Many have played (even just for one game) Magic: The Gathering. Everyone, indistinctly, at least has heard about it. Richard Garfield’s game has always represented a pleasant Mermaid for the nerdy people: playable on several levels, from casual to competitive pushed, Magic has charmed millions of players around the world, representing for Wizards of the Coast a continuous source of income thanks to the periodic release of new expansions. Twenty-five years of success, in which the myth of Magic has only recently tarnished due to the crowding of fierce competitors at the digital level (someone said Hearthstone?). Wizards, afraid to see the real and paper side of his domain scratched, has instead acted digitally in recent years with the feet of lead (probably too much, meanwhile losing a competitive advantage of inestimable value). On the one hand proposing – especially to the market of competitive players – Magic Online, a platform for Windows computers that reproduces all aspects of the paper counterpart: collection of Cards, trading between players, tournaments in the most various formats. A really inadequate software, graphically obsolete and ergonomics that define rigid is an understatement. On the other, Wizards has proven with infinite prudence, the land and the casual, with different versions of Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers (on Steam platform) and Magic Duels (also for mobile devices), applications that had the merit to introduce to the mechanics often complex of the game but suffered from the presence of the set is largely incomplete and, therefore, the impossibility of being able to play the formats that are now rooted at the level of the game on paper.

Finally, driven by the ever more impassioned appeals to players all around the world, Wizards of the Coast seems to have woken up, trying to combine the protection of the cash cow that is the game on paper with a wink to the audience of a Hearthstone, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Gwent and followers, with the goal to undermine them. Magic Arena is its new free to play offer, currently in closed beta (soon the open). Plausibly by the end of the year the software will be officially on the market, at least the Edition for pc, followed by that for iOS and Android and (perhaps) MacOS and consoles.

Thanks to the patch of 7 June, Magic Arena presents the complete collections of the Standard format (including the expansions Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, Welcome Deck 2017, Amonkhet, Hour of Devastation, Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan and the recent Dominaria). Other formats are under study, including a kind of Modern Arena, consisting of any paper made available on the digital platform, which will thus enjoy a second life after the classic rotation of the Standard format. At the time of entry into the game we will find some base decks and therefore a good number of cards already available in our collection, making us ready to challenge online the other players admitted to the closed beta. The economy of the game (always in progress) currently provides rewards in gold and the single cards to the first 15 wins per day which, combined with other rewards for the quest (e.g. destroy 30 creatures, play 60 mana, etc), to ensure regular player at least the opening of a sachet per day and, consequently, the enhancement of its decks. If it is true that at the moment the sachets contain only 8 Cards (Against 15 of the paper edition), inside them can be found Wild Cards of different value (from common to Mythic Rare) that guarantee the conversion of one of these jokers with any Magic card of equal value. In practice, through this ingenious mechanism, we will have the opportunity to immediately have the very card that we were desperately trying to upgrade our deck. Opening sachets and expanding our collection, we will then contribute to the progressive growth of the Vault, a treasure chest that when it comes to 100% will provide a number of extra Wild Cards.