To be fair, Magic the Gathering has a much higher financial barrier to entry. A cheap competitive standard deck is like $250. A cheap modern deck is like 1k dollars. Legacy, 2k dollars. And yes, you can always play a budget deck that's much cheaper and might even win your local FNM, but you aren't going to place at a GP or whatever with it.
On top of that, every single even costs real money. $5 for an FNM. $12-15 for a draft. $25-30 for a sealed/pre release. $30 for a 5k / PTQ. so on and so forth. Plus you have to (usually) drive there which costs gas, buy food while you're out for an extended period of time, etc. Point is that MTG costs a metric fuckton compared to Hearthstone, even beyond the "a boo hoo $100 to instantly jump in with a competitive deck"
Btw, gotta disagree with
<3sRichardSimmons . As someone who used to play an inordinate amount of MTG, going to multiple events a week at different card shops and placed in a 5k - there are a metric shitton of casual MTG players. Wizards and card store owners alike have admitted that the majority of revenue actually comes from the drooling kitchen table / EDH players who buy a couple of boxes every set and think their dragon deck is "epic".
As for
hivemind 's initial question. Well, to be totally honest, I'd wager that there's similar RNG to hearthstone and MTG. I know that sounds crazy since Hearthstone has tons of literal random elements, but in Magic it's not uncommon for a game to be entirely dictated by who hit their land drops. I've seen actual pro-tour players get blown out by random kids just because they miss their turn 3 land drop and don't draw lands for the next few turns. Most MTG players will scream "b-b muh legacy!" yeah, well, a lot of legacy games are won on off of opening hands. If your opponent is playing Belcher (not even a tier 1 deck) and you don't have the answer to it and they draw the nuts hand, then gg.
There is however a lot of arbitrary rules-lawyering that can win MTG games. The game is extremely unclear for a lot of interactions and The Stack is very unforgiving for new players. It's not uncommon for a new player to, for example, have their creature blocked in combat, kill the blocking creature with a spell, then become extremely confused that the attacking creature deals no damage - that sort of thing, and that's the simplest possible interaction I could think of. In order to become a Magic the Gathering Judge you have to study obscure card interactions and take an extensive online test, not unlike becoming an accountant or something
So basically, the answer is... yes and no.
