Magic the Gathering Arena

[anvi]

Started this a day or two ago, really impressed. I never thought old WOTC were capable of releasing a well put together product but this looks and feels as good as Hearthstone or anything else, but the gameplay is better. At first I was worried about everyone having the same few decks, but since I got a card that lets me craft any rare I want, I saw lots of uber cards. It is a lot broader than I thought! I don't know how it will be in terms of value though, that's why I quit Hearthstone, fucking rip off. But so far I have been enjoying playing this and unlocking some extra stuff, all for free.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Code "thatswild" for Grumgully style.
Code "tisascratch" for black knight style.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Code "crumbelina" for harmonious archon style.

 

[anvi]

What are these codes?

 

[spectre]

What are these codes?

Shit you type in the store to get stuff. The above ones are for the motion-sickness inducing holographic art for some cards (not the cards themselves). There's a few useful freebies as well, so check the site I linked on the previous page.

 

[anvi]

Cool thanks I'll do that now.

I just got owned for the first time I have lost several matches but only really because I got bad draws or whatever. Mostly I kick everyones ass. But that last game I got slaughtered and I suspect I would lose to that deck 90% of the time. Not even sure how it is beatable. He uses creatures that all create tokens when they die, and then he sacrifices the creatures and floods the board with tokens and then uses Syr Konrad to do damage to you for every token. But even without the combos, I would still lose to all those tokens. I have several removal cards but they are only really good against big creatures, I can't remove a board full of small ones. And most of them are flying too which sucks. I am used to playing Extended or Modern where I can use board wipes for shit like that, but they are limited here.

I think in MTG you can't win reliably against everything, even the best decks are always going to be weak against 1 type of deck that counters them. It just sucks to experience it so early. But I'm only using a slightly modified noob deck, once I start making my own deck I might be able to do better.

I refuse to copy decks off the internet.

 

[Perkel]

Spent nearly 15 hours playing it almost non stop today finished effectively single player "progression/campaign" (blue mastery)

Before reading: I played physical magic like 15 years ago (had like 150 cards total bought core pack and some boosters) and some digitally mostly via Forge and Duals but i didn't put serious hours into them maybe 20 hours total over past 10 years.

TLDR: After 3 days i have like 1000+ cards and plenty currency for more boosters. Game is fucking GREAT and shits all over Heartstone monetization, presentation, design wise etc.

My impressions:

==OVERVIEW==
____This is true MTG without holding back. None of Duels of Planeswalkers bullshit where you couldn't edit decks, none of mtg online which looks like it was made in 1985 and everything you have to do manually, none of its other forms where WOTC never actually wanted to get into digital and made half baked efforts. This is true Heartstone contender and it looks like WOTC is going full digital on this without fear that it will undercut its physical sales. Honestly speaking Heartstone has nothing on Arena in current version, be it presentation, gameplay, monetization or anything else.

==PRESENTATION==
____Graphically it looks great. Much better than Heartstone. Just like in heartone some rarer spells and creatures have their own animations and sounds. If you place mythic creature for sure it will fire up some nice animation. When you place card on battlefield cards get simplified to only art and power which is great idea and makes whole field much more readable. Another amazing thing about it is deck building UI. For one you get this really fucking nice deck box and you can customize that box with card art so coupled with unique name it really makes mtg fashion deck stand out. Deck building itself is pretty nice since there are plenty of filters to get cards displayed you want. Everything is neat, clear, simple and good looking.

==GAMEPLAY==
____MTG at its finest. First of all you can always dual with friends which you can challange via clunky code (but this gets into memory so you can repeat it easily without typing) or much more modern Discord invite which works like a charm. Then you have various ways to play magic. From standard constructed, best of 3, sealed, to various custom events. Honestly speaking coming from physical magic you will never find lack of people to play with. I also like how ranking system works and how it ties to other modes. Standard ranked play gives you ranking which can improve decrease, events pit out against each other all players unranked so you can get smashed by top pro or you can get noob who just started. Standard play is best place to figure out your deck while events are place where you use currency to get into tournament and win prizes possibly winning you more than you pitched in. You can also play with AI rather than people.
____When you actually get into battle this is magic how you remember it, nothing cut down, 1:1 mtg. There is though added time limit for turns but it is plenty. Since it is a game it also means that AI for you figures out what goes next, or should turn end if you don't have anything to play with. If you don't like such automation you can always switch to manualmode and observe action after action. Overall it is magic with QoL added so you can only care about strategy and what matters not about placing pesky tokens or calculating yourself various ability combos. I did notice 2 bugs regarding cards abilities but overall systemwise experience is almost bug free which is huge considering amount of cards in game. Also overall network experience did have some issues with kicking me out or losing connection while in battle but overall it was really great and disconnect happened to me like 5 times. Worth noting is that once you disconnect you can retry or relaunch game and it will go directly to duel you are playing right now.

==MONETIZATION==
____The most important aspect for game such as this. There are effectively 2 currencies:
GOLD - which is earned by various means, mostly from daily gameplay, events etc.
CRYSTALS - premium currency, which is mostly bought from shop for money but also you can win it via events.
MASTERY ORBS - kind of campaign currency to spend on mastery tree which gives you cards, decks, cosmetics.
Aside from that there is XP and mastery orbs stuff which works more or less like single player campaign and seasonal campaign. Once you finish mastery orbs you no longer can earn them. XP can be earned daily.

Crystals go for 5€ for 750 of them, 10€ for 1600 and so on.

You can buy booster pack for 1000 gold or 600 crystals for 3 booster packs.
You can freely pick any booster you want even from older formats.
Aside from that there are seasonal XP rewards and you get booster every 2 levels.
Your ranking in season wlso gets rewarded with boosters packs and gold.
WOTC often releases codes you can redeem for boosters.
You can get from leveling or boosters WILDCARDS which then can be used to craft any card what you want depending on wildcard rarity. Imho great idea so that opening boosters can net you actual improvement to your deck instead of RNG garbage.

In my case i got 4 boosters (from XP only) in last 3 days but that is mostly because i accumulated some daily quests(they can be accumulated if you don't play daily!!), after finishing everything you can pretty much get 1 booster every 2-3 days which is imho great. Aside from XP naturally you earn gold which you can spend on various things like booster or event ticket where you can win boosters/cards/gold for winning without much dying with other people. In those 3 days i got around 3.5k gold which is enough to buy 3 boosters and get into event where i can easily win some 200-300 gold and few cards assuming i will win 2-3 times if i win more i can get even or get extra gold and cards back.

Ok enough with raw data, how does it look in practice ?
After 3 days i finished blue mastery and i have like 1000 cards now which is crazy.

You get 5 standard decks just by login into game.
You get 4 extra multicolor decks for blue tree mastery.
You get 5 extra decks for finishing blue mastery
--------- 840 cards just from decks.
Just by playing and codes i got like 16 booster packs
--------- 128 cards if you don't get wildcards
Just by playing i got wildcards.
--------- Around 30 of them

I bought starter pack for 5€ which gives you 2,5k crystal and i am currently sitting on it. If i would want to change it into boosters that would be 12 boosters.
I stil also on around 4k GOLD which also could be spent on 4 boosters.
So i have extra 16 boosters so another 128 cards in currency. So that is around 1150 cards if i would use them

IDK if WOTC will change monetization scheme but so far it is fantastic compared to Heartstone and even more compared to normal magic. Where i live 1 physical booster is about 5€ which is a lot compared to digital boosters.

I am usually cheapskate but honestly with such setup i would gladly spend 10-20€ from time to time with no issue in such monetization scheme. For start i have 1k+ cards to play with and getting new boosters is fairly easy for now.
If they will stay with such monetization scheme frankly speaking i can see myself playing a lot of MTG in future.
And this comes from someone who found Heartstone model bad.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Code "foodcourt" for midnight clock style.

 

[anvi]

This is amazing. I put in all those codes and I have a lot of cards now including a few planeswalkers and a bunch of the wildcards including about 4 mythic ones! I played free versions of MTG online for more than 10 years because I was tired of WOTC being greedy pricks, MTGO was so expensive. Finally they have made a good version that is good value too. I think they were forced into it by competition from other games and maybe a lot of people were going the free route like me too, last time I tried MTGO it was so dead. But still, better late than never, and they seem to have done a good job.

Game is fucking GREAT and shits all over Heartstone monetization, presentation, design wise etc.

My thoughts too. Much better and more advanced game (it always was), and better value too. I only tried hearthstone because I was annoyed at being ripped off in MTGO but this is extremely generous in comparison.

Population seems good too, I've never even waited a minute, and most matches start in 5 seconds. Also I prefer a more 'Standard' type of MTG because as much as I love all the cool cards in Classic/Modern/Extended, it just degenerates the entire game into bullshit wins. You try to play a fun deck and some prick kills you on turn 1 or 2 with an unbeatable combo. It happens enough and you think fuck it, I'll make my own shitty fast combo, and the entire game ends up nothing but people desperate to win instantly. There is no game like that. Standard is much better but I avoided it in the past because it was too expensive to keep on top of. in MTG/O you pay a lot for the cards, especially if you get bored and want multiple decks, and then a year later half your shit gets invalidated and you have to spend more all over again. At least in Arena the prices are much more reasonable and you can get stuff without paying if you are happy to play a lot for stuff.

 

[Perkel]

Ok daily rewards are pretty good. You can easily get one or two boosters from just daily rewards.

Finally they have made a good version that is good value too. I think they were forced into it by competition from other games and maybe a lot of people were going the free route like me too, last time I tried MTGO it was so dead. But still, better late than never, and they seem to have done a good job.

It remains to be seen if WOTC will not ramp up monetization scheme but from what i know this is just good business for them.

1. Heartstone from what i know is already multibilion franchize. MTG is huge but costs of distribution, production, marketing etc ramp up and i seriously doubt they earn more than Blizz from H.
2. People to play with. Physical cards always had that issue. Unless you had people to play with you would never care about MTG and in the end you wouldn't buy their cards. This is me essentially. Always liked MTG, had 2 friends i played with in high school finished high school and boom no one to play with and near me there wasn't any mtg place to play and for sure i would go 200-300km just to play magic. So with digital they can get into magic shitload of more people who in the end will buy stuff from them and since it is digital no production costs which means they are probably earning a lot more on single booster than previously.
3. Competition like you said. Why play MTG when you can for "free" play heartstone ? Or even worse use something like Forge or other free software.

 

[anvi]

Wow I didn't know Hearthstone was so big. Rich bastards. And yeah the free MTG I played was XMage and Manalink. It wasn't great but it got the job done. I prefer this though. I just got a daily quest to cast 20 white spells so I threw together a white deck with mostly spells and some creatures. My first match was against an OP bastard netdeck asshole, and I ended up beating him I thought I was fucked at first but his did big things early then ran out of steam, and I kept building. I think I got kinda lucky but still, not much is as satisfying as beating a net decker with a bunch of random cards you threw in with no thought and not a single rare or mythic :D

 

[Perkel]

Hopefully they can figure out way to monetize cosmetics more so that buying cards would be still cheap or even not available through real money. There are already cosmetics but so far i found them fairly meh. If this would get popular they could easily earn fat money just on cosmetics.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

hint for yall: save gold for ranked drafts and build your collection through drafting. best way to get lots of cards is to be good at drafting

and when u draft take every rare/mythic that's available

 

[spectre]

hint for yall: save gold for ranked drafts and build your collection through drafting. best way to get lots of cards is to be good at drafting
and when u draft take every rare/mythic that's available

:
Yeah, ranked draft is where it's at. Though in the long run, I think it's better to try and draft the best deck you can. If you can win enough to make the draft pay for itself, this gives you another attempt to draft and get another good chunk of cards, some gems and a booster.

You still shouldn't neglect constructed entirely, because that's where you will be getting gold for your drafts. Getting a decent enough deck to start making profit from the paid in constructed events is good for you. And if you're breaking even or only losing slightly, it's still worth it because you should get a bunch of uncommons which are often the bread and butter cards (though rares are the real bottleneck if you want to get competitive in this game).

 

[anvi]

How do you do a ranked draft? I saw a bunch of match types that require gems but nothing that lets me play with gold.

 

[spectre]

How do you do a ranked draft? I saw a bunch of match types that require gems but nothing that lets me play with gold.

Be sure to switch this thing to see all play modes.

What you're looking for is Ranked Draft Core Set 2020. You get to play whatever is on tap at the moment (and Throne is currently only restricted to gem-only events,
because WotC is not all freebies and sunshine and needs to have its jew moment on set release).

If you never did a draft before, I recommend you save up at least 10k to be able to do two in a row. It's not a "real" draft because you pick stuff with bots and then play with people who were drafting from different packs and with different bots. The good part is you get to take all your sweet time with it, the bad part is that sometimes you get utter shit from your packs and get to play with guys with near-perfect preconstructed decks.

-Qwinn

 

[Doktor Best]

i think as newbie you have to activate advanced playmodes somewhere

 

[anvi]

Thanks I found the draft you can buy with gold. I think the main menu should be a bit more businesslike. It will take me a long while to save up gold for that draft, but I'll work towards it. How come you like to save up for 2 in a row?

 

[Doktor Best]

For newer players i can recommend Legenvd on Youtube. He just released a guide on how to upgrade the mono white starter deck and i assume he will do the same for the other ones too:



His limited format videos are also pretty educational.

 

[spectre]

How come you like to save up for 2 in a row?

I'm not a good drafter, I only really played sealed in Shandalar and naver actually drafted with people. The reasons are all psychological for me.
It takes a bit of time to get the shekels for drafting, I can get one every three to four days if constructed event runs are kind to me.
If I just run one draft, I will get distracted an click all the rares I see, other times I get all shit cards to pick from, or get mana screwed in all the matches, and it leaves you with a bad aftertaste.
With two drafts, I can allow myself to throw one run like that, they I'm getting my shit together for the second. If it goes reasonably well, I just might get enough gems to start a third run.
I began to see noticeable improvement in my drafting skills one I began to play them in bursts like that. I'm still a pretty shit drafter, but I started getting a good payout in gems - I probably won't have to pay a dime for set masteries in the future and I can even afford some bling if I want to.

- Qwinn

 

[anvi]

I thought that might be the case, I like the idea. I've only ever done sealed in Shandalar and Manalink too. I hope I can win enough to make a profit! For now I'm just playing hundreds of basic matches, I am still learning all the cards. I am not familiar with modern magic or Standard format, so most cards are completely new to me. It's fun to play though, I am amazed.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I just got a daily quest to cast 20 white spells so I threw together a white deck with mostly spells and some creatures.

Protip in case you aren't aware, summoning creatures still counts as a spell for your quests. Basically just means "Play 20 white cards", and when you get dual-color dailies, dual color cards count as both. So if you have a quest to play 30 red or blue cards, casting a single red card drops it to 29, but casting Niv Mizzle would drop it to 28 since he's both red and blue.

 

[anvi]

Cool thanks. Gold is slow as hell and I can't find 'constructed' that people talk about. But I started on ranked standard and it sped up the rewards a bit.

 

[Perkel]

meh it is better to find friends to play with instead of going full rat race on latest meta deck.
It it a lot of fun to play around with your cards, trying to come up with interesting decks and test them out.

Managed to get to gold rank so i will get 3 more boosters and some gold after season will end in ¬20 hours.

Cool thanks. Gold is slow as hell and I can't find 'constructed' that people talk about. But I started on ranked standard and it sped up the rewards a bit.

Imho it is pretty fair. You save up around 1000-1200 gold every day if you do 1 daily and 15 wins in standard.
Aside from 1000 gold you also get few cards with daily wins. Aside from that there is weekly which gives you around 2-3 boosters every week.

So if you play daily you get around in a week: ¬10k gold, 2-3 boosters, 10-15 random cards.