No, this is the best way:
https://cockatrice.github.io/

All cards for free forever. You just have to organize your own games with other people.

unless you like drafting and are good at it, mtga has a worse economy than actual honest to goodness gacha games. I know mtg is a gacha too but goddamn it's really bad.

You learn how to draft
I am too lazy to reinstall my client, but i had something like 300k gold and 100k gems, all sets that were ever standard legal fully collected (until kamigawa when i dropped this shit) and like gazillion wild cards.
Get good at draft or get ready to swipe the card.

>>731079219
cockatrice is horrible n
Everyone only plays commander and the few people who bother with standard constanty try to cheat on way or the other

>>731079465
In order to even play a draft game you need 5k gold

>>731079091
In theory, the free-to-play pattern for a newer player is as follows -
Do your dailies with the starter decks to slowly earn gold. Reroll once per day hoping to turn a 500 into a 750.
Once you have enough money for a draft of the latest set, draft that set. Normal drafts are cheaper and you get to pick your cards, but understanding how to actually build a draft deck and navigate the format can be difficult. Sealed is just trying to cobble together a deck from six packs so you don't need to think as hard and everyone's decks are likely going to be worse/less consistent.
Especially when starting, don't be afraid to prioritize cards for a constructed deck over what would be good for your draft deck. If you do very well in draft, the draft pays for itself. Even for skilled players with a winrate of 60%+ this is all but impossible to maintain long-term. It still adds up, so winning matters, but early on it can be nice to just come away from a draft with a bunch of rares and uncommons.
Use the draft spoils to make a standard deck. You're unlikely to be able to build a meta one, but you can follow their rough strategy based on what you have, or just improve the starter decks.

Rinse and repeat.
Buying packs directly is a sucker's game and very unlikely to give you cards you need.
If you're willing to put in $25 for the starter pack of gems, that can be a shot in the arm that lets you do a couple drafts back to back and get over the initial hurdle. I've personally spent about $250 on gems over the years, but I've spent well over $2k on physical cards during that span. I have no illusions that MTG's pricing is predatory and the structure of the game values being a collectable over limited or constructed being playable.

>>731079091
>gachaslop except instead of getting cute girls you get "modern day representation"
No thank you.

>>731080749
is there any thing to look out when playing Draft?
what are the decks that usually win?

Draft, you fool. Draft is the funnest way to play MTG and you complete sets more efficiently that way.

Can't wait to draft Lorwyn.

>>731082257
Watch HamTv and ScottyNada
Ham is straight up best drafter in the game and while scotty isnt that good, he always ready to help and answer any question even stupid ones.
The best draft decks are usually the ones drafted properly lol at you if you expected actual formula with solid removals and good creatures

>>731082257
It depends on a set to set basis.
Here's the initial tier list for Lorwyn according to a guy I trust. Set is coming out in two days so save your gold and gems for then. The tier list will change over time.

https://www.17lands.com/tier_list/1745e64176864bb2bec132cbd601b604

You're gonna have to gain experience in the general ways of drafting to get better at it. Probably will want to see some tutorial videos or some shit. But this is a good starting point when you're going in raw dog. It's worth it, bro. It's the funnest way to play MTG and makes it so that all your gold and gems are actually worth something.

>>731082331
Oh yeah, another thing. Since you're new, it's a good idea to do bot drafts. I believe they're called "Quick Drafts". They're not nearly as enjoyable, but they are the most economic way of drafting. Only 5k gold for 3 sets. Extremely good expected value. The meta there is way more boring and static, but it's also easier to draft since you get all the time in the world to think of your decisions.

For Lorwyn, it will probably still be half a month or a month until that gets a quick draft, so I guess you should go look up the tier lists for whichever set quick draft is up right now.

>>731082257
The good news is there's 30 years of advice about that, the issue is that over 30 years between changes in game design and changes in average player skill the aggregate of that advice is "pick the good cards and avoid the bad ones".

Overall, what colors/strategies are good is very dependent on which set you're drafting. Each set has its own cards, and modern (i.e. the past 10 years or so) set design sets up pretty straightforward strategies for each color pair. Blue+White might be aggressive flying creatures one set, then slow expensive spells and creature removal the next. I'd recommend looking at the card pool beforehand just so you don't have to read every card for the first time while the draft timer is ticking down.

In general, good cards are going to be ones that impact the board, aren't reliant on you being in a situation where you're already winning, and work well with the commons in the set. A lot of rares that seem powerful are actually just bait for the Commander format (singleton 100 card decks with a legendary creature you can always cast, 4-player free-for-all).

Sites like 17lands will let you see draft orders, win% of various cards, and an aggregate view of what people do, but for better or worse very little beats experience. Watching videos of good drafters can give you an understanding of what they do and why, but also bear in mind that a content creator is likely to pick things they find interesting or think will entertain over the bread and butter that wins games.

>>731082619
Meant for >>731082257
Also
>3 sets
3 packs*

I only play brawl so I only have to spend one wildcard on each card

>>731079091
The only consistent way to get cards in arena is to be a draft player. There was some guy who grinded to the top ranks and got jack squat for rewards while his draft only friend was drowning in cards.
It's such a shit client.

>>731080749
I've spent around 200 bucks on MTGA since it launched back in 2019 but 99% of it was for cosmetics. The only thing I bought that was for actual gems and gold was the 5 bucks adventurer pack. Not sure if that's still around nowadays but it was a good one-time purchase.

I was able to gather a bazillion wildcards just from playing the game normally F2P. I have 2000+ hours in it albeit

But this is all cause of draft. If MTGA didn't have draft, there's no way I'd have played it for more than 20 hours. Draft is so fucking fun.

If you're FTP, then yeah, I have 220 hours and about 9 decks for historical.

>>731082842
I just wish I could pay them $50 for a ticket that lets me draft as much as I want. I don't need the cards afterwards, I don't need the rewards for winning, I just want to be able to play the game without having to do the cost-benefit analysis and having the occasional 1-3 sting not just because of a bad runout but because it eats away at my ability to continue drafting.

>>731082969
Fuck man, I'd pay an yearly 60 bucks subscription to phantom draft as much as I wanted. Would be well worth it.

>>731083102
Same, which is why they won't do it. There's a small chance Daybreak might do it for MTGO, they've been a lot more willing to experiment. That'd be enough for me to try it again and fight through the interface. Though I also stay off MTGO because it'd be a matter of time before I spent $100 on a vintage dredge list and became part of the problem

>>731083232
kek I remember drafting a couple of sets in MTGO back in 2015 or so. That shit was so unbelievably expensive and I swore off of Magic forever. But then they pulled me back in with Arena.

>>731082731
Also yeah, this is the other thing. Brawl is good fun and the most economic constructed format. It's incredibly easy to brawl f2p.

>>731080749
>>731079091
>Once you have enough money for a draft of the latest set
Don't fall for this pyramid scheme, if you are a new player you will only lose and not achieve anything with drafts, only do that if you are specifically interested in drafting/learning draft, otherwise you'll just be used to feed the farmers for their infinite loops.
In reality mtga is a scam, I play it but only because I've been playing it since the beta and could gather packs slowly as they were released as a f2p, I'm also only interested in it's eternal formats, but if you are a new player there is 0 way for you to catch up or even get specifically what you want since the wildcards and their acquisition rate is extremely small.

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>>731079219
>>731079603
The real way to enjoy cockatrice is do artificial collections and have autistic campaigns/tournaments. Pick a block to start with, I'd personally recommend 8th Core, and each player starts with a starter deck and maybe a few packs from the set. That's their entire cardpool. If you want to go the campaign route, you play matches over territory on some map (fantasy, europe, whatever). Tournament can be round-robin or battle city or whatever strikes your fancies, more wins earns more [currency]. Depending on how often your group plays, end rounds daily or weekly or monthly and distribute packs. Campaign map style awards packs as resources for controlled territory, tournament style allows players to buy packs. Trading between players can be done with cards or currency. It helps if you autisticly get into it and play your planeswalker as a character.

>>731079091
This is the most efficient way to complete the collection

>win 4 games every day
>only complete 750g quests
>reroll all 500g quests if you can
>use gold for quick drafts
>use gems for the mastery pass
>draft every rare/mythic you see (press alt to see how many copies of a card yuou already have in your collection)
>use untapped.gg to see which (un-)commons are best for your deck
>a uncommon you already have 4 copies of is worth more than a common you still haven because of vault progress
>do not open packs until you have enough for each rare you are missing from the set
>if you have enough (un-) common wildcards to finish a set craft them before opening packs

>>731082969
>>731083102
Just play on xmage, you can organize whichever draft you want.

>>731082619
>>731083679
whats the difference between quick drafts and the traditional draft
Traditional costs 10k gold and quick only 5k
Are the rewards better or what?

>>731083986
In Quick draft the other 7 drafters are bots. Their pick order is essentially a ranked list of which cards are "good", they aren't trying to build a functional deck. In an actual draft, seeing patterns like 'I'm seeing a lot of good black cards after several picks, if I try to make a black deck the other players are in other colors and I'll get better cards on average' is the foundation of making a good deck. It's common for a rare to be still in the pack after a few picks if it's for a niche strategy or just not in the colors someone can use. Drafting against bots completely destroys that (though there are grinders that exploit patterns in the bot pick order to make very consistent decks), and as a result the draft is less interesting and the games are less fun. You play your games against other humans who did quick draft.

The upshot is that because you're the only human drafting, there isn't a time limit on picks. Mostly it's only there because when Arena launched, they didn't have the ability to draft with other people, so they never removed bot drafting. I would strongly recommend avoiding it.

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>>731083986
Quick drafts are drafting with bots and playing Best of 1 ranked matches
Premier drafts are drafting with other players and playing ranked matches (not necessarily against the players in your draftpool)
Traditional draft are drafting with other players and playing Best of THREE UNRANKED matches (not necessarily against the players in your draftpool)

Assuming three drafted rares Premier is better above 57.3% winrate
2.5 rares: need 58.7% WR.
4 rares: 54% | 5 rares: 49%.

If your winrate is lower Quick draft will be better for you because the reward curve is not so steep

>>731083698
>Players have bad packs
>Just AFK lol
Yeah, no

>>731083986
Like I said, quick drafts have a more boring and static meta because it's dependent on what the bots draft. But it's much better for a newbie cause it's cheaper and the reward ratio is better.

Cheap memedeck for cheesing out wins fast in Brawl
Mulligan for any of the seeking cards, use them to seek out all the non Island cards until you can play Treasure Hunt + TOracle in the same turn, consneed if you get the combo in hand and a seeker card still in the deck without a way to pull it out


Commander
1 Baral, Chief of Compliance (MUL) 73

Deck
94 Island (UST) 213
1 Thassa's Oracle (THB) 73
1 Treasure Hunt (WWK) 42
1 Bounty of the Deep (J21) 8
1 Seek New Knowledge (HBG) 36
1 Pool Resources (Y25) 6

>How do i get packs?
you don't
every TCG is pay to win
pay up big boy

>>731079219
Cockatrice, Apprentice, Forge, et. al. have terrible communities. If you don't have friends, you're either playing Commander or cheaters.

Even untap.in is bad (but less so).

>>731079091
You pay up or grind gold and slowly build one (1) mono-Mountain ("Red") deck to burn opponents until rotation.

Rinse and repeat.

You're better off playing MODO/Magic: Online and "renting" decks with tickets (like $1 a ticket) for whatever format you want.

>>731080749
Did they stop that "1,000 gold for 3,000 (+2,000 actual) or 100 gem [cash] for 3,000 [3,000 actual]" daily deal? That was about the only time to login to Arena.

>Sealed
Also I'll forever be upset that pre-release is now "six booster packs" over a Sealed play. I get it's a little less shitty (more RNG though) since you don't have to play an absolutely dogshit deck if your boosters in sealed suck, but the value proposition for attending a paper event is shitty in comparison to the before change.

>>731082257
B.R.E.A.D. if you actually care to play the format/drafts.

Rare draft if you don't and want to build a collection. Spend the gold, get as many rares as you can. Drop, repeat.

>>731086301
what if i dont want to win and just want to play?

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>>731086635

>>731086635
Forge "Adventure Mode" unless you want to play against actual people.

>>731086346
>Drop
What a fucking waste. Just play your damn games, pussy.

>>731086346
Bread is super out of date, these days synergy tends to matter more than individual card power.

I think they still do the gem daily deals but haven't seen one lately.

>>731079313
the ridiculous prices got me to quit on rotation. "sure i like the game, i'll just buy some- jesus christ it's how much for a deck?"