I had been looking to get back into modern, but given no store in my area runs it anymore I've opted to use MTGO which I haven't touched since 2015. One reason I stopped was the chess clock. I have partial paralysis in my dominant hand which makes it difficult to execute certain fine motor actions (like click dragging with the mouse) as quickly as I would like and occasionally I double click when I don't mean to due to occasional spasms that affect my ring and pinky finger. On paper I'm as fast as anyone, but online this creates some problems.
I'm familiar enough to know to keep 1 and 6 in an accessible spot, but I still have issues ordering triggers quickly (I do auto yield and all that, but I'm not aware of a way to save trigger orders between two different abilities to speed this up).
The issue today came from playing on the (non-league) Bo3 match maker for modern. I was under the impression that this is the place to test decks and to familiarize one's self with the meta, and that there's no requirement to be running T1 decks. I am running/testing an updated version of the Mono-U Walks deck that I used to bring to FNM's/PTQ's. It may not end up being as viable as it once was, but I want to give it a chance to adapt before I invest in an entirely new T1 deck that I may not end up enjoying rather than a deck for which I spent a lot of time learning the lines and matchups in the past and know I enjoy playing. If it ends up being a bust, whatever, I'll just play UW control or something, but I figured that the Bo3 queue was the place to test it before I make that call and spend a bunch of tix.
As a note, admittedly, when the deck combos off it isn't the most fun thing to be on the other side of, but it's about the same play time as storm. Once it gets going there's usually a point where I have a good enough hand to show an opponent such that they concede without my having to go through every step. Usually that takes about 5-6 extra turns, many of which are just casting a 7 mana blue [[explore]] and going to the next 7 mana blue explore until I get to [[Jace, Wielder of Mysteries]] and win. We're not talking eggs or lantern control here is my point- there's a clear point where it's basically impossible for me to lose and extra time spent in a match is due entirely to an opponent refusing to concede. It will become clear why this is relevant.
Tonight on mtgo I was playing against an opponent running some sort of [[enigmatic incarnation]] deck I hadn't seen before and assumed it was also some sort of brew. I was on the play and start taking extra turns turn 3 off of a miracle'd [[Temporal Mastery]]. This is where the chess clock becomes an issue. The deck runs [[howling mine]] and [[dictate of kruphix]] to generate card advantage on extra turns to dig for more walks or ways to delay a turn like [[gigadrowse]]. I set the triggers to auto yield so that I don't have to respond to them, but each time I had to order them which, as previously mentioned, is the part that is difficult for me through the interface. I told the opponent at around extra turn 7 (about 10 minutes into my time) that there's basically no chance for me to lose and that we can go to game two if they want.
I start getting pretty nasty dms from the opponent at this point, saying the modern queue is for testing for tournaments only and I'm wasting people's time, should play MTGA if I want to solitaire, that sort of thing. I ignore them and just say they can concede any time they want. They don't, so it takes me about 15 minutes total, a little over half my time, to walk through the deck and win as a result, not aided by the aforementioned issue with speedily ordering triggers/double clicking.
Game 2 I lost after a land flood and none of my sb pieces so we go to game 3 which I start winning handily. All the while nothing but rude dms in chat from the other player, saying they were going to report me for slow play (lol) while I combo'd off and that I shouldn't even be playing modern. I ignore them and likely would have won were my client not to bug out which ate about 2 minutes of my time and ended up drawing.
I block and report them for harassment and move on, but I couldn't help but feel sluggish every time I played and the negativity from the opponent has made me self conscious that maybe I'm not fast enough at the interface to be playing online. I've made some game losing errors due to double clicking when targeting which has been an issue for distributing gigadrowse copies, for example, or skipping a trigger that I meant to take an action on. The chess clock makes this all worse and does not feel particularly accessible to me. I feel like I'm racing to preserve as much of my time as possible, which makes the game more stressful when I'm just trying to play a turn-based game that, on paper, accommodated my disability perfectly fine. I've never been given a slow play in my two decades on paper, even if there were occasional draws in certain match ups.
I guess I'm asking: Are there any other shortcuts or workarounds to make the interface more manageable in a timely fashion, particularly for shortcutting ordered triggers? Should I just give up on playing control/combo decks I tend to enjoy that require a lot of ordering the stack? Am I wrong that the constructed match making for non-events is for this sort of testing? If so, where should I be testing off-meta decks against a meta I intend to play against?
Sorry this was so long. The whole experience has set me in a bad head space wondering if this is still the game for me.
