How is it so many of my opponents already have massive amounts of Rare and Mythic cards from the latest expansion? Without the option to dust cards, are people really spending $50+ on each expansion on Arena? I feel like I'm the only person playing who isn't dumping tons of cash into this game. I've bought the welcome bundle, but that's it. But everyone I play seems to have all the shocklands, 4 copies of each Mythic and Rare in their deck and some of the popular decks that include the newest expansion are super expensive with like 38 rares and 14 mythics. Guess I'm just surprised to see so many people spend a lot on this game.
I have spent about $65 in total on the game so far (started when open beta hit.) I have 2 really good decks, 1 of them is totally complete and 1 is almost complete. I also have 7 out of 8 U/B rare lands which aren't used in either of my decks currently. It can be worth it to spend $ on Arena, and you'd be surprised what it can add up to. I also have like 8 rare wildcards 4 mythics and 20+ each of uncommons and commons. Also 20,000 gold saved up for when I can use that to buy allegiance drafts.
I spent $40 in two $20 chunk increments for release of allegiance. Just use those gems to start drafting. Always rare draft a shockland unless you have some bomb you really need for your deck in the same pack. If you're good enough at drafting, you can keep playing with that money for quite a bit longer than the 2 drafts $20 would normally buy you. You're opening prize packs the whole time, saving up wildcards and opening cards you need for your deck.
My method was: Build my first tier 1 deck that I'm very happy with. Once you get tired of drafting the set a bunch, just keep saving all wildcards/gold/gems until the next set comes out. Instead of going to a pre-release, which is a bit of a drive for me, I spent that money on gems to draft the set the day before pre-release even came out!
To sum up, yes, people are spending $ on it and it is worth it. When I was really hurting for rares to finish off my first tier 1 deck, I did spend a bunch of gold on packs just to get that ticker counting up. Thing is, when you put the resources towards packs you end up getting wildcards much faster then just the ticker indicates. I'm guessing I open either a rare/mythic wildcard right from the pack around 1 out of every 6 packs. So opening 6 packs is more like getting 2 rare wildcards, not just the 1 that comes from the ticker.
I'm finding that I like Arena more and more. My store regularly fails to fire off it's drafts, so I'm getting quite tired of it. Much more economical to draft on Arena, time and $ wise. I plan on saving up so I can buy the $100 gem bundle in the future because I'm so please with Arena. I have 2 really good standard decks for $65 (plus a bunch of other cards on top of it.) These decks would cost me over $300 to buy in paper. Also, I would have to pay $5 to play standard at the card shop. I've totally given up on standard paper Magic as it's WAY too expensive compared to Arena. So long as you can be patient when building the deck, or just spend a bit more $, you should be fine.
Hmm, I guess I have a hard time crossing over to the digital cards. I still spend money on physical cards (usually draft once or twice a month and mess around with modern and commander) but can't convince myself to put money into Arena, even though I do end up laying it probably more than physical Magic...
I'm actually having a lot of problems when trying to jump into the mythic and rare competitive league, because I feel without having a platform to playtest ideas out you can't accurately spend the rare slots and mythic slots well enough. You might just pick a bunch of rares that don't work well competitively together and are stuck grinding for a month just to recover from it, which is what happened to me going demir and now probably rakdos colors.
The issue is that if you want to play something other than aggro or jank midrange, you have to spend the money or just game on cockatrice until you figure out your setup. Meanwhile, when you open packs you don't get as many rares outright because they grant you wild cards, which are cards you get to use. Those cards are basically dead in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they are trying to build or aim for, and the default filters for the game are set so that only cards one owns are seen so they may not even actively realize there is a specific card available that does something they want.
I mean, I hate to break it to wizards, but the problem is that their game has gotten so money hungry due to the damn stakeholders they've made it so an average player would have to spend a huge amount of time and money just to make a deck in standard that burns out in one season! Their is no free mode 75 card format with best of 3, either, so free players get stuck in 1v1 vs grinders all day. I don't even want to get started on the control decks in those queues. My god, do you think someone wants to sit through a pile of garbage so you can enjoy playing your Teferi deck when the entire reason you and your opponent are there is to get packs and gold?
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Well no need to convince yourself. My card shop is small and our population is low too. This means my shop doesn't fire sometimes. I too have a paper Modern deck and tons of EDH decks which I will never give up. However, I do like playing standard. None of my close Magic friends play standard. Also my card shop is so small, the meta can be kind of bad. Like really hard to win.
I too was a big skeptic when first starting on Arena. However, the free rewards are real. It's also SO much more convenient than finding people to play standard in person. While I love the person to person interaction, it's my hope that we don't need to give that up. I'm trying to get my friends into Arena as well. You can just bring your labtops together, sit across the same table and do a person-to-person challenge with your decks. The games go way faster as you don't need to shuffle. You don't have to bring an entire backpack full of decks that you have to physically switch between.
At first, I was very disappointing that you couldn't buy cards directly. After playing for a couple of months I was quickly convinced of the real rewards they give you for free. Since they said there are no plans to wipe accounts anymore, and there will be an eternal format entering once rotation happens, there's no reason not to spend some $ on Arena if you enjoy it.
This is going to revolutionize Magic in a good way. The thing is, you can keep spending nothing and slowly build a deck for free. If you are playing people that are at your level, it doesn't matter too much if your deck is less than optimal. Or, spend a bit of $ because you love playing limited which gets you cards you might need anyway. I have drafted more on Arena in about 5 months on Arena than I have in 2 years on paper. It took WAY less time and WAY less money. Also, the cards I get I can actually use for standard. (I just buy singles if I want something for EDH or Modern anyway, so...)
It is different than paper magic, especially economically. There are problems. The benefits outweigh these 5-10 fold at least. Even me, who is normally a huge critic of Wizards, is thoroughly amazed with this. Trust me, in 1-3 years it will be the norm for Magic players to have an Arena account which they want to play you on. It might take a while, but with the release of an eternal format so you can keep using your cards, the fact that many new players will enter the game via this mode, and that it is so free and fun to get started, many people will be joining. We are still in the beta, and it's already amazing! (With some kinks which keep getting fixed consistently.)
Trust me, you're getting in on the ground floor here and it's worth it. Don't spend $, or spend $ only on limited like I started doing in the last month. Just don't expect to build a tier 1 deck extremely quickly without spending anything (they have to make $ some how.) Either way you're accruing value and having fun at the same time.
How is it so many of my opponents already have massive amounts of Rare and Mythic cards from the latest expansion? Without the option to dust cards, are people really spending $50+ on each expansion on Arena? I feel like I'm the only person playing who isn't dumping tons of cash into this game. I've bought the welcome bundle, but that's it. But everyone I play seems to have all the shocklands, 4 copies of each Mythic and Rare in their deck and some of the popular decks that include the newest expansion are super expensive with like 38 rares and 14 mythics. Guess I'm just surprised to see so many people spend a lot on this game.
If people didnt waste wildcards, and played since open beta, they could easily with planning get what they needed without spending money. You 'go infinite' in Constructed Best of One, for Gold, and then you buy packs at your leisure with 1000 gold.
I'm actually having a lot of problems when trying to jump into the mythic and rare competitive league, because I feel without having a platform to playtest ideas out you can't accurately spend the rare slots and mythic slots well enough. You might just pick a bunch of rares that don't work well competitively together and are stuck grinding for a month just to recover from it, which is what happened to me going demir and now probably rakdos colors.
The issue is that if you want to play something other than aggro or jank midrange, you have to spend the money or just game on cockatrice until you figure out your setup. Meanwhile, when you open packs you don't get as many rares outright because they grant you wild cards, which are cards you get to use. Those cards are basically dead in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they are trying to build or aim for, and the default filters for the game are set so that only cards one owns are seen so they may not even actively realize there is a specific card available that does something they want.
I mean, I hate to break it to wizards, but the problem is that their game has gotten so money hungry due to the damn stakeholders they've made it so an average player would have to spend a huge amount of time and money just to make a deck in standard that burns out in one season! Their is no free mode 75 card format with best of 3, either, so free players get stuck in 1v1 vs grinders all day. I don't even want to get started on the control decks in those queues. My god, do you think someone wants to sit through a pile of garbage so you can enjoy playing your Teferi deck when the entire reason you and your opponent are there is to get packs and gold?
Hey colt47, they do have a best of 3 mode that is free for constructed. It's hidden in a way. You must move the switch on the welcome/opening page. It is in the upper right hand area of the screen. It moves from "Arena play modes" to "Advanced Play modes." Now when you open the "Play" tab, there will be more game choices available. Choose "Traditional Play" under find match. I heard they are introducing a ranking system for this style of play as well.
I'm pretty sure if you keep the "Advanced play modes" switch on, it gives you all available choices currently offered on the system. It is confusing, and it took me posting and messing up a bunch of times to figure it out. It is always available for free however.
Thanks! Thank goodness they have this mode. It's not really great for grinding, but sometimes you really want to just play decks the old fashion way.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
How is it so many of my opponents already have massive amounts of Rare and Mythic cards from the latest expansion? Without the option to dust cards, are people really spending $50+ on each expansion on Arena? I feel like I'm the only person playing who isn't dumping tons of cash into this game. I've bought the welcome bundle, but that's it. But everyone I play seems to have all the shocklands, 4 copies of each Mythic and Rare in their deck and some of the popular decks that include the newest expansion are super expensive with like 38 rares and 14 mythics. Guess I'm just surprised to see so many people spend a lot on this game.
If people didnt waste wildcards, and played since open beta, they could easily with planning get what they needed without spending money. You 'go infinite' in Constructed Best of One, for Gold, and then you buy packs at your leisure with 1000 gold.
I don't like the fact you can't take back a choice by dusting. That is a huge problem for the discovery aspect of the game when it comes to mid tier and lower level players. If someone wastes a wild card on a crap rare (which happens a lot) they have no way to change or reconfigure their decision. On top of which, it encourages people to horde wild cards even if they don't have any idea what to get, and the default filters do hide unobtained cards.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I think these right here are the 2 biggest failings of Arena, followed by obfuscation of what your money buys you.
The fact that people don't know about things that should be obvious and easily accessible is a major failing.
Not being able to reclaim misspent wildcards sounds annoying but not that big of a problem because unless you have completely scrapped a deck idea and are building from scratch, it shouldn't be that long to recover.
Yes, this is true. Inexperienced players will waste wild cards not knowing their value. I'm an experienced player and I've still made poor choices with my wild cards. However, it is easy to learn that spending wildcards on dual lands is a good idea.
I'm not familiar with dusting. It sounds like you and BestMagicGamer came over from different platforms since you reference it. I'm wondering if those same games have a draft/sealed/limited environment which is comparable to Magic. You see, Magic is really two games which can become 100 different games. Limited, you play with only the cards you open, and Constructed, build a deck however you want and then submit.
Arena is geared toward maximizing your "time/gold/gem/$" value by playing both limited and constructed. If you haven't played paper Magic before, drafts run 12-15 dollars usually. You may not get as awesome prizes, depending on where you play. Also, it's hard to go "infinite" in paper Magic depending on how people do their prize pool.
I'm going to make a thread, unless someone else gets to it first, on maximizing your time/resources playing arena. I've watched a couple of videos on this and will try to find them in the mean time. It's easy to squander resources/play the wrong format. Personally, I find it best to draft a new set into the ground when it comes out. All the while, opening cards for to help complete the set/earning wildcards. Get good at this, and you'll be earnining extra drafts through your wins. Jump on the forums if you're inexperienced to see what's performing well, or watch youtube videos on deck techs.
Truly save your wild cards until you get a bit of a critical mass. I just invest my resources into draft, and naturally end up with some cards I need for the deck, while earning back extra pack openings. If you want to play for free, you must be patient. Wait until the new set is available to draft for gold, then go to town with all that you've saved up.
I carry on. Try to make a thread about this in the next week or two. Follow a couple of simple principles, and you'll be adding up drafts/cards quickly enough.
How is it so many of my opponents already have massive amounts of Rare and Mythic cards from the latest expansion? Without the option to dust cards, are people really spending $50+ on each expansion on Arena? I feel like I'm the only person playing who isn't dumping tons of cash into this game. I've bought the welcome bundle, but that's it. But everyone I play seems to have all the shocklands, 4 copies of each Mythic and Rare in their deck and some of the popular decks that include the newest expansion are super expensive with like 38 rares and 14 mythics. Guess I'm just surprised to see so many people spend a lot on this game.
If people didnt waste wildcards, and played since open beta, they could easily with planning get what they needed without spending money. You 'go infinite' in Constructed Best of One, for Gold, and then you buy packs at your leisure with 1000 gold.
I don't like the fact you can't take back a choice by dusting. That is a huge problem for the discovery aspect of the game when it comes to mid tier and lower level players. If someone wastes a wild card on a crap rare (which happens a lot) they have no way to change or reconfigure their decision. On top of which, it encourages people to horde wild cards even if they don't have any idea what to get, and the default filters do hide unobtained cards.
Trust me, I feel the same. I've burnt up way too many Wildcards already on decks that didnt work out.
Carrying on but... After playing basically for free for the first two months, I spent $20. Then spent $40 consciously on arena in order to get the draft practice/pack openings in. I'm rocking a new Gruul deck that is slaying it. Still have wild cards left over plus a good a moutn of gold. Cheers!
How is it so many of my opponents already have massive amounts of Rare and Mythic cards from the latest expansion? Without the option to dust cards, are people really spending $50+ on each expansion on Arena? I feel like I'm the only person playing who isn't dumping tons of cash into this game. I've bought the welcome bundle, but that's it. But everyone I play seems to have all the shocklands, 4 copies of each Mythic and Rare in their deck and some of the popular decks that include the newest expansion are super expensive with like 38 rares and 14 mythics. Guess I'm just surprised to see so many people spend a lot on this game.
Honestly? Most people probably aren't dropping tons of money on the game, they're just playing limited. While sealed is luck-based as all hell, it is still 2000 gems for 9 packs, plus you get gems back for wins. The pre-release code gets you a free Traditional (Best of 3) Draft that pays gems and a pack per win. If you've converted coins to gems with drafting and built up a big enough bulwark, it'd be easy to do a ton of sealed events or Bo3 drafts - which in turn means you're getting a bunch of packs, a ton of wildcards, and a ton of rares to beef up your collection.
If you want new cards without paying tons of IRL money for them, play constructed events for gold, every 5000 gold do a draft for gems, then once a new set drops burn the gems playing limited. That's the formula.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
If you want new cards without paying tons of IRL money for them, play constructed events for gold, every 5000 gold do a draft for gems, then once a new set drops burn the gems playing limited. That's the formula.
Oh God. I didn't even know you could draft for gold. Once I ran out of gems from the welcome package I was just doing the constructed event for gold. This makes the game way more F2P friendly than I initially thought, and it was already fairly reasonable.
Anyone have any idea when we can draft things other than the coreset for gold or will it always only be the coreset? Either way the fact that it gives gems for winning means I can switch back to Allegiance drafts after a run.
How is it so many of my opponents already have massive amounts of Rare and Mythic cards from the latest expansion? Without the option to dust cards, are people really spending $50+ on each expansion on Arena? I feel like I'm the only person playing who isn't dumping tons of cash into this game. I've bought the welcome bundle, but that's it. But everyone I play seems to have all the shocklands, 4 copies of each Mythic and Rare in their deck and some of the popular decks that include the newest expansion are super expensive with like 38 rares and 14 mythics. Guess I'm just surprised to see so many people spend a lot on this game.
If people didnt waste wildcards, and played since open beta, they could easily with planning get what they needed without spending money. You 'go infinite' in Constructed Best of One, for Gold, and then you buy packs at your leisure with 1000 gold.
I don't like the fact you can't take back a choice by dusting. That is a huge problem for the discovery aspect of the game when it comes to mid tier and lower level players. If someone wastes a wild card on a crap rare (which happens a lot) they have no way to change or reconfigure their decision. On top of which, it encourages people to horde wild cards even if they don't have any idea what to get, and the default filters do hide unobtained cards.
That is me, I have yet to "crack" a wild card on anything because, quite frankly, I feel that I wouldn't be able to build a good deck if I do. I spend a lot of time testing decks until I find something I'm comfortable with. I currently have roughly 60K in gold and spent maybe.... 20-30k of gold on packs already?
As for the upcoming Eternal format....
WotC have better figure that **** out because all I see is an MTGO-like economy if it's ever going to work. Think about this, I jumped in when it went open. That means, that if I didn't spend any money, my collection would have HUGE gaps. As more sets rotate in, there's a choice to be made, spend money on Standard cards and stay in Standard while players watch their older cards become unusuable OR spend money in an attempt to acquire the necessary older cards in order to play the ones they do have. As time progresses, this pressure simply increases until you have a scenario similar to Legacy/Modern/Standsrd with one exception, the cost barrier to enter any format other than Standard would be astronomically high. Far higher than paper or MTGO.
Sure, it can be argued that players can use wild cards to get the older cards. However, I don't think that one can acquire enough wild cards to support both formats without, again, spending far too much money.
It can also be argued that draft is how someone can acquire those rare cards. Sure, if you know about it. But Johnny and his dad trying out Arena for the first time isn't going to know that and they're going to get snubbed in a hurry. That previous point dips into the BO1 match making mess but that's a discussion for another time.
The Arena economy is an area that WotC needs to improve one. Once these older sets rotate out, I don't see it as a very sustainable business model for very long.
WotC has to walk a delicate balance between their small number of whales and, I'm pretty sure, the much larger player base that have spent a meager $5 on the welcome pack. Oops, let's not forget the people inbetween, like the poster that spent $45(?)
Oh God. I didn't even know you could draft for gold. Once I ran out of gems from the welcome package I was just doing the constructed event for gold. This makes the game way more F2P friendly than I initially thought, and it was already fairly reasonable.
Anyone have any idea when we can draft things other than the coreset for gold or will it always only be the coreset? Either way the fact that it gives gems for winning means I can switch back to Allegiance drafts after a run.
Yeah, drafting is 750 gems OR 5000 gold. it SHOULD rotate off of core set soon-ish to Ravnica Allegiance, probably on Jan 31 with the rank resets.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
I play precons in unranked, and see more precon-based decks than anything else.
EDIT, response to below: I spent $0 on my account. It's worth $0. It has play value, not monetary value.
Anyone have any idea when we can draft things other than the coreset for gold or will it always only be the coreset? Either way the fact that it gives gems for winning means I can switch back to Allegiance drafts after a run.
Now that we are talking more about the "free" side of the economy I must point out: They have recently changed their system so that you will acquire all the rare cards you need more quickly. So, if you have 4 copies of a rare/mythic card and you would open one in your pack, it automatically becomes another rare/mythic you don't have. This system was only recently enacted, so we'll see how this changes things. However, it should obviously change things for the better as you will fill out your collection much faster. It becomes a snowball effect, which I saw on my own account during Guilds of Ravnica before this change even happened. I have already opened the vault once and I'm currently 50.4% through to my second vault opening. I expect to reopen the vault in the next month or less without spending any more.
Wizards literally keeps giving out MORE, not less rewards. Not sure if y'all are following the news, but they make their rewards system better basically every month. It's ridiculous how good it is.
To put in perspective, I must have at least $500 worth of cards if they were paper. I would not be surprised if this number were actually closer to $1,000, perhaps more. That would be a fun experiment to run. I have spent about $65 dollars to DRAFT, like I normally do in paper, only with all of the rewards this translates to hundreds upon hundreds of dollars worth of paper card equivalents. How can you complain about that?
Also, good ol' Johnny and his dad are going to be stoked, especially with someone showing them the way. Johnny's dad "You mean you can draft on this thing for free just because you play games on it? That will save me a lot of $" Johnny "Now I can play Magic even though I don't know anyone who does and the people at the card shop are too good."
I feel they have already knocked it out of the park with Arena, and it's still in Beta. All complaints must be taken with a grain of salt as they literally are fixing these complaints every update. Should only get better from here!
Honestly, I ask you nay sayers to look at your collection on Arena and ask yourself how much you spent on it. Then start looking up how much these cards cost in paper. I guarantee you, if you've been playing for a month you've got at least $150 worth of cards for free. How is that bad? Did you get to draft for free to start building this collection all the while? What's not to like? Play at your level, or spend a bit o cash if you start to find yourself seriously invested, like me. Keep in mind that you get a better deal on gems when buying in bulk. Instead of buying $20 at once, I could have just spent $50 at once and received and even better deal.
I spent $40 in two $20 chunk increments for release of allegiance. Just use those gems to start drafting. Always rare draft a shockland unless you have some bomb you really need for your deck in the same pack. If you're good enough at drafting, you can keep playing with that money for quite a bit longer than the 2 drafts $20 would normally buy you. You're opening prize packs the whole time, saving up wildcards and opening cards you need for your deck.
My method was: Build my first tier 1 deck that I'm very happy with. Once you get tired of drafting the set a bunch, just keep saving all wildcards/gold/gems until the next set comes out. Instead of going to a pre-release, which is a bit of a drive for me, I spent that money on gems to draft the set the day before pre-release even came out!
To sum up, yes, people are spending $ on it and it is worth it. When I was really hurting for rares to finish off my first tier 1 deck, I did spend a bunch of gold on packs just to get that ticker counting up. Thing is, when you put the resources towards packs you end up getting wildcards much faster then just the ticker indicates. I'm guessing I open either a rare/mythic wildcard right from the pack around 1 out of every 6 packs. So opening 6 packs is more like getting 2 rare wildcards, not just the 1 that comes from the ticker.
I'm finding that I like Arena more and more. My store regularly fails to fire off it's drafts, so I'm getting quite tired of it. Much more economical to draft on Arena, time and $ wise. I plan on saving up so I can buy the $100 gem bundle in the future because I'm so please with Arena. I have 2 really good standard decks for $65 (plus a bunch of other cards on top of it.) These decks would cost me over $300 to buy in paper. Also, I would have to pay $5 to play standard at the card shop. I've totally given up on standard paper Magic as it's WAY too expensive compared to Arena. So long as you can be patient when building the deck, or just spend a bit more $, you should be fine.
The issue is that if you want to play something other than aggro or jank midrange, you have to spend the money or just game on cockatrice until you figure out your setup. Meanwhile, when you open packs you don't get as many rares outright because they grant you wild cards, which are cards you get to use. Those cards are basically dead in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they are trying to build or aim for, and the default filters for the game are set so that only cards one owns are seen so they may not even actively realize there is a specific card available that does something they want.
I mean, I hate to break it to wizards, but the problem is that their game has gotten so money hungry due to the damn stakeholders they've made it so an average player would have to spend a huge amount of time and money just to make a deck in standard that burns out in one season! Their is no free mode 75 card format with best of 3, either, so free players get stuck in 1v1 vs grinders all day. I don't even want to get started on the control decks in those queues. My god, do you think someone wants to sit through a pile of garbage so you can enjoy playing your Teferi deck when the entire reason you and your opponent are there is to get packs and gold?
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I too was a big skeptic when first starting on Arena. However, the free rewards are real. It's also SO much more convenient than finding people to play standard in person. While I love the person to person interaction, it's my hope that we don't need to give that up. I'm trying to get my friends into Arena as well. You can just bring your labtops together, sit across the same table and do a person-to-person challenge with your decks. The games go way faster as you don't need to shuffle. You don't have to bring an entire backpack full of decks that you have to physically switch between.
At first, I was very disappointing that you couldn't buy cards directly. After playing for a couple of months I was quickly convinced of the real rewards they give you for free. Since they said there are no plans to wipe accounts anymore, and there will be an eternal format entering once rotation happens, there's no reason not to spend some $ on Arena if you enjoy it.
This is going to revolutionize Magic in a good way. The thing is, you can keep spending nothing and slowly build a deck for free. If you are playing people that are at your level, it doesn't matter too much if your deck is less than optimal. Or, spend a bit of $ because you love playing limited which gets you cards you might need anyway. I have drafted more on Arena in about 5 months on Arena than I have in 2 years on paper. It took WAY less time and WAY less money. Also, the cards I get I can actually use for standard. (I just buy singles if I want something for EDH or Modern anyway, so...)
It is different than paper magic, especially economically. There are problems. The benefits outweigh these 5-10 fold at least. Even me, who is normally a huge critic of Wizards, is thoroughly amazed with this. Trust me, in 1-3 years it will be the norm for Magic players to have an Arena account which they want to play you on. It might take a while, but with the release of an eternal format so you can keep using your cards, the fact that many new players will enter the game via this mode, and that it is so free and fun to get started, many people will be joining. We are still in the beta, and it's already amazing! (With some kinks which keep getting fixed consistently.)
Trust me, you're getting in on the ground floor here and it's worth it. Don't spend $, or spend $ only on limited like I started doing in the last month. Just don't expect to build a tier 1 deck extremely quickly without spending anything (they have to make $ some how.) Either way you're accruing value and having fun at the same time.
If people didnt waste wildcards, and played since open beta, they could easily with planning get what they needed without spending money. You 'go infinite' in Constructed Best of One, for Gold, and then you buy packs at your leisure with 1000 gold.
Spirits
Hey colt47, they do have a best of 3 mode that is free for constructed. It's hidden in a way. You must move the switch on the welcome/opening page. It is in the upper right hand area of the screen. It moves from "Arena play modes" to "Advanced Play modes." Now when you open the "Play" tab, there will be more game choices available. Choose "Traditional Play" under find match. I heard they are introducing a ranking system for this style of play as well.
I'm pretty sure if you keep the "Advanced play modes" switch on, it gives you all available choices currently offered on the system. It is confusing, and it took me posting and messing up a bunch of times to figure it out. It is always available for free however.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I don't like the fact you can't take back a choice by dusting. That is a huge problem for the discovery aspect of the game when it comes to mid tier and lower level players. If someone wastes a wild card on a crap rare (which happens a lot) they have no way to change or reconfigure their decision. On top of which, it encourages people to horde wild cards even if they don't have any idea what to get, and the default filters do hide unobtained cards.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The fact that people don't know about things that should be obvious and easily accessible is a major failing.
Not being able to reclaim misspent wildcards sounds annoying but not that big of a problem because unless you have completely scrapped a deck idea and are building from scratch, it shouldn't be that long to recover.
I'm not familiar with dusting. It sounds like you and BestMagicGamer came over from different platforms since you reference it. I'm wondering if those same games have a draft/sealed/limited environment which is comparable to Magic. You see, Magic is really two games which can become 100 different games. Limited, you play with only the cards you open, and Constructed, build a deck however you want and then submit.
Arena is geared toward maximizing your "time/gold/gem/$" value by playing both limited and constructed. If you haven't played paper Magic before, drafts run 12-15 dollars usually. You may not get as awesome prizes, depending on where you play. Also, it's hard to go "infinite" in paper Magic depending on how people do their prize pool.
I'm going to make a thread, unless someone else gets to it first, on maximizing your time/resources playing arena. I've watched a couple of videos on this and will try to find them in the mean time. It's easy to squander resources/play the wrong format. Personally, I find it best to draft a new set into the ground when it comes out. All the while, opening cards for to help complete the set/earning wildcards. Get good at this, and you'll be earnining extra drafts through your wins. Jump on the forums if you're inexperienced to see what's performing well, or watch youtube videos on deck techs.
Truly save your wild cards until you get a bit of a critical mass. I just invest my resources into draft, and naturally end up with some cards I need for the deck, while earning back extra pack openings. If you want to play for free, you must be patient. Wait until the new set is available to draft for gold, then go to town with all that you've saved up.
I carry on. Try to make a thread about this in the next week or two. Follow a couple of simple principles, and you'll be adding up drafts/cards quickly enough.
Trust me, I feel the same. I've burnt up way too many Wildcards already on decks that didnt work out.
Spirits
Honestly? Most people probably aren't dropping tons of money on the game, they're just playing limited. While sealed is luck-based as all hell, it is still 2000 gems for 9 packs, plus you get gems back for wins. The pre-release code gets you a free Traditional (Best of 3) Draft that pays gems and a pack per win. If you've converted coins to gems with drafting and built up a big enough bulwark, it'd be easy to do a ton of sealed events or Bo3 drafts - which in turn means you're getting a bunch of packs, a ton of wildcards, and a ton of rares to beef up your collection.
If you want new cards without paying tons of IRL money for them, play constructed events for gold, every 5000 gold do a draft for gems, then once a new set drops burn the gems playing limited. That's the formula.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Anyone have any idea when we can draft things other than the coreset for gold or will it always only be the coreset? Either way the fact that it gives gems for winning means I can switch back to Allegiance drafts after a run.
That is me, I have yet to "crack" a wild card on anything because, quite frankly, I feel that I wouldn't be able to build a good deck if I do. I spend a lot of time testing decks until I find something I'm comfortable with. I currently have roughly 60K in gold and spent maybe.... 20-30k of gold on packs already?
As for the upcoming Eternal format....
WotC have better figure that **** out because all I see is an MTGO-like economy if it's ever going to work. Think about this, I jumped in when it went open. That means, that if I didn't spend any money, my collection would have HUGE gaps. As more sets rotate in, there's a choice to be made, spend money on Standard cards and stay in Standard while players watch their older cards become unusuable OR spend money in an attempt to acquire the necessary older cards in order to play the ones they do have. As time progresses, this pressure simply increases until you have a scenario similar to Legacy/Modern/Standsrd with one exception, the cost barrier to enter any format other than Standard would be astronomically high. Far higher than paper or MTGO.
Sure, it can be argued that players can use wild cards to get the older cards. However, I don't think that one can acquire enough wild cards to support both formats without, again, spending far too much money.
It can also be argued that draft is how someone can acquire those rare cards. Sure, if you know about it. But Johnny and his dad trying out Arena for the first time isn't going to know that and they're going to get snubbed in a hurry. That previous point dips into the BO1 match making mess but that's a discussion for another time.
The Arena economy is an area that WotC needs to improve one. Once these older sets rotate out, I don't see it as a very sustainable business model for very long.
WotC has to walk a delicate balance between their small number of whales and, I'm pretty sure, the much larger player base that have spent a meager $5 on the welcome pack. Oops, let's not forget the people inbetween, like the poster that spent $45(?)
Yeah, drafting is 750 gems OR 5000 gold. it SHOULD rotate off of core set soon-ish to Ravnica Allegiance, probably on Jan 31 with the rank resets.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
EDIT, response to below: I spent $0 on my account. It's worth $0. It has play value, not monetary value.
Friday, February the 1st. https://magic.wizards.com/en/content/all-events-schedule
The schedule is at magic.wizards.com under EVENTS, and can be filtered to only show Arena. Ranked Draft is the gold option.
Wizards literally keeps giving out MORE, not less rewards. Not sure if y'all are following the news, but they make their rewards system better basically every month. It's ridiculous how good it is.
To put in perspective, I must have at least $500 worth of cards if they were paper. I would not be surprised if this number were actually closer to $1,000, perhaps more. That would be a fun experiment to run. I have spent about $65 dollars to DRAFT, like I normally do in paper, only with all of the rewards this translates to hundreds upon hundreds of dollars worth of paper card equivalents. How can you complain about that?
Also, good ol' Johnny and his dad are going to be stoked, especially with someone showing them the way. Johnny's dad "You mean you can draft on this thing for free just because you play games on it? That will save me a lot of $" Johnny "Now I can play Magic even though I don't know anyone who does and the people at the card shop are too good."
I feel they have already knocked it out of the park with Arena, and it's still in Beta. All complaints must be taken with a grain of salt as they literally are fixing these complaints every update. Should only get better from here!