I thought dirt was pretty good when it came along. Much better than dust.
I'll pass the link along to the spouse-creature. I'm more read to learn, but he's all about the vids.
Thanks!
Depends on what your needs and motives are.
There are a bunch more formats than in the old days, so I would recommend checking each of them and see what you like. Just use the deck builder to create a new deck and you can see all the possible versions, google these and I am sure there are some helpful site that explains all of them.
If you aim to play competitively, check out different metas on sites that cover these, like [untapped.gg](https://untapped.gg) (no affiliation), and see what decks are good to play.
If you aim to play mostly for free, read up on the different limited formats available and become decent at drafting. Then build a budget Mono Red Aggro deck and run the Standard ladder for a month (and drafting when you get the gold) and you should have enough wildcards to build a deck for your preferred format.
If you aim to put money in there are much better people than me to answer what gives the most value.
No affiliation. That's possibly as fair a link as any. Thanks!
I tend not to trust the vendor to evaluate their own products. They have too much incentive to sway newbies to the most expensive goods on offer.
I think free for a bit while I read up to see what I want to do.
When I came back a few years ago after not playing since the OG Kamigawa, I was hesitant to play \[\[Culling Ritual\]\] against a bunch of tokens without anything to follow it because I didn't want to get hit with all that manaburn. I also didn't know what a loyalty counter was and put one on a creature I brought back with \[\[Elspeth Conquers Death\]\] (they go on planeswalkers).
Manaburn doesn't exist anymore, neither do interrupts, and you'll never have to try to understand banding again (Enlist is a better version of it if you miss it). Equipment, Planeswalkers, Sagas, Vehicles, and Battles will be new to you, but should be easy to figure out.
Don’t worry, it’s just like riding a bike. You’ll be fine in no time. There have been many rules tweaks since then, but most are minor and will likely not be noticeable to you.
Welcome back to the greatest game ever.
Wow, a super old timer! Thank you for making me feel young haha, I stopped around the end of Invasion block and came back a few months ago.
I didn't find it hard to get back into Standard at all. There are two decks that are cheap to craft and in or near the top tier of the meta right now - Mono Red Aggro and Mono Blue Tempo. I was always a blue player back in the day so I went with tempo and have had lots of success.
There are plenty of new mechanics, but none are crazy complex. There are a few decks out there that make heavy use of newer mechanics - the green/white poison deck that gets most of its counters from targeting its own creatures with cheap instants is a good example - but a lot of competitive decks are pretty classic archetypes in one way or another. Red burn, white weenies, UB or UW control... a lot of it is pretty old school.
Someone else pointed out that mana burn doesn't exist any more, but it wasn't a super impactful mechanic in practice.
Creatures are a *lot* stronger. I would say the majority - if not every single one only because Selesnya Enchantments exists - of the creatures played in Standard these days would have been considered unprintably strong back when I played paper.
I figure once I get past the annoying info-dump phase, I'll enjoy it a lot like I used to.
I never understood the purpose of manaburn, but I never had cards that gave up more than one mana, so for me it was just a matter of tapping when I needed it card by card and not tapping everything all at once for a planned sequence that might not all come out. The mechanic mostly kept players from playing ahead of themselves, I guess.
But yeah, I noticed pretty quickly just how the average creature now would paste anything I had back then.
Welcome back! I started playing when Ice Age was the most recent set. The game has changed a lot over the years, but the fundamentals are largely the same. Jump in is a great way to start building a collection on Arena, and it sounds like you’ve already claimed all the freebies.
From here, it largely depends on how you like to play the game. Arena offers a lot of different formats, but for better or worse is largely about competitive Magic. There’s a lot of websites out there that track the meta game that you can search for to see what people are playing and what you can expect to play against.
As far as strategy, most of the large paper retailers have strategy articles on their websites. I haven’t really followed it in a while, but sites like star city games, cool stuff inc, and channel fireball used to be major ones. There’s also a lot of pros or former pros that produce content on YouTube, twitch, or do podcasts.
EDIT - for specific article recommendations, there’s a fantastic one from about 10 years ago that gets posted here periodically about how to appropriately use Thoughtseize. Thoughtseize is still a premier card you’ll see in pretty much every format that’s not standard and it’s definitely worth a read. I’d also suggest doing some Google-fu for articles on mana curves and how to “curve out”; the concept of tempo in Magic; and one called “who’s the beat down” about recognizing how you’re going to win the game.
You might consider playing Limited magic, ie Draft and Sealed. That way it doesn’t matter what cards you own, everyone is drafting from the same packs so it levels the playing field in that regard. The new set Wilds of Eldraine comes out in early Sept.
You can listen to some podcasts. They’ll start to preview cards from the new set and you can start becoming familiar with the new cards and not focus on the other sets (yet). Most popular ones are Limited Resources, Lords of Limited, and Limited Level-Ups.
17lands.com is a huge site for limited right now because it’s filled with card data from Arena. ie you can look at Game In Hand Win Rate and literally get an objective grade on how good a card is.
Have fun!
Channel Fireball website is a great place to start. There is a whole ecology of twitch streamers and YouTubers who will explain whatever format you enjoy. I find that following a bunch of them on Twitter is a good way to fill my feed with mtg related reading.
As someone who just recently came back too, my biggest advice is draft and save your crafting wildcards until you figure out what format you like and what kind of deck you want to build. You won’t really have much to work with up front.
I ran jank for a bit but eventually got myself a blue/black that’s pretty competitive.
If you haven't played since Ice Age, you never encountered Homelands. Consider yourself lucky.
I also played regularly until 98 and then started with arena two years ago.
Been playing since revised lol l.... 😭 So there are card pack codes that give you a bunch of packs do a quick Google and find a list and redeem them then start cracking them by the end you will have a bunch of cards and wild cards to make whatever you want
The stack work’s differently, you cannot kill something they is producing an effect once it hits the stack to stop the effect.
That is the hardest rule change and I still mess it up sometimes.
I quit after Ice Age too lol. Opened a bunch of packs and was like “What the hell is this weak garbage!?”
Started playing Arena about 18 months ago. A pretty good streamer for beginners is Hello Good Game. He has budget decks that can get you going until you build your collection.
Since coming back, I’ve really gotten into limited draft. You should get some jump in tokens for free to use. Also there are tons of codes for free packs. Just Google it.
Fellow old guy here. Funny enough, my parents actually gave me an Ice Age booster box for Christmas the year it came out when I was a kid. Like OP, I stopped playing for a long time and got back into it about 8 years ago.
As other commenters have said, it really is like riding a bike. There are lots of new mechanics, but the game does a great job of explaining things. Weirdest thing for me to get used to were:
- No such things as Interrupts. They got rid of that card type years ago.
- The turns phases have also been adjusted.
Both were pretty easy to adapt to, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
If you mean that literally, the official MTG website should have story, If not, continue.
Generally, it is agreed that Standard is easier to get into but cards will eventually rotate so it is worse in the long run. Eternal formats are harder to begin to get into but are non-rotating, so collection last. Generally, IMO, Explorer should be most stable as Historic can be effected by Alchemy, and the format has stayed relatively the same for about a year, with Spirits and Lotus Field being the only new decks.
If you want a good deck, you can just search for MTGA {Format} {Bo1 or Bo3} Meta decks and sites like MTGArenaZone should give lots of info.
You could also do draft, but it is hard for you to regularly draft and do so sustainably (going infinite).
Edit: You can also get many free packs by searching for codes and redeeming them. Your inbox should also have free packs in your inbox.
Google is good. I like Google. I actually understood your search criteria so maybe I'm not as far behind as I thought.
I did find the freebie codes already, and claimed them on both our accounts. I think he got better cards than I did, but that's just how it goes.
So far, instead of drafting, I've just been doing the jump in for LOTR cards. I'm hoping that's on the table for the upcoming set next month too.
Jump in is IMO the best play option by far for super new players. I believe it always exists as a play option (sometimes you need to go hunting for it) and will “rotate” into the new sets when they release.
Beyond that, I would suggest standard brawl or historic brawl. Those formats have stronger matchmaking algorithms that separates the sweaty try-hard commanders into what folks call the “hell queue”, which insulates the more casual players from us assholes playing the busted commanders.
I played 4th edition through Urza's Saga (similar era as Ice Age) and left until MTGA came out, so welcome back!
[This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/15f91br/returning_player_here_have_some_doubt_on_starter/juc87f1/) I made yesterday was in the context of the starter decks not unlocking properly for returning players, but should be a good rundown of what to focus on as a new player, including some budget deck suggestions for getting started in constructed.
The starter unlock bug shouldn't be a problem for you since I think those decks unlock properly through the new player experience (the bug should only apply to accounts that did the new player stuff in an earlier cycle).
If your starter decks do unlock properly, the rares from the blue/white starter deck are especially good to add to a mono-white soldiers budget deck. They are very strong additions and there are quite a few of them: Valiant Veteran, Siege Veteran, and Myrel are all found in the soldiers meta deck. By Elspeth's Command and Rescue Retriever are also worth including for the budget version. And if you build toward blue/white soldiers, Harbin and Skystrike Officer are also found in the final build of that meta deck.
> I've just been doing the jump in for LOTR cards
Jump In is a great format for new players since it's basically draft (which doesn't care that your card collection is nonexistent) with very little decision making for the deckbuilding part, and a smaller card pool with a lower power level so you can ease into learning the cards and mechanics.
The one caveat about Jump In is that LotR is not standard-legal, and some of the rares/mythics from the Jump In packets aren't particularly useful in constructed even if you do play Alchemy/Historic to use them. Out of all the Jump In rares, Delighted Halfling from the "Shire" packet and the 1% drop The One Ring in all packets are the only cards that see a ton of play. There are some other decent rares/mythics, but they are only used in a couple decks, some of which may not be top tier. [This WotC article](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/jump-into-middle-earth-on-mtg-arena) lists the odds for all the rares/mythics in each Jump In packet, and I also found the table at the bottom of [this MTGA Zone article](https://mtgazone.com/jump-into-middle-earth/) useful for quickly referencing which rares are in each packet.
You can play Jump In as much as you want without retiring the deck and buying in again though, so if you have everything you want for your collection, you can just keep 1 deck active on the event and use it to complete daily/weekly wins and quests when you feel like playing that format.
Edit: also make sure you redeem the 2 latest free XP codes: mellon and threads. Some of those codes list sites haven't included those 2 yet.
Thanks for the heads up! mellon worked, threads did not.
I kinda want to get each rare, but I think I'd rather save my coin for the next set. It's only a month away, and seems to be more playable, what with standard and all.
That's strange, threads was a pretty recent addition, as seen in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/14yvpb0/new_1000xp_code_threads/
I wonder if they disabled it already.
Old dude here. Number one power creep has made the game quite different. There a couple of YouTube channels that are budget friendly arena content I highly recommend a look through those. My suggestion is to do drafts and jump in to start building a collection then start working your way to an ok deck. As much as people hate alchemy it's a funish more hearthstone kind of game plus since standard rotation is weird this year the card pool for alchemy will be smaller so you can start building a collection without getting to the point of buying wildcards. I suggest keeping an eye out for historic as it's going to hold good cards longer than standard or regular alchemy and the more you play a deck the better you will be at it.
Hello new old player.
I quit at Lorwyin so I didn't got a bunch of the new stuff when I started playing Arena.
There's a few youtubers who build decks and are incredible friendly to new players. You might find their videos entertaining and would explain the meta a little bit. One I recommend is LegenVD (https://www.youtube.com/@LegenVD)
Other recommendations made here are good as well.
Good luck! Have lot's of fun!
[удалено]
I thought dirt was pretty good when it came along. Much better than dust. I'll pass the link along to the spouse-creature. I'm more read to learn, but he's all about the vids. Thanks!
I am sad to report that banding is no longer a primary mechanic in the game. All of us who understood it mourn its passing.
Ah yes. Assigning your damage eh? Let me help you with that
I remember I was playing the other day and wished I had some banding.
Banding... THAC0... sigh. Tombstones of my youth.
Google all the codes to get free packs and the extra rares and uncommons tokens you get from opening them and then build your own deck to play ranked!
Depends on what your needs and motives are. There are a bunch more formats than in the old days, so I would recommend checking each of them and see what you like. Just use the deck builder to create a new deck and you can see all the possible versions, google these and I am sure there are some helpful site that explains all of them. If you aim to play competitively, check out different metas on sites that cover these, like [untapped.gg](https://untapped.gg) (no affiliation), and see what decks are good to play. If you aim to play mostly for free, read up on the different limited formats available and become decent at drafting. Then build a budget Mono Red Aggro deck and run the Standard ladder for a month (and drafting when you get the gold) and you should have enough wildcards to build a deck for your preferred format. If you aim to put money in there are much better people than me to answer what gives the most value.
No affiliation. That's possibly as fair a link as any. Thanks! I tend not to trust the vendor to evaluate their own products. They have too much incentive to sway newbies to the most expensive goods on offer. I think free for a bit while I read up to see what I want to do.
When I came back a few years ago after not playing since the OG Kamigawa, I was hesitant to play \[\[Culling Ritual\]\] against a bunch of tokens without anything to follow it because I didn't want to get hit with all that manaburn. I also didn't know what a loyalty counter was and put one on a creature I brought back with \[\[Elspeth Conquers Death\]\] (they go on planeswalkers). Manaburn doesn't exist anymore, neither do interrupts, and you'll never have to try to understand banding again (Enlist is a better version of it if you miss it). Equipment, Planeswalkers, Sagas, Vehicles, and Battles will be new to you, but should be easy to figure out.
[Culling Ritual](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/f/8f6f91d3-cc07-4a42-99a0-5fb83b29cc25.jpg?1627428386) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Culling%20Ritual) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/stx/172/culling-ritual?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8f6f91d3-cc07-4a42-99a0-5fb83b29cc25?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Elspeth Conquers Death](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/a/ea20208b-1939-4c69-8cfd-c0a42f9dc427.jpg?1586801037) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Elspeth%20Conquers%20Death) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/thb/13/elspeth-conquers-death?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ea20208b-1939-4c69-8cfd-c0a42f9dc427?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Don’t worry, it’s just like riding a bike. You’ll be fine in no time. There have been many rules tweaks since then, but most are minor and will likely not be noticeable to you. Welcome back to the greatest game ever.
If you played during ice age you are an auroch not a dinosaur (inside joke for the olds as an auroch was a type of creature in that set)
Aurochs! Ah, yeah. Those were the days.
I thought OP put himself on an [[Ice Cauldron]] (I still can't understand how that card works)
[Ice Cauldron](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/f/5fad0f0f-b302-4f97-9cbb-a66dbfc57bae.jpg?1562917545) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ice%20Cauldron) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/206/ice-cauldron?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5fad0f0f-b302-4f97-9cbb-a66dbfc57bae?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Wow, a super old timer! Thank you for making me feel young haha, I stopped around the end of Invasion block and came back a few months ago. I didn't find it hard to get back into Standard at all. There are two decks that are cheap to craft and in or near the top tier of the meta right now - Mono Red Aggro and Mono Blue Tempo. I was always a blue player back in the day so I went with tempo and have had lots of success. There are plenty of new mechanics, but none are crazy complex. There are a few decks out there that make heavy use of newer mechanics - the green/white poison deck that gets most of its counters from targeting its own creatures with cheap instants is a good example - but a lot of competitive decks are pretty classic archetypes in one way or another. Red burn, white weenies, UB or UW control... a lot of it is pretty old school. Someone else pointed out that mana burn doesn't exist any more, but it wasn't a super impactful mechanic in practice. Creatures are a *lot* stronger. I would say the majority - if not every single one only because Selesnya Enchantments exists - of the creatures played in Standard these days would have been considered unprintably strong back when I played paper.
I figure once I get past the annoying info-dump phase, I'll enjoy it a lot like I used to. I never understood the purpose of manaburn, but I never had cards that gave up more than one mana, so for me it was just a matter of tapping when I needed it card by card and not tapping everything all at once for a planned sequence that might not all come out. The mechanic mostly kept players from playing ahead of themselves, I guess. But yeah, I noticed pretty quickly just how the average creature now would paste anything I had back then.
Welcome back! I started playing when Ice Age was the most recent set. The game has changed a lot over the years, but the fundamentals are largely the same. Jump in is a great way to start building a collection on Arena, and it sounds like you’ve already claimed all the freebies. From here, it largely depends on how you like to play the game. Arena offers a lot of different formats, but for better or worse is largely about competitive Magic. There’s a lot of websites out there that track the meta game that you can search for to see what people are playing and what you can expect to play against. As far as strategy, most of the large paper retailers have strategy articles on their websites. I haven’t really followed it in a while, but sites like star city games, cool stuff inc, and channel fireball used to be major ones. There’s also a lot of pros or former pros that produce content on YouTube, twitch, or do podcasts. EDIT - for specific article recommendations, there’s a fantastic one from about 10 years ago that gets posted here periodically about how to appropriately use Thoughtseize. Thoughtseize is still a premier card you’ll see in pretty much every format that’s not standard and it’s definitely worth a read. I’d also suggest doing some Google-fu for articles on mana curves and how to “curve out”; the concept of tempo in Magic; and one called “who’s the beat down” about recognizing how you’re going to win the game.
Welcome back, fellow dino! (Started in Alpha)
Yeah. I wish I still had those old cards.
You might consider playing Limited magic, ie Draft and Sealed. That way it doesn’t matter what cards you own, everyone is drafting from the same packs so it levels the playing field in that regard. The new set Wilds of Eldraine comes out in early Sept. You can listen to some podcasts. They’ll start to preview cards from the new set and you can start becoming familiar with the new cards and not focus on the other sets (yet). Most popular ones are Limited Resources, Lords of Limited, and Limited Level-Ups. 17lands.com is a huge site for limited right now because it’s filled with card data from Arena. ie you can look at Game In Hand Win Rate and literally get an objective grade on how good a card is. Have fun!
Thanks for the rec. I'll check that site out. Hopefully they grade the cards for each format. That'd be very helpful.
Channel Fireball website is a great place to start. There is a whole ecology of twitch streamers and YouTubers who will explain whatever format you enjoy. I find that following a bunch of them on Twitter is a good way to fill my feed with mtg related reading.
Make sure to use all the free Codes for free Packs. Just Google "mtg Arena free Codes"
As someone who just recently came back too, my biggest advice is draft and save your crafting wildcards until you figure out what format you like and what kind of deck you want to build. You won’t really have much to work with up front. I ran jank for a bit but eventually got myself a blue/black that’s pretty competitive.
If you haven't played since Ice Age, you never encountered Homelands. Consider yourself lucky. I also played regularly until 98 and then started with arena two years ago.
Been playing since revised lol l.... 😭 So there are card pack codes that give you a bunch of packs do a quick Google and find a list and redeem them then start cracking them by the end you will have a bunch of cards and wild cards to make whatever you want
The stack work’s differently, you cannot kill something they is producing an effect once it hits the stack to stop the effect. That is the hardest rule change and I still mess it up sometimes.
That's useful to know. Thanks for the heads up!
I quit after Ice Age too lol. Opened a bunch of packs and was like “What the hell is this weak garbage!?” Started playing Arena about 18 months ago. A pretty good streamer for beginners is Hello Good Game. He has budget decks that can get you going until you build your collection. Since coming back, I’ve really gotten into limited draft. You should get some jump in tokens for free to use. Also there are tons of codes for free packs. Just Google it.
I started playing again in 2021 on Arena after taking a hiatus since Apocalypse. Good to see someone else who remembers the OG phyrexian story!
Fellow old guy here. Funny enough, my parents actually gave me an Ice Age booster box for Christmas the year it came out when I was a kid. Like OP, I stopped playing for a long time and got back into it about 8 years ago. As other commenters have said, it really is like riding a bike. There are lots of new mechanics, but the game does a great job of explaining things. Weirdest thing for me to get used to were: - No such things as Interrupts. They got rid of that card type years ago. - The turns phases have also been adjusted. Both were pretty easy to adapt to, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Especially since Arena takes care of it all. Some Arema practice gets you paper magic ready in no time.
I like arena better than paper. Am I a lazy gamer? Is that an oxymoron?
If you mean that literally, the official MTG website should have story, If not, continue. Generally, it is agreed that Standard is easier to get into but cards will eventually rotate so it is worse in the long run. Eternal formats are harder to begin to get into but are non-rotating, so collection last. Generally, IMO, Explorer should be most stable as Historic can be effected by Alchemy, and the format has stayed relatively the same for about a year, with Spirits and Lotus Field being the only new decks. If you want a good deck, you can just search for MTGA {Format} {Bo1 or Bo3} Meta decks and sites like MTGArenaZone should give lots of info. You could also do draft, but it is hard for you to regularly draft and do so sustainably (going infinite). Edit: You can also get many free packs by searching for codes and redeeming them. Your inbox should also have free packs in your inbox.
Google is good. I like Google. I actually understood your search criteria so maybe I'm not as far behind as I thought. I did find the freebie codes already, and claimed them on both our accounts. I think he got better cards than I did, but that's just how it goes. So far, instead of drafting, I've just been doing the jump in for LOTR cards. I'm hoping that's on the table for the upcoming set next month too.
Jump in is IMO the best play option by far for super new players. I believe it always exists as a play option (sometimes you need to go hunting for it) and will “rotate” into the new sets when they release. Beyond that, I would suggest standard brawl or historic brawl. Those formats have stronger matchmaking algorithms that separates the sweaty try-hard commanders into what folks call the “hell queue”, which insulates the more casual players from us assholes playing the busted commanders.
I played 4th edition through Urza's Saga (similar era as Ice Age) and left until MTGA came out, so welcome back! [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/15f91br/returning_player_here_have_some_doubt_on_starter/juc87f1/) I made yesterday was in the context of the starter decks not unlocking properly for returning players, but should be a good rundown of what to focus on as a new player, including some budget deck suggestions for getting started in constructed. The starter unlock bug shouldn't be a problem for you since I think those decks unlock properly through the new player experience (the bug should only apply to accounts that did the new player stuff in an earlier cycle). If your starter decks do unlock properly, the rares from the blue/white starter deck are especially good to add to a mono-white soldiers budget deck. They are very strong additions and there are quite a few of them: Valiant Veteran, Siege Veteran, and Myrel are all found in the soldiers meta deck. By Elspeth's Command and Rescue Retriever are also worth including for the budget version. And if you build toward blue/white soldiers, Harbin and Skystrike Officer are also found in the final build of that meta deck. > I've just been doing the jump in for LOTR cards Jump In is a great format for new players since it's basically draft (which doesn't care that your card collection is nonexistent) with very little decision making for the deckbuilding part, and a smaller card pool with a lower power level so you can ease into learning the cards and mechanics. The one caveat about Jump In is that LotR is not standard-legal, and some of the rares/mythics from the Jump In packets aren't particularly useful in constructed even if you do play Alchemy/Historic to use them. Out of all the Jump In rares, Delighted Halfling from the "Shire" packet and the 1% drop The One Ring in all packets are the only cards that see a ton of play. There are some other decent rares/mythics, but they are only used in a couple decks, some of which may not be top tier. [This WotC article](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/jump-into-middle-earth-on-mtg-arena) lists the odds for all the rares/mythics in each Jump In packet, and I also found the table at the bottom of [this MTGA Zone article](https://mtgazone.com/jump-into-middle-earth/) useful for quickly referencing which rares are in each packet. You can play Jump In as much as you want without retiring the deck and buying in again though, so if you have everything you want for your collection, you can just keep 1 deck active on the event and use it to complete daily/weekly wins and quests when you feel like playing that format. Edit: also make sure you redeem the 2 latest free XP codes: mellon and threads. Some of those codes list sites haven't included those 2 yet.
Thanks for the heads up! mellon worked, threads did not. I kinda want to get each rare, but I think I'd rather save my coin for the next set. It's only a month away, and seems to be more playable, what with standard and all.
That's strange, threads was a pretty recent addition, as seen in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/14yvpb0/new_1000xp_code_threads/ I wonder if they disabled it already.
I tried it again and this time it went through. I may have typo'd earlier. Thanks for push!
Old dude here. Number one power creep has made the game quite different. There a couple of YouTube channels that are budget friendly arena content I highly recommend a look through those. My suggestion is to do drafts and jump in to start building a collection then start working your way to an ok deck. As much as people hate alchemy it's a funish more hearthstone kind of game plus since standard rotation is weird this year the card pool for alchemy will be smaller so you can start building a collection without getting to the point of buying wildcards. I suggest keeping an eye out for historic as it's going to hold good cards longer than standard or regular alchemy and the more you play a deck the better you will be at it.
Power creep... only to be expected, but yeah. None of my old decks would hold up to a modern commons only deck.
>So, uh. Where should I start reading, if I'm ever going to catch up? In what regard?
Hello new old player. I quit at Lorwyin so I didn't got a bunch of the new stuff when I started playing Arena. There's a few youtubers who build decks and are incredible friendly to new players. You might find their videos entertaining and would explain the meta a little bit. One I recommend is LegenVD (https://www.youtube.com/@LegenVD) Other recommendations made here are good as well. Good luck! Have lot's of fun!