Starting with Arena

Over the New Player Experience (NPE) period Arena gives out 15 free decks. The first 5 are “won” in the tutorial. After that five Color Challenges open.

Every challenge is a series of five matches. The first four are “puzzles”, games with predetermined draws, aimed at teaching new players the basics of playing a color versus another one. These are played versus AI and award card upgrades for your decks. The fifth match is played versus another player; if things go right, it would be another new player with a starting deck or a self-modification of one. This match award wildcards and cosmetics.

After Color Challenges are complete, the game will give out daily quests for dual-colored starter decks. Decks for “friendly” color pairs are given one by one, then you get a quest for a Mythic wildcard, and five decks for “enemy” color pairs are obtained in one last quest. After you’re done with the NPE, playing vs AI gives no progress on any reward track. Note: if you’re a returning player, you should get the mono-colored decks (or cards for them) automatically, but getting dual-colored decks might require contacting support. Starter deck lists can be found here.

As of August 2020, mono-colored decks are composed of cards from a special “Arena Beginner Set”; some are reprints, some are Arena-exclusive. Cards from this and “Arena New Player Experience” sets are intended to be legal in Arena Standard best-of-one play indefinitely. Arena-exclusive cards might be subject to functional changes. Upgraded mono-colored decks contain 6 Rare cards each.

Dual-colored decks contain cards from Throne of Eldraine through Core Set 2021 and are compliant with the “real” Standard format. They contain 6 Rare cards including a valuable dual-colored land, and 1 Mythic Rare. Next iteration of these should appear after Summer set of 2021.

Upgrading starters in ways other than Color Challenges should be done with caution, especially with powerful cards: starter decks should be matched with other starter decks for several dozens of games (in unranked Play), and altering them may put you out of that paddling pool.

Basic lands on Arena are free, but basic lands with specific art might be premium (cosmetic) items, available for purchase or awarded for events. “Basic Lands” advanced filter allows you to see and choose basic land art.

In a common for free-to-play games fashion, Arena has two currencies: Gold, obtainable for playing and winning, and “premium” Gems meant to be purchased with money. You can buy packs and enter most events with either, only Sealed doesn’t have Gold entry. Most cosmetics are Gems-only, though Gold-only items also exist.

There is no direct way to convert one into another, and the rate varies depending on the area of the game; with a supply of either currency, it’s more reasonable to buy packs with Gold and enter events with Gems. Constructed events may bring you Gold. Entering drafts with Gold is the only one way to purposefully obtain Gems for free. Small amounts of Gems can be incidentally gained for 5th copies of cards.

Regular Gold income:

• • • Daily quests. Simple tasks not requiring you to win, like “Play X spells of a color” or “Destroy X creatures”. You get one a day, you can hold up to three, and you can reroll a quest once a day. Daily quests award 500 or 750 Gold; most rerolls are spent trying to change a 500-Gold quest into a 750-Gold one. The chance to roll a 750-Gold quest is estimated at 25%. A new quest is given at 09:00 UTC if you have an empty slot.

    • Daily wins. The first 15 wins a day are rewarded. Early ones are crucial: 4 wins earn you 550 of 750 Gold for wins. After 4 wins rewards are alternating between 50–25 Gold and a card. First 10 daily wins award a small amount of Mastery XP. Daily wins reset at the same time.

A derivative but key “resource” on Arena is called wildcards. These are your way to obtain (“craft”) specific cards you need. A wildcard can be spent (“redeemed for” in WotC terminology) to add one card of the corresponding rarity to your collection. Wildcards are a very valuable and a scarce resource, especially Rare and Mythic Rare wildcards. You’ve been warned.

On Arena, you can’t destroy (disenchant, dust) cards like in some other games, so wildcards can be treated as “shards” or “dust” that you get upfront, albeit in smaller amounts. You get wildcards mainly by opening packs. The only other wildcards source is the Vault, out of reach for a new player.

Language can be changed in Options → Graphics. Other settings there and in Audio raise no questions.

Settings found in Options → Gameplay can be more or less useful depending on how well acquainted you are with Magic. Some highlights:

• • • Auto Tap. Lets the game choose how to add mana to the pool and spend mana from the pool for you. Makes playing games faster. Makes mistakes. But you always can tap manually. Spending mana from the pool manually requires going into Full Control mode (see below).

    • Auto Order/Choose/Assign. If you’re new to Magic, probably keep these on until you find out when you need them off.

    • Evergreen Keyword Reminders. If you’re completely new to Magic, turn this on. Some abilities in Magic are used year after year and most players don’t need to be reminded what they do.

    • Enable Gameplay Warnings. Makes the game ask for a confirmation on actions that might be unintended and harfmul, like targeting your own creature with a damaging/destroying spell.

The Options → Gameplay screen also lists [sadly, unchangeable] keyboard shortcuts, and some deserve an explanation:

• • • Full Control. Magic rules prescribe asking players if they want to take an action (aka passing priority) plenty of times every turn. In real life, the slowness of this solved by speech. On Arena, by skipping priority passes in the least used cases. It makes games faster but also means that sometimes an allowed action needs Full Control mode on, so tell Arena to stop it. The most common case is responding to your own spell or trigger. I recommend using Hold Full Control when you need it, then turning it off with the same Ctrl + Shift, as opposed to pressing just Ctrl for one priority pass. Alternatively, click the step or phase icon to put a “stop” on it, effectively enabling Full Control for its duration.
      On mobile: press and hold your avatar.

    • Pass Turn. While there presumably is some difference between Enter and Shift + Enter, if you really want to skip everything till the next turn no matter what, use specifically Left Shift + Enter.

    • Undo. Adding mana to the pool and maybe paying some costs can be undone, e.g. in case you chose wrong lands to tap.

    • Float All. “Floating” mana means adding it to your mana pool, but not spending it yet (remember that mana pool empties with every phase and step change). When you need to quickly tap 15 mana sources for whatever color, use QQ. Or hover specific ones while holding Q.

    • Show Collection Overlay. When picking cards in draft, hold Alt to see how many copies of presented cards you have in your collection. Checkmark means you have a playset, four. (Also shown on basic lands.)

So far, every set release on Arena since Open Beta was accompanied by a code that gives you 3 packs of that set for free. Some other codes also might be available, including ones providing cosmetics. Codes are entered on the Store tab, top right corner. Check e.g. on MTG Arena zone or Cardgamebase. Mobile versions have no in-game option to redeem codes. Go here, enter codes, then enter the Store in the client.

Some paper products also contain codes redeemable on Arena:

• • • Prerelease kits — seemingly settled on providing 6 packs of the set. One per account.

    • Promotional packs (details) — 1 pack. No more than five per account.

    • Some entry-level products, like Planeswalker decks or Arena Starter Kits — provide full decks. Not worth the money if you only want the Arena stuff. One per account.

    • Secret Lairs usually have single-use codes redeemable for cosmetics.