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

For a bit of history, Magic the Gathering has always had a string of terrible PC games with poor customization, poor optimization, no match making, very limited format and deck options, terrible monetization, and negative support post-launch, and it's usually a combination of all these issues.

I bring all this up because Arena circumvents nearly all of these problems, and is arguably the best digital CCG that WotC has put out. Of course outside of a few weeks at launch I put off actually putting time into the game, as its release meant the death of their previous live service title, Duels. Unlike Duels though, it seems like Arena is here for the long term. (Hopefully) And unlike at launch, it's a much more packed game.

For comparison, the game launched with just standard. Anyone that knows anything about standard will tell you it's a hellscape. Luckily there are a ton of fairly active game modes available. You have brawl which is basically mini commander, you have alchemy which uses digital only cards as opposed to just the physical equivalents, you have historic which is the game's legacy lite, and a bunch of events, drafts and rotating experimental game modes. There's certainly a lot to do here, and similar to other CCG's like Hearthstone, the cards and board are well crafted and animated. There's a lot more polish here compared to what we were dealt with in the past 2 decades.

Of course it's not all rainbows and sunshine. Despite having the most polish of any MtG title, the PC version is optimized poorly. Even on mid and low settings the game will lag and stutter, something I've never seen with any other card game on my computer. And it's not just isolated issues there, as even on my phone I'll get occasional crashes. Despite me gassing it up, it's not doing anything real technical. You don't have Elspeth or Liliana standing on cardboard with 3D renders. I can only theorize it being a server issue, but it really adds to a mixed experience during long sessions.

And that brings to whats my opinion the main issue; the monetization. And it's real messy. A pack is 1000 gold. You get about 300 gold a day, and about 2k gold a week. That's about 4 packs a week if you're choosing to be f2p, which really isn't good. To compare, Hearthstone you can get a pack a day at worst. That's really not good, and to boot the cash shop has the usual flood of cosmetics, overpriced pack bundles, random (pretty) uncommons sold at some few thousand gold each, it's a mess. The 1 upside is you can obtain wild cards as you open packs, which you can trade in for cards you want, ie a rare wild card let's you get any rare card you want. I would say it's more generous than your average dust system, until you realize you probably need or want 4 of the same rare or mythic in your list to stay competitively, which can really jack costs up.

Now that's not to necessarily say the game is p2w (well in some formats it will be p2w) but say we have climbing the standard ladder as the benchmark, you can make a relatively cheap mono red or mono black deck and climb to mythic (the game's top rank) without too much trouble. Paying is if you want variety in deck building and other game modes, which I imagine is most of the fun for most deck builders.

I mentioned how much gold you could make a day, and yeah that's another issue which creates a real monotonous gameplay loop. Each win nets you 25 gold, sometimes a random uncommon card. You get 15 wins a day for earning gold. Meaning you'll be playing about 15-40 games depending daily. Most of those games will either be with a very linear deck like mono red or mono black, or with a constructed starter deck. You get your dailies done, and that's about it. There's nothing here to keep playing and work towards. You can grind out ladder rank for end of month rewards, and you can gamble and try to go infinite through drafts, but it's not consistent. So for months, this will be MTG Arena, until MAYBE you get a somewhat sizeable card pool.

As such, this makes Arena an incredibly difficult game to recommend for the long term. If you never played Magic then I couldn't recommend this game more solely to introduce you to the franchise, but as far as spending goes? Your money is better spent either on MTG Online or the physical game itself. And if you want to goof around with friends, you have much cheaper alternatives like Tabletop Simulator or Untap.

I love MTG. It's unlike any other card game. Nothing even comes close to just how tactile it feels tapping lands and cards, or building a deck that fits your identity as a player.
However, WotC/Hasbro is a pile of flaming dog shit company. I don't condone or support any of their horrendous business practices. Every year that goes by, MTG becomes more and more a cash grab, and pushes people out of being able to play it. It's already an insane game where pieces of cardboard cost thousands of dollars. But they keep wanting to make their shareholders more money so it keeps becoming even worse, to the point where it's a fortnite IP crossover hell hole.

I long ago sold my magic collection. I've been playing since the early days. Now I proxy everything.

So why do I play MTG Arena? It's actually a half decent client. There are some precon deck modes and other formats where you can ignore the gacha hell of the game and play for fun.

I still love the game itself, it's just the company managing it that deserves 0 praise at this point.

All that said, Arena is a good way to learn for new players, and can be a somewhat okay way to experience the game without having to break your bank.

I will probably always come back and forth to the game, but I cannot in good conscience ever recommend anyone spend a single dime on it.

Screw the company. Proxy your cards. Don't spend a single cent on these people. Play the game for free any way you can. Table top simulator, cockatrice, or ever arena are viable options.

TL;DR - good game run by evil corporation

Surprisingly well built for an official trading card game app.

-Covers a lot of formats
-Pack opening feel relatively fair
-Seems to get into the newer sets for Standard quick enough
-Can play against CPU to test deck out
-Gives FREE good enough starter decks for all 1-2 color variations

Main flaws relate to the repetition. I'm generally not a fan of free to play "daily tasks" and making the tasks of getting cards limit to color decks gets old and feels more like a chore.

Also like others have said, when you play enough you start to see the repeition of decks that do well, especially in ranked.

To understand my review of this game, please keep in mind, that I am just reviewing the app as a means to play this game, not the card game itself. The card game I am a fan of since the early 90s, when I was still a kid collecting these cards. I stopped in the early 00s after school, and lately a friend of mine was getting back into it and he got me hooked with the Kaldheim set; so before buying any paper cards I wanted to see if I still liked the game, and tried it out on Arena.

The good things: Arena is nice to get into the game, and possibly also to get better at it: You get a lot of practice - more than you can probably cram in with friends with whom you can play physical paper Magic. And it helps understand how certain rules work (though they are not really explained and you need to look up things whenever you don't understand whats happening). And it can be played for free, which is another plus. However, playing it for free is a total grind that you need to suffer through first.

Now the bad things: Arena often feels like a really cheap, low effort money grab through obfuscation. This can be seen by multiple factors:

1.) There are two in-game currencies. These currencies make it hard to track the worth of things. There is the in-game currency, which is Gold, and then there are Gems, which is the currency you can buy for money. Depending on the amount you buy, a Gem is worth something between 0.005€ and 0.007€ worth. Or to put it differently: A booster pack costs 200 Gems, i.e. 1.10€ - 1.45€. That in it self seems fair, but keep in mind: a digital booster contains half as many cards as a physical booster. So you basically pay the same for a paper booster (double the price but also double the cards) - with the difference that you get something of value in return, something you can trade or sell. Arena gives you digital cards, and you need to collect up to four. Then the rest goes towards "The Vault" (more on that later).

2.) The most expert and fun experience for any magic player nowadays is probably Draft or Sealed. A draft with real people will cost you an entry fee of 1500 Gems - that's 11€. You get 3 boosters for that plus the chance to win back Gems and additional boosters. If you want to get even even with Gems (i.e. earn enough Gems back so you can play another round of draft), you'll need to score 5 wins - you'd also get four boosters to crack as price which is nice. However, Scoring 5 wins in Draft is pretty hard, as you loose the Draft once you score three losses; especially for novice players this will be a Gem/Gold sink. I, and all the players I know hardly ever get to 4 or 5 wins (my highest is still 4 wins, even after 3 years of playing again - and that has happened only a few couple of times). After breaking even with 4/5 wins, there are just two more games - 6 wins (1800 gems + 5 booster) and 7 wins (2200 gems + 6 booster). If you score 4 wins, you'll get 1400 Gems and 3 packs - value wise that's also still more than you payed, given each booster is 200 Gems worth. But to re-enter the game, you'd need 100 Gems from somewhere. Interestingly, Gem bundles are btw. never even for a draft. The bundles are 750, 1600, 3400, 9200, and 20000 - never a multiple of 1500. The more beginner-friendly Sealed that is also ideal to learn a new format is even worse: It's Gem only, and entry fee is 2000 Gems. Double the fee for double the booster, but - prices are even lower. While you always win 3 boosters, you break even with Gems at 6 winnings (2000 Gems) and get 2200 Gems max at 7 winnings.

3.) You never need Gems though, but it is rather frustrating playing for free. Gold can be earned by daily wins and daily quests. Every day you get a new daily quest (and you can stack up to three daily quests), and every day your win-counter get's reset. For the first win you get 250 Gold, the 2nd - 4th 100 Gold. From there on it's every second win that will get you 50 or 25 Gold. The maximum you can reach is 750 Gold per day, for 14 wins. Plus 500 Gold when you meet the conditions of your daily quest (e.g. play 50 lands, play 50 cards in a certain color, etc.); this is pretty grindy. Given that a game takes about 10-20 minutes, you need to put in round about 2-4 hours every day - and that's assuming you just win. A booster will cost you 1000 Gold, a draft 10000. So as a free-to-win player, you'll get to draft once every 10 days. or you can open a booster every day, if you are good/lucky and invest 2h a day.

4.) To get cards you want, there are wildcards - these are actually nice things. Every third booster opening you get a uncommon wildcard as a bonus, every 6 boosters you get a rare wildcard, every 24 boosters you get a mythic wildcard, and then there are Wildcards that are naturally placed into boosters at certain rates as well (every common slot has a 1:3 chance to be a wildcard, uncommon a 1:5, rare 1:30 and at a 1:7 chance a 1:30 rare wildcard becomes a mythic wildcard). These wildcards can be used to "craft" a card you don't own in that rarity. To "seemingly" speed things up, the shop offers "shortcuts" - a "Rare Wildcard Bundle" containing 4 rare wildcards for 11.99€, and a "Mythic Wildcard Bundle" conraining 4 mythic wildcards for 21.99€ (btw. they started this bundle with a 50€/50$ pricetag!). If you do the maths: For 11.99€ worth of Gems you could also get yourself 8 booster. That's 1 Rare wildcard. But also 7 random rare cards and 1 mythic rare card; that's a much better deal. And for 21.99€ you get 15 boosters, 2 rare wildcards, 2 mythics, and 13 rares. And there is a great chance of you getting your rares/mythics you still miss, by opening packs as well: every 5th rare/mythic is automatically replaced by a rare/mythic you don't yet own 4 times or more. And then there is the "Golden booster"; once you've opened 10 boosters that where bought (so no boosters you won/got for free). With this you get 6 rares, with every rare-slot having a 1:7 chance to be mythic. Add 2 boosters to your Rare Wildcard bundle price (3€) and you get those 6. For the price of the mythic rare wildcard bundle one of those is included. And every of this 6 rares/mythics could also be a wildcard. So to sum up: 12€ for 4 rare wildcards, vs. 15€ for minimum 1 rare/mythic wildcard, and 13 rare/mythic cards [with a chance for wildcards 1:30]. Or 22€ for 4 mythic wildcards vs. 22€ for 2 rare/mythic wildcards and at least 3 mythics [1:7 chance], and 18 rares [with a 1:30 chance for them being wildcards]. You also get your 5 commons and 2 uncommons per booster, that either complete your collection or count towards the vault, so that's another reason to go for the boosters and not the wildcard bundles - however tempting they may look. And the devlopers behind Magic know this. Once more: Cheap money grab.

5.) The Vault also contains wildcards. 3 uncommon, 2 rare and 1 mythic. To unlock the vault, you need "duplicates" over a playset (i.e. 4 cards) in common or uncommon cards. Every common card will count as 1 point, every uncommon as 3 points. The Vault will open (and reset) every 1000 points. So basically what that means: You can swap 1000 commons, or 334 uncommon cards (or any combination of these adding up to 1000 points), for 1 mythic, 2 rares and 3 uncommons. Seems like a fair trade, doesn't it? This vault might also be one reason, why digital boosters miss so many common cards (rarity-distribution of 5:2:1 in a digital booster, vs. 10:4:1 in a physical booster) this makes it even harder to get playsets of common and uncommon cards.

6.) Magic is a paper game (and at least for now they do not plan to change this in any way), and Magic fans spend hundreds or even thousands of their real-world currency every month on a diversity of card products (Pre-constructed decks, Draft-, Set-, Collector-Boosters, Secret Lairs, Pre-release Kits, Bundles, Displays, Jump-Start, etc.). None of these products allow to redeem the cards you bought, online. Which is frustrating for many players. Want to practice with your new deck? Craft it in Arena - don't have the wildcards for it? Well... you could get the 4 rare/mythic Wildcard bundle x-times (until you have all the cards of your 60- or 100-card deck; so worst case scenario, you need 16x22€ if your 100-deck precon only runs mythics [minus the ~35 basic lands - the only thing you don't need to craft/pull]). Adding a redeem-code would be an easy implement - and people are not even asking to have it for every booster card; but how about as a bear minimum just the Preconstructed Decks you offer? Pioneer Challenger Decks, Standard Challenger Decks, Commander Decks, Starter Decks for different Sets? They start at around 40€ a deck; it's insane to ask for a price that is at least double the physical price for a novice Arena player, just so you can play the same deck online as well. Especially if you consider that Arena is just the add on - there is no real developer effort for an app that just needs adds additional cards, if they are new. And every dollar that goes into developing the card is a dollar spent for the physical paper game which alone is insanely successful and generates returns in the billions for the companies behind Magic. So why use Arena as this cheap money grab to further milk your customers, who are already paying you for the product in physical form? Heck, if you really need the money, add the product as digital product as well that is priced the same and make an special offer (e.g. 80% off) for people who have a redeem code from the physical purchase. There are so many ways you could go about this, that would make the company money while still giving the customer the feeling that it is a good deal and that they are not cheated out of their money.

But that are just a few examples, and I could go on even further. But I think those are already enough to drive one of my main concerns home. But there are others as well:

Paper vs Digital: All our popular formats, like Pioneer, Modern, Commander or Oathbreaker are missing. It's been nearly 8 years since Arena got released, and in this time they did not yet manage to add all sets needed for any of these formats. They promise, yes. But they don't deliver. Instead, they work on new digital only formats, such as "Explorer", "Historic", or "Brawl" to somewhat mimic the formats that everyone loves in paper and wants to play online as well - and those don't do their paper counter parts justice at all. Which is a shame. What's even more frustrating: "Alchemy" - this is a digital-only format in that the Alchemy cards are real cards that change their behaviour; e.g. the Mana costs, the strength, or some of the effects of the card. This is annoying because you think you know a card but you never do. In fact, this is so annoying to almost all players, that it is boycotted by most players - which is why Arena tries to force it down your throat. While you pay real money (or time) for a normal booster, you'd regularly get free Alchemy boosters (which you can only play in alchemy. Of course you could have just taken the regular cards and change their behaviour according to the format you choose to play - but no. If you want to play both formats, pay up twice, please!). And secondly they preset Alchemy on every game, so for a while you had to actively deselect the Alchemy option. No one wants Alchemy, why do they keep pushing this format? Please work on Pioneer, Modern, Commander instead!

Client stability and performance: I used to play this on my MacBook, and there it was incredibly bad programmed. The Graphics top and bottom where cut off even when you set your correct resolution, and even if you chose a lower resolution and went to window mode. Also it used up a lot of CPU and RAM, and my fan always started rotating on highest speed after a few minutes. Also it crashed every now and then. On my PC (I installed it once it was available on Steam and am running it mostly on Linux), I don't have these problems. However (and this also happend a lot on my Mac), sometimes the connection gets randomly disconnected. If you are lucky you can rejoin the game - in this case you might have lost some turns and probably loose the game. If you cannot, the game will time you out after a while and you loose the game. Thanks. This once happend in a draft. Wow. Double thanks. And no, it's not me - I monitor my connection, and it was up all the time.



I could go on, but I think there's already enough points I mentioned to justify a bad rating of 1/5. This is not in regards to the game. I love the game. I play it at least once a week with 7 of my friends, where we do a paper draft or sealed, and get new boosters for it every time (no resealed sets or anything like that), and every other week there is also a second date where we play commander in 1 or 2 pods of up to 4 players each. The game is great. But even though the Arena is free (which actually it isn't, and where probably week-minded people end up spending a lot of money on Gems to progress), it is just a horrible experience that I cannot recommend. Go to your local game store, find people willing to meet for games, and get physical cards - you'll end up having a much better time, promise. For our group, we later sell any card that has a high enough value (50€+) and the money goes towards buying the next display, so every month or so we actually get a game for free, and if we don't it's ~8€ for every draft. And you get to grow your collection, trade your cards for things you are looking for in your constructed decks, etc.

Use Arena only if you must (and yes, I am a hypocrite - I still use Arena also on a weekly basis; but you know, I am a Magic junky).

Chego aqui não com uma review, mas sim, com um manifesto de protesto contra a Wizard of the Coast e a Hasbro.

É lamentável ter que tomar essa atitude em relação a uma franquia que proporcionou tantos momentos felizes e amizades. No entanto, diante da incompetência administrativa e empresarial, estou me vendo obrigado a interromper minha participação no jogo.

Desde o anúncio de que deixariam de lançar cartas em português e diversos outros idiomas, comecei a questionar se valeria a pena continuar após esse desrespeito para com várias comunidades ao redor do mundo. Desde a aquisição pela Hasbro, tornou-se evidente a sequência de decisões desastrosas ao longo dos anos, como preços exorbitantes, distribuição precária, cancelamento de projetos, demissões de funcionários e agora, esta última decisão, que foi o golpe final à dignidade.

I absolutely adore Magic: The Gathering. However, I can't bring myself to show the same amount of love for MTG: Arena. It obviously provides some of the same joy, but it's pretty clear that WotC has shifted focus and resources away from their digital platform over the past few years. The platform is still missing key features (ahem… Commander), and constantly turns into a buggy mess whenever there are any significant updates. Unfortunately, MTG: Arena has essentially turned into a giant money grab.

Aside from my general issues with the game, however, I still think it provides one of the best ways to get new players into Magic. I always recommend new players play through the MTG: Arena tutorial when they want to get into the game because it provides a decent and easy-to-digest explanation of the complicated game mechanics. Despite the lackluster experience as of late, the card animations are exciting and the way the game presents itself is very clean and enticing.