Magic the Gathering: Arena

 This one has been a long time coming, but I think I'm finally ready.

It's finally time to talk about Magic the Gathering: Arena. I started playing, predominately on mobile, during the pandemic and I've always kind of toyed with the idea of reviewing it. It's sort of a video game, sort of not. It's modern and not super obscure and I feel like there is already a lot of content about it already. But I finally decided that I wanted to give my thoughts about it, even if it would be just another reviewer screaming into a void. I play a lot of MTGA and I have a lot of thoughts on it and besides, card gaming is still gaming. And while I am still relatively new to Arena, I am most certainly not new to MTG.

I was eight years old when I first saw kids playing Magic in the lunchroom and I knew immediately that I had to get in on that. One of my friends taught me how to play and I started trying to get cards any way I could. Using my allowance, asking for them as gifts, begging my parents to buy them. Like I said, any way I could (it was a lot easier to manage all of that when cards were $2.99 a pack, remember those days?). Mirage, Visions, Weatherlight, 4th and 5th Edition, it didn't matter the expansion, I wanted them. I remember being stoked when I first saw Tempest. There was barely an internet and I wasn't subscribed to any sort of TCG magazine, so I typically learned about new sets by seeing the packs show up in stores. Again, it's a far cry from the way it is today with a seemingly never-ending spoiler season. I started building decks, or more accurately, piles of cards that were all the same color with a few lands, and playing whenever I could. Even when MTG was no longer cool, my friends and I continued to play. I stopped a little bit during Poke-Mania, but even as much as I loved Pokemon, the TCG didn't capture me like Magic did. I stayed with the game as it continued to grow and evolve. I watched it outlast a slew of other TCGs. Remember, it's not like it is now where you pretty much have Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon. There was a Star Trek TCG, two different Star Wars TCGs, you had stuff like Babylon 5, Legend of the Five Rings, Deadlands, Doctor Who, Spellfire, 7 Seas, Overpower, even major sports leagues got in on the action with MLB and NFL Showdown. There were countless others and honestly, it kind of feels like the TCG world is headed that way again with games like Flesh and Blood, Final Fantasy, One Piece and, of course, the official game of the Mouse, Lorcana. But through all of that, MTG survived and continued to thrive.

Yet for all of its success, Magic never really had a video game version that I had access to. I reviewed Magic the Gathering Shandalaar a few years ago, but that was a PC game and I lacked access to it for the reasons I outlined a few weeks ago. There was Battlemage, but that was more loosely based on the rules of MTG rather than a straight up video game adaptation. I have a strong feeling I will be reviewing it at some point. Magic Online was the first version of what I really wanted, it was just a straight up video game version of MTG. However, you also had to pay for cards and that meant choosing whether I had to buy paper cards or digital ones. I did play a decent amount when I was in college, I was never really able to find a playgroup there, but it got to be too expensive to really keep up with both. I also found the community to be a little...difficult to deal with on MTGO, particularly in the more intense formats. I still do hop on from time to time, I like that they have true EDH and I think it's the best place to play pauper, but it's very infrequent. Arena isn't as diverse as MTGO, but it's much easier for me to access, especially on mobile. I typically don't love mobile games, but when I had the opportunity to essentially have MTGO in the go, I couldn't pass it up. I will say that while it isn't perfect, I don't have as many complaints as some folks do. However, I understand the frustration a lot of players have with Arena. The mobile app especially has some issues that hamper the overall experience and the card pool causes, what I feel, are issues with some of the formats. Magic is a 10/10 game, but MTGA isn't the best way to experience it. That doesn't mean it's bad though and it's still a perfectly serviceable interpretation of MTG.

Arena offers a handful of formats, including standard, historic, explorer, alchemy, standard brawl, historic brawl, draft and sealed. I have dabbled in all of these except for explorer, but I mostly play the brawl formats (kind of like EDH, but 1v1 and lower starting life totals) and draft. Draft and EDH are my preferred formats in paper, so it only makes sense. Alchemy is...well, we'll get back to alchemy later. When I want to get a little more competitive, I usually go for historic, because of the way Arena's economy works I feel like it's a better option in the long run. I should probably mention, I am completely free to play on Arena, I've never spent a dime on the game though it's worth reiterating I'm not a big-time competitive player. But we will get back to the economy later. Because at the end of the day, none of that matters if the interface is a mess and the controls don't work. Fortunately, that's not the case here. Your hand will appear at the bottom of the screen and you drag cards to the battlefield to play them. Anything on the battlefield is represented by its artwork, and a long press on mobile will bring up the details. These details include the obvious, like explanations of keywords, as well as more deep stuff, like potential tokens and counters related to the card. Any information you would know will be displayed permanently, like if you know the top card of your library or cards in the opponent's hand. By default the game manages your mana for you, but you can also click/tap on lands to choose how to spend it yourself. For the most part the A.I. does this pretty well, though in really precise situations you probably want to tap your lands yourself. Even on a phone screen everything is clear and easy to see, the interface works and everything makes sense, the only thing I ever really had issues with is it's hard to deal with lots of cards in your hand, but that only happens every so often. It's easy to get into games and there is almost no wait time, I don't think I've ever waited more than a minute.

I like that there are so many formats and I think each one offers a little something for everyone. I especially like quick drafts, which are untimed drafts against bots. Their logic isn't the greatest, but it's a small price to pay for having a format designed with the fact that you might have to drop out at any second in mind. Alchemy is a much-maligned format and I'm not really a fan myself, but I don't think it's quite as bad as the community makes it out to be. For the record, this format is similar to standard but has certain cards "rebalanced" rather than outright banned. This was an attempt to take advantage of the digital nature of MTGA, obviously you can't do something like that in paper. It also has mechanics that are digital only, like conjure, which will allow you to put random cards into your hand from your library or various "spellbooks" contained in certain cards. I don't think that's a bad idea inherently, my issue with it is that these changes bleed over into the brawl and draft formats, which I don't really like. I want my Winota, Joiner of Forces to trigger eight times on an attack instead of just one, if I wanted the rebalanced version I would just play Alchemy. I have heard a lot of people complain about the economy being predatory and while I can understand that, I don't think it's that awful. Part of that is because I like drafting, most people I have heard complain about the economy hate drafting. It's by far the easiest way to build up a collection on MTGA, especially if you can win a couple games. Cards can also be purchased through wildcards, which are somewhat hard to obtain at the higher rarities.  I totally get why a standard player would have a problem with this, blowing all their wildcards before having to do it again in two years. But for historic, where decks don't always change that much, it wasn't a big deal. It's a weird economy because essentially all rares are created equal. Sheoldred is like $60 in print right now, but on Arena she's no different than any bulk rare. I think that's weird, but I don't know if its predatory.

Also, and now I am going to get into "unpopular opinion/hot take" territory, I think a lot of the complaints revolve around the cost of cosmetics. I've been wanting to say this for a long time about gaming as a whole, but if you spend even a cent on cosmetics you are wasting your money. I get it, it looks cool, but don't complain about not having the resources to buy stuff that's actually useful in game when you blow it all on skins. Both gems and gold can be earned without paying money on MTGA and anything you earn should go straight back into building your collection. Honestly, this is a problem that goes beyond Arena and impacts gaming as a whole, but all the money spent on these cosmetics is what enables companies to continue pushing all these microtransactions. Everyone is so worried about looking like a "noob" or "casual" that they will fork over money just to avoid it. In addition to being wasteful and not great for the industry, it's also short sighted from a gameplay perspective. It's actively an advantage if your opponent thinks you are a "noob" because there is a high probability they are going to let their guard down. Anyway, that's a different problem for a different day.

Arena has plenty of problems on its own, the most obvious being the abysmal "shuffler" the game uses to determine which cards you will draw. I have heard a lot of people say its rigged and I definitely don't think that's the case. Because it's awful for both players. I have been mana screwed more times in the three years that I have played MTGA than in the almost 30 that I've played paper MTG. But it's not the number of games that I lose because of this that shows me it's a problem. That could just be chalked up to making excuses and our inherent bias towards negative things. What tells me it's a problem is the number of games I feel like I win because my opponent just straight up can't do anything. Winning that way just isn't fun and it happens way too often. Half the time my opponents, understandably, concede and it ends up just being a waste of time for both of us. I also feel like I always draw the same stuff all the time in braw, which shouldn't really happen in a 100-card singleton format. Sometimes it works in my favor, but other times it makes some of my decks feel completely unplayable. I also wish more focus would be put on the brawl formats, particularly historic brawl. For all these alchemy changes and balances, they really don't do a good job of mixing up these formats that, while casual, are very popular. Honestly, I am debating leaving them entirely because the current meta is just piles of every removal or counter spell in the format, a few rocks and whatever busted 8+ CMC spell you can find. There is almost no room for any midrange strategies at all, though sometimes aggro decks can get under these strats. Also, every time I see Etali or Atraxa in the command zone, I get a little sick. Etali hopefully goes away as soon as the next "fun" card comes along. The stupid shrines deck was the hotness for a while and I don't see that much anymore, so good. But unfortunately, I think Atraxa is here to stay. I don't have a problem with powerful cards, but you rebalance Winota and not Atraxa? Seems odd to me. Some of this issue is down to the card pool, it's decent sized on Arena but it does have some blind spots. That's why the shrines deck was such a menace, some colors just don't have the means to deal with enchantments on Arena, black has maybe one or two. I know a lot of people hate hexproof, but printing more creatures with it or ways to grant it would go a long way in negating some of those removal piles.

Overall, MTGA has its share of issues. But Magic is still a great game at its core and this is your gateway to take it wherever you want to go. Many of the problems I have with it are kind of just my opinions, which you may not share. I don't love the balance changes and while I don't personally have a problem with the economy, I understand why a lot of people do. I wish there was more focus on the brawl formats, but again that's my opinion. A lot of games end up wasted because of the shuffler, but this is mitigated somewhat by the short wait times. I do wish the card pool were bigger, but It's not like they can just release every card at once and they are definitely growing the options. At the end of the day, Arena is Magic the Gathering in your pocket, even if its not the ideal version of the game. I will never take this over a game with good, old-fashioned paper, but I can't always get that. I also think it's a great gateway into the game. So, if you ever wondered if MTG was for you, or if you remember playing it in 6th grade and want a quick nostalgia trip, maybe give Arena a shot.

8/10