoked out a Venerated Loxodon on turn three using Samite Herbalist and got nine tap triggers. Following this I played a Night Market Lookout and Conkoved Ledev Guardian on turn four. For whatever reason, I got 40 triggers from Lookout, killing Sparky on the spot.
Whatever is going on behind the scenes, this combo is devastatingly powerful. In my limited testing experience, I got multiple turn-three kills using Night Market Lookout and any Convoke spell. Considering my deck was a very janky brew thrown together for testing purposes, there’s a real chance faster is possible.
Potentially, Night Market Lookout could be the best deck in the Historic metagame at the moment. That being said, you should not play this deck. There’s a very high chance that playing this broken combo will get you in trouble, or even outright banned. It may be fun to bully Sparky, but it’s not worth the risk of playing this against other players.
Bad Times All-Around
Unsurprisingly, this new literally broken combo is very unfun to play against on the MTG Arena ladder. Unless you’re aware of the bug, Night Market Lookout seems completely innocent until it kills you. At the moment, it’s a must-kill threat, but that’s not always easy to do since it’s a turn-one play.
Worryingly, since Convoke doesn’t care about summoning sickness, this broken deck can kill out of nowhere. Delaying with a control-focused strategy lets you build up enough recourses before dropping Night Market Lookout and winning near-instantly. There are a lot of ways to play this deck, but, again, you shouldn’t play any of them.
Following a few MTG Arena players sharing this bug on Reddit, Wizards of the Coast has become aware of the issue. Responding to a post, WotC_Jay revealed Wizards is looking into it, which hopefully means a fix is coming soon. Alongside this, Wizards is also watching players who are abusing this bug and will be dishing out punishments where appropriate.
“We will be scanning data for players exploiting this issue, and we will be temp/perma banning as appropriate.”
WotC_Jay
While this bug is funny to look at, Wizards’ harsh stance on punishment here is a very good thing. This combo literally should not work, and abusing it to climb the ladder or win Historic tournaments is outright wrong. Hopefully, Wizards won’t punish those who only tested the combo for a game or two, but that remains to be seen.
For now, we can only say again that you should not play this combo. Whether you’re doing it for fun or otherwise, it’s not worth the risk, as bans are on the line. We can only hope that Wizards will be able to deliver a fix soon to stop anyone who is abusing this issue.
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