Magic: The Gathering Arena 12+

I’ve been playing Magic since 1994, my uncle owned a comic/card shop at the time and gave me my first summer job there. I’ve been in love with the game since! I have taken time off over the years, but I always seem to find my way back. In my opinion, Arena is AMAZING (well, the Arena “economy” could use some tweaking)!! Having the ability to play whenever you want without making plans with friends, leaving the house, cleaning up after everyone leaves, etc. is phenomenal. While there are some minor hiccups, overall the game is spectacular. The financial side of the equation is also great for gamers. A deck that would cost you hundreds of dollars in paper can be constructed in Arena for a fraction of the cost and cards on Arena will always remain mint (lol, of course they will!). There’s no need for sleeves, dice, counters, tokens, etc. You don’t need an MtG judge standing by because Arena “knows the rules” and handles all that for the players. Lastly, a variety of formats are available to players which adds tons of replay-ability and keeps things fresh while allowing players to situate themselves where they’re most comfortable. Ranked for more experienced players and casual for newer players, drafts for everyone, historic for old timers, alchemy for new heads and on and on… A giant thanks to WotC for taking a huge step forward from Duels and delivering Arena to the MtG crowd!! I don’t know if I would have made it through COVID without hefty helpings of Arena.

Sooo, I used to have a pretty nasty Magic habit, and a pretty poor executed habit at that. I was working at GameStop when I first started playing again for the first time (x4). I was buying in small doses and Fatpacks because I loved the experience of playing a scratch off and still having something to show for it even if I didn’t get a decent win. I loved building decks, but sooner or later I would dread reorganizing, fall out of playing with friends, or decide not to spend an hour driving to come to work sleep deprived for Midnight releases, plus let’s be honest sometimes the smell at Magic events can be very strong and oh my god I’ve had people cheat, flip tables and steal cards. Enter Arena, organization? Meh. Cheaters? Nope. Flipping tables? Maybe theirs but mine isn’t flipping unless I chuck my phone or manhandle my monitor. Stealing cards? Yeah, okay. Smell? Maybe if I’m on public transit or it’s the day after chili night at my house. My only gripe is multiplayer. I want to play two-headed giant, Wizard’s Tower, Commander, but this is a great one on one experience, and the season pass is so worth the cash, it’s also (as has been mentioned) a great learning and experimentation tool for the formats provided. If you love strategy and deck building this is, in my opinion, one of the best games you can download to your phone.

Growing up I was no stranger to different TCGs and have spent a lot of time building decks, playing, and rebuilding. Magic is an amazing game for a mind like mine which likes to try out new combos and find goofy things the game lets me do. With that said I spend a LOT of time playing bot matches. Now I get that bot decks are all very basic and easy to beat with even a slightly well thought out deck. I feel that players should be rewarded even slightly for doing this. What I feel would be fair would be to include a weekly/ daily mission to beat the bot matches 10-15 times. When I started playing the biggest issue I faced was lack of capital to purchase packs, and since I wasn’t 100% sold on the game yet I was not going to put real money into it. A change like this would help to push player retention rates and honestly probably drive up gem sales since player will get into higher quality decks faster. You wouldn’t need to make it a mission every single day but at least once a week would help new players who are intimidated to play online get a little further one step at a time. A alternative thought I had would be to include a small amount of coins with each bot win. Nothing crazy just 5-10 per win. After a few games people would understand that bot matches, while able to provide a little bit of money, get boring fast. Also please add more of the historic cards because that’s where the real fun of the game is!