Magic: The Gathering Arena

The old classic, Magic: The Gathering, is now playable online directly from its makers, Wizards of the Coast. There are very good reasons for why it stood the test of time, but I think there is a problem when, now that there is a lot more competition and there are a lot of new ideas, the gameplay might seem a bit old.

The objective is simple, get the other player to zero health first. The turns have many phases which can be very complicated for new players, and there are lots of pauses during the turns so that you have the opportunity to play “interrupt” cards on the opponent’s turn. Also, as a new player, just reading how some cards worked did not make me understand it until I played it, and even then there were some problems. After you learn the mechanics of the game, it will not seems too much or too hard, but there is definitely a steep learning curve in the beginning.

The decks have a minimum of 60 cards and you can have at most 4 of any type of card, except lands that give you mana, and a typical deck has about 40% land cards. Thus, you can easily imagine how RNG can cause some massive pains out of the gate. Through my modest journey into this game, I concluded that usually you only get to draw about a quarter of your deck before the game is over, or a winner is almost certain. This results in low consistency, which will make some players happy because every match can be quite different for them with the same deck. On the other hand, once again, RNG can bend you over.

There is little wonder that games like Hearthstone, that streamlined how a turn is played and got rid of the complex mana system, gain so much popularity, not that I think they’re automatically better.

Overall, I liked the card art style even though there are no premium versions of cards, which might look different or be animated, but the mythic rare cards do have some 3D animations when played.

The game is free to play and you do get relatively quick some relatively decent decks for a beginner, but after that, the game is not all that F2P friendly. They could make the avatars and the boards look (a lot) better but at least the game client is very responsive.