Magic the Gathering Arena Preview

Magic the Gathering is a tabletop card game that has been running for around twenty-five years or so; and I have been playing for around ten of those glorious years. I would spend hours playing with my youth group every day. Then I would make the trip to the comic shop to play in the weekly Friday Night Magic tournaments and enjoy every win, loss and learning experience. Magic was a big part of my life for years until I fell off due to life commitments. Despite that, it was something I always wanted to go back to, and thanks to Magic the Gathering Arena, I can finally dive straight back into one of my favorite pastimes once again.

Magic the Gathering Arena is a free-to-play version of the iconic card game, though I use “free-to-play” a bit loosely. You can start playing and learning the basics for free, but if you want any chance of going for the competitive scene or even just a casual level of play you will need to win matches or complete daily and weekly challenges to unlock coins to purchase packs of cards.

Just for clarification, I have put around eight or so hours into Magic Arena and have spent $25. For that $25 I was able to buy 10-15 packs and the mastery pass, which gave me enough cards to build a decent deck. I wouldn’t bring this deck to a competitive tournament but I have been able to manage a fair amount of wins from it.

As mentioned above I bought the “Mastery Pass” for 3,600 gems which is the equivalent to around $20. This pass will give you rewards as you level up, kinda like Fortnite’s battle pass. With each level, you will unlock more card packs from the most recent expansion, (Magic Core Set 2020) coins that can purchase more card packs, mastery orbs that unlock new card skins and gems (around 200) that can normally only be purchased by real-world cash. I would say it is a pretty good value for someone who expects to spend a fair amount of time with the game.

Magic the Gathering Arena is thankfully pretty generous with its coins; as each daily challenge will net you around 500-700 coins depending on the length of the challenge. Some challenges will make you cast 30 spells in a specific color or attack with a certain number of creatures. Now keep in mind that one pack of eight cards comes with 1 rare, 2 uncommon and 5 commons and costs around 1000 coins. With regular play you could be earning upwards of a pack or two every few days if you don’t want to spend any money. Also you can earn packs through leveling up as well so there are plenty of opportunities to stay on the free side of things.

However, if you do plan on dropping some cash, you should know that you will be spending less then you would at your local card store depending on what level you want to play at. If you want a more casual deal then spending $30-$50 should set you on a decent path to gaining cards at a decent enough rate. This should keep you invested and playing long enough that you shouldn’t have to put any more of your hard-earned cash in for a while.

With the monetary side of things out of the way, you may be asking yourself “So what about the gameplay? does that hold up to the tabletop game at least?” The answer to that question is absolutely yes! it is the most faithful adaption of the game compared to the mobile versions, or the old console ports as well.

Magic the Gathering Arena supports 1-vs-1 PVP. Each player has 20 life and starts with a sixty card deck filled with different creatures. These creatures have varied strength numbers and defensive capabilities. Players also have spell cards that can earn you life, draw cards and enchant a creature to give them more health, defense, and new abilities! The goal of the game is to knock out your opponent’s life total to 0 or make them “Deck Out” which means they use all 60 or more cards in their deck. I could go into the deeper side of the cards or the strategy but that would take a fair amount of explaining and is better left off to a video tutorial.

Each deck is fully customizable, and there are five total colors each with there own strengths and weaknesses. Blue favors controlling the board with counter-spells, and disruptive attacks. The downside is that blue decks like to play the long game, so the longer the game goes the better your chances of winning are. Black favors self-punishment in a way. You will sacrifice your life total to summon creatures back from the graveyard to cause trouble for your opponent. White is focused mostly on teamwork and are the healers of Magic; build your deck right and you could have increased your life total to 40+ on turn 5 or 6. The downside is white creatures tend to be pretty weak.

Green is nature-focused, so that means dinosaurs, spiders and Godzilla-like beasts are at your disposal. When used correctly you can overwhelm your opponent in a matter of 5 turns. Lastly, there is Red. Red is mostly a hyper-aggressive element that can allow you to win before your opponent even has time to react, though red tends to start losing traction the longer a game progresses.

Magic the Gathering Arena is a faithful recreation of the legendary card game and I’ve been playing it every day. For people interested in getting into Magic this is a great way to learn the ropes and play for free; then you can decide if you want to dive into the physical or the digital offerings.