Magic: The Gathering Arena

A 15+ years player of the physical game, and I love what they have tried to do with the digital version, but the game is very unbalanced. As a new player, starting with barely any cards, match after match I was placed against players with strong custom decks, and my starting deck could not even touch them. This goes both for ranked and unranked games. After 20+ loses (with barely 1 win), I just decided to delete the game, as it offers no option to catch up to players that have been here for a while, other than with purchases, and even than it will be thousands down the drain before there is any real achievement. They should try matching people based on something other than rank (maybe cards in their library, years of playing, etc.), to make it more interesting and enticing to new players. Otherwise there is no real reason to keep playing after a day or two. Also, every 4-5 matches, it would just glitch and freeze, usually when the opponent is playing a new creature card. Very frustrating to have to restart every now and then (using iPhone 13pro, so its not caused by the phone).

I tried playing on both my laptop and phone. Both devices are updated to the latest software. I use an iphone 11 and a macbook. On both devices, I play ranked standard and I’m platinum. Literally the last 20+ games, with no exception, my game CRASHES in the middle of my match and I’m usually winning. I either lose server connection or literally the screen will freeze. I have to close and open the app in order to fix the freeze, at that point my match is abandoned. I make sure that I have a great internet connection. I make sure that my devices are updated and have a lot of available storage. I can guarantee that the fault is not on my end. The game just crashes a lot. Maybe it depends on the server I use.

Everything is great except for the shuffling which then effectively ruins the game, 8-10 pulls and I get no land cards or 8-10 pulls and it’s all creature cards on a regular basis? Broken

I automatically lose randomly, the most recent problem I’ve had is my opponent runs out of cards yet I automatically lose. It should be whoever runs out of cards loses not me. Whenever the game don’t cheap me out of winning it’s fun an I enjoy the play style

I just recently got back into magic and for practice I thought I’d pick this game up but after playing for a few hours I had my fill. The game is basically trying to milk you for every dollar to open up “digital booster” which is the dumbest thing ever. I already spend my money on real cards I feel it would only be fair to get the digital copies of what I already own.. or at least make a balanced game that doesn’t force you to grind in an effort to squeeze micro transactions out of you. GARBAGE.

Functionality wise, the app tends to glitch out repeatedly. I’ve had multiple saved decks just disappear. There’s no sense of community and quick automated responses from people who spend way too much time on this app to make games not fun and rather robotic. Honestly, you would have more fun invest investing your time and actually growing a real deck and going to a store.

This game can be fun but you have to accept there is an algorithm that determines ahead of time whether you'll win or lose a game, it is what it is. You'll lose 3,4,5 games in a row then go on to win the next 5 in a row it isn't random. Also whatever deck you make you'll play against. Build a black deck? You'll play against 80% black decks, make a white blue control deck? Weird how every other game your playing against a deck eerily similar to yours. There's nothing random about this game it's all controlled from the get go, with that it can be fun, ranked games seems to be the only place you can kind of get away from the algorithm, but only at the highest levels.

I will change my review when support for controllers are implemented. They make enough money preying on us nerds to make this happen.

If this app didn’t screw you constantly with bad draws and matching you up against players that are way more experienced and have spent ridiculous amounts of money for their cards or that just have wayyyy better decks than you, it would be a pretty awesome game, but unfortunately it screws you constantly. You better fork up the money or you aren’t going anywhere in this.

The reality is everything is manipulated in code with this game. Mono Red queues will take 2 minutes while a normal queue time is 10 seconds. They will purposefully give you bad “rated” cards in your hands, forces losses and wins, and it’s just garbage. There’s no true randomness to anything. Just get sellable and save your money for REAL VALUE CARDS.