I think it's quite silly that you say you can't compare it to other online TCG. Hearthstone? Legends of Runeterra? Sure, they play a bit differently, but in the end only a few factors matter: Can you play the modes you enjoy competitively without paying, or paying very very little (say 15 bucks a month). In Legends of Runeterra, you can have dozens of high quality competitive decks, you can play a lot of different styles, card crafting is very friendly for this and let's you play exactly what you want. Cards are essentially not monetized, only cosmetics are. Extremely F2P friendly. Hearthstone goes the middle road, you can get quite a few competitive decks going, and enjoy some variation. In MTGA, you can at best maintain a couple decks if you want them to be the things you want to play competitively. Mythics and even rares are a HUGE bottleneck for building anything remotely fun. Sure, you can go monored or monowhite and farm bo1s, but yikes, that's not a good solution in my opinion. I get that you really enjoy MTGA and want to play that, but compared to other games, it's very restrictive. Particularly restrictive is the opportunities to play limited draft mode, as it has a steep entry fee. I really like the mode, just like I really enjoy playing Arena in hearthstone. But there's no way to play it more than a couple times a week (I can't consistently have 6 wins, lol). If there was an alternative, perhaps one with a low entry fee, where you don't get to keep the cards you draft, but still get packs, or perhaps you just get an assortment of wildcards (with 1 mythic rare at 7 wins perhaps?) and a much reduced amount of gems. If I could afford one of those cheap drafts each day, now that would be great, then I could play my favorite thing a lot more. Don't get wrong, I've been regular now for months, and I can slowly branch out in what I can afford to build. From mono white for 2 months, to white/black now, trying out to branch a bit into red now. But it takes forever to build up a bit. Also I think it's super easy for newbies to waste their wildcards. It's not obvious how little you, after you get a bunch from redeeming codes, and it's particularly sad if a new player just wants to try things out and then is stuck having spent super rare wildcards on things they can't/won't use just a little later.
Thanks for the detailed comment. I don't compare this to other games or other TCGs because this is the game I want to play, so I only care about the value I get from this game, not from others. If I want an apple and someone offers me a free banana, then it's not crazy to me to refuse. When I started my second account at the end of last year, I was very quickly able to build some competitive decks by using my resources wisely without spending any money at all. I can't build everything on that account, but I have enough to enjoy the game without even worrying about running out of wildcards. On my main account I get over 90-95% complete on sets by drafting and buying packs without having to spend any money each month. I've spent about $50 in total since I started 3 years ago and I didn't really need to.
@@gameschooldadMTG After another month of grinding away, I can start to see where you're coming from. I didn't 100% LCI, but it's pretty close and I got all the things I want to at least 3x copies. When I wrote this, I think the main issue I was facing was that I did not play in a while, so I had no cards for ANY of the standard sets. Now that I have a set complete, if I keep this up, I can totally see myself having a somewhat complete collection a year from now, particularly once the next rotation comes. I think the point still stands, MTGA is really not great for new players, as you have to content with about a dozen sets when you start out, while most reliably getting cards only for the newest one. I do have a few decks now I enjoy playing, but I don't have any wildcards left over, not even common/uncommon as there was a lot I needed to get from the years of not playing. It feels like MTGA is a good F2P game if and only if you keep up with at least your 1 win a day, ideally 4, consistently, without taking a break. It's a lot more demanding than other games in that regard, but ultimately it's doable. I just had to accept and come to terms that I won't have a lot of options for months. I think some of the most irritating part about this is facing cool and sometimes oppressive cards from older sets, like kamigawa and innistrad. I wish I could toy around with those, but I'd be wasting wildcards in a sense. It'll get better come rotation, for sure.
People who like magic are comparable to crack addicts. They want magic and only magic. This really isn’t a criticism but they don’t value anything else the way they value magic. It is THE game to them. And what is an addict going to do when drug prices are high? Justify it and find a way to get their drug. It’s not comparable to others games because he has no interest in other games. It must be magic and whatever the price is will be paid. This is why magic will be expensive no matter what form it takes. To the rest of us it’s a video game. We are not the target audience.
I wish there was a dedicated commander format on arena a full 100 card deck because that’s how I fell in love with mtg all over again it’s just so fun to casually play with your friends
I would argue a fair game to compare would be Master Duel , But its also reasonable to compere it to only magic . I would just really like for MGA to have a disenchant mechanic similar to master duel , That would make decks far easier to make . (3 or any rarity can essentially be traded for a wildcard of its rarity , but "promo"-ish cards cant be disenchanted )
I just moved from Master duel to try Magic out and after a few days i think Master duel is incredibly f2p friendly compared to Magic. Maybe when i get better then arena would be ideal and there are other ways to get cards/resources but its still not even close to Master Duel imo. Konami's duel links on the other hand is the biggest p2w scam going. I agree that you can compare it to master duel and probably other card games, not talking about comparing the levels of enjoyment you get but comparing the systems inside the game that assist in f2p mechanics like Master duels crafting and even secret packs and so on.
Yeah, I play mainly Master Duel but a bit of Runeterra too (which is more heavily monetised, but very generous with cards), and while they are comparable with arena in some ways - the amount of packs you can afford by doing dailies etc - having wildcards *without* having a system for breaking down unwanted cards means I'm mostly pulling useless cards from a pack and waiting for a wildcard to drop that I can actually use. I would also say that, as someone new to magic, the ladder seems to really focus on the rank milestone rewards above all else. In other games the low ranks are quite obviously the shallow end of the swimming pool, but a few lucky wins in magic can push you into a rank where you just have to grind out a budget netdeck or lose 80% of your games. (also thanks for the budget deck guides, a real lifesaver lol)
I started Magic Arena about a month ago. I watched lots of youtube standard budget videos and choose a mono red burn deck with 0 rare and 0 mythics. In the First season I hit gold easily. Now Iam really close to Platinum. I like the fast paste games because you see a loot of different decks and you can learn a lot. Another deck I have build was mono blue tempo. There are really cheap versions of it (4-7 rare) and you should be able to easily rank up higher once you know how to play. Iam still not sure why my first "real" deck will be. Its always a bit of a gamble on how you will like that deck. But most of the time you can see how a deck plays while watching videos of it. RN Iam thinking about Orzhov Control or Mono-Black Midrange or Mono-White Aggro. But I will wait since I still have to obtain a few more wildcards and want to wait for the Meta to settle into the new cards which are coming soon. If you do a lot of thinking ahead. Magic Arena can be fun as F2P. But I can see how new players, who just wanted to take a look into the game, can get discouraged. I would really love to have the possibility to "rent a deck". EG you pay 10k Gold and you can play 5 games with any deck you want. Maybe limit it to 3times/Season. But it would give players the chance to test out decks without the commitment to use up wildcards.
Thanks for your comment. If they did implement some kind of deck renting system, 10k gold would be way too much to try out a deck, it would have to be much less than that. For 10k gold you can effectively add something like 18 rares and 72 other cards (including wildcards) to your collection permanently just by buying packs.
@@10Kay621 short answer: If it's early in a set release, I would do Quick Drafts if you tend to get less than 3 wins per event, do Premier Drafts if you tend to get more than 3 wins per event. If it's later in a set release or if you don't like drafting, just buy the most recent packs and get more wildcards for your gold (and a golden pack).
@@10Kay621it si always better to draft as long as You like playing draft and habe the time to learn if You arent going to enjoy or are going to instantly lose You are not getting mucho, besides that You keep the cards after the draft unless it si a cube draft or it it explícito states otherwise
it ia totally possible to play completely free. if you play every day you will have hindreds of free cards in just a few months. i have spent 90 dollars over 2 years and i am currently in top 100 in standard you cannot tell me that is p2w im sorry thats just whining.
You're video is so informative and very helpful as usual, I started playing this game last September and I never been so hooked on a game, I have 2 accounts, one is f2p and one i get to spend a few bucks every month especially the mastery pass. Thanks for the video it really helps a lot of new players
I'm glad you found my channel helpful. It sounds like you're approaching the game in a very sensible way. I hope you continue to enjoy it for a long time 👍
Not informative I bet he doesn't play commander in irl I have decks run around 200 300 more but they are REAL and I get to keep them forever gems disappear
Short answer - yes it can be played f2p (here since beta f2p) and this is how: -30k gold per month is realistic for most players -30-50 minutes to get up to 4 wins per day (bit more than a dollar worth) -You can open about 120 packs with 90k gold, those open for drafting also count. -Convert gold into gems in Quick Draft -Climb both Ranked and Draft for additional packs and gold at the end of the month -Never buy packs in shop (unless you are looking for cards from a set that you have 90+% already collected then buy-and no less than 10 packs - to get additional one) -Seasonal pass iz worth it if you can get 60+ lvls -Sealed can be worth playing with extra gems, early in the set
Amazing video! Thank you! Although you do need to take into account that if you keep your physical cards nice and "new" you can sell them again. They might even become worth more over time. So in the long term it does not have to be as expansive
I've been running two accounts in Arena. One completely F2P and one that I get mastery pass and the 50 pack prerelease bundle every set. Biggest difference is the amount of wild cards and therefore the amount of "competitive" builds. I don't care about styles and sleeves. That's where you could throw a bunch of gems is in getting your favorite deck Blinged out with styles. I do get the mastery pass when I've earned enough gems on the F2P but that's more like every third set. In summary, if you want completely F2P be very picky on your crafting. Find a couple archetypes you like to play and build those maybe 2-3 competitive decks depending on how greedy those are for rares/mythic and then just build "fun" decks. I actually don't think you need to slend anything unless you are a heavy user of the game.
Thanks for your comment :) The paid options are mostly there for people who want to speed up their progress to save time or people with too much money to spend.
For the last 9 months I've been getting 4 wins/day and spending $100 each standard set (I don't care about historic). I've been doing 10-15 drafts per set and then getting either the 45 or 90 pack bundle for each standard set. Between that and the mastery pass, I can pretty much play any competitive standard deck. It takes time and patience to do this, but for me this is the best balance with time and money. Some days it's a grind and I really don't feel like playing, but I'll bust out the mono red aggro deck and get 4 wins in usually 15-30 min. I don't mind spending $100 per standard set. This year it's come out to 300 dollars for the year. 300 over 12 months is just $25 per month, which is fine with me. I love playing the game and having all the cards available to play around with different decks. It's SOOOO much cheaper than playing real MTG. Yes, you don't technically own anything, but at the end of the day I don't really care about that. I'm enjoying the journey of playing and it's worth the $25 per month and
I making the 5$ challenge i dont know what set i going to try to collect but i only spend on the welcome bundle the one that cost 5 usd and i doing well im platinum and i cant complain i tryhard for the 15 wins a day but im almost 16k gp and i start less than a week
$100 every set and you still have to utilize time and patience to grind dailies to play any standard competitive deck? That sounds silly to me. $100 is nearly two brand new AAA releases. Maybe when you compare this against MTG paper prices, it sounds reasonable, but compared to most other mainstream f2p games, it's definitely leaning towards insanely greedy. Especially combining this with the amount of cosmetics that they sell on the store.
I have reached the same conclusion - I have given up paper magic as the hassle of getting to events was not worth my time. Instead I have started doing the following: Drop dollars on mastery pass, prerelease bundle, and play bunble. Pick up 3400 gems each month to play events or buy bling (draft, constructed, card styles) Make sure I get the minimum of 1050 gold a day (min 4 wins + 500 point quest) Bank all my gold for packs of the new set at launch Play enough ranked constructed matches each season to get to platinum level - usually it takes me 2 weeks to get there Doing all of this, I am looking at getting 130 packs of the next set + 13 gold packs at launch. My stats for past 31 days - 9.71 wins per day, 1403.09 gold per day - level 79 of mastery pass with 19 days to go
@@atlas4247 I guess I disagree. Playing paper would be 10 times as expensive and take way more time. I don't think it's greedy, it's a business. The alternative, if I want the same amount of cards, is I spend 4 or 5 times the amount of playtime. To me it's worth the cost.
I dont think it is that big of deal spending some money on a game you actually enjoy. Farming 500 hours seems fine but spending a bit to speed things up that you spend to watch a movie and eat something after once is omg crazy. The biggest problem with these type of games is that regardless of your time/money investment if you stop playing for a while, when you reenter it seems like you are almost starting from the beginning.
while I do agree with your points, and this is an extremely thorough look at the economy, I feel you overestimate the gold return for the player. I've returned to the game with the LotR set, I play every day and reroll the quest each time - and only seen 750g ones less than a dosen times. so the 470k/year number could be unreachable (statistically)
Totally unreachable. I also felt that he misses his own point there by using the 470k/year as a valid parameter, which it isn't. Not to mention there's nothing as hard as going infinite on Draft events. Regular drafting requires much more real money investment on gems, because if we're willing to spend all the gold we get from the dailies quests we would be able to buy a Draft event pass only each 8 days or something - and at this point it would be more safe just using this gold to buy whatever standart pack on Store, since any packs we would gain while Drafting will not count to the Golden Pack prize we have when we buy 10 packs directly from Store.
I have been tracking my gold progress for past 34 days . I have completed 20 x 500 point quests and 14 x 750 quests. That is with completing a quest per day, rerolling once, and NOT banking 500 point quests for next day. I also play enough ranked standard to get to platinum each season. My daily win average is 9.71, and my daily gold average is 1403.09 1403.09 per day is 512,127 gold per year. 470K is easily achievable.
Thanks for bringing the data on this, it's really helpful to illustrate the point. The 750 gold quests aren't as rare as some people think, and if you can bank the 500 gold quests for an extra chance at rerolling the next day, you'd have a little extra (but too much effort for me!)
@@MartinSparkes-BadDragon hey, good for you! if you are able to rack those numbers easily, then you are a better mtg player than me I may have stated my point wrong - I had reacted to Martin's exact phrase - "If we get a 750 gold quest, and only 4 wins per day, we get 1300 gold/day and this is more than 470k per year" - this is statistically unreachable. then, I have some questions to your calculation as well 10 wins per day - 700g (23800 per your 34 days) 750 quest 14 times - 10500 500 quest 20 times - 10000 all together - 44300 divided by 34 - 1303 in the end, not everybody has the time or passion to play to squeeze every last gold every day I sure can't just don't overestimate the numbers an average player will get
FYI the decks i use in MTGA if i wanted to play similar decks in MTGO that would cost me around $5000 or more. I have maybe 40 tier 1,2 and 3 decks across standard, historic and explorer rn. Each would be $150 to $300 in MTGO.
@@gameschooldadMTG Modern, Vintage, Legacy, Commander, Pauper etc. MTGO has so many more cards and formats. Thats the only benefit imo. MTGA is way cheaper and the gameplay and UI are so much better. MTGO is just like playing paper. its slow.
I played for free for over a year and was definitely competitive and even reached mythic without even really trying too hard. You tend to have to build decks around the rare’s you get although you do get some wild cards to help build deck you really want to make. I spend money on the game now but I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to. It really does just speed up building your collection and allows you to play limited games more. I will admit that now I’ve got most rare’s in the most recent sets, I kinda miss the play for free days, there’s nothing more satisfying than beating someone who’s clearly spent hundreds if not thousands on the game with a deck you paid nothing for
Agreed!! I also miss the early days of playing paper Magic when my friends and I had a limited pool of cards from which to build decks. They were real "kitchen sink" decks! Now, so much of paper Magic seems like the winner will be the person who spent the most on cards. I love to play in a limited pool environment like drafts or Jump Start play.
Excellent video! I spend like you do, the $15/Mastery Pass. I also bought the Explorer bundle. The Jump-In tokens are also a good way to add to a collection. If I recall, players get 10 free tokens. I do buy paper Magic lightly, though don't get the chance to play face-to-face. I like the thrill of seeing cards I use in Arena in "real life" and also discovering cards I have never seen before. The ink in the cards must have some addictive addictive. ;-)
Buying the actual cards can get expensive quickly, I've only got the Arena Starter Kits from the last few years because they're cheap and they're ready to play with my kids.
@gameschooldadMTG I would like to ask to be sure. I did some quick math about the rewards, if you do the 750 quest and 1st win, you'll get 7 packs per week, 28 per month, than means getting 4 rare wildcards just by opening every 6 packs and you'll have 38 random rares from the 28 packs of the month taking into account 2 golden packs. If you do 4 daily wins, this goes to 9 packs per week, 36 per month, leaving you with 6 wildcards and 51 rare random cards. Just the Bloomburrow set has +250 rare cards, and you end after 3 months with a range of 114 - 154 rare cards (this is of course an estimate). After this you get another set. I completely understand what you're saying, getting all of these for free and so on, but, that doesn't mean is the best in the world nor that is enjoyable. If you want to build a specific deck, then you're basically doomed since you may not have a lot of rare wildcards (also common and uncommon). Please correct me if I'm wrong, but after looking at these numbers, it is f2p, but that doesn't mean that the economy is really bad and you're forced to be playing the game as a homework instead of having fun. I also leave this link in addition :) draftsim.com/is-mtg-arena-pay-to-win/
I'm little confused as a new player. How many semi competitive decks can I expect to build as a f2p player after a year of constant playing / doing dailies? Not counting starting decks
It's hard to put a number on that to be honest. If you play pretty frequently, you'll get enough gold and wildcards to build a variety of decks over a year. There are some budget decks that don't take many rare wildcards, which make this even easier. What are you confused about?
@@gameschooldadMTG I should have been more specyfic. I'm strict f2p player coming from Master Duel. I've played MD without paying for about 1,5 year doing all dailly quest/events etc. maximizing currency gains. I made 20 different types (archetypes in YuGiOh) of decks, half of them top tier, half of them junk, but all using different important cards which i needed to drop/craft using only f2p means. I know that cards in MTG are more interchangable than YuGiOh (cards belong to 5 colors vs >100 restrictive archetypes) but I assume it is the mythic/rare cards that makes the deck competitive and it is the bottleneck in MTGA. For the context, for now I'm playing dimir zombies (horde aggro is fun :D) so i need 4x necroduality = 4x mythic wildcard I could switch to mono black zombies but it need Sheoldred, the apocalypse = mythic wildcard or mono black nazgul deck, need Witch-king of Angmar / Sheoldred, the apocalypse / The One Ring = all 3 need mythic wildcards I feel like these cards are essential to make the decks work in ranked, so I can complete quests => make gold => buy packs => earn more wildcards Let's say I spend next 1,5 year to grind in MTGA using all available f2p means. I assume I won't go infinite in draft, because I don't know meta etc. so make it constant 0-3 in quick draft. How many types of competetive decks could I make after this time? sry for any spelling mistake, english is not my first language
It gives You more value than what you arr actually playing for You get 1/3 only i'm gems, You get resources for a deck o progress and Even if You lose the drafts with the tokens or waste the gold You are actually getting the full value as long as You play
That would be very sweet. Though, I don't know a game that allows to do so. However, I know a lot of games that allow you to save up resources and pay for the next battle pass even if you're f2p. MTGA is one of them so I don't see a problem here. You need to save up 2,200 every 3 months. For this period you're also going to get 400 gems for 1,500 gold in daily deals, twice. Just make sure to check it every day. So it leaves the amount of 1,400 gems to save up - 467/month on avg. Let's say you earn 1,000 gold/day on average, which is super easy to do (and even kinda underestimation). It gives 30,000/month. This equals to 6 Quick Drafts. If you lose every single match in those Drafts you'll get 300 gems. If you win at least 4 matches out of 18 (and in the worst possible configuration, being no more than 1 win per Draft) you get 500 gems, more than you need. And on top of that, you get tokens, packs, cards, gold, and other rewards in the process.
Let me tell you in layman terms how good the new player experience is : By the time you build a deck you actually want to play (unless it's mono blue or red) the cards would have rotated out and your only choice is to play it in historic. New player ain't gonna do anything in sealed formats, just lose everytime and waste precious resources. If by some miracle you do build a deck before it rotates, you have maybe a few months to play it at best and then it's new format and you're out of gas, and out of a deck. P.S. By new player i don't mean new to arena, but rather new to magic in general.
Yes sir.@@gameschooldadMTG You have to understand, a new player isn't going to have the patience to play starter decks for 2 months, let alone a year to build up enough currency and cards to make their own deck that will win actual real games of magic. The comparison part of the video is important, because you have to look at how other card games do things to evaluate just how bad Arena has it. You can spend 5$ buying codes online, and you will have enough currency to build every single Meta and Rogue deck in Pokemon TCG Live, and you will have spare resources left . The game also starts you off with 7 decently competitive decks which can be made roguewith almost nothing spent. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel gives you enough currency from the very beginning to build AT LEAST 3 meta decks, and that's just the new player gems. Master Duel also allows you to scrap the cards you don't need to craft the ones you do. If you don't know how to play YuGiOh, the structure decks in the game cost nothing at all and will win you plenty of games all on their own. Magic could be the best card game in the world, but if you can't play it at a decent pace, it's irrelevant.
@@pozertron Ok then, so you know decks don't rotate out of Standard that quickly then? It doesn't take years to build a decent deck. There are many budget deck options that are very effective, and it doesn't take long at all to get a decent amount of rare wildcards to build a powerful meta deck either, unless you only play once a week or something 👍
This illustrates the problem that many people have with how wizards handles arena and MTg in general. Many people, including me, just see arena as a video game. Others, and including WOTC, see it as a comparable product to cardboard magic. They price it way out of step with a video game. It works for their target audience because you guys are hellbent on holding magic as THE game you want to play. This isn’t a criticism just on observation. WOTC will make arena expensive as long as thier fan base stays hooked and willing to pay. The rest of use are priced out because we do not idolize magic the way you guys do. It’s just a game to me and not the best game on the world. I never played cardboard because it’s insanely expensive. I do t play arena anymore because ,for a video game, it’s also insanely expensive. They justify it, as you do, by comparing games t to other ways to play magic. It’s not a video game to them it’s the other way to play thier sacred game. And plenty are willing to pay it so I guess it’s the right business call for them. Whether or not you can be satisfied with the F2P or even low spending arena experience completely depends on how you want to play the game. It wasn’t good enough for me so I stopped. It might be good enough for others. The less casual you try to play the game the harder it will be to go F2P because you will want more and more decks that you don’t get to have. If you play a few games a week then maybe the one meta deck you get to craft can hold you for months.
Thanks for the comment. I agree that playing MTG on paper can be really expensive, I've only got a few starter decks on paper because I don't feel the need to spend hundreds or thousands playing a variety of higher power decks. But I don't see how you came to the conclusion that Arena is insanely expensive. There's no entry fee, no monthly subscription, and no need to spend any money on the game at all, the only paid options are entirely optional. And although there is the option to spend up to $100 at a time, you could get pretty decent value from the game from spending as little as $5 per month if you wanted to, which is almost nothing. I haven't spent a penny on the game for about a year (and only about $50 in the 2 years before that), and I can play pretty much whatever I want.
The biggest issue is if you like limited. It's not a gamemode that's supported as f2p at all. I feel Draft and Sealed are a bit too expensive if you care about playing the format instead of using it to expand your collection. You can't use won packs to re-enter drafts (I'd combine 2 normal packs into a "draft pack" if it let me use those instead of gems/gold for buy-ins, even if I'm basically losing value). And Sealed is not even available all the time. I'd really enjoy always having a set (current one or rotating ones) be available to phantom draft for a much lower entry price point, and with worse prizes. It probably shouldn't be free since it will lead to a broken format if people can just quit if they don;t open a good pack, but have it be like 1/2 or smeht of the current quick draft costs. Will prolly never happen, tho. I also saw Limited League format in Eternal CCG (not sure if it's there in other card games), which would be amazing. You get a new league season each month, buy-in for basically Sealed, like 6 packs. And each week, every week, you get 1 or 2 more packs you can open and continuously improve and tune your league deck for that season. I'm really annoyed they're not stealing this format since it's amazing for a digital card game. If you like limited, ofc.
This has always annoyed me about digital card game clients - it's a fantastic platform for draft and similar limited formats, but is priced as if you should be playing it at the exclusion of all other options, or outright pay-to-play. Like, I am probably never going to learn how to draft well because I don't want to spend all my currency to lose 3 matches in a row when I could be doing that in ranked for free :P I would love an equivalent of a jump-in draft - either a small deck drafted from a lower-rarity pool, or at standard power without keeping the cards, just a temporary deck you can play as much as you like and pick up some simple win rewards.
I think throwing out game comparison is not a good idea. I play hearthstone as my main card game right now BECAUSE it's the most accessible to me on my computer and on my phone, but I also know that I can continue to play this game f2p forever. I like playing mtg in paper but when I'm comparing online game options mtg isn't my first option because of money investment
@@disguisedlizard8681 Not really, need to play for a bit of time to when there is enough free stuff. And that's way easier these days compared to 4 years ago when I just started playing. They even give you a fairly competitive deck to start with. The only thing is keep playing in standard is too costly of time, so I only play in the wild. The format is crazy but the deck you play is also crazy, I personally love ridiculous gameplay. The only thing is currently the Wild is in a very bad position because some decks just do way too well, while there used to be a lot more decks standing together at the top.
If you are good at drafting I would say it is, otherwise it seems more like a struggle, given how competitive standard is, where many decks will OTK turn 4, only worse in other formats with a larger pool of cards to select from. Initially spent a lot to be collection complete, later on decided to F2P, by being good at drafting the best way to turn gold into gems.
MTGA is actually better IMO. It auto takes rules and tokens into play and keeps players from cheating. Back in my local shop, players would constantly break rules, 2 copies of a Legendary on the field at once. Gatekeeping how certain abilities work. Swapping to MTGA was such whiplash watching combos that would have worked at the tables i played not work at all. It was like relearning the game again.
All video games are freemium ( F2P by spending time, buy by spending money)money is time, time os money. And finding the balance between them is the key of success.
I came back to magic because magic arena, I spend no money on it. Just draft a bit, do my quests, craft the decks I like. Its free, unless you want everything or you want it now, if you’re happy with 5-10 decks per seasson you don’t Need to spend money id you dont want cosmetics, etc.
The main disadvantage of F2P is that the game is programmed where regularly paying players go first disproportionately. As F2P regardless of what deck you play, you will only go first about 1/3rd of the time. That is a significant disadvantage to overcome. You can grind out a deck or two that are competitive and while boring to be stuck with them, they could still win. So you can play F2P, but know that you will always be at a disadvantage versus P2W players. Keep in mind, that’s about 1/3rd on average. It’s only that high because it’s 50/50 versus other F2P players. It’s a business after all, so they want to keep the paying players happy.
@@gameschooldadMTG Evidence. I mean aside from the endless tirade of players pointing it out, anyone can just create an account and play enough games and it becomes obvious. If I could bet in Vegas on whether I I would go first or second with even odds, I would be the wealthiest man in the world in no time.
I'm making a ton of free progress on daily's using starter decks in Historical. I built one standard red aggro deck just for fun, but never play it yet. I just tweak it as I get new cards.
You're using starter decks in Historic? You should try the Starter Deck Duel event instead if you prefer a level playing field. Good luck with your red aggro deck :)
I've done F2P for years and have a lot of fun. I don't have ALL the cards, but I do have some excellent decks that seem to work well and I like playing them. Good vid!
I'm a freakin' whale ! I like allocating some of my hard earned money to spend on my hobbies ! At least with Arena, i'm getting a nice looking game, an infinite amount of opponents, and don't run the risk of having to sell out because people can't keep up with the prices and my local scene is suddenly deserted.
Thanks for your comment. There are definitely some solid advantages to having Arena, that's one reason why I'm happy to put some money into it occasionally 👍
Arena's is probably more than reasonable on it's F2P. I have definitely seen much worse. However, bottom line is Wizards wants to make money. My experience is you come to a point where you progress at less than a snail's pace. My win rate dropped from about 50% down to less than 10% virtually overnight, maybe less. My opponents totally overpower me, for the most part, and it would take forever to get back to the level I was at staying F2P. But again, Wizards is in business to make money, not give away their product. I would be curious how far folks have gotten never leaving F2P, and how much of a grind it was.
I haven't found f2p any harder at all. It's just slower unlocking new cards and things like that. If Wizards somehow artificially made your win rate less than 10%, they must have increased everyone else's win rates. I don't see how that makes them any more money.
@@gameschooldadMTG Thanks for the reply. I was thinking more opponent deck strength and skill level matches, and other things like draws, trying to get me to buy stuff to improve those. Just seemed like an awfully big drop practically overnight, when I was basically playing the same way.
Im doing a 5 $challenge on the game im plat right now on rank and i have almost 16kgp for the desire set so wish me luck for the desire set with i still dont know what set is going to be
@@gameschooldadMTG yes Basically to prove that you can follow a path and still getting results and the 5$ was already spend before to start this so I’m not going to count it
As to cost and is it worth it f2p well I was around playing MTG MANY years ago then played other tcgs as well and ending up in Hearthstone.I have in general a very good idea of gaming+costs +value. First of all ONLINE means you are acquiring VIRTuAL goods so you do NOT own anything you are in legal terms buying a license to use and nothing more. Let's be honest nobody starting up is going to be a champion and to make it to the top you will need to be in the top loop right away you can't waste time acquiring the needed cards to compete at the top. However if you want to just have some fun and not care about making the top ranks you can certainly do it for free or do like I did and buy the $5 welcome bundle which is high value.
Thanks for your perspective. I don't think there's any reason why someone couldn't play very competitively without having spent any money (or very little money) on the game. More money helps you collect as many cards as possible, and much more quickly, but if you're focused you can build a few very competitive decks with the number of wildcards acquired from earning free gold and packs.
i miss the days where you just pay 60 bucks for a game and unlock full enjoyment after a few months of playing. and even paid DLC is great if it doesn't make the old content obsolete.
I get your point, but there's a vast difference between a racing game and a Ferrari. The experience of playing MTG is not anywhere near as different between tabletop and Arena. I don't play Arena so I can have something to resell, I play it because I enjoy the game.
You really missed the whole point. Some decks that require you to be competetive are upwards $100-$500 depending on how competetive you want to be. Mtga give you the option of not buying anything, getting wildcards and free packs and enjoying the game. Not to mention the ability to duel distant friends and enter online mtga tournaments. It is great for new players like me, who have no interest in going to a game store to meet people like you. Get rekt nerd.
If you are ok with taking a very long time to get what you want. Yes you dont need to spend much. i know guys that only ever purchased those two starter bundles for around $25 combined and have played free since.
I don't even think it necessarily takes a long time to get what you want if you don't spend any money, you just need to know how to navigate the economy.
@@gameschooldadMTG As a new player it takes a while to even know what you want tbh. I started with mono black which in itself is a mythic and rare heavy deck that took a while. Then moved to mono red, blue, and that lead me to rakdos, dimir decks. idk where i would be if i were a free player but i certainly would have no where near what i have now. Especially since my historic/explorer collection is fleshed out these days. fyi ive only played 5 months so far.
I think it depends on what you think is "a very long time". I guess it would take me about 1 month to get familiar with everything, try free decks, different formats, see what I like to play, etc. Then I can feel confident about what I want and where to spend my resources. Overall, a new player will probably need 3-4 months to save up resources for their first mastery pass (to start getting max profit) while also saving up resources for his own decks. I guess you would call it "a very long time". But since we get 1 new set every 3 months and it remains valid for 2 or 3 years I would not consider it a very long time. At least I don't feel like that. It's not fast either but in my opinion, it's kinda normal for a CCG kind of game. Especially given that now the game gives me more opportunities to play with new sets and cards than it did several years ago when I tried MTGA for the first time. Probably a new player cannot be competitive in ranked/play queue for some time. But with Jump In and Starter Deck Duel, I don't see it as an issue. It's much more fun and pleasurable to play in these formats than it was during my last experience. When I had to struggle through ranked queues and even completing dailies was a challenge. BTW, I also bought a starter bundle back then but have not used any resources from it yet.
If you're starting a collection from nothing, I would recommend doing the Jump-In events to give yourself a wide range of cards to start with from Standard sets of the past year. If you enjoy drafting, do drafts of any set that you want to build a collection of. Usually this would be the most recent set, but it really applies to any set you want to build. If you're buying packs, it's best to buy the most recent and you'll get the golden pack bonus that gives you other extra rares and mythics. When you buy packs you'll also get wildcards to craft any ninjas that you want. You can get some free starter packs/wildcards here draftsim.com/mtg-arena-codes/
@@VampireGhostie there are colourless cards you can use in any deck, and some rare lands that are really useful for multicoloured decks. But the best way to get started is to decide what kind of deck you would like to play (Aggro, combo, midrange, control, etc) then just craft the cards that are most versatile for those types of decks.
@@gameschooldadMTG thanks, i am also struggling with the UI. I am pretty tech savy and can figure things out quickly, but man it was tough when I was looking for cards and building a deck yesterday.
The grind feels bad in Arena because the most efficient way to farm dailies is to do them in bundles of 3 but to get adequate amounts of gold one needs to get 1-4 wins every day. These are conflicting systems.
And the lack of crafting sucks, too. "Just use WCs." Wrong, one needs to open packs to obtain WCs which needs gold. Crafting could be done with the cards one already had. Not to mention that WCs are incredibly scarce
I just explained. For dailies you want them to pile up and do them in trios. This means not doing anything till they're stacked up. For the wins you want to get 4 wins daily. This means playing every day. Playing every 3 days vs playing every day are two conflicting ways to play. @@gameschooldadMTG
One thing you also need to bear in mind with Arena is that it rewards you for playing regularily. If you get 4 wins a day and complete your daily quest you get between 1050 and 1300 gold per day you will get close to 100% coverage of rares and about 60% coverage of mythics for each set which is more than enough to be free to play. The key thing is it is hard to get back order cards, but once you have made it through the first two rotations you should be set.
I do think Arena is F2P friendly and I've been playing over 2 years now (started a few weeks after Strixhaven was released) and just about every day. I spent about 40 USD right at the start to speed things up but haven't spent anything since. As you've said, if you just play enough, you can get just about whatever you want, just slower than someone who pays, that's all. I will say though, until recently, I think you could have said it was not quite new player friendly. Back when I started, after finishing the color challenge, it was just like you were thrown to the wolves with everything that they just opened up to you. With the recent change/revamp of the new player experience, I do think they addressed that so it's not such shock to the system as it was before. If there is anything that is might not be F2P friendly could be the unranked matches. With those, it's like if you went to the gym to get a pickup game of 1:1 basketball. The person you get could be some middle aged guy with a dad body or a fellow in decent shape or LeBron James. If you're F2P and have the choice, the 1st two options are fine but I would never willing submit to playing against a "LeBron James" type player, LOL...
If that's what you'd rather do, that's great. I'd much rather spend $200 over years of playing Arena to enable me to build any deck I want in any available format and play as many games a day as I want, rather than spend that money on 60 pieces of cardboard 👍
I would rather spend money on cardboard that i getto keep forever than on digital cards that will likely dissappear as soon as the game die and with all the money grabbing they do I don't give it to much longer
My statement about you not playing commander makes since I have never spent 200 dollars on a standard deck but I have over 2000 dollars in commander deck that I will have FOREVER and never have to worry about an online game dying
that's the problem. it's like renting the cards till the game die for $200 vs have the cards forever for $200 It was kinda overlooked in the vid, but overall it was very informative
You do great work on these videos! Do you use untapped gg at all? I recently bought the premium just to see what kind of data it shows that is really cool, i think it would sweet if you covered that or some form of figuring out how to research ranks or deck data and formats all that, also I have like 40k + gold and a few draft tokens with the new set coming up what's going to be an efficient way to collect as many new cards as possible? Ma6bee another video when that set drops
Thanks for your comment and suggestions. I use the untapped website, but I already use MTGA Assistant to track my stats. The website is really useful, and I definitely want to cover using these kinds of services more in a video, I just need to find the right time to fit it in. For the new set, the best way to build a collection would be to Premier Draft straight away using draft tokens (if you have a reasonably good win rate in draft), and reinvest any gems back into more drafts, after you have the mastery pass paid for. Draft for as long as you want, or until you start to see the same rares/mythics that you already have 4 copies of, or until you get to a high enough rank that the games get predictably harder. If you're not as good at drafting, you can wait until the Quick Draft event starts and just do those instead. Once you've done enough drafting, you can hold on to your packs to get maximum delayed value, or you can open them for instant value and wildcards. I'll probably make a video to go into it in more depth, but that's the general idea that I follow.
Not a very good video for new players. “I can’t compare this to anything else” well I want it compared to anything else because I don’t know magic lmao.
@@IndiaUploadsEngrav this video isn't intended to help new players decide if they want to play magic or not. It's to help people who want to play magic know if they can play it for free.
@gameschooldadMTG yes. I primarily play historic brawl. But I have standard and pioneer decks as well. Just from playing 5-10 matches a day I've been able to pay and craft over 30 plus decks across 4-5 formats
Great video, I also never got the fuzz about the economy being so bad. Playing for 3 years now consistently and I am seeing my collection constantly growing. One note about the formats is probably important: When you want to play different decks in different formats then playing for free will limit you a lot. The limiting factor is the rare wildcards which you ultimately only get so much of. Sometimes the meta changes fast and if you're already "invested" in a losing deck this can be quite frustrating. Playing formats like Historic Brawl or Standard Brawl have the advantage of not requiring quadruplets of cards.
"I never got the fuzz." "I've been playing for 3 years now." The "fuzz" is about the fact that if the game was more generous than incredibly stingy, you could've got to where you are right now progression wise in half the time or less.
I would like to add that now the game is more f2p friendly than it was several years ago. With the new Jump In and Starter Duels it's easier to farm daily quests than before, when you had to do them in the Play queue. Now you can easily farm gold and wins even if you're a new player without competitive decks. So it's strange for me why people hate MTGA for being p2w more now than they did back then. Then everyone was pretty much happy with the game and now it became even better from what I see. Also, it's interesting to compare the game (in terms of f2p) to other card games, I feel that's what people usually mean. I have a little experience with HS and I assure you it's much less f2p friendly than Magic. At least it was so several years ago.
Yeah but I don't want to "easily farm gold" with crappy starter decks. I wanna play with the cool cards and brew. Mtga is terrible for making that happen.
And HS is friendlier with fewer cards to collect, faster games, easier UI, loaner decks, and several free modes that aren't just "play garbo starters" or "grind ladder".
Can you play for free at only a few games a day? Sure, but why the hell would you play a game where the biggest aspect is deck design freedom, only to be severely limited in resources and then stomped out by meta decks (which people play in casual nonstop btw). The average aggro deck has maybe 10 rares in it and the average control/midrange deck has around 30 rares and 8 to 10 mythics. That will take you an entire seasons of devoting every single one of your wild cards just to craft it with very little time to climb ranked with it. For ranked F2P either play aggro decks or they don't play the game at all because homebrew decks are not worth wasting your wildcards on. It is not a fun experience to log in, que up and lose 70% of your matches because you are lacking so many key cards to even be remotely competitive, just to get dailies done so you can bank enough gold to draft after 5 days. Then when it comes to drafting you actually have to know how to draft to win and you're limited to the reward packs which are always the most recent set. It's the worst, most predatory in game economy of any F2P game I've ever seen because it intentionally gates the biggest parts of the MTG experience behind outrageous costs of time or money and then compounds it with algorithmic manipulation via MMR, hang smoothing and trying to force 50% winrates to encourage buying out of frustration.
The standard events in this game certainly are unless you are a massively top-tier strategist @@gameschooldadMTG . You almost certainly need a complete meta deck and/or knowledge that only really comes with playing a LOT of top tier decks to be able to brew your way into any amount of wins. Combine that with the events having a buy-in, and uninformed new players will easily fall into a trap that consumes their resources for basically no gain. I appreciate that you put these guides together, they are incredibly helpful, but the fact that guides like this need to exist to even kind of understand the economy in this game is a real indicator that the economy is either incompetent or predatory, especially for the new player experience.
I've been playing arena for years. It's my way of winding down after work. I'll come home, finish a daily or 2 then log off. I'll usually have around 70,000-100,000 gold for every new set that comes out and I only ever spend money on the battle pass because I think it's good value as I max it out every time.
lol i love when other people try compare other games to another i mean if don't like rewards vs game your already playing why swap to that game if think that game better its hobby after all try play for free or spend here and there on a budget people pretty much want stuff handed to them for free
I started playing magc arena recently, but i played pokemon TCG live before and have played yugi-oh master duels and duel-links for a long time, so i "can" compare them. Pokemon is defenitely the least free2play friendly... why? casue even though the game pass does give more rewards and you can buy it for free, the price at wich you can adquire decks, packs and individual cards its a lot higher than the other games, plus, playing normal games does not give any decent reward, most of the time none, even in ranked games where the rewards comes only when you go up 1 entire league (bronce->silver->gold, etc). You get only like 5 basic decks at the start and even the cheaper pack will take at leas 4 days of farming. The money (gold/coins) you get to buy individual cards is only enough for buying 1 cheap deck and playing more will not get you almost any reward. Yugi is...probably the more free2play friendlier or the second. In duel master, you can get the game-pass for money you get for free, just by playing and the pass gives you not only enough of the same money to buy the next one but even more than that. You get cards and money for just playing and biger rewards for going up the ranks. You get enough to get a pair of meta decks and then its a lot more dificult to get new full decks but its doable as long as you keep playing and completing the game-pass wich allows you to get all the hard to get individual cards. Yugi Duel links its even easer to farm and make decks, but due to not following the original rules so i'll leave it out. Magic is probably more free2play friendly than even yugi, but to get individual cards, am not sure, havent played enough to be sure... rng in packs its not very friendlier for anyone so im not giving it a 10/10 pass yet.
I spent 100 dollars max in the begining of my time with arena 4 years ago.I got most of the decks in historic, explorer and standard minus trash Alchemy. ATM i have 200 rare wild cards and 132 mythic wcs. How can anybody call it trash economy is beyond me. I don't draft (once or twice per set max)or participate in qualifiers tho
Love you're content but I disagree with the premise of this video. "I don't want it so it can't be compared" isn't a very intellectually sound argument in my opinion. Especially when analogous games like Yu-Gi-Oh's master duel and hearthstone exist
Thanks for your comment. I feel like it's a solid argument. If I want to buy a Tesla and someone tells me a Ford would be cheaper, I could say it doesn't matter how much cheaper they are, I want a Tesla. If I'm looking to compare the value of the Tesla I want, I would look at different places that offer Teslas. If I want to play MTG on Arena and someone tells me any other game might potentially give me more resources for free, I could say it doesn't matter what you get in Fortnight/Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh/etc, I want to play MTG Arena. If I'm looking to compare the value I get in Arena, I would look at the different ways I could play MTG.
I really hope you got paid by WotC for this vid considering how hard you shilled for them. Jesus christ, you're borderline deceiving new players here. 1) Your point about not being able to compare battle passes to other games is outright stupid. You absolutely can compare MTGA's battle pass to other games, including other card games. And it turns out that MTGA's battle pass really is not that generous. It's not terrible value as it's better than anything else in MTGA, but it's pretty common for other game's battle passes to refund you the amount of currency you spent on it by completion for example, letting you re-buy it every season without spending money. It also requires you to play and get 4 wins every day for a good ~60% of the days the mastery pass is active in order to really get your value out of it. That's going to be a 30m-1hr every day, which some players are going to hate to do. 2) You compare MTGA to paper MTG....without ever mentioning that you can re-sell your paper cards to buy new decks. Don't get me wrong, paper is horrendously expensive, but this is a pretty big point to leave out of an economic comparison. 3) I wonder if there's better comparisons to be made here....like say Gwent? Legends of Runeterra? Hearthstone? etc. You know, the other digital CCGs? Spoiler alert for the new players: MTGA doesn't compare well to a lot of them in terms of economy. There's no excuse for you not doing some reddit researching to find some reliable numbers to make a real comparison. 4) You talk about whether or not f2p is viable but avoid breaking it down into hard numbers other than the one time you mention 470 packs per year. What you don't mention is the time requirement of having to play every day for X wins (I'm not sure if you figured 470 based off 4 wins or 15 wins) to get those 470 packs. Not everyone has the time to play every day nor do they want to feel forced to. You don't mention that there's 4 standard sets per year or how golden packs are going to figure into this. How much of each standard set can new f2p players reasonably expect to get? And even more importantly, how many wildcards per set, cause that's the real limiter. You *could* have found this information on your own in 5 minutes of googling reddit threads, because multiple people have attempted to math this out in the past. I honestly don't know if you didn't bother to do this because you wanted to be lazy with your content or because it paints a much different picture about how 'generous' MTGA's f2p economy is. Here's some actual advice for new players wanting to know what the MTGA economy is like: - Can you be full free to play? Yes, but be aware that you MUST play everyday for 30m-1hr indefinitely AND you're going to be stuck playing the 1-3 decks you spend your wildcards on for a while. A LONG while, people commonly mention doing this for an entire YEAR to save wildcards for the next rotation. Better hope you picked the right decks and they don't get obliterated 3 months from now when the next set drops and the meta shifts, cause doing those dailies every day is going to be a real slog if that happens. - Can you get to the highest rank (Mythic) as f2p. Yes....but again you're heavily limited by your available wildcards (sensing a theme yet?) which means that your deck might be good for THIS month's meta...and might suck for the next 11 months. Granted, it's unlikely to be that drastic, but if new sets shift the meta to where your deck's winrate goes down to 51%, getting to mythic is going to take a lot of grinding. If the winrate goes below 50%, you're not getting to mythic at all. Hope you resisted spending all your wildcards! - Can you play in actual competitions as a f2p player as said in this vid? Lmao, no. Technically yes, and I'm sure there's some pro or very experienced youtuber who's been playing the game for years that has done it, but no new player is going to correctly guess what deck to spend their limited wildcards on that will demolish that event's meta. - What about going infinite in drafting or events? Technically possible....but realistically impossible for the vast majority of new players to do consistently. Some common price points players play at: 1) F2p $0 per set - Have to do daily wins every day to get gold, never have enough wildcards to craft that many decks. Experimenting with off-meta decks is basically a pipe dream. Choosing to spend wildcards on Standard means you don't have them for Explorer/Historic and vice versa. You'll have to be pretty selective about what you spend your wildcards on, so I hope you've already got a good idea of what colors/playstyles you enjoy. You can get about 60% of each set as f2p if you save all your gold and play daily, but remember that the real crunch is how many wildcards you have to complete decks with because it takes a loooong time to catch up with the multiple years worth of sets in Standard. 2) Mastery Pass only $15 per set - 4 standard sets per year, $60 per year. A lot of people in this category, they spend a little because mastery pass is technically the one of the best value buys in Arena...but the paid version is basically just an extra 20 packs from the past 5 or so standard sets, some cosmetics, and 10 random current set mythics usually, plus a pet. If the the random cards you get are not good, you basically just got a slight discount on packs/wildcards. 3) $50 fifty pack Preorder Bundle plus or minus the Mastery Pass. $200 per year. Gives you a bigger chunk of the set (which means you spend less wildcards) and more wildcards from opening packs. Alot of people at this price point. This is about where you can start expecting to have ~90-100% of the set and enough wildcards to cover the gap. Definitely possible to brew up some jank decks now without feeling punished for it if they're not mythics, but that competes with you crafting cards to try out the explorer/Historic formats. YOU STILL HAVE TO PLAY EVERYDAY to collect the 'free' gold from dailies. 4) $60-$100 a set, up to $240-$400 a year: This level is usually going to include some combination of the $50 pre-order, buying gems in the $100 bundle but only spending a portion of them for each set on packs or drafting, and buying the mastery pass. This is about where you can start to expect to be able to play mostly anything as you have 100% of THIS set and wildcards for explorer/historic. If you've done this for at least a year or two, that means playing almost anything in Standard, with wildcards covering most of the gap for Explorer/Historic formats. Your mythic wildcards are still a valuable resource, be careful what you use them on. You can start slowly building your Explorer/Historic playables with your wildcards. You only need to spend about $60 per set on packs/draft plus the $15 mastery pass to rare complete, so most players in this category are going to use the extra for a few cosmetics or just to be able to ignore having to play every day, instead only playing every 3 days or so to complete their quests. 5) ~$150-$170 a set: This is the level for people who say 'Fuck dailies' and play when they want to play. Which unfortunately gets pretty pricey, as you can see. You can get about 100k gold (100 packs) each set and about 37ish packs for the current set from the mastery pass which mostly gets leveled due to your dailies. Skipping them completely requires $$$ if you want to be able to reach the same level of play-what-I-want. The vast majority of players, including myself, don't spend this much and play most days to get dailies done. And as a final note, be aware that if you take time off from the game and don't buy packs/draft during each set, it gets significantly more expensive/harder to catch back up. All that said, I somehow still enjoy this game. But it's definitely not a good value vs most games out there.
1. This only matters if you want to play other games instead of MTG. 2. I do mention that you can sell cards, but that isn't the point. 3. This only matters if you want to play other games instead of MTG. 4. Yes, playing the game takes time, but if you enjoy the game, this is a good thing. Also, if you are f2p: You don't have to play every day to keep up. You can have more than 1-3 good decks. You can get to Mythic if this matters to you, but it shouldn't. You can play in competitive events if you want to, but most probably won't want to, and that isn't the point. Going infinite is possible, but not required at all. There are many players who agree that the economy is really pretty generous, or who enjoy playing as much as they want to for free :) Thanks for your thoughts.
Can't edit, but I forgot the gold, gems, and draft token for the mastery pass when I was talking about it. Dunno how I forgot them, so ignore that bit, it's more than a slight discount.
Dude, you sound like you really hate this game. Maybe you should take a break instead of convincing yourself that it's gonna be more expensive/harder to catch back up? Not to mention that you seem to be wrong in many points you make. I played MTGA several years ago for a couple of months and stopped because of infinite Cauldron Familiar + Witch's Oven combos. It pissed me off. This month I returned to the game and I'm pretty happy to find out it became friendlier than I remember. The new Jump In and Starter Deck Duel events allow me to complete daily wins/quests easily. Also, I genuinely enjoy playing them. Back then I had to do this with a starter deck against the current meta, playing in normal or ranked queue. And you are right, that was very painful and time-consuming, no match to the current situation, in my opinion. Also, for some reason, I felt like I "have to" compete in Ranked for rewards and because it's "the sense" of the game. I believe this was my main mistake. Thank God this time I realize that tearing my ass apart for a couple of extra packs is rather stupid. Obviously, I cannot properly estimate your opinion on set completion and the expense of changing your deck. Still, I wanna make several points here. - This is rather expected from a CCG. It even says "Free to Play", not "Free to Mythic" or "Free to 100%". So if I find out I cannot complete 100% of my collection, which is probably going to happen, it's not a big deal for me. I pretty much knew it from the start. - Comparing MTGA to other CCGs by this parameter, I highly doubt you could find a game where you can become Mythic with 100% collection for free. That's not how this business works. The same is true for other game genres, btw, if it's allowed to buy anything but cosmetics. - I had some experience with HearthStone. And I dare to say its economy (in 2016) was real shit. So seeing you bring up this example here was surprising. But ok, I didn't play it for a long time, maybe something changed. So I did the research as you suggested. I checked Wiki and several videos on UA-cam. From what I've seen, it's improved with the addition of "Rewards Track" but is still painful. Still no wildcards, the same disenchantment instead. You still have to disenchant 30 packs to get 1 Legendary card. You definitely cannot complete your collection without spending at least $100 per set. Packs are considered to be overpriced by HS players themselves. And you still have to complete your dailies. My calculations from Wiki say it's gonna take 3 hours/day, but ok, I'm gonna believe those UA-camrs who refer to 1 hour. Another note about comparing to other games. I partially agree that it's possible. But at the same time, it often doesn't make any sense. Take my experience for e.g.. What do I do if I want to play CCG, if I tried HS (didn't like it as you see), do not like Legends of Runeterra or Master Duel aesthetics, and Gwent mechanics seem obsolete in comparison? And this brings us to the last point. The point of this video which you, for some reason, missed. It's not about whether you can become best of the best with 100% collection. It's about whether you can play and enjoy the game without spending money on it. And from what I've experienced myself I think yes, you can. I will also try to update my reply several months later. Maybe if I play long enough as you did I'll change my opinion. Or if I get bored and leave.
If you are very good or above average in drafting, MTGA is really F2P, otherwise, it's still F2P but you will obviously get less but more than enough to have fun
It's less like apples vs bananas and more like different brands of apples. You might not want the other brand but looking at alternatives will give you an idea of the expected market price of apples.@@gameschooldadMTG
@@gameschooldadMTG I watched you go "well we can't really compare it to any other game because I want to play magic, but we can't consider this other version of magic because even though I don't know, I'm going to say it's more expensive" It isn't. Mtgo is much cheaper if you want to play anything other than homebrew piles.
I think it's quite silly that you say you can't compare it to other online TCG. Hearthstone? Legends of Runeterra? Sure, they play a bit differently, but in the end only a few factors matter: Can you play the modes you enjoy competitively without paying, or paying very very little (say 15 bucks a month). In Legends of Runeterra, you can have dozens of high quality competitive decks, you can play a lot of different styles, card crafting is very friendly for this and let's you play exactly what you want. Cards are essentially not monetized, only cosmetics are. Extremely F2P friendly. Hearthstone goes the middle road, you can get quite a few competitive decks going, and enjoy some variation. In MTGA, you can at best maintain a couple decks if you want them to be the things you want to play competitively. Mythics and even rares are a HUGE bottleneck for building anything remotely fun. Sure, you can go monored or monowhite and farm bo1s, but yikes, that's not a good solution in my opinion.
I get that you really enjoy MTGA and want to play that, but compared to other games, it's very restrictive. Particularly restrictive is the opportunities to play limited draft mode, as it has a steep entry fee. I really like the mode, just like I really enjoy playing Arena in hearthstone. But there's no way to play it more than a couple times a week (I can't consistently have 6 wins, lol). If there was an alternative, perhaps one with a low entry fee, where you don't get to keep the cards you draft, but still get packs, or perhaps you just get an assortment of wildcards (with 1 mythic rare at 7 wins perhaps?) and a much reduced amount of gems. If I could afford one of those cheap drafts each day, now that would be great, then I could play my favorite thing a lot more.
Don't get wrong, I've been regular now for months, and I can slowly branch out in what I can afford to build. From mono white for 2 months, to white/black now, trying out to branch a bit into red now. But it takes forever to build up a bit.
Also I think it's super easy for newbies to waste their wildcards. It's not obvious how little you, after you get a bunch from redeeming codes, and it's particularly sad if a new player just wants to try things out and then is stuck having spent super rare wildcards on things they can't/won't use just a little later.
Thanks for the detailed comment. I don't compare this to other games or other TCGs because this is the game I want to play, so I only care about the value I get from this game, not from others. If I want an apple and someone offers me a free banana, then it's not crazy to me to refuse.
When I started my second account at the end of last year, I was very quickly able to build some competitive decks by using my resources wisely without spending any money at all. I can't build everything on that account, but I have enough to enjoy the game without even worrying about running out of wildcards.
On my main account I get over 90-95% complete on sets by drafting and buying packs without having to spend any money each month. I've spent about $50 in total since I started 3 years ago and I didn't really need to.
@@gameschooldadMTG After another month of grinding away, I can start to see where you're coming from. I didn't 100% LCI, but it's pretty close and I got all the things I want to at least 3x copies. When I wrote this, I think the main issue I was facing was that I did not play in a while, so I had no cards for ANY of the standard sets. Now that I have a set complete, if I keep this up, I can totally see myself having a somewhat complete collection a year from now, particularly once the next rotation comes. I think the point still stands, MTGA is really not great for new players, as you have to content with about a dozen sets when you start out, while most reliably getting cards only for the newest one. I do have a few decks now I enjoy playing, but I don't have any wildcards left over, not even common/uncommon as there was a lot I needed to get from the years of not playing.
It feels like MTGA is a good F2P game if and only if you keep up with at least your 1 win a day, ideally 4, consistently, without taking a break. It's a lot more demanding than other games in that regard, but ultimately it's doable. I just had to accept and come to terms that I won't have a lot of options for months. I think some of the most irritating part about this is facing cool and sometimes oppressive cards from older sets, like kamigawa and innistrad. I wish I could toy around with those, but I'd be wasting wildcards in a sense. It'll get better come rotation, for sure.
People who like magic are comparable to crack addicts. They want magic and only magic. This really isn’t a criticism but they don’t value anything else the way they value magic. It is THE game to them. And what is an addict going to do when drug prices are high? Justify it and find a way to get their drug. It’s not comparable to others games because he has no interest in other games. It must be magic and whatever the price is will be paid. This is why magic will be expensive no matter what form it takes.
To the rest of us it’s a video game. We are not the target audience.
I wish there was a dedicated commander format on arena a full 100 card deck because that’s how I fell in love with mtg all over again it’s just so fun to casually play with your friends
You ever played ygo pro all the cards are free and is all based on deck building skills and playing online for fun
I want to play; but I'm not too good at deck building and I can't remember the new mechanics well enough to get anywhere. lol
I would argue a fair game to compare would be Master Duel ,
But its also reasonable to compere it to only magic .
I would just really like for MGA to have a disenchant mechanic similar to master duel ,
That would make decks far easier to make . (3 or any rarity can essentially be traded for a wildcard of its rarity , but "promo"-ish cards cant be disenchanted )
I just moved from Master duel to try Magic out and after a few days i think Master duel is incredibly f2p friendly compared to Magic.
Maybe when i get better then arena would be ideal and there are other ways to get cards/resources but its still not even close to Master Duel imo. Konami's duel links on the other hand is the biggest p2w scam going.
I agree that you can compare it to master duel and probably other card games, not talking about comparing the levels of enjoyment you get but comparing the systems inside the game that assist in f2p mechanics like Master duels crafting and even secret packs and so on.
Yeah, I play mainly Master Duel but a bit of Runeterra too (which is more heavily monetised, but very generous with cards), and while they are comparable with arena in some ways - the amount of packs you can afford by doing dailies etc - having wildcards *without* having a system for breaking down unwanted cards means I'm mostly pulling useless cards from a pack and waiting for a wildcard to drop that I can actually use.
I would also say that, as someone new to magic, the ladder seems to really focus on the rank milestone rewards above all else. In other games the low ranks are quite obviously the shallow end of the swimming pool, but a few lucky wins in magic can push you into a rank where you just have to grind out a budget netdeck or lose 80% of your games. (also thanks for the budget deck guides, a real lifesaver lol)
It’s trash for constructed. Only people saying it’s good are those that are good drafters. WoTC needs to do better and make it fairer.
You should see my video on how much you can unlock without drafting at all. It's a lot.
Once again, you are the go-to spot for these detailed breakdowns. Appreciate it!
Thanks so much for your support 😊
Dudes logic is stupid
I started Magic Arena about a month ago.
I watched lots of youtube standard budget videos and choose a mono red burn deck with 0 rare and 0 mythics.
In the First season I hit gold easily. Now Iam really close to Platinum.
I like the fast paste games because you see a loot of different decks and you can learn a lot.
Another deck I have build was mono blue tempo. There are really cheap versions of it (4-7 rare) and you should be able to easily rank up higher once you know how to play.
Iam still not sure why my first "real" deck will be. Its always a bit of a gamble on how you will like that deck.
But most of the time you can see how a deck plays while watching videos of it.
RN Iam thinking about Orzhov Control or Mono-Black Midrange or Mono-White Aggro.
But I will wait since I still have to obtain a few more wildcards and want to wait for the Meta to settle into the new cards which are coming soon.
If you do a lot of thinking ahead. Magic Arena can be fun as F2P. But I can see how new players, who just wanted to take a look into the game, can get discouraged.
I would really love to have the possibility to "rent a deck". EG you pay 10k Gold and you can play 5 games with any deck you want.
Maybe limit it to 3times/Season.
But it would give players the chance to test out decks without the commitment to use up wildcards.
Thanks for your comment. If they did implement some kind of deck renting system, 10k gold would be way too much to try out a deck, it would have to be much less than that. For 10k gold you can effectively add something like 18 rares and 72 other cards (including wildcards) to your collection permanently just by buying packs.
@@gameschooldadMTG is it better to use 10k gold to buy packs or to enter draft events?
@@10Kay621packs unless your win rate is 50% or above I believe.
@@10Kay621 short answer: If it's early in a set release, I would do Quick Drafts if you tend to get less than 3 wins per event, do Premier Drafts if you tend to get more than 3 wins per event. If it's later in a set release or if you don't like drafting, just buy the most recent packs and get more wildcards for your gold (and a golden pack).
@@10Kay621it si always better to draft as long as You like playing draft and habe the time to learn if You arent going to enjoy or are going to instantly lose You are not getting mucho, besides that You keep the cards after the draft unless it si a cube draft or it it explícito states otherwise
it ia totally possible to play completely free. if you play every day you will have hindreds of free cards in just a few months. i have spent 90 dollars over 2 years and i am currently in top 100 in standard you cannot tell me that is p2w im sorry thats just whining.
How sir
You're video is so informative and very helpful as usual, I started playing this game last September and I never been so hooked on a game, I have 2 accounts, one is f2p and one i get to spend a few bucks every month especially the mastery pass. Thanks for the video it really helps a lot of new players
I'm glad you found my channel helpful. It sounds like you're approaching the game in a very sensible way. I hope you continue to enjoy it for a long time 👍
Not informative I bet he doesn't play commander in irl I have decks run around 200 300 more but they are REAL and I get to keep them forever gems disappear
@@native_vaper9945cool paper boomer the future is now
Short answer - yes it can be played f2p (here since beta f2p) and this is how:
-30k gold per month is realistic for most players
-30-50 minutes to get up to 4 wins per day (bit more than a dollar worth)
-You can open about 120 packs with 90k gold, those open for drafting also count.
-Convert gold into gems in Quick Draft
-Climb both Ranked and Draft for additional packs and gold at the end of the month
-Never buy packs in shop (unless you are looking for cards from a set that you have 90+% already collected then buy-and no less than 10 packs - to get additional one)
-Seasonal pass iz worth it if you can get 60+ lvls
-Sealed can be worth playing with extra gems, early in the set
Ah, technically yes, that's the best kind of yes. /s
lol the forum posting format is so easy to read. Good suggestions.
Amazing video! Thank you! Although you do need to take into account that if you keep your physical cards nice and "new" you can sell them again. They might even become worth more over time. So in the long term it does not have to be as expansive
Good point!
I've been running two accounts in Arena. One completely F2P and one that I get mastery pass and the 50 pack prerelease bundle every set. Biggest difference is the amount of wild cards and therefore the amount of "competitive" builds. I don't care about styles and sleeves. That's where you could throw a bunch of gems is in getting your favorite deck Blinged out with styles. I do get the mastery pass when I've earned enough gems on the F2P but that's more like every third set.
In summary, if you want completely F2P be very picky on your crafting. Find a couple archetypes you like to play and build those maybe 2-3 competitive decks depending on how greedy those are for rares/mythic and then just build "fun" decks. I actually don't think you need to slend anything unless you are a heavy user of the game.
Thanks for your comment :)
The paid options are mostly there for people who want to speed up their progress to save time or people with too much money to spend.
For the last 9 months I've been getting 4 wins/day and spending $100 each standard set (I don't care about historic). I've been doing 10-15 drafts per set and then getting either the 45 or 90 pack bundle for each standard set. Between that and the mastery pass, I can pretty much play any competitive standard deck. It takes time and patience to do this, but for me this is the best balance with time and money. Some days it's a grind and I really don't feel like playing, but I'll bust out the mono red aggro deck and get 4 wins in usually 15-30 min. I don't mind spending $100 per standard set. This year it's come out to 300 dollars for the year. 300 over 12 months is just $25 per month, which is fine with me. I love playing the game and having all the cards available to play around with different decks. It's SOOOO much cheaper than playing real MTG. Yes, you don't technically own anything, but at the end of the day I don't really care about that. I'm enjoying the journey of playing and it's worth the $25 per month and
I making the 5$ challenge i dont know what set i going to try to collect but i only spend on the welcome bundle the one that cost 5 usd and i doing well im platinum and i cant complain i tryhard for the 15 wins a day but im almost 16k gp and i start less than a week
$100 every set and you still have to utilize time and patience to grind dailies to play any standard competitive deck? That sounds silly to me. $100 is nearly two brand new AAA releases.
Maybe when you compare this against MTG paper prices, it sounds reasonable, but compared to most other mainstream f2p games, it's definitely leaning towards insanely greedy. Especially combining this with the amount of cosmetics that they sell on the store.
I have reached the same conclusion - I have given up paper magic as the hassle of getting to events was not worth my time. Instead I have started doing the following:
Drop dollars on mastery pass, prerelease bundle, and play bunble.
Pick up 3400 gems each month to play events or buy bling (draft, constructed, card styles)
Make sure I get the minimum of 1050 gold a day (min 4 wins + 500 point quest)
Bank all my gold for packs of the new set at launch
Play enough ranked constructed matches each season to get to platinum level - usually it takes me 2 weeks to get there
Doing all of this, I am looking at getting 130 packs of the next set + 13 gold packs at launch.
My stats for past 31 days - 9.71 wins per day, 1403.09 gold per day - level 79 of mastery pass with 19 days to go
Some people can afford it 😉@@atlas4247
@@atlas4247 I guess I disagree. Playing paper would be 10 times as expensive and take way more time. I don't think it's greedy, it's a business. The alternative, if I want the same amount of cards, is I spend 4 or 5 times the amount of playtime. To me it's worth the cost.
I dont think it is that big of deal spending some money on a game you actually enjoy. Farming 500 hours seems fine but spending a bit to speed things up that you spend to watch a movie and eat something after once is omg crazy. The biggest problem with these type of games is that regardless of your time/money investment if you stop playing for a while, when you reenter it seems like you are almost starting from the beginning.
while I do agree with your points, and this is an extremely thorough look at the economy, I feel you overestimate the gold return for the player.
I've returned to the game with the LotR set, I play every day and reroll the quest each time - and only seen 750g ones less than a dosen times.
so the 470k/year number could be unreachable (statistically)
Totally unreachable. I also felt that he misses his own point there by using the 470k/year as a valid parameter, which it isn't. Not to mention there's nothing as hard as going infinite on Draft events. Regular drafting requires much more real money investment on gems, because if we're willing to spend all the gold we get from the dailies quests we would be able to buy a Draft event pass only each 8 days or something - and at this point it would be more safe just using this gold to buy whatever standart pack on Store, since any packs we would gain while Drafting will not count to the Golden Pack prize we have when we buy 10 packs directly from Store.
I have been tracking my gold progress for past 34 days . I have completed 20 x 500 point quests and 14 x 750 quests. That is with completing a quest per day, rerolling once, and NOT banking 500 point quests for next day. I also play enough ranked standard to get to platinum each season.
My daily win average is 9.71, and my daily gold average is 1403.09
1403.09 per day is 512,127 gold per year.
470K is easily achievable.
Thanks for bringing the data on this, it's really helpful to illustrate the point. The 750 gold quests aren't as rare as some people think, and if you can bank the 500 gold quests for an extra chance at rerolling the next day, you'd have a little extra (but too much effort for me!)
@@MartinSparkes-BadDragon
hey, good for you! if you are able to rack those numbers easily, then you are a better mtg player than me
I may have stated my point wrong - I had reacted to Martin's exact phrase -
"If we get a 750 gold quest, and only 4 wins per day, we get 1300 gold/day and this is more than 470k per year" - this is statistically unreachable.
then, I have some questions to your calculation as well
10 wins per day - 700g (23800 per your 34 days)
750 quest 14 times - 10500
500 quest 20 times - 10000
all together - 44300
divided by 34 - 1303
in the end, not everybody has the time or passion to play to squeeze every last gold every day
I sure can't
just don't overestimate the numbers an average player will get
FYI the decks i use in MTGA if i wanted to play similar decks in MTGO that would cost me around $5000 or more. I have maybe 40 tier 1,2 and 3 decks across standard, historic and explorer rn. Each would be $150 to $300 in MTGO.
Wow, I haven't looked into MTGO in that much detail, but I don't see the upside to it compared to Arena, apart from just having more cards available.
@@gameschooldadMTG Modern, Vintage, Legacy, Commander, Pauper etc. MTGO has so many more cards and formats. Thats the only benefit imo. MTGA is way cheaper and the gameplay and UI are so much better. MTGO is just like playing paper. its slow.
I played for free for over a year and was definitely competitive and even reached mythic without even really trying too hard. You tend to have to build decks around the rare’s you get although you do get some wild cards to help build deck you really want to make. I spend money on the game now but I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to. It really does just speed up building your collection and allows you to play limited games more. I will admit that now I’ve got most rare’s in the most recent sets, I kinda miss the play for free days, there’s nothing more satisfying than beating someone who’s clearly spent hundreds if not thousands on the game with a deck you paid nothing for
Agreed!!
I also miss the early days of playing paper Magic when my friends and I had a limited pool of cards from which to build decks. They were real "kitchen sink" decks!
Now, so much of paper Magic seems like the winner will be the person who spent the most on cards.
I love to play in a limited pool environment like drafts or Jump Start play.
Excellent video! I spend like you do, the $15/Mastery Pass. I also bought the Explorer bundle.
The Jump-In tokens are also a good way to add to a collection. If I recall, players get 10 free tokens.
I do buy paper Magic lightly, though don't get the chance to play face-to-face. I like the thrill of seeing cards I use in Arena in "real life" and also discovering cards I have never seen before.
The ink in the cards must have some addictive addictive. ;-)
Buying the actual cards can get expensive quickly, I've only got the Arena Starter Kits from the last few years because they're cheap and they're ready to play with my kids.
Absolutely too expensive! I mainly go for pauper cards and a few packs every now and then.
And oh you can proxy cards like wtf
@gameschooldadMTG I would like to ask to be sure. I did some quick math about the rewards, if you do the 750 quest and 1st win, you'll get 7 packs per week, 28 per month, than means getting 4 rare wildcards just by opening every 6 packs and you'll have 38 random rares from the 28 packs of the month taking into account 2 golden packs. If you do 4 daily wins, this goes to 9 packs per week, 36 per month, leaving you with 6 wildcards and 51 rare random cards.
Just the Bloomburrow set has +250 rare cards, and you end after 3 months with a range of 114 - 154 rare cards (this is of course an estimate). After this you get another set.
I completely understand what you're saying, getting all of these for free and so on, but, that doesn't mean is the best in the world nor that is enjoyable. If you want to build a specific deck, then you're basically doomed since you may not have a lot of rare wildcards (also common and uncommon).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but after looking at these numbers, it is f2p, but that doesn't mean that the economy is really bad and you're forced to be playing the game as a homework instead of having fun.
I also leave this link in addition :)
draftsim.com/is-mtg-arena-pay-to-win/
I'm little confused as a new player.
How many semi competitive decks can I expect to build as a f2p player after a year of constant playing / doing dailies?
Not counting starting decks
It's hard to put a number on that to be honest. If you play pretty frequently, you'll get enough gold and wildcards to build a variety of decks over a year. There are some budget decks that don't take many rare wildcards, which make this even easier.
What are you confused about?
@@gameschooldadMTG I should have been more specyfic.
I'm strict f2p player coming from Master Duel.
I've played MD without paying for about 1,5 year doing all dailly quest/events etc. maximizing currency gains. I made 20 different types (archetypes in YuGiOh) of decks, half of them top tier, half of them junk, but all using different important cards which i needed to drop/craft using only f2p means. I know that cards in MTG are more interchangable than YuGiOh (cards belong to 5 colors vs >100 restrictive archetypes) but I assume it is the mythic/rare cards that makes the deck competitive and it is the bottleneck in MTGA.
For the context, for now I'm playing dimir zombies (horde aggro is fun :D) so i need 4x necroduality = 4x mythic wildcard
I could switch to mono black zombies but it need Sheoldred, the apocalypse = mythic wildcard
or mono black nazgul deck, need Witch-king of Angmar / Sheoldred, the apocalypse / The One Ring = all 3 need mythic wildcards
I feel like these cards are essential to make the decks work in ranked, so I can complete quests => make gold => buy packs => earn more wildcards
Let's say I spend next 1,5 year to grind in MTGA using all available f2p means. I assume I won't go infinite in draft, because I don't know meta etc. so make it constant 0-3 in quick draft. How many types of competetive decks could I make after this time?
sry for any spelling mistake, english is not my first language
I'd say fewer than 5 decks, the progression is mundane and glacial.
Still... the mastery pass should pay itself when you finish it and not just give almost a third of its value.
I'm not sure where you got a third of its value from? The Mastery Pass is hugely valuable and definitely gives you more back than it costs.
It gives You more value than what you arr actually playing for You get 1/3 only i'm gems, You get resources for a deck o progress and Even if You lose the drafts with the tokens or waste the gold You are actually getting the full value as long as You play
@@gameschooldadMTG
It's a common practice in f2p games - by completing bpass you get back it's cost in premium currency.
That would be very sweet. Though, I don't know a game that allows to do so. However, I know a lot of games that allow you to save up resources and pay for the next battle pass even if you're f2p. MTGA is one of them so I don't see a problem here.
You need to save up 2,200 every 3 months. For this period you're also going to get 400 gems for 1,500 gold in daily deals, twice. Just make sure to check it every day. So it leaves the amount of 1,400 gems to save up - 467/month on avg.
Let's say you earn 1,000 gold/day on average, which is super easy to do (and even kinda underestimation). It gives 30,000/month. This equals to 6 Quick Drafts. If you lose every single match in those Drafts you'll get 300 gems. If you win at least 4 matches out of 18 (and in the worst possible configuration, being no more than 1 win per Draft) you get 500 gems, more than you need.
And on top of that, you get tokens, packs, cards, gold, and other rewards in the process.
@@ZEhamster thanks for the detailed response 👍
Let me tell you in layman terms how good the new player experience is : By the time you build a deck you actually want to play (unless it's mono blue or red) the cards would have rotated out and your only choice is to play it in historic. New player ain't gonna do anything in sealed formats, just lose everytime and waste precious resources. If by some miracle you do build a deck before it rotates, you have maybe a few months to play it at best and then it's new format and you're out of gas, and out of a deck. P.S. By new player i don't mean new to arena, but rather new to magic in general.
You do know Standard has a 3-year rotation cycle, right?
Yes sir.@@gameschooldadMTG You have to understand, a new player isn't going to have the patience to play starter decks for 2 months, let alone a year to build up enough currency and cards to make their own deck that will win actual real games of magic. The comparison part of the video is important, because you have to look at how other card games do things to evaluate just how bad Arena has it. You can spend 5$ buying codes online, and you will have enough currency to build every single Meta and Rogue deck in Pokemon TCG Live, and you will have spare resources left . The game also starts you off with 7 decently competitive decks which can be made roguewith almost nothing spent. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel gives you enough currency from the very beginning to build AT LEAST 3 meta decks, and that's just the new player gems. Master Duel also allows you to scrap the cards you don't need to craft the ones you do. If you don't know how to play YuGiOh, the structure decks in the game cost nothing at all and will win you plenty of games all on their own.
Magic could be the best card game in the world, but if you can't play it at a decent pace, it's irrelevant.
@@pozertron Ok then, so you know decks don't rotate out of Standard that quickly then? It doesn't take years to build a decent deck. There are many budget deck options that are very effective, and it doesn't take long at all to get a decent amount of rare wildcards to build a powerful meta deck either, unless you only play once a week or something 👍
This illustrates the problem that many people have with how wizards handles arena and MTg in general. Many people, including me, just see arena as a video game. Others, and including WOTC, see it as a comparable product to cardboard magic. They price it way out of step with a video game. It works for their target audience because you guys are hellbent on holding magic as THE game you want to play. This isn’t a criticism just on observation. WOTC will make arena expensive as long as thier fan base stays hooked and willing to pay. The rest of use are priced out because we do not idolize magic the way you guys do. It’s just a game to me and not the best game on the world.
I never played cardboard because it’s insanely expensive. I do t play arena anymore because ,for a video game, it’s also insanely expensive. They justify it, as you do, by comparing games t to other ways to play magic. It’s not a video game to them it’s the other way to play thier sacred game. And plenty are willing to pay it so I guess it’s the right business call for them.
Whether or not you can be satisfied with the F2P or even low spending arena experience completely depends on how you want to play the game. It wasn’t good enough for me so I stopped. It might be good enough for others. The less casual you try to play the game the harder it will be to go F2P because you will want more and more decks that you don’t get to have. If you play a few games a week then maybe the one meta deck you get to craft can hold you for months.
Thanks for the comment. I agree that playing MTG on paper can be really expensive, I've only got a few starter decks on paper because I don't feel the need to spend hundreds or thousands playing a variety of higher power decks.
But I don't see how you came to the conclusion that Arena is insanely expensive. There's no entry fee, no monthly subscription, and no need to spend any money on the game at all, the only paid options are entirely optional. And although there is the option to spend up to $100 at a time, you could get pretty decent value from the game from spending as little as $5 per month if you wanted to, which is almost nothing.
I haven't spent a penny on the game for about a year (and only about $50 in the 2 years before that), and I can play pretty much whatever I want.
The biggest issue is if you like limited. It's not a gamemode that's supported as f2p at all. I feel Draft and Sealed are a bit too expensive if you care about playing the format instead of using it to expand your collection. You can't use won packs to re-enter drafts (I'd combine 2 normal packs into a "draft pack" if it let me use those instead of gems/gold for buy-ins, even if I'm basically losing value).
And Sealed is not even available all the time.
I'd really enjoy always having a set (current one or rotating ones) be available to phantom draft for a much lower entry price point, and with worse prizes. It probably shouldn't be free since it will lead to a broken format if people can just quit if they don;t open a good pack, but have it be like 1/2 or smeht of the current quick draft costs. Will prolly never happen, tho.
I also saw Limited League format in Eternal CCG (not sure if it's there in other card games), which would be amazing. You get a new league season each month, buy-in for basically Sealed, like 6 packs. And each week, every week, you get 1 or 2 more packs you can open and continuously improve and tune your league deck for that season. I'm really annoyed they're not stealing this format since it's amazing for a digital card game. If you like limited, ofc.
This has always annoyed me about digital card game clients - it's a fantastic platform for draft and similar limited formats, but is priced as if you should be playing it at the exclusion of all other options, or outright pay-to-play. Like, I am probably never going to learn how to draft well because I don't want to spend all my currency to lose 3 matches in a row when I could be doing that in ranked for free :P
I would love an equivalent of a jump-in draft - either a small deck drafted from a lower-rarity pool, or at standard power without keeping the cards, just a temporary deck you can play as much as you like and pick up some simple win rewards.
I think throwing out game comparison is not a good idea. I play hearthstone as my main card game right now BECAUSE it's the most accessible to me on my computer and on my phone, but I also know that I can continue to play this game f2p forever. I like playing mtg in paper but when I'm comparing online game options mtg isn't my first option because of money investment
Cant really play hearthstone nowadays for free, if you want to be competitive in hearthstone
@@disguisedlizard8681 Not really, need to play for a bit of time to when there is enough free stuff. And that's way easier these days compared to 4 years ago when I just started playing. They even give you a fairly competitive deck to start with.
The only thing is keep playing in standard is too costly of time, so I only play in the wild. The format is crazy but the deck you play is also crazy, I personally love ridiculous gameplay.
The only thing is currently the Wild is in a very bad position because some decks just do way too well, while there used to be a lot more decks standing together at the top.
If you are good at drafting I would say it is, otherwise it seems more like a struggle, given how competitive standard is, where many decks will OTK turn 4, only worse in other formats with a larger pool of cards to select from. Initially spent a lot to be collection complete, later on decided to F2P, by being good at drafting the best way to turn gold into gems.
MTGA is actually better IMO. It auto takes rules and tokens into play and keeps players from cheating.
Back in my local shop, players would constantly break rules, 2 copies of a Legendary on the field at once. Gatekeeping how certain abilities work.
Swapping to MTGA was such whiplash watching combos that would have worked at the tables i played not work at all. It was like relearning the game again.
All video games are freemium ( F2P by spending time, buy by spending money)money is time, time os money.
And finding the balance between them is the key of success.
Mtg arena is for players that want to learn the game and cards,and dont like to go to stores and play with real ppl
@@axelbeltran5343 I like to play with real people.
I came back to magic because magic arena, I spend no money on it. Just draft a bit, do my quests, craft the decks I like. Its free, unless you want everything or you want it now, if you’re happy with 5-10 decks per seasson you don’t Need to spend money id you dont want cosmetics, etc.
The main disadvantage of F2P is that the game is programmed where regularly paying players go first disproportionately. As F2P regardless of what deck you play, you will only go first about 1/3rd of the time. That is a significant disadvantage to overcome. You can grind out a deck or two that are competitive and while boring to be stuck with them, they could still win. So you can play F2P, but know that you will always be at a disadvantage versus P2W players. Keep in mind, that’s about 1/3rd on average. It’s only that high because it’s 50/50 versus other F2P players. It’s a business after all, so they want to keep the paying players happy.
That would be very annoying if it was true, but it isn't. Are you claiming this happens to some F2P players, or all of them? Based on what?
@@gameschooldadMTG Evidence. I mean aside from the endless tirade of players pointing it out, anyone can just create an account and play enough games and it becomes obvious. If I could bet in Vegas on whether I I would go first or second with even odds, I would be the wealthiest man in the world in no time.
Thank you MTGA for having a F2P option.
I'm making a ton of free progress on daily's using starter decks in Historical. I built one standard red aggro deck just for fun, but never play it yet. I just tweak it as I get new cards.
You're using starter decks in Historic? You should try the Starter Deck Duel event instead if you prefer a level playing field. Good luck with your red aggro deck :)
@@gameschooldadMTG I'm thinking Historical Ranked to knock out my daily's, then check out the event? I wasn't doing Ranked.
I've done F2P for years and have a lot of fun. I don't have ALL the cards, but I do have some excellent decks that seem to work well and I like playing them. Good vid!
Thanks for sharing!
I'm a freakin' whale ! I like allocating some of my hard earned money to spend on my hobbies !
At least with Arena, i'm getting a nice looking game, an infinite amount of opponents, and don't run the risk of having to sell out because people can't keep up with the prices and my local scene is suddenly deserted.
Thanks for your comment. There are definitely some solid advantages to having Arena, that's one reason why I'm happy to put some money into it occasionally 👍
Nice looking? This game looks criminally barebones for the possible budget behind it.
Arena's is probably more than reasonable on it's F2P. I have definitely seen much worse. However, bottom line is Wizards wants to make money. My experience is you come to a point where you progress at less than a snail's pace. My win rate dropped from about 50% down to less than 10% virtually overnight, maybe less. My opponents totally overpower me, for the most part, and it would take forever to get back to the level I was at staying F2P. But again, Wizards is in business to make money, not give away their product.
I would be curious how far folks have gotten never leaving F2P, and how much of a grind it was.
I haven't found f2p any harder at all. It's just slower unlocking new cards and things like that. If Wizards somehow artificially made your win rate less than 10%, they must have increased everyone else's win rates. I don't see how that makes them any more money.
@@gameschooldadMTG Thanks for the reply. I was thinking more opponent deck strength and skill level matches, and other things like draws, trying to get me to buy stuff to improve those. Just seemed like an awfully big drop practically overnight, when I was basically playing the same way.
Im doing a 5 $challenge on the game im plat right now on rank and i have almost 16kgp for the desire set so wish me luck for the desire set with i still dont know what set is going to be
Is the challenge to not spend more than $5 on the game?
@@gameschooldadMTG yes
Basically to prove that you can follow a path and still getting results and the 5$ was already spend before to start this so I’m not going to count it
As to cost and is it worth it f2p well I was around playing MTG MANY years ago then played other tcgs as well and ending up in Hearthstone.I have in general a very good idea of gaming+costs +value.
First of all ONLINE means you are acquiring VIRTuAL goods so you do NOT own anything you are in legal terms buying a license to use and nothing more.
Let's be honest nobody starting up is going to be a champion and to make it to the top you will need to be in the top loop right away you can't waste time acquiring the needed cards to compete at the top.
However if you want to just have some fun and not care about making the top ranks you can certainly do it for free or do like I did and buy the $5 welcome bundle which is high value.
Thanks for your perspective. I don't think there's any reason why someone couldn't play very competitively without having spent any money (or very little money) on the game. More money helps you collect as many cards as possible, and much more quickly, but if you're focused you can build a few very competitive decks with the number of wildcards acquired from earning free gold and packs.
i miss the days where you just pay 60 bucks for a game and unlock full enjoyment after a few months of playing. and even paid DLC is great if it doesn't make the old content obsolete.
Dude, stop comparing the prices of a digital card game to physical cards. That’s like comparing racing games to buying a ferrari 😂
That's a good point. One can always sell a physical card, while all money we spend on pixels is bound to get nowhere else.
I get your point, but there's a vast difference between a racing game and a Ferrari. The experience of playing MTG is not anywhere near as different between tabletop and Arena. I don't play Arena so I can have something to resell, I play it because I enjoy the game.
Yeah, seriously; have you ever played in a shop with magic nerds? The smell alone 😂
You really missed the whole point. Some decks that require you to be competetive are upwards $100-$500 depending on how competetive you want to be. Mtga give you the option of not buying anything, getting wildcards and free packs and enjoying the game. Not to mention the ability to duel distant friends and enter online mtga tournaments. It is great for new players like me, who have no interest in going to a game store to meet people like you. Get rekt nerd.
@@sriousprobs477 yea, it can be sad. These kinds of games tend to attract those types.
If you are ok with taking a very long time to get what you want. Yes you dont need to spend much. i know guys that only ever purchased those two starter bundles for around $25 combined and have played free since.
I don't even think it necessarily takes a long time to get what you want if you don't spend any money, you just need to know how to navigate the economy.
@@gameschooldadMTG As a new player it takes a while to even know what you want tbh. I started with mono black which in itself is a mythic and rare heavy deck that took a while. Then moved to mono red, blue, and that lead me to rakdos, dimir decks. idk where i would be if i were a free player but i certainly would have no where near what i have now. Especially since my historic/explorer collection is fleshed out these days. fyi ive only played 5 months so far.
I think it depends on what you think is "a very long time". I guess it would take me about 1 month to get familiar with everything, try free decks, different formats, see what I like to play, etc. Then I can feel confident about what I want and where to spend my resources.
Overall, a new player will probably need 3-4 months to save up resources for their first mastery pass (to start getting max profit) while also saving up resources for his own decks. I guess you would call it "a very long time". But since we get 1 new set every 3 months and it remains valid for 2 or 3 years I would not consider it a very long time. At least I don't feel like that. It's not fast either but in my opinion, it's kinda normal for a CCG kind of game.
Especially given that now the game gives me more opportunities to play with new sets and cards than it did several years ago when I tried MTGA for the first time. Probably a new player cannot be competitive in ranked/play queue for some time. But with Jump In and Starter Deck Duel, I don't see it as an issue. It's much more fun and pleasurable to play in these formats than it was during my last experience. When I had to struggle through ranked queues and even completing dailies was a challenge.
BTW, I also bought a starter bundle back then but have not used any resources from it yet.
I do it Ftp all the time, and I make mythic all the time.
Im trying to get into MTG Arena… i play Yugioh right now. Im obsessed with Ninja’s and I dont even know where to start with MTG and getting packs…
If you're starting a collection from nothing, I would recommend doing the Jump-In events to give yourself a wide range of cards to start with from Standard sets of the past year. If you enjoy drafting, do drafts of any set that you want to build a collection of. Usually this would be the most recent set, but it really applies to any set you want to build. If you're buying packs, it's best to buy the most recent and you'll get the golden pack bonus that gives you other extra rares and mythics. When you buy packs you'll also get wildcards to craft any ninjas that you want. You can get some free starter packs/wildcards here draftsim.com/mtg-arena-codes/
@@gameschooldadMTG are there staples? Not sure if its the same as mtg but in yugioh we have staple cards that can be used in any deck.
@@VampireGhostie there are colourless cards you can use in any deck, and some rare lands that are really useful for multicoloured decks. But the best way to get started is to decide what kind of deck you would like to play (Aggro, combo, midrange, control, etc) then just craft the cards that are most versatile for those types of decks.
@@gameschooldadMTG thanks, i am also struggling with the UI. I am pretty tech savy and can figure things out quickly, but man it was tough when I was looking for cards and building a deck yesterday.
The grind feels bad in Arena because the most efficient way to farm dailies is to do them in bundles of 3 but to get adequate amounts of gold one needs to get 1-4 wins every day.
These are conflicting systems.
And the lack of crafting sucks, too. "Just use WCs." Wrong, one needs to open packs to obtain WCs which needs gold. Crafting could be done with the cards one already had. Not to mention that WCs are incredibly scarce
I don't see how daily quests and 4 wins per day are conflicting at all.
I just explained.
For dailies you want them to pile up and do them in trios. This means not doing anything till they're stacked up.
For the wins you want to get 4 wins daily. This means playing every day.
Playing every 3 days vs playing every day are two conflicting ways to play.
@@gameschooldadMTG
One thing you also need to bear in mind with Arena is that it rewards you for playing regularily. If you get 4 wins a day and complete your daily quest you get between 1050 and 1300 gold per day you will get close to 100% coverage of rares and about 60% coverage of mythics for each set which is more than enough to be free to play. The key thing is it is hard to get back order cards, but once you have made it through the first two rotations you should be set.
I do think Arena is F2P friendly and I've been playing over 2 years now (started a few weeks after Strixhaven was released) and just about every day. I spent about 40 USD right at the start to speed things up but haven't spent anything since. As you've said, if you just play enough, you can get just about whatever you want, just slower than someone who pays, that's all.
I will say though, until recently, I think you could have said it was not quite new player friendly. Back when I started, after finishing the color challenge, it was just like you were thrown to the wolves with everything that they just opened up to you. With the recent change/revamp of the new player experience, I do think they addressed that so it's not such shock to the system as it was before.
If there is anything that is might not be F2P friendly could be the unranked matches. With those, it's like if you went to the gym to get a pickup game of 1:1 basketball. The person you get could be some middle aged guy with a dad body or a fellow in decent shape or LeBron James. If you're F2P and have the choice, the 1st two options are fine but I would never willing submit to playing against a "LeBron James" type player, LOL...
Paying 200 dollars for digital cards is supid when you can spend 200 dollars or irl single and make a really good deck
If that's what you'd rather do, that's great. I'd much rather spend $200 over years of playing Arena to enable me to build any deck I want in any available format and play as many games a day as I want, rather than spend that money on 60 pieces of cardboard 👍
I would rather spend money on cardboard that i getto keep forever than on digital cards that will likely dissappear as soon as the game die and with all the money grabbing they do I don't give it to much longer
My statement about you not playing commander makes since I have never spent 200 dollars on a standard deck but I have over 2000 dollars in commander deck that I will have FOREVER and never have to worry about an online game dying
that's the problem. it's like renting the cards till the game die for $200 vs have the cards forever for $200
It was kinda overlooked in the vid, but overall it was very informative
You do great work on these videos! Do you use untapped gg at all? I recently bought the premium just to see what kind of data it shows that is really cool, i think it would sweet if you covered that or some form of figuring out how to research ranks or deck data and formats all that, also I have like 40k + gold and a few draft tokens with the new set coming up what's going to be an efficient way to collect as many new cards as possible? Ma6bee another video when that set drops
Thanks for your comment and suggestions. I use the untapped website, but I already use MTGA Assistant to track my stats. The website is really useful, and I definitely want to cover using these kinds of services more in a video, I just need to find the right time to fit it in.
For the new set, the best way to build a collection would be to Premier Draft straight away using draft tokens (if you have a reasonably good win rate in draft), and reinvest any gems back into more drafts, after you have the mastery pass paid for. Draft for as long as you want, or until you start to see the same rares/mythics that you already have 4 copies of, or until you get to a high enough rank that the games get predictably harder. If you're not as good at drafting, you can wait until the Quick Draft event starts and just do those instead. Once you've done enough drafting, you can hold on to your packs to get maximum delayed value, or you can open them for instant value and wildcards.
I'll probably make a video to go into it in more depth, but that's the general idea that I follow.
Not a very good video for new players. “I can’t compare this to anything else” well I want it compared to anything else because I don’t know magic lmao.
@@IndiaUploadsEngrav this video isn't intended to help new players decide if they want to play magic or not. It's to help people who want to play magic know if they can play it for free.
I've been playing it for about 2.5 years and still haven't spent a single dollar
Do you still find you can mostly craft whatever you want and play a variety of decks/formats?
@gameschooldadMTG yes. I primarily play historic brawl. But I have standard and pioneer decks as well. Just from playing 5-10 matches a day I've been able to pay and craft over 30 plus decks across 4-5 formats
Great video, I also never got the fuzz about the economy being so bad. Playing for 3 years now consistently and I am seeing my collection constantly growing. One note about the formats is probably important: When you want to play different decks in different formats then playing for free will limit you a lot. The limiting factor is the rare wildcards which you ultimately only get so much of. Sometimes the meta changes fast and if you're already "invested" in a losing deck this can be quite frustrating.
Playing formats like Historic Brawl or Standard Brawl have the advantage of not requiring quadruplets of cards.
"I never got the fuzz."
"I've been playing for 3 years now."
The "fuzz" is about the fact that if the game was more generous than incredibly stingy, you could've got to where you are right now progression wise in half the time or less.
I would like to add that now the game is more f2p friendly than it was several years ago. With the new Jump In and Starter Duels it's easier to farm daily quests than before, when you had to do them in the Play queue. Now you can easily farm gold and wins even if you're a new player without competitive decks.
So it's strange for me why people hate MTGA for being p2w more now than they did back then. Then everyone was pretty much happy with the game and now it became even better from what I see.
Also, it's interesting to compare the game (in terms of f2p) to other card games, I feel that's what people usually mean. I have a little experience with HS and I assure you it's much less f2p friendly than Magic. At least it was so several years ago.
Yeah but I don't want to "easily farm gold" with crappy starter decks. I wanna play with the cool cards and brew.
Mtga is terrible for making that happen.
And HS is friendlier with fewer cards to collect, faster games, easier UI, loaner decks, and several free modes that aren't just "play garbo starters" or "grind ladder".
Can you play for free at only a few games a day? Sure, but why the hell would you play a game where the biggest aspect is deck design freedom, only to be severely limited in resources and then stomped out by meta decks (which people play in casual nonstop btw). The average aggro deck has maybe 10 rares in it and the average control/midrange deck has around 30 rares and 8 to 10 mythics. That will take you an entire seasons of devoting every single one of your wild cards just to craft it with very little time to climb ranked with it.
For ranked F2P either play aggro decks or they don't play the game at all because homebrew decks are not worth wasting your wildcards on. It is not a fun experience to log in, que up and lose 70% of your matches because you are lacking so many key cards to even be remotely competitive, just to get dailies done so you can bank enough gold to draft after 5 days. Then when it comes to drafting you actually have to know how to draft to win and you're limited to the reward packs which are always the most recent set.
It's the worst, most predatory in game economy of any F2P game I've ever seen because it intentionally gates the biggest parts of the MTG experience behind outrageous costs of time or money and then compounds it with algorithmic manipulation via MMR, hang smoothing and trying to force 50% winrates to encourage buying out of frustration.
I disagree with basically everything you just said, which is impressive. Thanks for commenting 👍
On my Mono-Black Infect deck I spent $871dollars.
Wow 😲
It's just money vs time
It's finding the right balance between the two in this case. Some games can be almost unplayable if you don't start spending something.
The standard events in this game certainly are unless you are a massively top-tier strategist @@gameschooldadMTG . You almost certainly need a complete meta deck and/or knowledge that only really comes with playing a LOT of top tier decks to be able to brew your way into any amount of wins.
Combine that with the events having a buy-in, and uninformed new players will easily fall into a trap that consumes their resources for basically no gain.
I appreciate that you put these guides together, they are incredibly helpful, but the fact that guides like this need to exist to even kind of understand the economy in this game is a real indicator that the economy is either incompetent or predatory, especially for the new player experience.
I've been playing arena for years. It's my way of winding down after work. I'll come home, finish a daily or 2 then log off. I'll usually have around 70,000-100,000 gold for every new set that comes out and I only ever spend money on the battle pass because I think it's good value as I max it out every time.
lol i love when other people try compare other games to another i mean if don't like rewards vs game your already playing why swap to that game if think that game better its hobby after all try play for free or spend here and there on a budget people pretty much want stuff handed to them for free
I know!
It isn't to tell you to switch games... It's to give you perspective and show you how terribly MtGA does it.
I started playing magc arena recently, but i played pokemon TCG live before and have played yugi-oh master duels and duel-links for a long time, so i "can" compare them. Pokemon is defenitely the least free2play friendly... why? casue even though the game pass does give more rewards and you can buy it for free, the price at wich you can adquire decks, packs and individual cards its a lot higher than the other games, plus, playing normal games does not give any decent reward, most of the time none, even in ranked games where the rewards comes only when you go up 1 entire league (bronce->silver->gold, etc). You get only like 5 basic decks at the start and even the cheaper pack will take at leas 4 days of farming. The money (gold/coins) you get to buy individual cards is only enough for buying 1 cheap deck and playing more will not get you almost any reward.
Yugi is...probably the more free2play friendlier or the second. In duel master, you can get the game-pass for money you get for free, just by playing and the pass gives you not only enough of the same money to buy the next one but even more than that. You get cards and money for just playing and biger rewards for going up the ranks. You get enough to get a pair of meta decks and then its a lot more dificult to get new full decks but its doable as long as you keep playing and completing the game-pass wich allows you to get all the hard to get individual cards.
Yugi Duel links its even easer to farm and make decks, but due to not following the original rules so i'll leave it out.
Magic is probably more free2play friendly than even yugi, but to get individual cards, am not sure, havent played enough to be sure... rng in packs its not very friendlier for anyone so im not giving it a 10/10 pass yet.
I spent 100 dollars max in the begining of my time with arena 4 years ago.I got most of the decks in historic, explorer and standard minus trash Alchemy.
ATM i have 200 rare wild cards and 132 mythic wcs. How can anybody call it trash economy is beyond me.
I don't draft (once or twice per set max)or participate in qualifiers tho
It's trash if you're F2P. You spent the equivalent of two AA video games, your perspective is different.
Love you're content but I disagree with the premise of this video. "I don't want it so it can't be compared" isn't a very intellectually sound argument in my opinion. Especially when analogous games like Yu-Gi-Oh's master duel and hearthstone exist
Thanks for your comment. I feel like it's a solid argument.
If I want to buy a Tesla and someone tells me a Ford would be cheaper, I could say it doesn't matter how much cheaper they are, I want a Tesla. If I'm looking to compare the value of the Tesla I want, I would look at different places that offer Teslas.
If I want to play MTG on Arena and someone tells me any other game might potentially give me more resources for free, I could say it doesn't matter what you get in Fortnight/Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh/etc, I want to play MTG Arena. If I'm looking to compare the value I get in Arena, I would look at the different ways I could play MTG.
I really hope you got paid by WotC for this vid considering how hard you shilled for them. Jesus christ, you're borderline deceiving new players here.
1) Your point about not being able to compare battle passes to other games is outright stupid. You absolutely can compare MTGA's battle pass to other games, including other card games. And it turns out that MTGA's battle pass really is not that generous. It's not terrible value as it's better than anything else in MTGA, but it's pretty common for other game's battle passes to refund you the amount of currency you spent on it by completion for example, letting you re-buy it every season without spending money. It also requires you to play and get 4 wins every day for a good ~60% of the days the mastery pass is active in order to really get your value out of it. That's going to be a 30m-1hr every day, which some players are going to hate to do.
2) You compare MTGA to paper MTG....without ever mentioning that you can re-sell your paper cards to buy new decks. Don't get me wrong, paper is horrendously expensive, but this is a pretty big point to leave out of an economic comparison.
3) I wonder if there's better comparisons to be made here....like say Gwent? Legends of Runeterra? Hearthstone? etc. You know, the other digital CCGs? Spoiler alert for the new players: MTGA doesn't compare well to a lot of them in terms of economy. There's no excuse for you not doing some reddit researching to find some reliable numbers to make a real comparison.
4) You talk about whether or not f2p is viable but avoid breaking it down into hard numbers other than the one time you mention 470 packs per year. What you don't mention is the time requirement of having to play every day for X wins (I'm not sure if you figured 470 based off 4 wins or 15 wins) to get those 470 packs. Not everyone has the time to play every day nor do they want to feel forced to. You don't mention that there's 4 standard sets per year or how golden packs are going to figure into this. How much of each standard set can new f2p players reasonably expect to get? And even more importantly, how many wildcards per set, cause that's the real limiter. You *could* have found this information on your own in 5 minutes of googling reddit threads, because multiple people have attempted to math this out in the past. I honestly don't know if you didn't bother to do this because you wanted to be lazy with your content or because it paints a much different picture about how 'generous' MTGA's f2p economy is.
Here's some actual advice for new players wanting to know what the MTGA economy is like:
- Can you be full free to play? Yes, but be aware that you MUST play everyday for 30m-1hr indefinitely AND you're going to be stuck playing the 1-3 decks you spend your wildcards on for a while. A LONG while, people commonly mention doing this for an entire YEAR to save wildcards for the next rotation. Better hope you picked the right decks and they don't get obliterated 3 months from now when the next set drops and the meta shifts, cause doing those dailies every day is going to be a real slog if that happens.
- Can you get to the highest rank (Mythic) as f2p. Yes....but again you're heavily limited by your available wildcards (sensing a theme yet?) which means that your deck might be good for THIS month's meta...and might suck for the next 11 months. Granted, it's unlikely to be that drastic, but if new sets shift the meta to where your deck's winrate goes down to 51%, getting to mythic is going to take a lot of grinding. If the winrate goes below 50%, you're not getting to mythic at all. Hope you resisted spending all your wildcards!
- Can you play in actual competitions as a f2p player as said in this vid? Lmao, no. Technically yes, and I'm sure there's some pro or very experienced youtuber who's been playing the game for years that has done it, but no new player is going to correctly guess what deck to spend their limited wildcards on that will demolish that event's meta.
- What about going infinite in drafting or events? Technically possible....but realistically impossible for the vast majority of new players to do consistently.
Some common price points players play at:
1) F2p $0 per set - Have to do daily wins every day to get gold, never have enough wildcards to craft that many decks. Experimenting with off-meta decks is basically a pipe dream. Choosing to spend wildcards on Standard means you don't have them for Explorer/Historic and vice versa. You'll have to be pretty selective about what you spend your wildcards on, so I hope you've already got a good idea of what colors/playstyles you enjoy. You can get about 60% of each set as f2p if you save all your gold and play daily, but remember that the real crunch is how many wildcards you have to complete decks with because it takes a loooong time to catch up with the multiple years worth of sets in Standard.
2) Mastery Pass only $15 per set - 4 standard sets per year, $60 per year. A lot of people in this category, they spend a little because mastery pass is technically the one of the best value buys in Arena...but the paid version is basically just an extra 20 packs from the past 5 or so standard sets, some cosmetics, and 10 random current set mythics usually, plus a pet. If the the random cards you get are not good, you basically just got a slight discount on packs/wildcards.
3) $50 fifty pack Preorder Bundle plus or minus the Mastery Pass. $200 per year. Gives you a bigger chunk of the set (which means you spend less wildcards) and more wildcards from opening packs. Alot of people at this price point. This is about where you can start expecting to have ~90-100% of the set and enough wildcards to cover the gap. Definitely possible to brew up some jank decks now without feeling punished for it if they're not mythics, but that competes with you crafting cards to try out the explorer/Historic formats. YOU STILL HAVE TO PLAY EVERYDAY to collect the 'free' gold from dailies.
4) $60-$100 a set, up to $240-$400 a year: This level is usually going to include some combination of the $50 pre-order, buying gems in the $100 bundle but only spending a portion of them for each set on packs or drafting, and buying the mastery pass. This is about where you can start to expect to be able to play mostly anything as you have 100% of THIS set and wildcards for explorer/historic. If you've done this for at least a year or two, that means playing almost anything in Standard, with wildcards covering most of the gap for Explorer/Historic formats. Your mythic wildcards are still a valuable resource, be careful what you use them on. You can start slowly building your Explorer/Historic playables with your wildcards. You only need to spend about $60 per set on packs/draft plus the $15 mastery pass to rare complete, so most players in this category are going to use the extra for a few cosmetics or just to be able to ignore having to play every day, instead only playing every 3 days or so to complete their quests.
5) ~$150-$170 a set: This is the level for people who say 'Fuck dailies' and play when they want to play. Which unfortunately gets pretty pricey, as you can see. You can get about 100k gold (100 packs) each set and about 37ish packs for the current set from the mastery pass which mostly gets leveled due to your dailies. Skipping them completely requires $$$ if you want to be able to reach the same level of play-what-I-want. The vast majority of players, including myself, don't spend this much and play most days to get dailies done.
And as a final note, be aware that if you take time off from the game and don't buy packs/draft during each set, it gets significantly more expensive/harder to catch back up.
All that said, I somehow still enjoy this game. But it's definitely not a good value vs most games out there.
1. This only matters if you want to play other games instead of MTG.
2. I do mention that you can sell cards, but that isn't the point.
3. This only matters if you want to play other games instead of MTG.
4. Yes, playing the game takes time, but if you enjoy the game, this is a good thing.
Also, if you are f2p:
You don't have to play every day to keep up.
You can have more than 1-3 good decks.
You can get to Mythic if this matters to you, but it shouldn't.
You can play in competitive events if you want to, but most probably won't want to, and that isn't the point.
Going infinite is possible, but not required at all.
There are many players who agree that the economy is really pretty generous, or who enjoy playing as much as they want to for free :)
Thanks for your thoughts.
Can't edit, but I forgot the gold, gems, and draft token for the mastery pass when I was talking about it. Dunno how I forgot them, so ignore that bit, it's more than a slight discount.
Dude, you sound like you really hate this game. Maybe you should take a break instead of convincing yourself that it's gonna be more expensive/harder to catch back up? Not to mention that you seem to be wrong in many points you make.
I played MTGA several years ago for a couple of months and stopped because of infinite Cauldron Familiar + Witch's Oven combos. It pissed me off. This month I returned to the game and I'm pretty happy to find out it became friendlier than I remember. The new Jump In and Starter Deck Duel events allow me to complete daily wins/quests easily. Also, I genuinely enjoy playing them. Back then I had to do this with a starter deck against the current meta, playing in normal or ranked queue. And you are right, that was very painful and time-consuming, no match to the current situation, in my opinion.
Also, for some reason, I felt like I "have to" compete in Ranked for rewards and because it's "the sense" of the game. I believe this was my main mistake. Thank God this time I realize that tearing my ass apart for a couple of extra packs is rather stupid.
Obviously, I cannot properly estimate your opinion on set completion and the expense of changing your deck. Still, I wanna make several points here.
- This is rather expected from a CCG. It even says "Free to Play", not "Free to Mythic" or "Free to 100%". So if I find out I cannot complete 100% of my collection, which is probably going to happen, it's not a big deal for me. I pretty much knew it from the start.
- Comparing MTGA to other CCGs by this parameter, I highly doubt you could find a game where you can become Mythic with 100% collection for free. That's not how this business works. The same is true for other game genres, btw, if it's allowed to buy anything but cosmetics.
- I had some experience with HearthStone. And I dare to say its economy (in 2016) was real shit. So seeing you bring up this example here was surprising. But ok, I didn't play it for a long time, maybe something changed. So I did the research as you suggested. I checked Wiki and several videos on UA-cam. From what I've seen, it's improved with the addition of "Rewards Track" but is still painful. Still no wildcards, the same disenchantment instead. You still have to disenchant 30 packs to get 1 Legendary card. You definitely cannot complete your collection without spending at least $100 per set. Packs are considered to be overpriced by HS players themselves. And you still have to complete your dailies. My calculations from Wiki say it's gonna take 3 hours/day, but ok, I'm gonna believe those UA-camrs who refer to 1 hour.
Another note about comparing to other games. I partially agree that it's possible. But at the same time, it often doesn't make any sense. Take my experience for e.g.. What do I do if I want to play CCG, if I tried HS (didn't like it as you see), do not like Legends of Runeterra or Master Duel aesthetics, and Gwent mechanics seem obsolete in comparison?
And this brings us to the last point. The point of this video which you, for some reason, missed. It's not about whether you can become best of the best with 100% collection. It's about whether you can play and enjoy the game without spending money on it. And from what I've experienced myself I think yes, you can. I will also try to update my reply several months later. Maybe if I play long enough as you did I'll change my opinion. Or if I get bored and leave.
Yeah the F2P aspect and progression of MtGA is bottom of the barrel.
The deals on Mobile are better, for gems et least
That's really weird. It's the same for me on mobile.
MTG Onlline is cheaper because you can sell your cards
That doesn't make it cheaper than free. You still need to buy cards to start with, right?
If you are very good or above average in drafting, MTGA is really F2P, otherwise, it's still F2P but you will obviously get less but more than enough to have fun
Fun is subjective.
Honestly garbage thought process mate. You can easily compare. Just because you don’t want to play it, makes little since.
Ok then. If I want a good deal on apples and someone offers me a free banana, I'm still not going to take it :)
It's less like apples vs bananas and more like different brands of apples. You might not want the other brand but looking at alternatives will give you an idea of the expected market price of apples.@@gameschooldadMTG
so, is not free to play, you just give reasons to pay.
You might have missed the point of this video.
The only games with subscription anymore is wow really nobody has paid subscription games anymore
I'm not going to watch the rest of this video. You could have done the bare minimum research on magic online to make an honest comparison
Magic Online isn't really the point of this video 👍
@@gameschooldadMTG then why mention it 👉😎👉. Good luck being a UA-camr.
@@jaytotheareokay if you watched the video, it would make sense! 😂
@@gameschooldadMTG I watched you go "well we can't really compare it to any other game because I want to play magic, but we can't consider this other version of magic because even though I don't know, I'm going to say it's more expensive"
It isn't. Mtgo is much cheaper if you want to play anything other than homebrew piles.
@@jaytotheareokay cheaper than free? That's impressive and also not what anyone else has said about MTGO.
Hell they are missing most the good cards and expensive ones on arena anyways like stop supporting areas trash