Are some matches rigged?
Hi, new-ish player over here.
I know the title for the post might suggest i'm salty because I get unlucky sometimes, but it is a genuine question.
I returned to magic after a 10+ year break. I wanted to get back into the hobby, so I figured Arena would be a good start.
I've played about 250 games and I feel like there are sometimes where the game feels rigged. I've experienced things like drawing 6+ land cards back to back, having the same 3-5 cards as starting hand in multiple games, also back to back, adding new more powerful cards to the basic decks for them not to show up in 10+ matches, etc.
The curious thing is that it seems to work the other way around too. I've won matches with basic decks against much more competitive ones because I happen to draw the exact cards that i needed or get the perfect starting hand.
I know that at the end of the day all of these things can happen by chance and sometimes you just get extraordinarily lucky/unlucky, but i feel like too many things have happened too often for it to be just coincidence.
Is this the 'expected' experience and i just have a flawed perception?
Posted Jul 9, 2026, 7:49 PM UTC