This review contains SPOILERS! Click to expand.
Magic Arena is by far one of the best games I have ever played, and I've been gaming since about 1962. The depth of this game is incredible. Almost every day I see new combinations of cards, many I never thought of. So this means I'm constantly learning from other players. And I've discovered a few fun combinations on my own. In the last year I've played 100's of hours. And
Magic Arena is by far one of the best games I have ever played, and I've been gaming since about 1962. The depth of this game is incredible. Almost every day I see new combinations of cards, many I never thought of. So this means I'm constantly learning from other players. And I've discovered a few fun combinations on my own. In the last year I've played 100's of hours. And if I was better at it, there are tournaments where you can win money. So far I've not spent any money on it. I win quite a few free cards everyday. It's incredibly fun to get just the right card at the right moment and win!
But all this said, even though I've had more fun playing Arena than just about any other game ever, I've also gotten so angry the neighbors wonder who I'm cursing. There is something wrong with the shuffler. If you know even the most basic things about statistics and probability, you'll know what I say is true. For instance I took 40 land cards, 20 plains and 20 swamps, shuffled them together, and then laid out 10 cards. I did this 100 times. Each time I would reshuffle. In every case I got a mixture of plains and swamps. Never once did I get 10 swamps or 10 plains. But playing Magic Arena you CAN have strange things like that happen. I've had decks of 60 to 80 cards which had 15 swamps and 15 plains, and not only did I get 10 swamps in a row but not one other card such as a creature. It's statistically almost impossible to replicate that with a real world deck. The only place you'll see really crazy draws is in Arena. Also certain cards seem to want to be drawn more often than others even if you only have one of them in your deck. This happens over and over 100's of times.
Then you have the other players. My best wishes to the real "gamers" out there that know their decks and play their cards in a reasonably fast manner. The real players are a joy to play against. Other people that you run into commonly will let the timer almost run out every single time over and over. So a game that should have taken at most 10 minutes to play now drags on for over 30 minutes. Other people deliberately create decks that don't seem to ever win but they just go on and on, they'll literally take 10 minutes just to do all the crazy things they can with their cards. Then you have the people that, when they see they're losing, just walk away and so the timer runs almost out and at the last second they come back and stall, and stall, and stall. In just about any other game I've ever played this type of "griefing" or play that is just ruining the game, is not allowed. But Arena is a haven for some really nerdy strange people that pull stunts like I just described. And of course naming and shaming these people is strictly not allowed. In fact the forums are run very strictly and you cannot say anything negative without having your post edited or removed. So what I'm saying is a portion of the community is just there to mess with you and ruin your game. That does happen in other games but many games either allow it (Eve Online) or ban you for using game mechanics to ruin the game.
So you have one of the greatest games ever that is partly ruined by a whacked out shuffler system and whacked out community that deliberately do things to ruin the game with no consequences. I can only hope it gets better someday.