Magic: The Gathering Arena

Most broken game ever (mechanics). And when it is not broken it is most of the times toxic, even in play queue. I can't have fun even when it doesn't bother me to lose. Avoid it if you don't know where you are getting into. The game is a joke. And the people who play it the worst of the gamers. Though in the ranked mode you can't level down once you reach a rank (like in duels) people keep using the unranked mode with tier1 decks to do their daily quests at the expence of their opponent. The game is not "magic", it is attacking "magic users" and the most cancerous plan wins. And the game gets more broken with new sets added. This is both the designers fault and the players base fault, because if a broken combo exists players will use it to win rank and get rewards faster. I started playing in 2015 with duels. At first I was having fun and was happy if I won a match. Then I learned the cards and tried to play competitive, I couldn't climb beyond a point because that demanded either fast decks or decks full of removal and I didn't like this style, I wanted a board state. I also started to really hate the game when the sets were too many and the people started playing decks full of mythics, broken combos, and all the things that weren't suppossed to happen. People in the forums there said the game was unbalanced because of duels nature and missing cards so I bited it and was happy to move to Arena for the full experience. Well the game is broken even if you have the cards that are supposed to help you. Problematic cards happen all the time and banning them most of the times means they are played in Historic. As I said the problems get worse with every set and currently it is turn 3 wins with elves or goblins, 4 mana instant win by combining 2 cards, turn 4 Ugin, turn 5 win by self milling doing nothing, scute swarm that gets you tens of creatures and every way imaginable to play your library without paying mana like mutate or energy. I got to mythic and the climb wasn't worth it. Unless you are happy to see more broken things and playing against the same cards. The system is designed to make you play as much as possible, you can win 1.5 cards/day. With some weekly deals monthly offers and new set gifts lets say you can win 2rares/day. Lose a part of every day and get every day bad competitive vibes to get 2 cards. So besides the competitive side, lets say you lose at least 2 hours/day and win 2 rares/day, do the math and guess how much time you need to spend to have fun with one set when every set has more than 260 rares and more than 70 mythics. This is why people care only to win. And they add at least 3 sets/year. You want to pay? The deal is 15 euros for 24 random rare cards and 7 random mythic cards, and you might not even get these and get 20 gems instead. Even if you play everyday and buy smartly you will need huge amounts of time and you will spend coins elsewhere too. I am collecting Amonkhet for 6 months and I am still missing 200 rares/mythics. So if you want to join the dark side of life this game is perfect for you. The game has nothing to do with its fame which was made by people who had limited cards available and played with their friends and were making new friends. I was fan of TSR in the 90's and am still fan of cooperative storytelling RPGs but I don't know who are WotC. I certainly don't approve the turn from cooperative play to competitive fights and letting players play chaotic or evil. I don't know how much time I have on this game but I played since alpha and I had 2400 hours on duels 2015 till 2017 when that game stopped being supported. I hated duels and I hate Arena. It is like, lets create hundreds of problems and hundreds of solutions (like counter and destroy everything) and let the people try to figure it out like we know what we are doing. The only thing the designers are doing is releasing sets quicker than people with normal lives can get.

Okay, I've been a casual MTG player for more than 20 years. I've played the actual game and most of the digital versions. In terms of the mechanics and how the visual effects and iconography aid in quickly assessing the board (not to mention looking pretty cool) this is my favorite iteration. I like the feel of it and it plays well (for the most part but keep reading). A few issues though: firstly, why do my games against the AI require the server? This wouldn't be so bad except TWICE as I was closing in on a win I got network connection errors and the play ended. It wasn't my end because my browser was able to hit other sites fine and play video all the while so I only assume it was their servers. That really stinks. The other big letdown is (at least at the time of this review) it only supports 1v1, no two-headed giant mode which has always been my favorite. Other than those two things there have also been a few blocking UI issues (cards not going away from the screen after I won them) but that's (so far) been limited to the title menu screens. Overall there's a lot I really love about this incarnation and a lot I don't. Ultimately I'm somewhere in the middle; hoping it gets better with time.

I love playing Magic: The Gathering in paper, and I've player Draft, Modern, Legacy and even some Vintage for the past 10 years. I was really excited when this MTG: Arena came out, to finally have an opportunity to also play Magic from home from time to time. However, the platform is designed in such a way, that your winning chances in Best of One are restricted to your card draw. Most of the games you win or lose in this Game Design, with just 1 game to decide the outcome of a match are skewed towards who draws 4 lands and all the powerful cards. It seems the only other option is drawing no lands and lose, or 12 lands and lose. Playing this game is frustrating over time, because your player skill is almost worthless compared to the engine that runs the randomization behind the scenes. And of course, every single detail in that engine is designed for you to buy more packs, to be able to build a better deck. Ultimately, the best of one format, that is inherent for most of the games on the platform creates an unfair advantage for Wizards, and an unfair source of income. You just need to remember, that skill is absolutely irrelevant, and as long as you enjoy either one player playing the game while the other does mostly nothing, this is the platform for you to play this game.

I grew up playing MTG back in the 90's and was excited to try out a digital version of the game to see what it was like today and I am surprised at just how bad the game is compared to the original. I have to assume that the card designers excuse for such bad game mechanics is to feed their families by forcing the community to pay for the broken cards. I mean its not like there are one or two cards that are broken... there are so many that one could argue "If everyone has them then its fair" but unfortunately then the game comes down to who draws them first and plays the I win button. I played for a couple of days and it became more and more common the higher the rank I went that either myself or the other player would just concede within the first 1-3 turns with the game being decided. This is not only not fun for either player, its a complete waste of time and nudges the players with the least amount of broken cards into buying more broken cards so their chances of drawing them at the beginning of the game is better than their opponents. I was going to write up all the reasons to avoid this game having uninstalled it myself but I will just make a list of the pro's and cons and future players be warned. PRO's: Card Art - It is the one redeeming thing of value in this game and the mtg artist should be proud of their work. CON's: (I am only listing the major ones... there's more but I am trying to keep this short) high volume of untested cards leading to broken game mechanics (card interactions do not work as described on the individual card) high volume of pay to win cards (very lost mana cost, very high impact, very rare availability) poor match making system stupidly long player turn duration, if a player afks on purpose it takes about 3 minutes to continue, can be longer if the other player is trolling. poor shuffling algorithm *( It is very common to draw either land or nonland cards consecutively 8+ turns in a row in a deck of 36/24 deck composition ) *( you can put a maximum of 4 of the same cards in a standard deck, and its not uncommon not to draw all four in either the draw +1-2 turns or to not see a single on having played through 80% of your deck in a game. I happens all the time is very noticeable.) very high volume of cards that do the same exact spell/effect as another card of a different name within the same color, this basically breaks the rule of having only 4 of anyone one card in a deck. This is incredibly bad in the black/blue colors but is present in all colors. True sign of lazy game design and no forethought. Closing thoughts... If you want to see some amazing artwork, download the game its worth it for that. If you want to play the game go into knowing its a complete train wreck, zero skill, zero strategy, and I say that as someone that got mythic in the top 1200 players in three days. I used to look at my box of old magic cards and remember the good times me and my friends shared playing the game, now mtg just feels like.. a brainless money grab that's not even trying to pretend at not being the piece of **** it is... just sad.

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.

The pay to play mechanics ruin what should be a fun game. The decks will always leave you mana or creature screwed when I played with real cards I never saw draws like this gives round after round. it crazy how I hate a game I want to love because the devs are so obviously greedy!!! From what I can see this has been the case with this game for two years since its a topic widely discussed all the way back to 2018. These so called free games have destroyed games with loot boxes. I won't budge on calling this a failed game until its balanced and the AI functions with decent deck shuffles.