An Introductory Guide to Magic: The Gathering Arena

Hi! This is an introductory guide to Magic the Gathering: Arena. If you’re already playing drafts and streamer events and grinding your way up towards Mythic Rank, then you’ll probably want to wait for the more advanced guides coming in a week or two. But if you’re new to Arena, and perhaps a little uncertain what to do next, read on! I’ll touch on topics such as what to expect the first time you start up the game, how to earn cards and Gold and Gems, and what I do on a day-to-day basis as a free-to-play player.

First of all, if you don’t know what Magic is, or how to play it, well, the good news is that it’s one of the best games in the world, and the second is that Wizards has some very handy guides for you!

https://magic.wizards.com/en/new-to-magic

Don’t be intimidated if it feels like there are a lot of rules; Arena has entertaining and easy tutorials which will help you quickly grasp the basics. All you have to do to get there is download Arena, start it up, and create an account.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/mtgarena

First Steps

After you create an account, you’ll be taken straight into Arena’s tutorials - a series of five interactive mini-lessons that provide a gentle learning curve into the enjoyable complexities of Magic. Once you finish, you’ll unlock five mono-color decks

The complete Arena feature set can be unlocked as well, but let me quickly talk about the series of introductory one-time quests. These have simple goals - play a game, play 5 lands - and reward you with gold and packs and entire decks. You’ll be matched against other players with similar decks, so don’t worry about being overmatched. And the quests can be fulfilled regardless of whether you win or lose, so play around and see what style of deck you like!

After you finish the first three introductory quests, you’ll see a locked introductory quest, which will not be unlocked until the next day. The introductory quests from here on forward are designed to be played over several days, and provide a feel for the daily rhythm of Arena: playing a deck, earning gold by completing quests, and upgrading your deck with the cards you obtain.

At the end of the introductory quest series, you’ll have unlocked all ten beginner decks - one for each two-color combination of the five colors of Magic. These beginner decks have powerful mythics, rare dual lands, and Constructed staples. You can find decklists for all of the beginner decks here. There’s also a fair amount of cards that you’ll want to upgrade. But they’re fun to play, and they’ll give you a good idea of what style of deck you like.

Time to dive further in!

Gold and Gems

Arena uses two different in-game currencies: Gold and Gems. Gold is the “free-to-play” currency, earned through quests and many events. Gems are rarer, only obtainable by paying real money or by participating in more expensive events.

What are these currencies used for? Well, although you can play and complete quests without spending Gold or Gems, event queues which award prizes require you to spend some currency. You can also buy packs with Gold or Gems. Here’s a breakdown of how much various things cost in Arena:

The Arena store features a one-time deal called a “Welcome Bundle”: $4.99 for five M19 packs, and 2500 Gems. It’s a pretty good deal!

Cards

• Limited Events: The cards you draft in a Draft event or open in a Sealed event are yours!
• Packs: Each pack contains five common cards, two uncommons, and one rare or mythic rare. A card can be replaced by a Wild Card of equal rarity (more about those below). Weekly quests and Limited events award packs from a specific set. You can also buy packs of any set in the store using Gold and Gems.
• Individual Card Rewards (ICRs): An ICR is a single uncommon card from any set, that has a small chance of being upgraded to a rare, and an even smaller chance of being upgraded to a mythic. ICRs are earned from dailies and some events. ICRs from an event are sometimes guaranteed to be a rare or mythic.
• Wild Cards: Wild Cards have a specific rarity - common, uncommon, rare, mythic - and can be redeemed for any card of the same rarity. Each card in a pack has a chance to be a Wild Card. You also earn Wild Cards simply by opening packs: one uncommon and rare Wild Card every 6 packs, and one mythic Wild Card every 30 packs.

Quests

Let’s do a quick summary of quests and their rewards.

• Weekly Quests: Win one pack of the current set after 5, 10, and 15 wins. Weekly quests reset on Sunday.
• Daily Quests: You’ll get one daily quest that rewards either 500 or 750 gold. These quests ask you to do things such as “Cast 20 red or blue spells” or “Play 30 lands”. Each quest can be changed once by clicking on it. You can have a maximum of three of these quests active at once.
• Daily Rewards: There are rewards for your first 15 wins of a day. Rewards are as follows:

How to (Free-to-)Play

So what do you do after finishing the introductory quests? Here’s what I do on a day-to-day basis:

• Check my daily quest. If it only rewards 500 Gold, replace it to see if I get a 750 Gold quest.
• If I have enough Gold to enter my preferred event (Draft), I do that. You may prefer Constructed, opening more packs, or hoarding Gold for the next set release.
• Make sure I have at least four wins for the day in order to earn a total of 650 Gold from my daily quests. If I don’t, I break out my Constructed deck and play no-fee non-event Constructed matches until I reach four wins.

How do you pick a Constructed deck? If you’re new to Magic and less interested in ensuring that you end up with a tier 1 deck, I suggest trying all ten beginner decks to find the one that matches your playstyle, and then slowly upgrading that over time.

On the other hand, if you want your Constructed deck to be extremely competitive, you’ll have to be a bit more selective and read up on the current Standard metagame before choosing a deck. Building your chosen deck will then require time and/or money. It’s a process that may sound frustrating - but I actually found it quite fun! It was very reminiscent of my early days of Magic by working with the cards I had to work my way towards a Tier 1 deck.

However, that’s a topic for the next article. In the meantime, may all your ICRs end up being cards that you want!