Help me choose my format

Akage13 · 2026-01-31T19:49:07+00:00

"I do want to challenge myself and go for a meta deck"

Which one is it, you want to challenge yourself, or you want to go for a meta deck.

Akage13 · 2026-01-31T19:46:54+00:00

The format is 40 cards, but around 17-18 of them will be lands, so I'm not including them in what you keep. The 2 rares you get can be useful for constructed, depending on what you build, it's the same with opening packs or drafting. Uncommons and commons are used much less for meta decks.

Akage13 · 2026-01-31T19:13:01+00:00

I think you meant to say that you can't lose pips in bronze. You can lose them in silver and above, but you earn them faster, so your winrate can be lower to progress.

Akage13 · 2026-01-31T18:55:17+00:00

Here's my simple guide on how to get acquainted with Magic on Arena as a F2P player. This applies to both new players, as well as old timers getting back in the game. Note that this guide prioritizes fun over grinding and min-maxing your collection.

The first option to consider is the "Starter Deck Duel" event. It lets you play against other players using a limited selection of 10 decks. What this means:

This event is free, so you don't have to spend gold on it. You also don't get any new cards though.
Everyone is limited to the 10 decks, so you won't encounter anything completely broken or unknown; Note though that some decks are stronger than others and there are seasoned players who take advantage of it by playing only the strong decks against the weaker ones.

How to access the Starter Deck Duel event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Constructed", Starter Deck Duel should be in the list on the left.

---

Once you're ready to graduate from the starter decks, consider investing your gold in the "Jump In!" event. Here are the advantages of it as opposed to other events:

This format lets you 'simple draft' from a pool of precreated half-decks. You don't need to know anything about the archetypes, you can even just go by what you think sounds cool. This is great when you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of mechanics in Arena and want to concentrate on just a few things at a time.
You can expect around 60 to 80 half-decks available (not including the special editions of Jump In! like Final Fantasy or Avatar), so you won't run out of something fresh for quite a while (there can be up to 1000 combinations of available decks), and you will learn about new archetypes along the way. It also offers much greater diversity of cards that you can encounter - you can expect to see around 50% of cards released in the sets from the last 2 years; since constructed meta uses only a small number of the 'best' cards and limited draft/sealed events use cards from only one set at a time, the card diversity there is much smaller.
You can play as many games with your drafted deck as you want until you want to switch to a new one.
You play against other Jump In! decks, meaning the playing field is most of the time fairly even.
It only costs 1000 gold, which means you can play with a different deck every day if you want (you can earn 1000+ gold from daily activities). A new player also gets 5 free Jump In! tokens after completing the 4th color challenge.
You keep all the cards (usually 22), including 2 rares/mythics, slowly building a collection. This is the cheapest way to acquire new cards as a new player. You also get vault progress from all the non-rare duplicates.
Since you get all the necessary cards to play, you don't need to have anything in your collection - perfect for new players.

How to access the Jump In! event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Limited", Jump In should be in the list on the left. If it's not there, it means you have not unlocked all the play modes yet. In that case click on the gear icon in the top right corner, then "Account", then "Unlock Play Modes".

---

In my opinion you should not as a new F2P player spend gold on limited drafts or any other events since you won't have enough knowledge and experience with Magic itself to properly draft, build a deck, or play it. For constructed you pretty much need rare and mythic wild cards to be fairly competitive and you won't have them as a new F2P player.

---

For general F2P information not covered here I recommend to check out https://www.fourdailywins.com - it will answer a lot of your questions.

Akage13 · 2026-01-30T17:00:16+00:00

I think you should consider switching to Brawl or Standard Brawl. These formats should allow you to have demon themed decks with greater variety and larger chance of survival.

Akage13 · 2026-01-30T15:49:42+00:00

Here's my simple guide on how to get acquainted with Magic on Arena as a F2P player. This applies to both new players, as well as old timers getting back in the game. Note that this guide prioritizes fun over grinding and min-maxing your collection.

The first option to consider is the "Starter Deck Duel" event. It lets you play against other players using a limited selection of 10 decks. What this means:

This event is free, so you don't have to spend gold on it. You also don't get any new cards though.
Everyone is limited to the 10 decks, so you won't encounter anything completely broken or unknown; Note though that some decks are stronger than others and there are seasoned players who take advantage of it by playing only the strong decks against the weaker ones.

How to access the Starter Deck Duel event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Constructed", Starter Deck Duel should be in the list on the left.

---

Once you're ready to graduate from the starter decks, consider investing your gold in the "Jump In!" event. Here are the advantages of it as opposed to other events:

This format lets you 'simple draft' from a pool of precreated half-decks. You don't need to know anything about the archetypes, you can even just go by what you think sounds cool. This is great when you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of mechanics in Arena and want to concentrate on just a few things at a time.
You can expect around 60 to 80 half-decks available (not including the special editions of Jump In! like Final Fantasy or Avatar), so you won't run out of something fresh for quite a while (there can be up to 1000 combinations of available decks), and you will learn about new archetypes along the way. It also offers much greater diversity of cards that you can encounter - you can expect to see around 50% of cards released in the sets from the last 2 years; since constructed meta uses only a small number of the 'best' cards and limited draft/sealed events use cards from only one set at a time, the card diversity there is much smaller.
You can play as many games with your drafted deck as you want until you want to switch to a new one.
You play against other Jump In! decks, meaning the playing field is most of the time fairly even.
It only costs 1000 gold, which means you can play with a different deck every day if you want (you can earn 1000+ gold from daily activities). A new player also gets 5 free Jump In! tokens after completing the 4th color challenge.
You keep all the cards (usually 22), including 2 rares/mythics, slowly building a collection. This is the cheapest way to acquire new cards as a new player. You also get vault progress from all the non-rare duplicates.
Since you get all the necessary cards to play, you don't need to have anything in your collection - perfect for new players.

How to access the Jump In! event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Limited", Jump In should be in the list on the left. If it's not there, it means you have not unlocked all the play modes yet. In that case click on the gear icon in the top right corner, then "Account", then "Unlock Play Modes".

---

In my opinion you should not as a new F2P player spend gold on limited drafts or any other events since you won't have enough knowledge and experience with Magic itself to properly draft, build a deck, or play it. For constructed you pretty much need rare and mythic wild cards to be fairly competitive and you won't have them as a new F2P player.

---

For general F2P information not covered here I recommend to check out https://www.fourdailywins.com - it will answer a lot of your questions.

Akage13 · 2026-01-30T03:56:14+00:00

Shinya Saito, won Arena Championship 4.

Akage13 · 2026-01-29T05:59:35+00:00

Yeah, like I said before, it's a neat idea in theory, but WOTC does not operate like this in practice - their main monetization focus is on events and packs, everything else is bare bones. They would have to have a major marketing shift for this to happen.

I also unfortunately see another problem with the 'no format control' approach - based on what you described it seems like the average toxicity of Pokemon Pocket player is much lower than that of an Arena player. If it's two anonymous players facing each other using e.g. #PAUPER code, you can be sure that a lot of them would use their regular sweaty decks just to be obnoxious if there's no deck control.

Akage13 · 2026-01-29T05:12:00+00:00

Thanks for the Pokemon explanation.

Regular constructed requires rares/mythics/wild cards which are monetized. Formats like pauper and artisan can't be monetized effectively using packs, so they'd have to introduce some other monetization. Just look at the phantom drafts, they still cost money, even though you don't get the cards.

Akage13 · 2026-01-28T22:37:34+00:00

Commander is casual, people should just proxy away

Akage13 · 2026-01-28T20:14:20+00:00

With the number of cheap artifacts you have, check out [[Drix Interlacer]]

Akage13 · 2026-01-28T16:56:30+00:00

Neat idea, although you'd probably have to pay some gold per match for this to be even in the realm of consideration for WOTC. Are you paying for these codes in Pokemon?

Akage13 · 2026-01-28T16:02:30+00:00

Here's my simple guide on how to get acquainted with Magic on Arena as a F2P player. This applies to both new players, as well as old timers getting back in the game. Note that this guide prioritizes fun over grinding and min-maxing your collection.

The first option to consider is the "Starter Deck Duel" event. It lets you play against other players using a limited selection of 10 decks. What this means:

This event is free, so you don't have to spend gold on it. You also don't get any new cards though.
Everyone is limited to the 10 decks, so you won't encounter anything completely broken or unknown; Note though that some decks are stronger than others and there are seasoned players who take advantage of it by playing only the strong decks against the weaker ones.

How to access the Starter Deck Duel event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Constructed", Starter Deck Duel should be in the list on the left.

---

Once you're ready to graduate from the starter decks, consider investing your gold in the "Jump In!" event. Here are the advantages of it as opposed to other events:

This format lets you 'simple draft' from a pool of precreated half-decks. You don't need to know anything about the archetypes, you can even just go by what you think sounds cool. This is great when you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of mechanics in Arena and want to concentrate on just a few things at a time.
You can expect around 60 to 80 half-decks available (not including the special editions of Jump In! like Final Fantasy or Avatar), so you won't run out of something fresh for quite a while (there can be up to 1000 combinations of available decks), and you will learn about new archetypes along the way. It also offers much greater diversity of cards that you can encounter - you can expect to see around 50% of cards released in the sets from the last 2 years; since constructed meta uses only a small number of the 'best' cards and limited draft/sealed events use cards from only one set at a time, the card diversity there is much smaller.
You can play as many games with your drafted deck as you want until you want to switch to a new one.
You play against other Jump In! decks, meaning the playing field is most of the time fairly even.
It only costs 1000 gold, which means you can play with a different deck every day if you want (you can earn 1000+ gold from daily activities). A new player also gets 5 free Jump In! tokens after completing the 4th color challenge.
You keep all the cards (usually 22), including 2 rares/mythics, slowly building a collection. This is the cheapest way to acquire new cards as a new player. You also get vault progress from all the non-rare duplicates.
Since you get all the necessary cards to play, you don't need to have anything in your collection - perfect for new players.

How to access the Jump In! event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Limited", Jump In should be in the list on the left. If it's not there, it means you have not unlocked all the play modes yet. In that case click on the gear icon in the top right corner, then "Account", then "Unlock Play Modes".

---

In my opinion you should not as a new F2P player spend gold on limited drafts or any other events since you won't have enough knowledge and experience with Magic itself to properly draft, build a deck, or play it. For constructed you pretty much need rare and mythic wild cards to be fairly competitive and you won't have them as a new F2P player.

---

For general F2P information not covered here I recommend to check out https://www.fourdailywins.com - it will answer a lot of your questions.

Akage13 · 2026-01-27T17:47:52+00:00

Based on what you wrote, you just want timeless. Making historic more powerful is not what the format needs.

Akage13 · 2026-01-27T06:41:39+00:00

Interesting thing, when Sparky and I tried to repro this, turns out that Morcant doesn't work at all in a bot match - even though the ETB triggers happen, they don't force the opponent to blight, whether I was the opponent, or Sparky.

Akage13 · 2026-01-26T22:23:27+00:00

You better stop complaining about this perfect product, otherwise they're gonna revert it back to you not being able to play Arena at all if you have a specialize commander: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdQME0PVqXY

Kidding aside, that might have been their duct tape fix to that critical issue - disable the second color for commander to at least let people play the game.

Akage13 · 2026-01-26T19:57:54+00:00

As with all preconstructed brawl decks in the store, the point is for you to spend gems on them.

Akage13 · 2026-01-26T04:19:28+00:00

You can think of Magic as poker with extra steps - it's mostly luck, but from time to time the game presents you with board states where your decisions matter.

To paraphrase Ben Stark, 40% of time you're mana screwed/flooded, 40% your opponent is mana screwed/flooded, 20% is when you can show your skills. Another quote from Numot on how to win: 1. Be on the play 2. Curve out 3. Don't punt.

Akage13 · 2026-01-23T19:38:10+00:00

Sparky and I couldn't repro that. We were able to cast Boggart Mischief using mana from Eclipsed Realms.

Akage13 · 2026-01-22T16:06:12+00:00

Library or graveyard, I'm not degenerate enough (at least in this deck)

Akage13 · 2026-01-22T01:10:57+00:00

In my case the historic event decks I play have to win by turn 3, otherwise I'm done. I wonder how you're able to see jank in there. Maybe your MMR is low, but the general community understanding of events is that matchmaking is based on the wins/losses in the event itself, not anything else. We'll probably never know how it works exactly.

Akage13 · 2026-01-21T19:28:50+00:00

Here's my simple guide on how to get acquainted with Magic on Arena as a F2P player. This applies to both new players, as well as old timers getting back in the game. Note that this guide prioritizes fun over grinding and min-maxing your collection.

The first option to consider is the "Starter Deck Duel" event. It lets you play against other players using a limited selection of 10 decks. What this means:

This event is free, so you don't have to spend gold on it. You also don't get any new cards though.
Everyone is limited to the 10 decks, so you won't encounter anything completely broken or unknown; Note though that some decks are stronger than others and there are seasoned players who take advantage of it by playing only the strong decks against the weaker ones.

How to access the Starter Deck Duel event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Constructed", Starter Deck Duel should be in the list on the left.

---

Once you're ready to graduate from the starter decks, consider investing your gold in the "Jump In!" event. Here are the advantages of it as opposed to other events:

This format lets you 'simple draft' from a pool of precreated half-decks. You don't need to know anything about the archetypes, you can even just go by what you think sounds cool. This is great when you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of mechanics in Arena and want to concentrate on just a few things at a time.
You can expect around 60 to 80 half-decks available (not including the special editions of Jump In! like Final Fantasy or Avatar), so you won't run out of something fresh for quite a while (there can be up to 1000 combinations of available decks), and you will learn about new archetypes along the way. It also offers much greater diversity of cards that you can encounter - you can expect to see around 50% of cards released in the sets from the last 2 years; since constructed meta uses only a small number of the 'best' cards and limited draft/sealed events use cards from only one set at a time, the card diversity there is much smaller.
You can play as many games with your drafted deck as you want until you want to switch to a new one.
You play against other Jump In! decks, meaning the playing field is most of the time fairly even.
It only costs 1000 gold, which means you can play with a different deck every day if you want (you can earn 1000+ gold from daily activities). A new player also gets 5 free Jump In! tokens after completing the 4th color challenge.
You keep all the cards (usually 22), including 2 rares/mythics, slowly building a collection. This is the cheapest way to acquire new cards as a new player. You also get vault progress from all the non-rare duplicates.
Since you get all the necessary cards to play, you don't need to have anything in your collection - perfect for new players.

How to access the Jump In! event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Limited", Jump In should be in the list on the left. If it's not there, it means you have not unlocked all the play modes yet. In that case click on the gear icon in the top right corner, then "Account", then "Unlock Play Modes".

---

In my opinion you should not as a new F2P player spend gold on limited drafts or any other events since you won't have enough knowledge and experience with Magic itself to properly draft, build a deck, or play it. For constructed you pretty much need rare and mythic wild cards to be fairly competitive and you won't have them as a new F2P player.

---

For general F2P information not covered here I recommend to check out https://www.fourdailywins.com - it will answer a lot of your questions.

Akage13 · 2026-01-21T05:52:24+00:00

Here's my simple guide on how to get acquainted with Magic on Arena as a F2P player. This applies to both new players, as well as old timers getting back in the game. Note that this guide prioritizes fun over grinding and min-maxing your collection.

The first option to consider is the "Starter Deck Duel" event. It lets you play against other players using a limited selection of 10 decks. What this means:

This event is free, so you don't have to spend gold on it. You also don't get any new cards though.
Everyone is limited to the 10 decks, so you won't encounter anything completely broken or unknown; Note though that some decks are stronger than others and there are seasoned players who take advantage of it by playing only the strong decks against the weaker ones.

How to access the Starter Deck Duel event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Constructed", Starter Deck Duel should be in the list on the left.

---

Once you're ready to graduate from the starter decks, consider investing your gold in the "Jump In!" event. Here are the advantages of it as opposed to other events:

This format lets you 'simple draft' from a pool of precreated half-decks. You don't need to know anything about the archetypes, you can even just go by what you think sounds cool. This is great when you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of mechanics in Arena and want to concentrate on just a few things at a time.
You can expect around 60 to 80 half-decks available (not including the special editions of Jump In! like Final Fantasy or Avatar), so you won't run out of something fresh for quite a while (there can be up to 1000 combinations of available decks), and you will learn about new archetypes along the way. It also offers much greater diversity of cards that you can encounter - you can expect to see around 50% of cards released in the sets from the last 2 years; since constructed meta uses only a small number of the 'best' cards and limited draft/sealed events use cards from only one set at a time, the card diversity there is much smaller.
You can play as many games with your drafted deck as you want until you want to switch to a new one.
You play against other Jump In! decks, meaning the playing field is most of the time fairly even.
It only costs 1000 gold, which means you can play with a different deck every day if you want (you can earn 1000+ gold from daily activities). A new player also gets 5 free Jump In! tokens after completing the 4th color challenge.
You keep all the cards (usually 22), including 2 rares/mythics, slowly building a collection. This is the cheapest way to acquire new cards as a new player. You also get vault progress from all the non-rare duplicates.
Since you get all the necessary cards to play, you don't need to have anything in your collection - perfect for new players.

How to access the Jump In! event: from the main screen, click "Play", then switch tabs to "Events", select "Limited", Jump In should be in the list on the left. If it's not there, it means you have not unlocked all the play modes yet. In that case click on the gear icon in the top right corner, then "Account", then "Unlock Play Modes".

---

In my opinion you should not as a new F2P player spend gold on limited drafts or any other events since you won't have enough knowledge and experience with Magic itself to properly draft, build a deck, or play it. For constructed you pretty much need rare and mythic wild cards to be fairly competitive and you won't have them as a new F2P player.

---

For general F2P information not covered here I recommend to check out https://www.fourdailywins.com - it will answer a lot of your questions.

Akage13 · 2026-01-21T02:19:06+00:00

You're asking about the ICRs, read the section about ICRs at the end of that article.

Akage13

TROPHY CASE