Locations
The veil has been lifted! No, not Lilliana's Chain Veil. I'm talking about MTG Arena's non-disclosure agreement. It has been lifted and people can stream, write, and talk about it. So, I'm here to write about it. I've been playing some MTG Arena and I have my own personal experience and thoughts on it. So today, that is what I'll be talking about. From just initial thoughts to what I think would help improve the game. The future is digital, and Wizards of the Coast isn't going to fall behind.
Initial Thoughts
It's important to keep in mind that MTG Arena is in the beta stages. Nothing is set in stone and you might encounter some bugs along the way and that's okay. After all, Hearthstone and League of Legends weren't built in a day.
When I first booted the game up I was honestly impressed. It looked clean, I had plenty of prebuilt decks I could choose from, everything from aggressive strategies, 
control/midrange decks, 
Explore and even Tokens. Now these decks weren't exact copies of their Standard paper counterparts, but they were a very solid start. The only thing I was a little saddened about was I was not given the option to play a ramp strategy. As a lover of ramp decks, especially Hour of Promise, not seeing any ramp deck was a little disheartening. Since you don't have an option to play a preconstructed ramp deck, it also meant that you aren't given many ramp options. No Thunderherd Migration, two Naga Vitalist, and a couple of Gift of Paradise. Oh well! I'll just play some games and build the deck overtime.
The visuals looked great, especially for Beta! Seeing cards punch my opponents face, the noises when your transitioning phases, and the animation on Eternalizing / Embalming really looked cool. The visuals were so much better than Magic Online. After I got used to the buttons and how the game flowed, I liked it.
No Clock
Unlike Magic Online and paper Magic, MTG Arena had no clock. Thank Kruphix! Instead if the opponent was taking too long it gave them a timer around their profile portrait. When the rope ran out, they were done. If they continued to do nothing even after that, I would win the game! Same was true if they were just taking forever, they had to finish their turn within a set time.
These are all wonderful things. The only downside is I'm not sure how they'll implement infinite combos like copying your Restoration Angel with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. The game is still in beta though and I'm sure they'll figure that out when they get to it.
Quests
MTG Arena has quests! It will ask you to do something like play 15 Black spells or kill X number of creatures. When you finish the quest, you'll get gold and gold is used to purchase packs. The quests I saw rewarded 250-500 gold depending on the quest and a pack would cost 1000 gold. You also had dailies that you got do every day for another 100 gold. So, it took about three days to get a pack with just quest farming. However, you also had a weekly quest/goal that awarded you a pack per five, ten, and fifteen wins. This sounds like a lot but it's not. 1000 gold for a pack is a hefty price! Especially when you can't even buy packs yet with real life currency (for now, at least).
Wild Cards
Wild cards are ways you can craft your own cards. For example, if you have a common wild card, you can craft any common you want. Same is true for uncommon, rare, and mythic. One way to get wild cards is just by opening packs. Sometimes instead of getting a normal common, uncommon, rare, or mythic in a pack you'll get a wild card of that same rarity. It will be blank, but you can make it anything you want.
The second way to get wild cards is getting more than a playset of a card. For example, if you open your fifth Oketra's Last Mercy, it will become a wild rare which you can then turn into any rare you want.
This can be crappy because nobody really wants an Oketra's Last Mercy as their rare, let alone four of them. You cannot "dust" cards to make new cards, thought I wish you could. I would gladly trade two, three, or even four bulk rares for a rare that is good.
Playing what you want to play
Forget that for now. You can't play the same Standard deck you're playing right now in Standard. I mean you can play an aggro, control, or midrange deck but not the exact cards you want. The card acquisition rate is like molasses. It is so slow, and it would take months upon months for you to build the deck you want. This is frustrating because if you're trying to do this as quickly as possible you're stuck playing some sort of aggressive strategy. Aggressive decks are fast, win or lose. This lets you gain more wins on average per hour. The problem with this is, some people do not enjoy playing aggressive strategies.
Sure, I can play a control deck to farm the cards/wild cards I need but I know deep down that I'm not being efficient by not playing an aggressive deck. This is especially true since you don't get anything if you lose. So, in the end, I'll play an aggressive deck to farm the cards I need so that I can play what I want. The problem with this is that I'm still stuck playing a deck I don't enjoy for months, and that's no fun.
Moreover, knowing that my account is going to get wiped of all cards when MTG Arena gets out of the beta sucks. I'll farm cards for five months with an aggressive deck and then maybe play the deck I want? For how long will I even get to play the deck I worked so hard to get before I lose everything? That's a huge deterrent.
A fix for this is to give something small, even with a loss. Have that small reward grow by a percentage the longer the match takes. This allows people to grind control decks instead of feeling they need to play an aggressive deck to make the most use out of their time and effort.
Wrap Up
I do enjoy playing MTG Arena. For people complaining about the program, they need to keep in mind that it is in beta. Wizards is looking for feedback, so they can change MTG Arena to what you and I want. So, give it to them.
MTG Arena is big step up for me visually from Magic Online. It's a lot easier for a new player to play Arena then jump straight into Magic Online. MTG Arena is a CCG not a TCG. This means you cannot trade or sell your cards. While this is a deterrent for some, I personally do not mind it if it's a lot cheaper to play. This is a terrific way to make the barrier of entry easier for people that don't have a lot of money to spend on paper Magic. I do not like having to go on a website to buy cards for Magic Online, logging in and waiting for a bot to trade me, then finally getting my cards. That's not even getting into how annoying it can be that we must go into the "market place" to find a bot with the card we want that also needs to be available to trade. If they do the CCG right, I will welcome it.
Right now, MTG Arena is essentially glorified sealed. Everyone is playing insanely powerful sealed decks instead of playing Standard. I would like to see a quicker way to acquire cards. I believe they are on the right track. The wild card system is unique and enjoyable. Honestly finding the right balance with that alongside reducing pack price or gaining more gold is good enough, at least for me.
I would love to see an alternate to foil cards online. Foil cards just don't cut it online. Having the card being animated or full art would be cooler than a foil that just glows.
Wizards is just beginning to scratch the surface with what they can do with Magic in MTG Arena. We don't even have draft implemented yet and that's going to be very enjoyable for Limited players. I can't wait to see what other formats they will slowly incorporate into MTG Arena. I really hope they eventually have a way to play Modern on the Arena platform. It is their most beloved format after all. The players love seeing and playing Modern. I can't imagine how much coding and work would go into making all those sets that are legal in Modern being playable on MTG Arena, but it would be a shame to not have access to it.
I look forward to seeing my favorite game adapt and grow. Overall, I'm excited for MTG Arena and its potential. I hope one day I can play a tournament as big as a Grand Prix in my underwear from home. Now that would be magical sight. If you want to hear me talk more about MTG Arena, make sure to check out the newest episode of Think Twice where Justin and I talk MTG Arena and what some of the better cards to craft are when just starting out.
That's all I have for you today folks. Make sure to give wizards your feedback on MTG Arena and what you'd like it to see or change. I'll be streaming some MTG Arena soon as well so make sure to give me a follow on Twitch.
As always thanks for reading,
Ali Aintrazi
Follow me @AliEldrazi
