Magic the Gathering as a base is maybe my favorite game. Modern design and priorities have make that no longer the case. Arena specifically feels like a shell of what I once loved. It takes away many of the strengths of Magic: Fun with friends, creative casual decks, variable deck strength, variable stakes. And emphasizes its weaker points: RNG, stifling metas, repetitive competitive scene. By playing on a computer, you aren't facing your friend. You're facing a screen. Bad rng feels worse and you lose standings, resources, and time. In real Magic, you can simply laugh it off and shuffle back up. Add on a poor economy, the constant bannings, and a sloppy software. I can't recommend this in good faith.

Magic: The Gathering is one of my favorite games of all time. Yeah, not just board games; my favorite game. So that being said, a free-to-play version with online functionality allowing me to play at any time should be the best thing ever, right? Well...

So I guess I should get this out of the way since it's clearly everybody's problem with this game. Yes, it's insanely predatory, but so are card games? This is no less predatory than actual Magic realistically but I don't think that's most people's problem with this game. Their problem is that when you do get cards and do make a fun deck based around those cards, that deck is rendered almost completely obsolete only a few months later. The fact that Standard is what they decided to base the game around instead of Modern really makes it hard to justify buying cards. Why would I buy cards that have no use outside of this game if they aren't going to be worth anything in said game after a year or so? With paper Magic, there are so many ways to play, with so many formats, casual play is so common that you can use any of your cards in any deck with limitless rules. And with real Magic cards, you can sell those guys when you're done with them if you want. But if you pull cards you don't want in this game, you're just kind of stuck with them, which makes pulling commons even more annoying than it is IRL. At least with paper Magic, you actually own something tangible, even if it's barely worth more than a few cents. I think the easiest way for Wizards to circumvent this would literally just be to let you have the cards. Build and try out any decks you want, just like Magic: Online. I know this isn't realistic and that they have to make their money somehow but I don't think that having ads or something would be any less immersion breaking than scummy monetary practices.

That being said, how is the game as a service for Magic? I'm not going to judge the Magic format because I would simply say that it's perfect and mastered the card game style in '93 but I do want to judge the way this game provides a place to play Magic. In my honest opinion, it's alright. It works well, and processes everything at a nice pace. It certainly feels like I'm playing a game of Magic. But, it doesn't do much in the way of offering me customizability and this ties back into the problem with basing your game around Standard. It's my opinion that the Standard format is inherently flawed. It promotes playing the game for as few turns as possible and it shows by how few control decks are played in the format. However, I understand that there is a market for this format and that a lot of people really do like it. But, what about me who is not one of those people. What do I get to work with? Well there's Brawl which is certainly a lot of fun but other than that, there's only variations of Standard, and considering that most cards in the game are simply 2018 and onward, it really all just feels like Standard. There's barely any variations, no Two-headed giant, no Commander, no Archenemy and no real variations on the Draft formats. It feels like this was constructed entirely for competitive one-on-one... oh yeah... is was. All MTG tournaments since the release of this game have been on Arena. They simply made this as an official way to have pretty presentation for Magic tournaments. I'm happy that these players have their way to play now but most people play Magic as a hobby and would like some variation from time to time. Throwing a bone to your main fan base would probably do you some good, Wizards.

Regardless, the game is presented very well. Special animations for legendary creatures, sound design is delightful and everything looks really good. They did not have to go this hard for a simple card game. The game is updated consistently to keep up with Magic's ever-expanding line of products. But man, those updates are killer and keep me from opening this thing so often. I don't think I need a 7GB update every single time I open your app, Wizards but I appreciate you being on top of things. Also, the lack of social features on here is abyssmal. Magic always has been a very social game and while I'm not saying you need voice chat or anything, but the ability to say something beyond a "Hey!" or a "Nice job." would be nice.

This honestly, just feels like Wizards attempt to kill paper Magic that did nothing but make paper Magic fans more dedicated to their cardboard. It's a nice application but until more features are added to be more inclusive to casual formats, I don't think this will replace paper Magic for me and millions of others.

This is a really solid digital TCG. Got into MTG back during covid and really enjoyed it in paper. Tried magic arena but didnt expect to get into it because I preferred paper magic. Well now its basically the main way I play magic now, especially standard. Only real complaint is I am not a fan of the wildcard system. Basically limits me from building decks with lots of rares in it because of the inability to craft cards like hearthstone.

Update: Over time I realized I do much prefer paper magic still, and much prefer hearthstone as a digital TCG. So with that being said I am done with this game now, had fun with it but building decks with wildcards is just too annoying without spending a lot of money.

It was good while it lasted and way better than every other MTG online game in the past 15 years. There are two main reasons I stopped playing after around 450 hours.
Regrettably, to play more of the fun formats (Draft, Sealed) you need to play a lot of unpleasant Standard matches. The unstoppable force of a new expansion every three months seems like a breath of fresh air in theory, but instead emerges a nuisance. Most high-level decks are only valid for this particular frame of time and have to be updated or discarded afterwards and even if you were to put many hours into this game, every cycle there'll be around 1 to 2 max that can be crafted through the wildcard system. Unless players have loads of money left to put into it.

The other reason consists of the incredibly boring grind in ranked matches. Arenas reward system works great and is fair when other games are considered. The battle pass yields a lot of prizes and is worth to get for every new expansion. But to climb in the ranked system it's required to win at least 72 games more than you lose as every win counts 1 or 2 points and every loss subracts 1. There's no other dynamic and whenever I had more time in any given month it was possible to get to the highest rank. After three years I just can't be bothered anymore.

I still love MTG as a card game. One person can only play so many games in their life and this was definitely one of them.

not a bad way to play magic, i started playing it because i had a group of friends i began to play commander with and i wanted to become a little more familiar with the game. i had a good time with it and i spent a little bit of time trying to get as many free cards that were easily obtainable so that i could start making decks of my own and not have to use the tutorial decks the game gives you. my biggest thing though is that with trying to build my own decks, something about being faced with a wall of digital cards and having to read through them all deterred me from wanting to actually make a deck of my own and i wish it's something i could get over. i had this same problem when i tried out yugioh master duel, it's just something about going through a whole bunch of stuff i can't physically touch while reading it that bores me to death. in the future though i will try harder and make a better effort to actually go through and make some of my own decks in this game, just right now i can't really be bothered