I too have this issue. Is it tied to an account number or something like that? I re-installed about a week ago because a friend wanted to play and I'd estimate that over 90% of my games are "go second".

This morning I counted. I have played 15 games so far. 14 I have gone second in. Maybe I and the OP are just super unlucky, but I've been playing 20-30 games per day for 10 days and it has been consistent. I almost never go first.

(Which really sucks in this **** life game tempo meta for historic.)

The shuffling algorithm is bad. Fix it please.

Matchmaking is really broken or everyone I play against is playing the same decks. I'm being matched up against all the free casting decks that I have very little chance of actually playing never mind winning the game. It's just easier to concede and go to the next game. Bur loe and behold I'm matched up with the same deck yet again. For example: I'm playing a Heliod lifegain deck in Historic Brawl (which I've started so many times trying to overcome the ****** decks I come up against). I've played 604 games with my current deck with a 39% win rate. Out of all those games someone has conceded to me 38 times at draw. I've conceded 291 times. 291 time, really!!! That's 54.5%, well over half my games not played at all; and it's only going up because I'm being matched against the same decks ALL THE TIME! See my Untapped.gg screenshot attached.

And it looks like I'm not the only 1 that's facing this problem.

I was playing in MTGA and my opponent didn't always have it. For three games in a row things were working properly and they 1,000% always had, to their very last card, exactly the card that countered me, but then I had a game where somehow they didn't have it and I won once. Please fix ASAP so I can go back to the authentic MTGA experience.

This site is manipulation bs , opponent goes first 72/100 and 69/100 in the two blocks i kept track of. The only thing i have found to advance into mythic is alternate decks and single game and traditional. Idk why this helps , maybe it can not get a lock on me lol , I noticed when doing this you will find a day here and there where you are nearly unbeatable.

Same thing , but not 95% wow , in two blocks of 100 games , opponent goes first 72/100 and 69/100 , that was a cpl months ago I kept track with pen and paper , it has not changed , now when I go first it feels weird. Recently I keep track of land of opponents playing the top 5 decks , they are rarely land screwed or flooded and have many very balanced hands = they are smoothed. One example is the white deck is land screwed 1/26 games. (does not drop land four (not even three lol) on round four 1/26) = bs manipulation site.

Your matchmaking is horrendous. Your balance is horrendous. The shuffle algorithm is ****. Just lost a game in 5 turns because my draws were so bad and the opponent had the perfect hand. I used one of the Wizards premade decks too. This game has turned to **** and you all refuse to fix it. And you refuse to refund everyone who has put money into the game and had to deal with this *********.

can you please take care of the algorithm of the card draws. you always have double or triple everything in your hand or in the top 10 cards.

I just played a game where I got 3 lands after 14 draws. I am having this experience quite often and it’s really annoying. What can you tell about that? There is some sort of algorithm to do that for some reason? It’s not possible this thing is random. Can someone give me some information regarding that?

This is currently happening to me as well

So it's become very predictable how my games will go. If I start a match with 2 lands in my hand I won't get a land draw. If I start a game with 4 lands in my hand I'll draw nothing but lands.

Fix your matchmaking algorithm.

You have to know it's broken. You HAVE to know that 'working as designed' doesn't mean it work; it means it's doing what it's told to do. Looking at the number of posts here, on the reddit forum, in your own forums from people who are frustrated with the game because you cannot actually get a fair and balanced match. I know what first level support will say to this ticket - I work in software development so I understand how it works. Your level one guys will close out this case because there's a document on your knowledgebase that indicates that matchmaking is fine. Level 1 guy - you gotta do better than that. Players can't find good games, not because Magic stopped being fun, but because it's being decided by the matchmaking algorithm what your opponent will be. You can't just play against a random opponent; the game decides before the game begins who is going to win.
Do better.

It's obvious that some players are being targeted, algorithmically in some fashion, to experience deeply unfair "coin flips" to determine who goes first. The commentary and analytics on this go back 3 years at this point. It's not a bug. It's deliberate.

Matchmaking is garbage, ranked matches garbage. This game is currently broken and you guys have ruined Magic. Fix matchmaking, and create algorithms based not only on player win/loss, but deck composition.

Regain confidence by a publication about the shuffler in MTGA :
- Is it fully random ? ==> if not, do it
- Are PNJ players used ? ==> if yes, stop it
- Is the matchmaking in ranked game fully random ? ==> if not, do it (only parameter : the rank)

And choose about MTGO/MTGA. It's ridiculous to have two digital products for the same game : quality suffers !

And, last but not least, MTG is MTG, not hearthstone or pokemon or ... ! Never forget it !!!!

PS : I stopped buying your products (around 2000$ a year) because I'm not a patsy !

Is there any way we could sue magic the gathering as a community since we are paying real life currency

GET RID OF YOUR ALGORITHIM FOR RANKED IT IS ABSOLUTE GARBAGE WORST POS I'VE EVER SEEN MAKES THE GAME COMPLETELY UNENJOYABLE

This is insane. I create a new deck. I win 2 games with it and then your algorithm figures out the hands that can beat mine and suddenly I go into 4 matches in a row with decks I could NEVER beat. They are perfectly suited to not only oppose my deck but not even give me a chance to win. These are decks I've never seen before in a year and a half of playing Arena. But this happens anytime I create a new deck. Suddenly I'm facing opposing decks that are perfectly suited to beat me, decks I've never faced with any of my previous decks.

I want an option to play an honest to god random match! Not to be matched up against decks your algorithm has identified as being able to beat me.

To be clear, I don't care if I lose. What I care about is it being a fair match. If I walk into any in-person match there isn't a 3rd party reviewing both our decks and then deciding who can play who, which is what Arena does. You pre-determine who is going to win and the worst part is you are completely shady about it. I see from many other posts we all know you're doing it with these algorithms but you don't make new players aware.

I enjoy playing MTGA but my God it feels rigged some times. I lose a few matchs in a row and then when I change decks its seems to put me up aganst decks that a designed to either nullify and undermine the mechanic I have chosen or happens to play at the speeds that put my deck at a disavantage in termes of play speed. I switch it up again and boom puts me up aganst a deck that is clearly designed to undermine the new deck I have chosen.

I will never pay money to play this game for as long as the matchmaking stays the way it is. Obviously pairing me up against decks that are designed to win against whatever I'm playing is so stupid that I am barely hanging on to free play at the moment and I feel like even then, I shouldn't waste resources in game. I go up against 20 lifegain decks in a row but then I put a few cards in that stop lifegain and never see one. I agree with every other player on these board. STOP RIGGING MATCHES AND USE A RANDOM PAIRINGS GENERATOR. Simple as far as I'm concerned: you dont fix this and I refuse to give you money.