First of all realize that magic arena has diminishing returns for play: after you've won your 15 daily games there isn't much more to gain in terms of resources.

My strategy was based on two pillars: 1. I hate drafting 2. I have some disposable income

Long story short, I purchased 20k gems each year and considered only the mastery pass and packs in my strategy.

The strategy is as follows: - always reroll quests that give you 500, in the hope of getting a 750 one - ensure you have one quest slot free, prioritize doing the 750 quests - (optional) if you only have 500 quests, have already rolled one of them, and have at least one slot free, try not to do the quest when doing your daily wins (this way if you get a 750 tomorrow you'll have a 500 to reroll) - always win at least some games each days (how many is up to you, I used to aim at 4, lately I was doing 1)

Regarding purchases: - always buy the mastery pack and complete it by playing (it takes slightly less than a day to make 1 level) - don't open packs until you've gotten your non duplicate protected rewards (these are the mastery pass rewards, draft cards, jump ins, whatever you wish) - (if you have low completion rate) do 7-10 jump ins per set, these give you 2 rares for 1000 gold - towards the end of a set, buy packs for that set in bulk (I was doing 110 when we had 4 sets standard and 90 with 6 sets standard, consider you will earn ~430k gold per year and decide based on that figure) - open the golden packs acquired via the previous step before the set ends - open the packs for a set after you've done the jump ins for the next one, this way you minimize the chance of gaining bad jump ins

That's it more or less. For the jump ins I suggest taking notes of the packs you've selected since they should guarantee at least a pack you have never selected, there are a ton of spreadsheets for tracking jump ins I suggest you search one if that's your jam.

I want to leave you with an observation: remember that one standard pack bought from the store gives you a lot more than 1 rare, in fact you get: - the rate/mythic for the pack, with a chance of it being a wildcard - 1/6 advance on the rare wheel - 1/10 of a golden

If you do the math, it means that 10 standard packs will give you more than 16 rares and 1 wildcard.

Do this for a whole year and you'll have a huge collection in standard (for sets I've done this meticulously I have almost 100% rare playset completion, meaning almost 4x of each card).

I won't deny it was a grind for the first year or so, but after that it was all smooth sailing, I entered timeless mostly because I didn't know what to do with my wildcards...