How you can play for free and still get the cards you want.

[Nubbles]

There's been a whole bunch of posts about how this game is designed to get you to spend money on it. I've been playing this for years and I just want to share what I do to be able to play the decks I want to play without spending any money.

I start out by roleplaying a red dragon. I'm hoarding all the gold. I want as much gold as possible. I try to win at least 4 times per day, that's 550 gold per day right there. You can also get gold from daily quests, but watch out, there's quests for 500 gold and theres quests for 750 gold. You get 1 reroll for quests per day, so I always reroll the 500 gold quests and if I get another 500 gold quests, I try to avoid completing it, unless I have 3 quests all for 500, then I complete one. Also, play some ranked games. Having a rank gets you extra boosters and gold every month. Getting into the platinum ranks is doable with a deck with only commons and uncommons.

When a new set releases, super exciting times, I sit on my hoard of gold and don't get the new cards yet. With a new set, there's also usually a new mastery and you get boosters from that mastery. I don't open the packs. Just shove them under the pile of gold so the pile seems bigger. I am however interested in the new cards, so I look at some streamers who draft the new set to see what's good and what traps to avoid.

About 2 weeks after the release of a new set, that set becomes available for quickdrafting. There's a schedule and there's no guarantees for how this schedule will work in the future with new sets, but it's been this way for while.

When we can quickdraft the new shiny set, I spend about a dragonshoard of gold on quickdrafts. These things are great for completing a set, you get 3 boosters to pick cards from, I'm picking all the rares and since the computer doesn't, I'm getting ~6 rares on average in my draft pool. And then it's time to play, the more I win, the more prizes I get. That part about watching some drafts with the new set comes in handy here. You get extra boosters from the drafts and gems. The more you win, the more gems you get. I can draft up a mastery pass every time and then some. And the then some gets spent on more quickdrafts.

I keep track of what rares and mythics I got from that draft 4x, if I have them 4x, depending on how good the card is, I might pick some uncommon over the rare. Also, when no card fit into my deck, I pick the rarest, so often its uncommons over the commons for the later picks. This adds more to the vault, which is another benefit to drafting. A draft pack has 15 cards, more than the normal pack openings and you're often picking some of the uncommons and commons a lot. Any of those that you get when you already have 4 copies get added to the vault. A common adds 0.1% and an uncommon adds 0.3%. When the vault is at 100%, you get a mythic wildcard, 2 rare wildcards and 3 uncommon wildcards. Drafting fills this up relatively fast and when you spend a dragonshoard of gold on drafting, you will get these wildcards.

If you get really really good at drafting and you're tracking your win percentage and that is high enough, you could get into the premier or traditional drafts. The payout in gems is higher with those and you can win more gems than what it would cost to start the next one if your winpercentage is high enough.

When I spent all my gold on quickdrafts, it's time to open up those packs that I stashed away. I open these packs after the drafts because of how the rares are distributed. In a draft, you can get any rare, including the ones you already have 4x. With a pack opening, that doesn't happen unless you have all the rares of the set 4x, but otherwise you either get a rare or mythic wildcard, or you get a rare or mythic card that you did not already have 4x. Any packs from past sets, I get from the mastery pass, I open right away.

And then I just go back to roleplaying a red dragon and the cycle starts again.

Playing in this way allows me to get all the cards that I want aswell as the masterypass for free.

Have fun with your free games ;)

[GoddessofEternity]

free boster codes online give u lots of wildcards

[Nubbles]

Just a reminder to not instantly buy all the packs of the new set when it comes out. We hold our dragonshoard worth of gold. Wait until a set you want to draft becomes available for quickdrafting (possibly the new set).

[ZAP]

Choose one or two colors and only get cards from those that you actually like. Do this over a year or two and you'll have enough to build many strong decks that are fun/cool for free.

[Nubbles]

With the strategy I wrote out above, you can get all cards or at least all relevant cards of new sets and spend the majority of wildcards on past sets. You'll be good for standard and with the wildcards you can move into historic and historic brawl. You won't have to limit yourself to one or two colors.

[Insomniac Jack]

I prefer creating alt accounts and using the wildcards to make the deck I feel like playing. Far less time consuming and requires much less "work", but most important of all it's a lot more fun.

[Soji]

Your guide is pretty thorough, unfortunately it doesn't mention anything about how Arena is rigged so it'll mostly fall on deaf ear being posted on this board, I'm afraid

[Minmataro]

Автор сообщения: Berserkr

God there's people that spend hundreds of dollars on this game every time something new comes out

Damn right we do and its 100% worth it.

[Berserkr]

Автор сообщения: Minmataro

Damn right we do and its 100% worth it.

All the power to ya, I posted on the other guys thread to hit him with the reality of how huge MTG is, literally millions of people play it world wide, I play Arena because no one goes out to play anywhere anymore( I haven't had nor played paper magic cards in probably 18 years now) and at $8 a booster pack I'll stick to the digital version lol

[Nubbles]

There's still people claiming you need to pay for good cards, so I just want to point out I did collect a playset of every good wilds of eldraine card with the above strategy and I've been saving up gold for the next set.

[Minmataro]

I tried running a 100% free account. the novelty wears off after a while. its not fun running only a couple decks (if u only focus on constructed) . I get why certain people need to play that way but i dont.

[LordoftheRobe]

all these steps are the reason the game won't get new players and the current fan base stagnates slowly.

[DontMisunderstand]

Автор сообщения: Minmataro

I tried running a 100% free account. the novelty wears off after a while. its not fun running only a couple decks (if u only focus on constructed) . I get why certain people need to play that way but i dont.

You could always construct a single deck that feels like many different decks at once. That's what I did, and it's been working for me. I started with a core identity for the deck, the cards that I put 4 of in, those are the types of things I want to see often. And from that I branch off into a very large number of singles that synergize with the core but not always with each other (though I prefer when they also synergize with others). So I end up with a 250 card deck with a lot of variety in play while always feeling like one coherent deck. I figure the point of running multiple decks is that it gets monotonous when every match goes the same way. Using this deckbuilding strategy, there is no one single optimal start, so you judge your starting hand by the cards in it rather than how close to the one god hand it is.

That's how I manage with just one deck for ranked constructed. For Brawl I have 3 decks because it's pretty much impossible to do that with a static 100 card count.

[Minmataro]

Автор сообщения: DontMisunderstand

Автор сообщения: Minmataro

I tried running a 100% free account. the novelty wears off after a while. its not fun running only a couple decks (if u only focus on constructed) . I get why certain people need to play that way but i dont.

You could always construct a single deck that feels like many different decks at once. That's what I did, and it's been working for me. I started with a core identity for the deck, the cards that I put 4 of in, those are the types of things I want to see often. And from that I branch off into a very large number of singles that synergize with the core but not always with each other (though I prefer when they also synergize with others). So I end up with a 250 card deck with a lot of variety in play while always feeling like one coherent deck. I figure the point of running multiple decks is that it gets monotonous when every match goes the same way. Using this deckbuilding strategy, there is no one single optimal start, so you judge your starting hand by the cards in it rather than how close to the one god hand it is.

That's how I manage with just one deck for ranked constructed. For Brawl I have 3 decks because it's pretty much impossible to do that with a static 100 card count.

While i respect what you achieved for me personally that sounds like hell. You dont need to spend hundreds of dollars to build a few meta decks.

[Brother Alpha]

Автор сообщения: Minmataro

While i respect what you achieved for me personally that sounds like hell. You dont need to spend hundreds of dollars to build a few meta decks.

For less money than it costs to get a tier-one deck in paper, you can get enough packs / wildcards to build tier-one decks in standard and historic and have enough gems left over to get the mastery pass for the next few sets. At that point, you might have enough luck getting 5th copies of rares and mythics to keep up the mastery pass every single set.

F2P means playing unranked and bronze / silver only, which can still be fun.

[HaleTheFreeVoice]

Автор сообщения: Minmataro

I have money, i'll spend money. However nothing wrong with saving up currency i think thats awesome. I find the free way of playing to be a bit boring and im not a fan of drafted events (wasnt in paper magic either). What i like? to open packs and make my own decks. So i dropped $150 on a ♥♥♥♥ ton of packs and got like 40-50 rare wildcards and now i can do what i want lol.

Hes like I suppotr microtransactions like a ****** and iDGAF ahahhaahahahahhah