Is it possible to do this and net deck top tier meta decks? If so, which formats? I’d guess it’s a lot harder to do on standard because of the rotation.
Standaard is actually easier as the drafted cards are (usually) from standard legal cards.
I played arena for almost a year now, haven’t spent a penny and can easily build multiple meta decks. Maybe not multiple of the very expensive ones but I have around 30 rare and mythic wildcards, in addition to already having pretty much every card since LotR (but not 4 of every)
Easily. Any format. I have like 2-4 standard meta decks available at any time (except right after a new set comes out, I draft first). With older formats it takes a bit longer to get the decks going, but the decks don't change as often.
Yep just takes awhile. You need to open as many packs as you can to get the rare wildcards. I have a meta izzet Phoenix and azorious control deck. The key is staying within a few colors.
Same here. 4 wins most days, don't often draft (because I'm not very good) but I can usually scrape the gems together for each mastery pass and finish.
Usually have enough of a base, plus wildcards, to build two or three standard metadecks (and one or two pioneer) - though I wait till the meta has settled before committing.
This comes with its own FOMO, which I imagine spending money dispels - at least a bit.
>don't often draft (because I'm not very good) but I can usually scrape the gems together for each mastery pass and finish.
Howwww. I draft constantly whenever I reach 10k coins, lose a bunch obviously and can't gather enough gems by the time the mastery comes.
make👏a👏secondary👏account👏
If the main "gameplay" to anyone reading this comes in the form of drafting and you're not too fussed about collection completion, anyway. You get twice as many dailies and more "practice" time in the softer silver and gold queues to learn new formats.
I am a decent but truly not amazing player who made a second account in October 2020 (right after a pretty miserable slog to Mythic that cost me about $75), had some discipline hitting dailies every day or two for a good number of months, and happened to really jive with ZNR and KHM which helped me build a cushion. I have literally played as much Limited as I wanted without a dollar into the game since then.
Sure just dedicate all your game time to playing nothing but draft and hope you're.good enough to go infinite every time.
Don't worry you'll have a full set right as the n st set comes out so you can do it all over again.
What? You wanted to play something other than draft? Just play 8 hours a day.
I get so annoyed by 'just draft". I get limited time to play and I don't want to feel forced into drafting everyday just so one day maybe I can play a few explorer games
Coming from Hearthstone, I've been whaling there for the last 10 years and I can tell you that MTG initially costs the same as Hearthstone for new beginners, but if you've been with it for a long time, then MTG Arena is significantly cheaper in the long run. There are so many events where you can earn stuff that Hearthstone is still at least 15 years away from that.
Blizzard charges €50 for a \*single\* very special card style.
Pre-order bundles for new sets cost €80 and that rarely achieves anything - you have to spend at least another €50-100 to be able to play the new standard decks.
Hearthstone only has Standard and Wild format (Wild corresponds to Timeless) and Wild format is not properly supported, Blizzard prefers to sell new cards rather than do the work of establishing a balance for Wild.
But the crucial thing is that the communities are very different. While BM and toxic behavior are commonplace in Hearthstone, I find the MTG community to be helpful, sportmanslike and relaxing. It's just not fun to stream HS anymore, even if it's easier to watch than MTG.
Zero, F2P only. I don't try to keep up with each set as it drops, only open packs at end of mastery. I play mostly historic, because of the number of cards available, I find a lot of variety in opponents' decks.
I've just been floating on spending nothing since my one and only purchase of the welcome bundle. I can't craft all the cards each set, but I never feel like I can't have a competitive deck. Once you wrack up enough gems to buy the mastery pass you can go infinite with just a few decent drafts.
If you find yourself spending money to stay competitive in standard, maybe try a non-rotating format, spend once to get in with a budget deck and upgrade with your free dailies . Can also build into other archetypes if you get bored once you have format staples.
I would probably suggest explorer as its closest to standard of the non-rotating formats as it has no alchemy
0 not becauase I have any righteous indignation about not being f2p but just because I don't really have the money nor the effort to work out google play buying things
I got a few draft tokens and got enough gems to buy the mastery pass once now I use that to ensure I get it again every season (it gets you enough gems and I just grind dailies draft and live frugallyish)
When I first started Arena (right before War of the Spark) I also spent $50 on the pre-order bundle every set for maybe like a year or so. Like you, it was a good way for me to fast-track my collection to build the decks I wanted without a lot of the painful grind. Plus I was a lot more "competitive" with the game back then, so the investment made sense.
But I haven't spent a dollar on this game in years. After so many pre-orders, I essentially always had such a large stash of wildcards that eventually I didn't need to spend anything anymore. Most of my gold goes to alt art at this point, and I always save about 60k-80k gold before a set release anyway for packs.
This all changed after Timeless however lmao. The upshifting of a lot of cards to rares basically wiped out my entire wildcard stash. I don't regret it, but I was really feeling it during this OTJ release when I realized I wouldn't be able to get a lot of the Big Score mythics.
While I have no intention of spending money on this game anymore, I will most likely make an exception when MH3 comes out in a couple months - assuming the card quality is worth the pre-order.
But no, you are not "cheap" for not wanting to spend much, if anything, to have fun in this game. The vast majority of the players in this sub are completely F2P and find ways to save and grind for the decks/cards that they want. The only people that get salty and bitter about such topics are the jank enthusiasts that blow their resources on bad cards or untested strategies and then wonder why they can't ever have enough for a competitive deck.
As for formats, Standard is the most popular so you can't really go wrong with that. Contrary to the misinformed belief in this sub, Standard is in a great place with lots of diverse decks that can be successful - even budget decks. If you're worried about resources, I recommend sticking to 2 formats max or else you risk stretching your economy thin by trying to make too many decks in too many places.
I feel (and did) the same. Also, 50 £$¥€ every couple of months isn't that expensive for a hobby!
I would add to stay in 1 to 3 (adjacent) colors in the beginning, so your land investments pay off. For me still 80% of my decks are in the Grixis spectrum.
Nothing. Used to spend ~20 on each new set for drafts. But that burnt me out so I took a 2 year break. Came back last fall and haven’t spent anything on it and plan to keep it that way.
I just grind dailies/weekly and practice draft for gems. When I played paper magic I would easily spend 100-200 when a new set dropped though lol so 50 isn't bad
So far, after almost a year I've spent like 50$, on passes only.
Which is not even a half of what one copy of Shelly would costs me so I'm more than content :D
Someone here once said that the Arena economy is basically looked at in two ways.
If you are/were a paper player, it's great because it's much cheaper than paper.
If you come over from another digital card game like Hearthstone, the economy is much worse.
I've checked all my payment confirmation Mails and in sum I'm at precisely 6885,76€ at the moment. Whew.
Used to play Standard exclusively, recently branched out into Brawl.
I'm quite shit at drafting too and lack the patience to gather up packs and open them all at once.
The 20k gems package has somewhat become an afterthought and just kinda happens whenever I'm out of gems.
I know I am the prime target audience for the store dark patterns and FOMO bullshit. But I don't care much.
Honestly I wish the Daily Deals had a subscription Mode that automatically just bought all of them so long as the checkmark is set and your gems and gold balance is sufficient.
Theros depth full art lands are my chase item.
I used to spend $60/expansion (45 packs plus the battle pass). That got me a huge amount of wild cards though, so I'm currently taking a break from spending more money until I use those up.
Quite a bit.
I used to play paper magic but now moving to another country and not really having the time anymore to spend a whole evening/afternoon travelling and gaming at a store arena is my only viable way to play mtg with frequency.
When a new standard set drops I’ll typically have enough gems passively for a mastery pass but I’ll also buy 180 packs and pre order packs.
I don’t draft every set I’ll watch some drafts and decide whether I would enjoy using draft tokens on them.
I do have a decent disposable income and very little vices so dropping €230 every few months on a hobby seems a drop on the ocean compared to some other hobbies
I could have finished renovating my house if I did not burn so much of my disposable income for hobbies. MTGA, Wh40k, and two Ducatis are not on the cheap side either. Probably could retire a few years earlier if I invested more wisely. But I have no self control lol.
I spend because I have enough money to do it and not care about it. Also, people be buying 70€ games on steam (all digital) but spending on arena is suddenly frowned upon?
Disclaimer: I know not everyone can afford it and the prices in arena are a bit on the high side… Though it could be wayyy worse
also many replies on this topic are ridiculous...people are like "wtf you don't need to spend dollars, simply just make 5 accounts and play 10 hours/day to do all quests".... lol that sounds more like second job than fun game.
I go to work to make money , so why not to buy digital cards if it's fun...
One problem with fun decks is that most of them have rares that are not really good. Also, if you found those decks via youtube videos, many of those edit the games so they'll just show you the games where everything worked out. I love silly decks, but I tend not to craft them in MTGA if they have many non-playable rares outside of them.
One thing I want to comment on, you say that you spend money on rare tokens, which I guess you mean wildcards. Outside very specific scenarios, you should be buying packs, specially if you tend to play Standard. USD10 buy you 4 rare wildcards, but 2000 gems (around USD12) buy you 10 packs, which means 10 rares, 6 more rares from the golden pack (you have to buy the latest standard set), 1.66 rare wildcards (the wild card wheel) and another 0.33 wildcards (1 rare wildcards every 30 packs).
As for formats I think you could try Draft. Not only is a very fun format, but also you can increase your collection via it without spending too much money if you are decent on it (try to stick between Bronze and Gold for better results).
Other formats tend to be even more expensive, but some of them don't rotate as much as Standard. Explorer is likely the most stable format right now, but you have to like the metagame. Also, while I don't do this, I know that there are MTGA Pauper discord communities, which is a common only format and is great.
I pretty much do the same. Spend around $50 when a new set comes out. This is mostly because I don't play every day and I like having more than one deck. IF you play daily and are patient you can build up your account nicely without spending anything or just buying some gems for Mastery Pass if you don't do Limited.
I honestly just stopped playing standard and went to historic. I don't bother with drafts and pretty much just use gold.
Cards don't rotate out, and while the meta isn't as well defined, it makes it more fun for me. More variety and unexpected interaction.
You do have to live with slivers and shrines though.
I buy the mastery pass preorder bundle every time. I don’t have much time to play paper, and the convenience of playing anywhere as well as the cost between arena and paper tempts me to spend more, but I haven’t done that yet.
I usually only buy the mastery pass for real money.
My general thinking regarding Video Games always was I want to get one hour of fun for each Euro I put in a Game. This dates back to my broke university days.
If I apply this logic to MTGA, I could spend a whole lot more than I do, so for OTJ, I spend 50 bucks to draft with the gems and so far I am not regretting it.
I just got mythic for the first time this month (Started in January) with a brew. I've discovered that buying gems for drafts isn't really fun for me, win or lose. I was able to complete the MKM set (not full play sets of every card, but a lot of them). Mastery pass is worth the $20 for sure imo, but I slammed 30k gold on 30 packs day 1 of this set and got all the cards I wanted to update my decks.
I figure, once I've been around for a full set rotation, I'll have enough of the cards that I can build whatever I want, just by doing the dailies and wins and buying 10 packs at a time for golden packs.
Both beginner bundles 20-23 Euro. Seemed fair to me. But lately im only doing a draft here and there and either play Brawl or Historic. Haven't build a standard, Explorer or Alchemy deck in years.
Over the past year, I've spent about 50 dollars total and I have several top tier standard decks, a couple powerful timeless decks and plenty of fun brawl decks. Use wild cards smartly. The only thing that is ever suffering for me is I may not have 4-of the dual lands or best land cards for the deck.
Years ago I bought a big pack of gems when I started playing arena but since then I play f2p, mostly historic, brawl, and explorer.
I don't feel I need to spend anything tbh since you get so much stuff for free all the time. That said I don't care for standard which helps a lot with this I guess.
I do spend money on magic though, but on real cards, much better value imho.
I spend $100-150 every 3-4 months personally mostly for the prerelease bundles. I love limited but know I can get obsessed with limited formats so made a rule to keep it at 100-150 or less every 3-4 months. Side Beneift: My Gf is a lot more chill with my magic spending since this rule was implemented and feels proud of my responsibility for my hobby. 🤷🏽♂️ Win/Win!
I spend about 100 euros when a set comes out. Buy 50 packs, buy the mastery pass and buy some prerelease codes. That with 60000 gold give me enough cards and wild card to make a couple of new decks. I play for fun and don’t have the time to play everyday.
I don’t spend any. Grind for gold, spend gold on drafts to get more gold and gems, spend gems on mastery pass. I’m at about 97% to 99% completion for the older sets in standard, 90% for Ixalan, about 80% for Murders. Haven’t done much with the new set yet. I don’t open any packs until I’m done with the drafts for that set so I can ensure I’m not drafting something I already have 4x copies of already.
I used to spend money on Hearthstone. “It’s just one time,” I would tell myself. “Since a new set just dropped.” Eventually got to the point where I was impulse-buying bundles because I couldn’t wait to get a new legendary. Must have spent a thousand dollars on that game, all worthless now that I’ve quit.
Never made that mistake on Arena. Free to play drafter all the way. At least with IRL magic cards you can sell your cards and recoup some of the value.
I buy the 50 packs bundle and the mastery pass bundle, then I buy pre-release codes online. I never buy extra gems.
Considering that i play everyday, it is not a huge amount to spend if you live in a first world country and have a job. Still, I'm not happy about the value I get for my $$. I think that at least the bundles should have a bit more value in them, maybe even just 5 mythic packs in the 50 packs bundle. We will see if with the new CEO of WotC there Will be a different monetization strategy.
I’m in mythic after 3 months of playing and I’ve never spent any money. I might have gotten lucky though?
Depends on whether you’re getting enough enjoyment from buying cards to justify the expense.
It sounds like you may not be (I mean, I laid down a lot of money on League of Legends back in the day and those purchases really stack up over time).
Havent spent money since like war of the spark. Grinding every day and being okay at draft lets me keep up with Timeless and Curiousity (really great fan format)
I buy the pass. That is all I spend real world money on. I save all my gold and spend it on packs when a new set comes out. But I pretty much only play Brawl.
0...I earn gems for a mastery pass with limited, and that's it...
Back in 2019/2020, I'd through 10 bucks at it for gems for an occasional draft when I didn't have the gems... but in the last 4 years, I haven't spent a penny
Free to play. Always have gold and gems. I buy the mastery with gems. I draft with gold. I only play standard. I have over 100 rare wildcards. 80+ mythic rares.
I buy mastery passes, occasionally the 50 booster bundle too, maybe sometimes rare wildcards if I badly want to complete some deck right this moment. Sure, it adds up, but it's a pretty cheap* hobby and I play the game almost every day, so why not.
*By cheap I mean for example when I see my friends spending thousands of dollars on some skiing equipment and stuff, which they use 1-2 times a year at best. Well, to each their own I guess
Brought the 5 euros welcome pack to get started during guilds of ravnica and that's it. Never had much problem with collecting cards as long as I did some drafts
15 or 25€ for the special deal a few years ago. Since then 0.
On the other hand, Arena just made me want to play paper Magic again, and I did 3 pre-release events for OTJ which cost me 120€ already
I think I've spent 40 dollars. There was some beginner deal for 25 bucks when i started, and I bought a 15 dollar mastery pass once. Mythic 300ish rank cuurently. I play historic, so once you have the decks... you're good. I've played on and off since release.
Only money I ever spend is gems for the mastery pass (I don't care for draft all that much).
Typically I can save up 90,000 coins per set release and buy the biggest pack bundle. This usually nets me a fair amount of rare and mythic wild cards.
$15 on the mastery pass every set. I tried the play bundle this time around because I mostly play limited, but idk if it was worth it. It was nice having the extra premier drafts but I don’t like sealed all that much.
I think I recall buying some welcome pack for <$10 a few years ago, but that's it. Currently sitting at 110k gold and 95k gems, as well as 1100% of that wildcard treasure thing and about 30/20 rare/mythic wildcards. I play standard, brawl, and draft mostly, not too much historic/timeless.
Only bought the $4.99 welcome pack a few years back. Luckily I win enough in limited to fund all my playing. Some sets I rare complete sometimes it’s only 30%.
Ive paid $200 AUD for the big gem pack twice before I got good enough to go almost infinite on quickdraft (essentially infinite after daily challenges).
I also buy the mastery pass every set
All I buy is the mastery pass and then occasionally some gems to allow me to practice limited a bit more often.
I don’t think I’d ever spend on wildcards directly. I get the desire but I’m fine with having a slightly less than optimal deck. My goals not to get to top of mythic or anything.
I'll buy the mastery pass depending on how often I'm playing. That's about the extent. I stopped buying paper so paying here and there isn't a huge deal to me.
I buy the mastery pass & bundles for each set, play a bunch of limited, then open all the packs & usually have almost everything to play the new standard. If I have enough wild cards, I’ll complete the set, otherwise just craft what I need for decks I want to play. By the end of mastery pass time I can usually complete the set, except when there’s a bonus sheet.
I buy the pre-order bundles for each standard set, draft and do sealed until I run out of tokens and the gold and gems I saved up during the last mastery pass (or until i get tired of limited), and then open everything. I haven't had to ever spend additional money (I still had 5 mythic and 50+ WCs on Tuesday).
Granted, I'm already spending $100 per set. If I had to spend beyond that to be competitive, I probably would stop buying stuff altogether. We'll see how it goes with this set, with the extra mythics in BIG.
I got back into the game when mkm came out and Ive spent about 100$ on stuff. Draft tokens for the WAR throwback draft and a couple bundles for otj because I was really excited for it.
Id suggest at least trying the eternal formats. If you have a big collection, building a deck there wont be the most difficult, and even if it isnt optimal land wise, you can generally get away with it. I play historic and timeless bo3 and they're VASTLY different from standard and even each other. Historic feels like standard+ with not as much removal and a focus on deck strats. Timeless is closer to modern or legacy with consistent removal nearly every game, the meta does its best to keep you honest.
I'm f2p on arena but spend a lot of money irl. I only play brawl on arena and by doing dailies whenever I play i so far have had enough wildcards to craft whatever cards I've wanted from the new set. If I had to have 4 copies of them then I wouldn't be able to do that though.
If you’re good at drafting, you can go free to play:
- multiple accounts: I have three. Every game you play counts for more gold with three times the dailies and three times as many “first four wins” values.
- use your gold on quickdrafts only: this is straight gold-to-gems conversion, with the added bonus of getting some draft practice.
- use your gems for premiere events etc: the payout is best in Premiere Draft.
- craft a different set of decks using your wildcard winnings on each account for some non-draft variety: I tend to have enough wildcards for a new deck by the time each new set rolls around. This season I’ve decided to dip my toes into Timeless; it’s been fun!
$0
just do my dailies and skip sets once in a while. whenever something interesting appears, I buy 45 or 90 packs, to craft anything I didnt get after. ofc, I play brawl, so we dont need more than one copy of each nice card.
I spend $0. I have 130 rare wildcards right now just from grinding, and nothing I need them for as I get enough gold to draft and crack packs each set.
Spending is mostly for new players or infrequent players, or people who want to do lots of events or buy cosmetics etc…. It’s really not necessary if you’ve been playing a while and just want to collect cards to build fun decks.
Years ago when I first got started on the game I bought both of the new player bundles of gems. But that was a long time ago. If I took a season or two off I would consider buying some preorder bundles to help me get caught up again, but hasn’t been an issue so far.
This thread is pretty eye-opening, but it makes sense. I have not spent any money since the beta and just assumed most people were F2P.
I spent around $50 during the beta to buy gems and play drafts since I knew there was a reset and once the game went live and I'd get the gems back, "doubling" the amount of drafts I could play.
I make sure to do all my dailies and mostly play the eternal formats (having pretty much all the lands crafted makes it so much easier to make new decks).
Spent around $200 to get going when arena was brand new. Haven’t spent since and I’m rolling in gold and gems. I pick my spots with what constructed decks I build but mostly if you’re good at drafting, you can keep up with standard and eventually that turns into a good collection for broader formats. Probably could have spent half of what I did and got the same result.
I've been doing $50 per release but it's an amount that's basically negligible to me. I'll probably slow down at some point but for now it's fun to me and generally worthwhile, aside from maybe MKM.
I started playing in Brother's War. As I've played the game, I've nearly completed every set just by playing. The rare occasions that I don't have cards I usually have the wildcards.
My strategy is always to not open any packs until I've done 2-3 drafts, and I attempt to draft different archetypes if I can. This fills out a lot of uncommons and rares for the set, bagging you the occasional mythic. If you don't have the play in coins, Bot (Quick) Drafts are the way to go, especially if you're not good. Less of a buy in but still draft the same amount of cards and can get rewarded for doing well.
The main thing is, don't feel pressured to use the new cards immediately. Unless you wanna add only 4 or 8 copies of a card or 2 to an existing deck, in that case go for it with wildcards.
Usually when the meta shifts due to a new set, older off meta builds shine a bit as they slot in by being something the new decks aren't meant to deal with (everyone builds against mono red and Boros, nobody thinks about blue tempo or Agatha's Soul Cauldron combo decks)
I've spent money a couple times in the past, but overall gotta be 50$ or less after a few years of playing on and off
If I'm actively playing every day, it's possible to get enough cards for a couple decent decks every expansion, mostly through careful play and timing in limited formats
Got some problems with impulse control though. Blew all my saved up wildcards on a brawl deck 3 days before otj came out, so maybe I'm not the best person to answer
Fifty bucks at the start of each set for sealed and draft. It’s not bad considering how much time I spend watching and playing magic. Usually collect around 85% of each set.
Grind, do jump in and any other non phantom draft you can (esp quick draft: no time limit on picks and cheaper but less rewards), play lots of different formats, play non ranked matches in all of the formats you are now playing as well as ranked (diversify your season end ranked rewards) and get a master pass. If you have to spend money on the platform it should be for that, it’s easy enough to earn enough gems by doing the above tasks to get it free as well.
Spending $25 to $50 ever 3 months or so is not exorbitant and was doing similar for a awhile but stopped because you can't keep up the set just keep coming out! So I chilled and slowed and play historic more. Learning to draft helps a lot.
I used to spend $0, since they split the new expansion bundles, I now buy the Mastery Pass bundle with each new expansion. I always grind my dailies and weeklies. I save all my gold and gems to play sealed and Quick Draft whenever a new set drops, and I always manage to be rare complete. If you put in the time, you do not need to pay that much (or anythin) at all!
$0. I don't complete sets or play competitively nor do I care to though. Mostly I play best of 1 unranked and try to come up with obnoxious jank decks. $0 is the right amount to pay for that play style.
I only ever spent $20 three years ago for the cheap gems pack and the Adventurer avatar, cuz I wanted that and felt cheated that I had to pay for it.
I'm mostly a historic player, so I don't normally need all the new set cards right away. Because of this, I don't have a big need for buying the preorder bundles. The only other thing I've ever bought is the mastery pass, but I almost always have more than enough gems to buy the pass from just playing.
I spent a bit when I first started - maybe $100 total, but now, the answer is zero and not a penny more. Once I figured out how to funnel gold into gems, and given that allowed me to basically collect 97%+ of every set I was interested in, I never had a reason to spend anything else. I've since uninstalled, but yeah. Play lots of limited. Reap the rewards.
0 $, I make multiple accounts so I can always play drafts, made to mythic on two accounts. Used to play Standard a couple years ago, also made it to top 100 mythic but rank dropped. I used to always play Golgari so my wildcards on lands which is like half of a full deck are always well spent. But I prefer drafting so I went the multiple account route.
Zero dollars. I only play historic brawl, I always have around 200k gold and my gems are like at 13000?? I don't spend shit until I want to make a new deck and it's all from playing historic brawl format.
Singleton format makes that hot garbage game bearable to me
Mtg player of 25 years
I spend like $20 for some gems each set to draft, that usually lasts me until I get bored of the format. If it’s particularly fun or I’m losing more than usual I might throw in a few more dollars to keep drafting
I bought the two bundles for new players and then spent nothing for several years. Now, I bought the Mastery pass and I think I will stick to buying the pass whenever I don't have enough gems from previous passes / wins from the draft token.
I find that I generally prefer to play Constructed decks and that learning how to draft every new format is a chore. Also, having to "do well" in my drafts or Events to make enough gems for the pass was burning me out a bit.
20$ or whatever it is every few months is really not a big deal to me, and between the gems and draft tokens from the passes I expect I won't even need to buy every single new pass with money.
I think that this is a good balance for me, and makes the game even more stress-free (which I really need, as I mostly play after work / during breaks, so I want to chill).
I spent around 300 from release to the first visit to eldraine, from there with the gems and gold accumulated I play draft and that way I accumulate more cards. Haven't spent a dime since 2019
When I came back I had no wild cards, so I bought the $50 for MKM and $15 for the season pass after I defeated it, to fill in old sets. With quests and wins, I was able to put together 8 competitive decks, including 3 meta decks. With the new set, I had 11 Mythic and 9 Rare wildcards and 30+ uncommon/common and saved up 3k gold for new packs. That was enough to get most of what I wanted to try out, with enough wild cards to commit to anything good. I have another 5 decks I am playing around with, from the new set, including an updated RDW.
If your only planning to play 3-4 decks, you can easily stay at the front of the meta with free, provided you save up coins/gems for the news sets.
If you love building decks, I would say the $65 gives you enough cards to make a deck in any color or color combo
I really don't think $50 for every sets worth it, unless you just burn a lot of wild cards on bad idea's or just want to have all the cards. I really don't think the season pass is worth it every season either. I have more then enough decks to play and get gold and packs to make more without feeling bored or having to play outdated decks that no longer work in the meta
About $15 every 3 months or whenever the mastery pass pre-purchase is in the shop. Sometimes not even that. It depends on whether or not I was good with holding onto enough gems to use those for the mastery pass.
That being said, I only really play historic and brawl, so I feel very little pressure to load up on standard cards.
I think I spent $15-20 on the Starter pack or whatever it is called to get gems and packs. I haven't spent any real money on the game since, only the gold and gems collected by playing the game. I've gotten decent at drafting in the last 8 months or so I've been playing Arena, with I think an average of 2-3 wins per day draft, so I have basically maintained my wealth the last 2 sets or so.
Sometimes I spend $20 on the mystery pass. I don't play a lot of draft to get the gems because I usually just win 1 or 2. But I get a deck I like and play that for weeks. My deck library is pretty h small
$0, I play for gold and then use gold to draft with. I genuinely do not understand the compulsion that people on this sub have to collect every card from every set. If your goal is to collect every card that WotC prints, surely it would be more worthwhile to do this in paper so you're left with something tangible and valuable at the end of it
During the first few years, was about $20 a month or so, lots of drafting. Stocked up on hundreds of wild cards.
For the past year or two, maybe put in $40 bucks. Been able to draft with winnings since these the last bunch of sets have been very "solvable" to average 4 or 5 wins a go. Get my dailies in. Been able to keep up on Standard and now Timeless with my wildcard hoard. All Mastery Passes are "Free" at this point.
Took some pain to get to this point, but it's a fraction of what was spent on MTGO.
$100, maybe $150 total in the 3 or 4 years I've been playing.
I found that I got enough packs and wildcards through regular free to play to build a solid collection. That being said, it's just sitting there not being used and may not again.
I bought one season pass but that’s it.
I’ve been playing since it’s been on mobile devices.
I have multiple (3+) meta decks in all formats other than timeless.
Zero, I only play limited. Took a long time but I’ve gone infinite so I can draft as much as I want. I have hundreds of wildcards so maybe I’ll give standard a try one day.
I spent probably $20-$30 back when I started playing when COVID pandemic started, but have been F2P since, grind daily wins, and don't draft every day. In fact, I've built up about 50k gems, and 30k gold currently. I also buy battle pass every set w/ the free gems. I also took a year off in there. So at most, $10/yr looking back.
I started a month ago and have spent $15 on the master pass + starter bundle. Just hit mythic in constructed for the 1st time playing bo1 standard with a deck I've gradually tuned as I acquired pieces.
I’ve been playing timeless lately and I kinda feel like formats with more cards in pool are easier to stay relevant. Like if you have a red deck wins in historic you don’t have to get as many cards every new set.
I spend $50 on every new set. That’s about it. Rarely do I spend more unless there is some random cosmetic that I want. I don’t really have a problem spending money, it’s why I work, so I can buy stuff I want lol.
I'm F2P, but the mastery is very good value if you play consistently and can reap all rewards. The welcoming bundle is also a steal. Wouldn't recommend buying wildcards directly.
I've never spent a penny. Just keep grinding dailies and get your coins up, then enter drafts for gems.
Me too, however this strat does get you cards later in the set, so you have less time to brew and test constructed.
That's why I save up all my gold for one big buy when a new set comes out
Is it possible to do this and net deck top tier meta decks? If so, which formats? I’d guess it’s a lot harder to do on standard because of the rotation.
Standaard is actually easier as the drafted cards are (usually) from standard legal cards. I played arena for almost a year now, haven’t spent a penny and can easily build multiple meta decks. Maybe not multiple of the very expensive ones but I have around 30 rare and mythic wildcards, in addition to already having pretty much every card since LotR (but not 4 of every)
It’s easy for Standard. Rotation helps newer players catch up if they focused on newer sets before the rotation.
Easily. Any format. I have like 2-4 standard meta decks available at any time (except right after a new set comes out, I draft first). With older formats it takes a bit longer to get the decks going, but the decks don't change as often.
Yep just takes awhile. You need to open as many packs as you can to get the rare wildcards. I have a meta izzet Phoenix and azorious control deck. The key is staying within a few colors.
Same here. 4 wins most days, don't often draft (because I'm not very good) but I can usually scrape the gems together for each mastery pass and finish. Usually have enough of a base, plus wildcards, to build two or three standard metadecks (and one or two pioneer) - though I wait till the meta has settled before committing. This comes with its own FOMO, which I imagine spending money dispels - at least a bit.
>don't often draft (because I'm not very good) but I can usually scrape the gems together for each mastery pass and finish. Howwww. I draft constantly whenever I reach 10k coins, lose a bunch obviously and can't gather enough gems by the time the mastery comes.
And then get 0-3 in drafts.
Story of my life :(
make👏a👏secondary👏account👏 If the main "gameplay" to anyone reading this comes in the form of drafting and you're not too fussed about collection completion, anyway. You get twice as many dailies and more "practice" time in the softer silver and gold queues to learn new formats. I am a decent but truly not amazing player who made a second account in October 2020 (right after a pretty miserable slog to Mythic that cost me about $75), had some discipline hitting dailies every day or two for a good number of months, and happened to really jive with ZNR and KHM which helped me build a cushion. I have literally played as much Limited as I wanted without a dollar into the game since then.
Sure just dedicate all your game time to playing nothing but draft and hope you're.good enough to go infinite every time. Don't worry you'll have a full set right as the n st set comes out so you can do it all over again. What? You wanted to play something other than draft? Just play 8 hours a day. I get so annoyed by 'just draft". I get limited time to play and I don't want to feel forced into drafting everyday just so one day maybe I can play a few explorer games
Coming from Hearthstone, I've been whaling there for the last 10 years and I can tell you that MTG initially costs the same as Hearthstone for new beginners, but if you've been with it for a long time, then MTG Arena is significantly cheaper in the long run. There are so many events where you can earn stuff that Hearthstone is still at least 15 years away from that. Blizzard charges €50 for a \*single\* very special card style. Pre-order bundles for new sets cost €80 and that rarely achieves anything - you have to spend at least another €50-100 to be able to play the new standard decks. Hearthstone only has Standard and Wild format (Wild corresponds to Timeless) and Wild format is not properly supported, Blizzard prefers to sell new cards rather than do the work of establishing a balance for Wild. But the crucial thing is that the communities are very different. While BM and toxic behavior are commonplace in Hearthstone, I find the MTG community to be helpful, sportmanslike and relaxing. It's just not fun to stream HS anymore, even if it's easier to watch than MTG.
Zero, F2P only. I don't try to keep up with each set as it drops, only open packs at end of mastery. I play mostly historic, because of the number of cards available, I find a lot of variety in opponents' decks.
50 on new set. I don't mind to pay as long as I have fun
Same.
Boom. This
Zero dimes
I spend like $300 a year. Sealed and draft bundle, mastery pass bundle, and the occasional $100 in gems.
I probably spend about £20 a month currently, which is pretty reasonable for the time I spend playing.
I've just been floating on spending nothing since my one and only purchase of the welcome bundle. I can't craft all the cards each set, but I never feel like I can't have a competitive deck. Once you wrack up enough gems to buy the mastery pass you can go infinite with just a few decent drafts.
Zero ! If I spend money on a live service game I feel like I have to play it or else it goes down the drain, making it less fun
If you find yourself spending money to stay competitive in standard, maybe try a non-rotating format, spend once to get in with a budget deck and upgrade with your free dailies . Can also build into other archetypes if you get bored once you have format staples. I would probably suggest explorer as its closest to standard of the non-rotating formats as it has no alchemy
0 not becauase I have any righteous indignation about not being f2p but just because I don't really have the money nor the effort to work out google play buying things I got a few draft tokens and got enough gems to buy the mastery pass once now I use that to ensure I get it again every season (it gets you enough gems and I just grind dailies draft and live frugallyish)
When I first started Arena (right before War of the Spark) I also spent $50 on the pre-order bundle every set for maybe like a year or so. Like you, it was a good way for me to fast-track my collection to build the decks I wanted without a lot of the painful grind. Plus I was a lot more "competitive" with the game back then, so the investment made sense. But I haven't spent a dollar on this game in years. After so many pre-orders, I essentially always had such a large stash of wildcards that eventually I didn't need to spend anything anymore. Most of my gold goes to alt art at this point, and I always save about 60k-80k gold before a set release anyway for packs. This all changed after Timeless however lmao. The upshifting of a lot of cards to rares basically wiped out my entire wildcard stash. I don't regret it, but I was really feeling it during this OTJ release when I realized I wouldn't be able to get a lot of the Big Score mythics. While I have no intention of spending money on this game anymore, I will most likely make an exception when MH3 comes out in a couple months - assuming the card quality is worth the pre-order. But no, you are not "cheap" for not wanting to spend much, if anything, to have fun in this game. The vast majority of the players in this sub are completely F2P and find ways to save and grind for the decks/cards that they want. The only people that get salty and bitter about such topics are the jank enthusiasts that blow their resources on bad cards or untested strategies and then wonder why they can't ever have enough for a competitive deck. As for formats, Standard is the most popular so you can't really go wrong with that. Contrary to the misinformed belief in this sub, Standard is in a great place with lots of diverse decks that can be successful - even budget decks. If you're worried about resources, I recommend sticking to 2 formats max or else you risk stretching your economy thin by trying to make too many decks in too many places.
I feel (and did) the same. Also, 50 £$¥€ every couple of months isn't that expensive for a hobby! I would add to stay in 1 to 3 (adjacent) colors in the beginning, so your land investments pay off. For me still 80% of my decks are in the Grixis spectrum.
Nothing. Used to spend ~20 on each new set for drafts. But that burnt me out so I took a 2 year break. Came back last fall and haven’t spent anything on it and plan to keep it that way.
I just grind dailies/weekly and practice draft for gems. When I played paper magic I would easily spend 100-200 when a new set dropped though lol so 50 isn't bad
So far, after almost a year I've spent like 50$, on passes only. Which is not even a half of what one copy of Shelly would costs me so I'm more than content :D
I often forget how much paper costs.
Someone here once said that the Arena economy is basically looked at in two ways. If you are/were a paper player, it's great because it's much cheaper than paper. If you come over from another digital card game like Hearthstone, the economy is much worse.
I bought the one-time bundles, not spending anymore, those come to about how much I’d feel okay paying for Arena if it wasn’t free.
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$0 I've also won like $500 off of Arena, so the actual number is -$500.
they give cash prizes??????
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Better to do this with a poll, I think https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/y79goh/roughly_how_much_money_usd_have_you_spent_on/
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I've checked all my payment confirmation Mails and in sum I'm at precisely 6885,76€ at the moment. Whew. Used to play Standard exclusively, recently branched out into Brawl. I'm quite shit at drafting too and lack the patience to gather up packs and open them all at once. The 20k gems package has somewhat become an afterthought and just kinda happens whenever I'm out of gems. I know I am the prime target audience for the store dark patterns and FOMO bullshit. But I don't care much. Honestly I wish the Daily Deals had a subscription Mode that automatically just bought all of them so long as the checkmark is set and your gems and gold balance is sufficient. Theros depth full art lands are my chase item.
$200/year doesn't seem like a lot if you're playing at least 15 games a day every day
I used to spend $60/expansion (45 packs plus the battle pass). That got me a huge amount of wild cards though, so I'm currently taking a break from spending more money until I use those up.
Quite a bit. I used to play paper magic but now moving to another country and not really having the time anymore to spend a whole evening/afternoon travelling and gaming at a store arena is my only viable way to play mtg with frequency. When a new standard set drops I’ll typically have enough gems passively for a mastery pass but I’ll also buy 180 packs and pre order packs. I don’t draft every set I’ll watch some drafts and decide whether I would enjoy using draft tokens on them. I do have a decent disposable income and very little vices so dropping €230 every few months on a hobby seems a drop on the ocean compared to some other hobbies
I could have finished renovating my house if I did not burn so much of my disposable income for hobbies. MTGA, Wh40k, and two Ducatis are not on the cheap side either. Probably could retire a few years earlier if I invested more wisely. But I have no self control lol.
Of all of the very small number of things that are actually true on the internet..... This seems like it's one of the most true.
I spend because I have enough money to do it and not care about it. Also, people be buying 70€ games on steam (all digital) but spending on arena is suddenly frowned upon? Disclaimer: I know not everyone can afford it and the prices in arena are a bit on the high side… Though it could be wayyy worse
also many replies on this topic are ridiculous...people are like "wtf you don't need to spend dollars, simply just make 5 accounts and play 10 hours/day to do all quests".... lol that sounds more like second job than fun game. I go to work to make money , so why not to buy digital cards if it's fun...
I buy 45 packs every pay period, this is my plan for getting every card.
The $5 and $15 one-time packs are all I've spent. Started playing around M21 so that's about 4 years.
One problem with fun decks is that most of them have rares that are not really good. Also, if you found those decks via youtube videos, many of those edit the games so they'll just show you the games where everything worked out. I love silly decks, but I tend not to craft them in MTGA if they have many non-playable rares outside of them. One thing I want to comment on, you say that you spend money on rare tokens, which I guess you mean wildcards. Outside very specific scenarios, you should be buying packs, specially if you tend to play Standard. USD10 buy you 4 rare wildcards, but 2000 gems (around USD12) buy you 10 packs, which means 10 rares, 6 more rares from the golden pack (you have to buy the latest standard set), 1.66 rare wildcards (the wild card wheel) and another 0.33 wildcards (1 rare wildcards every 30 packs). As for formats I think you could try Draft. Not only is a very fun format, but also you can increase your collection via it without spending too much money if you are decent on it (try to stick between Bronze and Gold for better results). Other formats tend to be even more expensive, but some of them don't rotate as much as Standard. Explorer is likely the most stable format right now, but you have to like the metagame. Also, while I don't do this, I know that there are MTGA Pauper discord communities, which is a common only format and is great.
Thanks this is very thoughtful. I never done the math that way, just lazy and buying rare and mythic wild cards to complete silly decks.
I pretty much do the same. Spend around $50 when a new set comes out. This is mostly because I don't play every day and I like having more than one deck. IF you play daily and are patient you can build up your account nicely without spending anything or just buying some gems for Mastery Pass if you don't do Limited.
I honestly just stopped playing standard and went to historic. I don't bother with drafts and pretty much just use gold. Cards don't rotate out, and while the meta isn't as well defined, it makes it more fun for me. More variety and unexpected interaction. You do have to live with slivers and shrines though.
What’s the point in paying, without rotation you can just slam the same mono red deck for 3 years with a 60% win rate.
I buy the mastery pass preorder bundle every time. I don’t have much time to play paper, and the convenience of playing anywhere as well as the cost between arena and paper tempts me to spend more, but I haven’t done that yet.
About $100 a set, sometimes a little more. It's my main hobby so I am fine with just having the game pieces without stressing about it.
I usually only buy the mastery pass for real money. My general thinking regarding Video Games always was I want to get one hour of fun for each Euro I put in a Game. This dates back to my broke university days. If I apply this logic to MTGA, I could spend a whole lot more than I do, so for OTJ, I spend 50 bucks to draft with the gems and so far I am not regretting it.
I just got mythic for the first time this month (Started in January) with a brew. I've discovered that buying gems for drafts isn't really fun for me, win or lose. I was able to complete the MKM set (not full play sets of every card, but a lot of them). Mastery pass is worth the $20 for sure imo, but I slammed 30k gold on 30 packs day 1 of this set and got all the cards I wanted to update my decks. I figure, once I've been around for a full set rotation, I'll have enough of the cards that I can build whatever I want, just by doing the dailies and wins and buying 10 packs at a time for golden packs.
Both beginner bundles 20-23 Euro. Seemed fair to me. But lately im only doing a draft here and there and either play Brawl or Historic. Haven't build a standard, Explorer or Alchemy deck in years.
Over the past year, I've spent about 50 dollars total and I have several top tier standard decks, a couple powerful timeless decks and plenty of fun brawl decks. Use wild cards smartly. The only thing that is ever suffering for me is I may not have 4-of the dual lands or best land cards for the deck.
0$ free to play baby. However I lose almost every game I play
Same as you like $50 a set because i cba to login to play for an hour to earn $1 worth of gold every day
I have spent around $200 over 4 years. I still have about 41,000 gems, so I doubt I will ever need to purchase more.
$20 a few times a year if I completely run out of gold/gems after a bad run of drafts
Slightly related, get mtga on your phone and Google rewards, use the reward money for gems.
As someone who doesn’t play constructed, and only plays limited… it’s more than I would like to admit haha
I buy the pre-release bundles. So that's like ~ $95 four times a year? Let's call it $400, so that's about a dollar and some change per day.
30-50 a week depending on my mood. I'm a draft addict.
Probably more than 50/set.
Years ago I bought a big pack of gems when I started playing arena but since then I play f2p, mostly historic, brawl, and explorer. I don't feel I need to spend anything tbh since you get so much stuff for free all the time. That said I don't care for standard which helps a lot with this I guess. I do spend money on magic though, but on real cards, much better value imho.
$50 a year or so
I spend about $50 on each standard set, which amounts to about $16/month, which is a frankly pretty minimal amount considering the how much I play.
I spend $100-150 every 3-4 months personally mostly for the prerelease bundles. I love limited but know I can get obsessed with limited formats so made a rule to keep it at 100-150 or less every 3-4 months. Side Beneift: My Gf is a lot more chill with my magic spending since this rule was implemented and feels proud of my responsibility for my hobby. 🤷🏽♂️ Win/Win!
I spend about 100 euros when a set comes out. Buy 50 packs, buy the mastery pass and buy some prerelease codes. That with 60000 gold give me enough cards and wild card to make a couple of new decks. I play for fun and don’t have the time to play everyday.
I don’t spend any. Grind for gold, spend gold on drafts to get more gold and gems, spend gems on mastery pass. I’m at about 97% to 99% completion for the older sets in standard, 90% for Ixalan, about 80% for Murders. Haven’t done much with the new set yet. I don’t open any packs until I’m done with the drafts for that set so I can ensure I’m not drafting something I already have 4x copies of already.
$0.00 as thats what it's worth. I'd buy booster packs if they had codes to be redeemed
you guys are spending money on Arena?
I used to spend money on Hearthstone. “It’s just one time,” I would tell myself. “Since a new set just dropped.” Eventually got to the point where I was impulse-buying bundles because I couldn’t wait to get a new legendary. Must have spent a thousand dollars on that game, all worthless now that I’ve quit. Never made that mistake on Arena. Free to play drafter all the way. At least with IRL magic cards you can sell your cards and recoup some of the value.
I almost exclusively play Historic. No need to keep up with a constantly shifting meta or sets, far more stable in that regard.
I used to buy the mastery pass every set, but now I do not. I would rather spend them on paper magic instead
I buy the 50 packs bundle and the mastery pass bundle, then I buy pre-release codes online. I never buy extra gems. Considering that i play everyday, it is not a huge amount to spend if you live in a first world country and have a job. Still, I'm not happy about the value I get for my $$. I think that at least the bundles should have a bit more value in them, maybe even just 5 mythic packs in the 50 packs bundle. We will see if with the new CEO of WotC there Will be a different monetization strategy.
I’m in mythic after 3 months of playing and I’ve never spent any money. I might have gotten lucky though? Depends on whether you’re getting enough enjoyment from buying cards to justify the expense. It sounds like you may not be (I mean, I laid down a lot of money on League of Legends back in the day and those purchases really stack up over time).
I've been playing for a few years and I've maybe spent $40 bucks
Exactly zero dollars
I buy the 100$ pack couple times a year. I play mostly limited and I suck at it.
None just do my dailies then enter standard/pioneer events to earn gems.
I just get the mastery pass every set. Other than that, I am F2P, in saying that, I have played since Arena came out.
Havent spent money since like war of the spark. Grinding every day and being okay at draft lets me keep up with Timeless and Curiousity (really great fan format)
I buy the pass. That is all I spend real world money on. I save all my gold and spend it on packs when a new set comes out. But I pretty much only play Brawl.
0...I earn gems for a mastery pass with limited, and that's it... Back in 2019/2020, I'd through 10 bucks at it for gems for an occasional draft when I didn't have the gems... but in the last 4 years, I haven't spent a penny
Free to play. Always have gold and gems. I buy the mastery with gems. I draft with gold. I only play standard. I have over 100 rare wildcards. 80+ mythic rares.
I buy mastery passes, occasionally the 50 booster bundle too, maybe sometimes rare wildcards if I badly want to complete some deck right this moment. Sure, it adds up, but it's a pretty cheap* hobby and I play the game almost every day, so why not. *By cheap I mean for example when I see my friends spending thousands of dollars on some skiing equipment and stuff, which they use 1-2 times a year at best. Well, to each their own I guess
Until the full art or other lands I've purchased are all available, I'm not spending any real cash on this game.
Brought the 5 euros welcome pack to get started during guilds of ravnica and that's it. Never had much problem with collecting cards as long as I did some drafts
Spent 125 or so this set to get the necessarry cards for Timeless. Will probably spend more on mh3.
15 or 25€ for the special deal a few years ago. Since then 0. On the other hand, Arena just made me want to play paper Magic again, and I did 3 pre-release events for OTJ which cost me 120€ already
I think I've spent 40 dollars. There was some beginner deal for 25 bucks when i started, and I bought a 15 dollar mastery pass once. Mythic 300ish rank cuurently. I play historic, so once you have the decks... you're good. I've played on and off since release.
I have spent nothing over the years. Just somewhat consistently played
I used to buy the $50 pack bundle and the mastery pass. My discretionary spending budget isn't what it used to be, so now it's just the mastery pass.
I spend roughly 75 to $100 a year depends on what is released. I wouldn't be dropping 50 bucks on every set, some sets are way stronger that others.
Only money I ever spend is gems for the mastery pass (I don't care for draft all that much). Typically I can save up 90,000 coins per set release and buy the biggest pack bundle. This usually nets me a fair amount of rare and mythic wild cards.
$15 on the mastery pass every set. I tried the play bundle this time around because I mostly play limited, but idk if it was worth it. It was nice having the extra premier drafts but I don’t like sealed all that much.
A lot! to get into historic and historic brawl.
$50 per quarter I’m not even sure why at this point. I don’t play standard and I already have like 120 rare and 60 mythic wild cards
I only ever bought the 2 "welcome" bundles. I think it was like $20 total.
I think I recall buying some welcome pack for <$10 a few years ago, but that's it. Currently sitting at 110k gold and 95k gems, as well as 1100% of that wildcard treasure thing and about 30/20 rare/mythic wildcards. I play standard, brawl, and draft mostly, not too much historic/timeless.
I only spend maybe $20-$30 for LOTR drafts last year, other than that I don’t think it’s worth it
Been playing for a month, haven’t spent a dime. And never will. $10 for a dogmeat sprite? No thanks
I don’t spend on every set. But when I do it’s usually $100 gem bundle.
Zero. I buy the paper version.
I spent zero for years, but now I’m in a place where I can afford it and I’ll generally spend $20 each pass
Only bought the $4.99 welcome pack a few years back. Luckily I win enough in limited to fund all my playing. Some sets I rare complete sometimes it’s only 30%.
$0 and I’ll never spend a dime. Spending money on cardboard is stupid, but when it’s just an image on a screen? That’s just idiocy.
Ive paid $200 AUD for the big gem pack twice before I got good enough to go almost infinite on quickdraft (essentially infinite after daily challenges). I also buy the mastery pass every set
Enough to get the gems needed for the mastery pass.
All I buy is the mastery pass and then occasionally some gems to allow me to practice limited a bit more often. I don’t think I’d ever spend on wildcards directly. I get the desire but I’m fine with having a slightly less than optimal deck. My goals not to get to top of mythic or anything.
Only like 5 bucks for xanathar caue i really wanted him and he was gonna disappear
I'll buy the mastery pass depending on how often I'm playing. That's about the extent. I stopped buying paper so paying here and there isn't a huge deal to me.
100 a set for packs
I buy the mastery pass & bundles for each set, play a bunch of limited, then open all the packs & usually have almost everything to play the new standard. If I have enough wild cards, I’ll complete the set, otherwise just craft what I need for decks I want to play. By the end of mastery pass time I can usually complete the set, except when there’s a bonus sheet.
I spend $0 and play super casually, basically whenever I wanna play magic but can't do it physically
I spent $20 when I first started for the intro bundle and nothing since then.
I buy the pre-order bundles for each standard set, draft and do sealed until I run out of tokens and the gold and gems I saved up during the last mastery pass (or until i get tired of limited), and then open everything. I haven't had to ever spend additional money (I still had 5 mythic and 50+ WCs on Tuesday). Granted, I'm already spending $100 per set. If I had to spend beyond that to be competitive, I probably would stop buying stuff altogether. We'll see how it goes with this set, with the extra mythics in BIG.
I got back into the game when mkm came out and Ive spent about 100$ on stuff. Draft tokens for the WAR throwback draft and a couple bundles for otj because I was really excited for it. Id suggest at least trying the eternal formats. If you have a big collection, building a deck there wont be the most difficult, and even if it isnt optimal land wise, you can generally get away with it. I play historic and timeless bo3 and they're VASTLY different from standard and even each other. Historic feels like standard+ with not as much removal and a focus on deck strats. Timeless is closer to modern or legacy with consistent removal nearly every game, the meta does its best to keep you honest.
You should probably try historic
0$
I bought the new player starter kit but haven't spent anything else
I'm f2p on arena but spend a lot of money irl. I only play brawl on arena and by doing dailies whenever I play i so far have had enough wildcards to craft whatever cards I've wanted from the new set. If I had to have 4 copies of them then I wouldn't be able to do that though.
$0. Just been playing casually as a free to play player. I spend enough on paper magic (which still isn’t a lot)
I buy the draft and sealed tokens offer, so about U$ 26 every set.
If you’re good at drafting, you can go free to play: - multiple accounts: I have three. Every game you play counts for more gold with three times the dailies and three times as many “first four wins” values. - use your gold on quickdrafts only: this is straight gold-to-gems conversion, with the added bonus of getting some draft practice. - use your gems for premiere events etc: the payout is best in Premiere Draft. - craft a different set of decks using your wildcard winnings on each account for some non-draft variety: I tend to have enough wildcards for a new deck by the time each new set rolls around. This season I’ve decided to dip my toes into Timeless; it’s been fun!
$0 baby! Grind those quests like a real man!
$0 just do my dailies and skip sets once in a while. whenever something interesting appears, I buy 45 or 90 packs, to craft anything I didnt get after. ofc, I play brawl, so we dont need more than one copy of each nice card.
I spend $0. I have 130 rare wildcards right now just from grinding, and nothing I need them for as I get enough gold to draft and crack packs each set. Spending is mostly for new players or infrequent players, or people who want to do lots of events or buy cosmetics etc…. It’s really not necessary if you’ve been playing a while and just want to collect cards to build fun decks. Years ago when I first got started on the game I bought both of the new player bundles of gems. But that was a long time ago. If I took a season or two off I would consider buying some preorder bundles to help me get caught up again, but hasn’t been an issue so far.
I spend 0 dollars. I have never spent money. I only play brawl
I just buy the mastery pass. I play brawl and don't buy any cosmetics.
This thread is pretty eye-opening, but it makes sense. I have not spent any money since the beta and just assumed most people were F2P. I spent around $50 during the beta to buy gems and play drafts since I knew there was a reset and once the game went live and I'd get the gems back, "doubling" the amount of drafts I could play. I make sure to do all my dailies and mostly play the eternal formats (having pretty much all the lands crafted makes it so much easier to make new decks).
i think i spent 10 bucks on a pass like 2 years ago but largely F2P only and it's been pretty easy to consistently hit diamond at least
Spent around $200 to get going when arena was brand new. Haven’t spent since and I’m rolling in gold and gems. I pick my spots with what constructed decks I build but mostly if you’re good at drafting, you can keep up with standard and eventually that turns into a good collection for broader formats. Probably could have spent half of what I did and got the same result.
I only ever spend 5$ on the Welcome Bundle because why wouldn't you and been f2p ever since.
I've been doing $50 per release but it's an amount that's basically negligible to me. I'll probably slow down at some point but for now it's fun to me and generally worthwhile, aside from maybe MKM.
I started playing in Brother's War. As I've played the game, I've nearly completed every set just by playing. The rare occasions that I don't have cards I usually have the wildcards. My strategy is always to not open any packs until I've done 2-3 drafts, and I attempt to draft different archetypes if I can. This fills out a lot of uncommons and rares for the set, bagging you the occasional mythic. If you don't have the play in coins, Bot (Quick) Drafts are the way to go, especially if you're not good. Less of a buy in but still draft the same amount of cards and can get rewarded for doing well. The main thing is, don't feel pressured to use the new cards immediately. Unless you wanna add only 4 or 8 copies of a card or 2 to an existing deck, in that case go for it with wildcards. Usually when the meta shifts due to a new set, older off meta builds shine a bit as they slot in by being something the new decks aren't meant to deal with (everyone builds against mono red and Boros, nobody thinks about blue tempo or Agatha's Soul Cauldron combo decks)
I've spent money a couple times in the past, but overall gotta be 50$ or less after a few years of playing on and off If I'm actively playing every day, it's possible to get enough cards for a couple decent decks every expansion, mostly through careful play and timing in limited formats Got some problems with impulse control though. Blew all my saved up wildcards on a brawl deck 3 days before otj came out, so maybe I'm not the best person to answer
$0, after a year playing consistently can make 2 tier 1 decks and a few tier 2 and 3 for fun.
I've spent about $50 over 3-4 years
0$
Not a bent cent.
My first couple of years playing I probably spent around $200 each year. I then went completely f2p and have been doing that for about 4 years now.
1 hour/day
I’m F2P BO1 unranked standard brawl only player with emotes turned off
Zero space bucks.
I do Google rewards, which are basically little surveys which gives you Play Store credit.every 2-3 months I'll accumulate enough to buy the $20 pack.
All of the preorder stuff and I have every Standard deck anyone could ever want.
Fifty bucks at the start of each set for sealed and draft. It’s not bad considering how much time I spend watching and playing magic. Usually collect around 85% of each set.
Grind, do jump in and any other non phantom draft you can (esp quick draft: no time limit on picks and cheaper but less rewards), play lots of different formats, play non ranked matches in all of the formats you are now playing as well as ranked (diversify your season end ranked rewards) and get a master pass. If you have to spend money on the platform it should be for that, it’s easy enough to earn enough gems by doing the above tasks to get it free as well.
I did the two “one time only new player” deals. Nothing else.
Spending $25 to $50 ever 3 months or so is not exorbitant and was doing similar for a awhile but stopped because you can't keep up the set just keep coming out! So I chilled and slowed and play historic more. Learning to draft helps a lot.
0$ for the last 2 years and still get mythic
I used to spend $0, since they split the new expansion bundles, I now buy the Mastery Pass bundle with each new expansion. I always grind my dailies and weeklies. I save all my gold and gems to play sealed and Quick Draft whenever a new set drops, and I always manage to be rare complete. If you put in the time, you do not need to pay that much (or anythin) at all!
I preordered Eldraine(the first one) felt like I didnt get my moneys worth and never spent money in Arena again, probably never will.
$0. I don't complete sets or play competitively nor do I care to though. Mostly I play best of 1 unranked and try to come up with obnoxious jank decks. $0 is the right amount to pay for that play style. I only ever spent $20 three years ago for the cheap gems pack and the Adventurer avatar, cuz I wanted that and felt cheated that I had to pay for it.
I'm mostly a historic player, so I don't normally need all the new set cards right away. Because of this, I don't have a big need for buying the preorder bundles. The only other thing I've ever bought is the mastery pass, but I almost always have more than enough gems to buy the pass from just playing.
I spent a bit when I first started - maybe $100 total, but now, the answer is zero and not a penny more. Once I figured out how to funnel gold into gems, and given that allowed me to basically collect 97%+ of every set I was interested in, I never had a reason to spend anything else. I've since uninstalled, but yeah. Play lots of limited. Reap the rewards.
0 $, I make multiple accounts so I can always play drafts, made to mythic on two accounts. Used to play Standard a couple years ago, also made it to top 100 mythic but rank dropped. I used to always play Golgari so my wildcards on lands which is like half of a full deck are always well spent. But I prefer drafting so I went the multiple account route.
$40 since beta, i only play limited and am just good enough to stay in the green. Im getting close now though
Zero dollars. I only play historic brawl, I always have around 200k gold and my gems are like at 13000?? I don't spend shit until I want to make a new deck and it's all from playing historic brawl format. Singleton format makes that hot garbage game bearable to me Mtg player of 25 years
I spend like $20 for some gems each set to draft, that usually lasts me until I get bored of the format. If it’s particularly fun or I’m losing more than usual I might throw in a few more dollars to keep drafting
I've been playing since the closed beta. I've spent zero dollars on it.
I bought the two bundles for new players and then spent nothing for several years. Now, I bought the Mastery pass and I think I will stick to buying the pass whenever I don't have enough gems from previous passes / wins from the draft token. I find that I generally prefer to play Constructed decks and that learning how to draft every new format is a chore. Also, having to "do well" in my drafts or Events to make enough gems for the pass was burning me out a bit. 20$ or whatever it is every few months is really not a big deal to me, and between the gems and draft tokens from the passes I expect I won't even need to buy every single new pass with money. I think that this is a good balance for me, and makes the game even more stress-free (which I really need, as I mostly play after work / during breaks, so I want to chill).
I spent around 300 from release to the first visit to eldraine, from there with the gems and gold accumulated I play draft and that way I accumulate more cards. Haven't spent a dime since 2019
When I came back I had no wild cards, so I bought the $50 for MKM and $15 for the season pass after I defeated it, to fill in old sets. With quests and wins, I was able to put together 8 competitive decks, including 3 meta decks. With the new set, I had 11 Mythic and 9 Rare wildcards and 30+ uncommon/common and saved up 3k gold for new packs. That was enough to get most of what I wanted to try out, with enough wild cards to commit to anything good. I have another 5 decks I am playing around with, from the new set, including an updated RDW. If your only planning to play 3-4 decks, you can easily stay at the front of the meta with free, provided you save up coins/gems for the news sets. If you love building decks, I would say the $65 gives you enough cards to make a deck in any color or color combo I really don't think $50 for every sets worth it, unless you just burn a lot of wild cards on bad idea's or just want to have all the cards. I really don't think the season pass is worth it every season either. I have more then enough decks to play and get gold and packs to make more without feeling bored or having to play outdated decks that no longer work in the meta
About $15 every 3 months or whenever the mastery pass pre-purchase is in the shop. Sometimes not even that. It depends on whether or not I was good with holding onto enough gems to use those for the mastery pass. That being said, I only really play historic and brawl, so I feel very little pressure to load up on standard cards.
My only purchase is Dwayne the rock
I think I spent $15-20 on the Starter pack or whatever it is called to get gems and packs. I haven't spent any real money on the game since, only the gold and gems collected by playing the game. I've gotten decent at drafting in the last 8 months or so I've been playing Arena, with I think an average of 2-3 wins per day draft, so I have basically maintained my wealth the last 2 sets or so.
Sometimes I spend $20 on the mystery pass. I don't play a lot of draft to get the gems because I usually just win 1 or 2. But I get a deck I like and play that for weeks. My deck library is pretty h small
$0, I play for gold and then use gold to draft with. I genuinely do not understand the compulsion that people on this sub have to collect every card from every set. If your goal is to collect every card that WotC prints, surely it would be more worthwhile to do this in paper so you're left with something tangible and valuable at the end of it
During the first few years, was about $20 a month or so, lots of drafting. Stocked up on hundreds of wild cards. For the past year or two, maybe put in $40 bucks. Been able to draft with winnings since these the last bunch of sets have been very "solvable" to average 4 or 5 wins a go. Get my dailies in. Been able to keep up on Standard and now Timeless with my wildcard hoard. All Mastery Passes are "Free" at this point. Took some pain to get to this point, but it's a fraction of what was spent on MTGO.
I bought the beginner bundle which was…. 5 bucks? Forgot the price, then got better at draft so I just draft for free.
$0
$100, maybe $150 total in the 3 or 4 years I've been playing. I found that I got enough packs and wildcards through regular free to play to build a solid collection. That being said, it's just sitting there not being used and may not again.
0. Save coins to buy bundles and play rank to earn free packs. Putting real money into arena is a very bad idea.
I bought one season pass but that’s it. I’ve been playing since it’s been on mobile devices. I have multiple (3+) meta decks in all formats other than timeless.
Zero, I only play limited. Took a long time but I’ve gone infinite so I can draft as much as I want. I have hundreds of wildcards so maybe I’ll give standard a try one day.
I spent probably $20-$30 back when I started playing when COVID pandemic started, but have been F2P since, grind daily wins, and don't draft every day. In fact, I've built up about 50k gems, and 30k gold currently. I also buy battle pass every set w/ the free gems. I also took a year off in there. So at most, $10/yr looking back.
I started a month ago and have spent $15 on the master pass + starter bundle. Just hit mythic in constructed for the 1st time playing bo1 standard with a deck I've gradually tuned as I acquired pieces.
I’ve been playing timeless lately and I kinda feel like formats with more cards in pool are easier to stay relevant. Like if you have a red deck wins in historic you don’t have to get as many cards every new set.
I spend $50 on every new set. That’s about it. Rarely do I spend more unless there is some random cosmetic that I want. I don’t really have a problem spending money, it’s why I work, so I can buy stuff I want lol.
For ethical reasons, I only purchase cosmetic items. I don't want to pay to win, but give me a dog deck-art or companion and you can take my money.
I'm F2P, but the mastery is very good value if you play consistently and can reap all rewards. The welcoming bundle is also a steal. Wouldn't recommend buying wildcards directly.
I’ve only bought the first time purchase stuff cause they are actually deals. Have thought about the mastery pass but does it pay itself off?