Last updated on March 14, 2026
Ponder (kind of) | Illustration by Dan Scott
They called you a conspiracy theorist, but look who's laughing now: Big Magic Arena has been exposed, and the truth has come out in the wash. Turns out, the Arena Shuffler™ has been broken this whole time, and has incidentally caused you, and you alone to experience mana flood and mana screw at a disproportionate rate to everyone else you play against, who seem to always hit the perfect number of lands and then nothing but gas for the rest of the game.
Proof in the Pudding
This definitive proof comes courtesy of the hard work of 17hands.com data analyst Professor Derkinwitz, who meticulously studied one or two games in which his 14-land Limited deck failed to draw three or more lands by turn 3. “Variance just can’t explain this,” claims Professor Derk. “This one deck had a 58% chance of drawing my third land by turn 3, and yet I still failed to draw the land more than half the time. That made me immediately suspicious that something was up!”
You can find Derkinwitz’s full analysis below and see the proof for yourself:
That’s some irrefutable evidence, honestly.
One In a Million
If you’ve ever lost a game of Magic on Arena, you can now feel vindicated that it probably wasn’t, in fact, your fault. You might've heard claims of “poor deckbuilding” or “bad mulligan decisions”, but it’s clear now that the shuffler has been against you and only you this whole time. All those times you kept a one-lander and didn't get there? The other times you hail mary'd a 6-lander with a 6-drop and got run over by a 2-drop into 3-drop from the opponent? That one time you registed all Forest instead of Plains in your Boros deck? Yup, all on the shuffler. Definitely, definitively the shuffler's fault.
Worse yet, this may have been happening to you before MTG Arena came to be. Rumors have long circulated about a “Ponder Bug” plaguing Magic Online, in which placing cards on top of your library and shuffling with Ponder leads to drawing the last card you put on top anyway. It’s been theorized that there’s no real way to test the Ponder Bug, but Derky finally has an answer to this as well.
“Facts don't lie,” claimed Derkinwitz, while rubbing his 10-carat diamond bust of Bigfoot. It's his belief that the org chart will put an end to the “Variance Truthers' lies” once and for all.
When pressed on whether or not he was aware of any other bugs on the Arena client, he simply provided this list of card names, then cartwheeled away:
Am I Entitled to Compensation.
No. God, no.
This is a fictional piece of satire; the characters and situations described are not meant to be taken literally. Just have fun with it, folks!
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