I say recommend, with a grain of salt, I play this because its the easiest way to play a good chunk of the Magic formats from home without paying additional fees. I've played since the early beta and watched their experiments and growth changes fairly positively. It's fairly fast, visually attractive and handles the rules well most of the time. (Just make sure to turn off the uncapped fps option in the settings otherwise it will max out your CPU/GPU) And for me, that suits me just fine, I'm a decent drafter and can extend my winnings/purchases in it to last me quite a while.

BUT, boy oh boy do they push you into paying for as much as they can, lots of frivolous emotes, stickers, profile avatars, card sleeves, alt art lands and cards, and a bad value battle pass. There is no chatting and limited friend list interaction.

WOTC will barely incentivize you to play for free with any bonuses, the free route DOES exist, but it's very slow. The battle pass and gems aren't a very good value proposition though, and to make any decks for standard or the weird historic/pioneer/explorer/historic/brawl mixed up offerings quickly you'll probably need to pay some amount and/or be pretty decent at drafting.

Currently they have limited it to 1v1 formats and no commander, so if you're looking for that, you should probably play MTGO even if it's slow, clunky, and dated as heck. It's fairly cheap to get into and has a much WIDER availability of cards.

It does have a pretty nice intro and tutorial to the game and colours of magic, but I wish it left you with a better collection of cards to start with, especially as the formats and sets they add to it grows. 50~ vanilla-ish creatures and some decent rares are not gonna last you as long as it would of with their increased schedule for adding sets and cards, and it doesn't leave you with much of a taste of the more complex elements of the game.

So yeah, its decent, and fine for what it is, (and its available on phones, such a novelty) just be wary going in.

(There is no option to 'cash out' in MTGA where there is in MTGO/paper if you ever decide to quit, something that may or may not appeal to some people, this is particularly a knock against MTGA I find as someone who likes drafting a lot, and coming out of a draft with no value if you've already collected a set feels bad. Also it says 143 hours, but I've probably played MUCH more in the years before it was added to steam, just for disclosure. My time with it has dropped quite a bit in the last few years.)

I say recommend, with a grain of salt, I play this because its the easiest way to play a good chunk of the Magic formats from home without paying additional fees. I've played since the early beta and watched their experiments and growth changes fairly positively. It's fairly fast, visually attractive and handles the rules well most of the time. (Just make sure to turn off the uncapped fps option in the settings otherwise it will max out your CPU/GPU) And for me, that suits me just fine, I'm a decent drafter and can extend my winnings/purchases in it to last me quite a while. BUT, boy oh boy do they push you into paying for as much as they can, lots of frivolous emotes, stickers, profile avatars, card sleeves, alt art lands and cards, and a bad value battle pass. There is no chatting and limited friend list interaction. WOTC will barely incentivize you to play for free with any bonuses, the free route DOES exist, but it's very slow. The battle pass and gems aren't a very good value proposition though, and to make any decks for standard or the weird historic/pioneer/explorer/historic/brawl mixed up offerings quickly you'll probably need to pay some amount and/or be pretty decent at drafting. Currently they have limited it to 1v1 formats and no commander, so if you're looking for that, you should probably play MTGO even if it's slow, clunky, and dated as heck. It's fairly cheap to get into and has a much WIDER availability of cards. It does have a pretty nice intro and tutorial to the game and colours of magic, but I wish it left you with a better collection of cards to start with, especially as the formats and sets they add to it grows. 50~ vanilla-ish creatures and some decent rares are not gonna last you as long as it would of with their increased schedule for adding sets and cards, and it doesn't leave you with much of a taste of the more complex elements of the game. So yeah, its decent, and fine for what it is, (and its available on phones, such a novelty) just be wary going in. (There is no option to 'cash out' in MTGA where there is in MTGO/paper if you ever decide to quit, something that may or may not appeal to some people, this is particularly a knock against MTGA I find as someone who likes drafting a lot, and coming out of a draft with no value if you've already collected a set feels bad. Also it says 143 hours, but I've probably played MUCH more in the years before it was added to steam, just for disclosure. My time with it has dropped quite a bit in the last few years.)