Magic the Gathering Arena Details How Card Unlocks Will Work
The upcoming free to play Magic: The Gathering Arena (MTG Arena) detailed in a blogpost today exactly how players will unlock new cards. The game will feature 2 currencies:
Gold: The free to play currency earned by winning games, completing quests, and events.
Gems: The premium currency which can only be purchased for cash from the in-game store.
Both currencies can be used to unlock new card packs, events, and other content. The game plans to offer cosmetic items (card sleeves? avatars?) which are only available for purchase via Gems but gameplay related content will never be available exclusively through gems.
Players can obtain cards in Magic: The Gathering Arena in the following ways:
Booster packs will be eight-card boosters containing 5 commons, 2 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic rare.
Draft packs will contain 14 cards mirroring tabletop drafts (the basic land has been removed). Drafting will also add cards to your collection, as any card you draft will be automatically added to your collection.
Individual cards will also be earnable through play. We are testing a system where for every match win, players will receive one card in MTG Arena, up to 30 per day.
Wildcards are special cards that have a chance to appear in the place of each card at any rarity in every booster you open. Wildcards have their own rarity of common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare. You can redeem a Wildcard one-to-one for a card at that same rarity.
The Vault adds yet another layer of excitement to booster opening. Every time you open a booster, you earn progress toward unlocking The Vault. When you would collect a fifth copy (or more) of a card, you earn vault progress instead of adding that card to your collection. We are testing the rewards you can earn each time you open The Vault. We will start by awarding a number of Wildcards. We'll likely change the exact mix over time and during testing to get the balance correct and keep things exciting.
Magic: The Gathering Arena aims to get cards in the hands of players at a much faster pace than existing digital card games with front-loaded rewards, meaning the devs want people who play even casually to be able to unlock plenty of cards. Playing longer will always yield more rewards, but the biggest reward daily will be the first win. Players will also be able to unlock a random new card every day with each win up to 30 free cards daily. Players also get free booster packs each week depending on how much they played that week.
One thing missing here though is the dust / crafting system found in games like Hearthstone and Shadowverse. The developers intentionally left this out and the reason they provided was:
If we had used a traditional dusting system, it would have limited our ability to be as generous with card rewards. In addition, we simply didn't want players to need to constantly evaluate what to destroy. We wanted a path for players to complete their collections.
Regardless of how easy it is to unlock new cards, I suspect trying to build a specific deck without any kind of crafting / dust system is going to be difficult. Still, as a big fan of the physical card game I'm eager to try MTG Arena. The game is currently in closed beta with the Rivals of Ixalan expansion set to launch on January 18th. No word on when open beta begins. There will be a wipe at the end of CBT.
