MTG Arena lets players play Magic: The Gathering on mobile and PC for free, giving the classic TCG a much lower barrier to entry. In MTGA, you’ll build up your virtual card collection, create the decks of your dreams, and face off against friends near and far.
]]>Magic: The Gathering Arena was released in 2019 as a (better) digital adaptation of the decades-old physical trading card game. Our review deemed it a success for its ability to make untapping and cycling graspable for newcomers and for its adoption of HearthStone-style attack animations.
Previously it's only been available as a download from its own website, but now Wizards say it'll come to Steam on May 23rd.
]]>Card game Magic: The Gathering introduced sets which cross over with other worlds last year under the name Universes Beyond. Wizards Of The Coast announced during an investor call today that future crossovers would include Final Fantasy and Assassin's Creed - although not until 2024.
]]>Gothic horror strikes again in Magic: The Gathering Arena in 2023, when the Shadows Over Innistrad Remastered set rears up from its grave in the first half of the year. The remaster of 2016’s return to the plane of werewolves, vampires and zombies was revealed by Wizards Of The Coast today during a stream that kicked off Magic: The Gathering’s 30th anniversary celebrations.
]]>Just ahead of its cardboard launch, Magic: The Gathering Arena today debuts the new Jumpstart game type in digital form. Jumpstart's an interesting one, giving both players two curated 20-card packs each containing half a deck to smash together into one. Jumpstart has 46 different pack themes too (including angels, devils, dogs, dragons, cats, pirates, unicorns, dinosaurs, minotaurs, and minions), so you end up with something a bit weird but not wholly random. You have to pay for enter, but do get to keep the cards.
]]>A new wodge of 274 cards hits Magic: The Gathering Arena today with the launch of Core Set 2021. As ever, the annual Core set brings a mix of new and reprinted cards to build a base for the year's expansions - and this year it brings an awful lot of cats and dogs. One card even has a cat and a dog who are best friends. Core Set 2021 doesn't officially launch in cardboard form until July 3rd, so it's a bit of a sneaky peeky for the digital version.
]]>Next month, Wizards of the Coast will release a new way to play Magic: The Gathering in the form of Jumpstart. Available physically and also in Arena, its PC-based incarnation. We previewed Jumpstart yesterday in conversation with Magic’s principal product designer, Mark Heggen. Today we’re exclusively revealing two of its 46 different themes, and discovering the incredible calculus Wizards of the Coast apply to their card designs.
]]>Like many CCG-curious people, I can’t even think about playing Magic: The Gathering properly. Building a deck from a library of thousands of cards and mechanics makes impossible demands on my time and – frankly – ability. But that’s about to change with Jumpstart, a new format that’s due to launch July 17 on paper in the US and also in Magic: The Gathering Arena, its excellent free-to-play PC-based incarnation.
Look, I’m not the only one. “I still have a hard time confidently knowing how many lands to put in my deck,” Mark Heggen tells me. And he’s Magic’s principal product designer. So Jumpstart sounds interesting to me as an official way to play Magic that sidesteps the whole thing.
]]>It's not a great time for physical games. While us videogames lot are enjoying more time than ever to play, it's practically impossible to run a weekly board or card game meet when all the shops are shut and any human interaction could lead to contracting a (potentially deadly) virus. In an effort to keep the magic alive, Wizards Of The Coast are running three weeks of special Friday Night Magic events to help MTG communities stay alive online with Magic: The Gathering Arena.
]]>Next week, on January 16, the latest card set will hit Magic: The Gathering Arena ahead of its physical release on January 24. It turns out that developers Wizards Of The Coast weren’t joking when they said their PC-based online game would stand right alongside the traditional game.
Theros Beyond Death is a new set in a series of four based on the Greek mythology-inspired plane of Theros. Gods, monsters and humans clash and heroes return from the Underworld in the continuation of a story which began back in 2013. But the important thing is the cards. A couple of months ago, I looked at how the previous set, Throne Of Eldraine, was designed, so I was interested to find out how this new one came together. I got to talk to design lead Mark Gottlieb about two of its new cards, Favoured of Iroas and Heroes of the Revel, which RPS can exclusively reveal below.
]]>We weren't allowed to meet up in person for a few years there, so everyone went a bit doolally for physical board games once doctors said we could cough directly into each other's eyeballs. We've all calmed down a bit now, but our love for the board game hasn't diminished. That's why we've put together our list of the best board games on PC - that is, the best digital versions of popular board games that you can play online.
]]>“It’s hungry mother. It’s trip to the fair. It’s bad trade. Magic beans. Jack’s cow, angry mother. It’s surprise beanstalk. It’s climbing the beanstalk, giant’s castle, giant’s wife, golden goose, self-playing harp, escape with the goose, chop down the beanstalk.”
Mark Rosewater has been head designer on Magic: The Gathering since 2003, overseeing the creation of thousands of new cards in the collectible card game that spawned them all. Among 269 new cards in Magic’s latest expansion set, Throne of Eldraine, some tell the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. Others feature pie-baking and big bad wolves, and some spin out Arthurian legends. All together, they form a densely intricate game of attack and defence, playable both as physical cards and in Magic: The Gathering Arena.
]]>Even though there’s been a digital version of Magic: The Gathering in some form for more than seventeen years, it’s not the game that I, a casual but long-term devotee of the physical game, am recommended on a near-monthly basis. By now, I’ve lost count of the number of friends who have approached me with wide-eyed enthusiasm and told me ‘mate, you need to play Hearthstone!’
Any digital card game exists by default in the shadow of the Blizzard behemoth, and most newcomers have failed so much as to nip at its ankles, many of them withering in the darkness despite being quite good. But now, after a year in open beta, Magic: The Gathering Arena is out. If it can wrest away Hearthstone’s status as the game that’s actually recommended to tabletop MtG players, it will be quite something.
]]>On my third or fourth game with Throne Of Eldraine, I realised I was going to lose if my opponent just kept stuffing his own damn cat into an oven again and again.
Throne Of Eldraine is the newest Magic: The Gathering set, coming to both the physical game and, more importantly for our purposes, Magic: The Gathering Arena. It's a mix of Arthurian high fantasy and fractured fairy tales. The barrow witches at RPS sent me on a quest to play it in a preview event arranged by Wizards, and I have come back with a wealth of first impressions.
]]>I've always been a little terrified of Magic: The Gathering. Not the game itself, mind. The lifestyle. I've never been in the home of a Magic player where old cards weren't spilling from every drawer, scattered on every floor. In one, they had enough dud cards to make a beautiful tree collage right up the side of the living room wall. Beautifully horrifying, that. I'll stick with flooding our own flat with tiny plastic people, thank you very much.
Thankfully there's a new way to play without making a mess. Magic: The Gathering Arena, an entirely online way to play the ancient card game, has left beta and is free to download in its final(ish) form right now.
]]>The new digital version of the game police are referring to as 'Teenbane', Magic: The Gathering Arena, is almost ready to launch in full after a year in open beta. Wizards of the Coast have announced a launch date of September 26th for both the free-to-play card game and its latest expansion, Throne Of Eldraine. Its new cards will send wizards off to a new world inspired by fairytales and Athurian legends, full of knights, hunters, little mermaids, faeries, witches, adventures, crystal slippers, and oh so much food.
]]>Imagine it’s 1993. You were up late last night working on your ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign. You’re sitting behind a DM screen, waiting for your players to show up, miniatures and maps and notes arrayed in front of you. Then they come in, sit down, and all they want to do is play this weird new card game they’re suddenly obsessed with.
It’s all your players want to talk about or do. One of them mentions how much they spent on several boxes of the stuff, but you’re sure you heard the number wrong. It’s apparently called Magic: The Gathering. Magic is the ur-trading card game, both originator and most successful example of the genre. But its history with video game adaptations doesn’t really match the endurance of the cardboard original.
]]>Open the door, get on the floor, infinitely spawn the dinosaurs! The free-to-play CCG Magic: The Gathering Arena updated yesterday with the 2020 core card set. One card from this new set -- Marauding Raptor -- can be played together with Polyraptor to destroy the game. Causing an infinite loop of dinosaur spawning, the perpetrator can only grin smugly and dare their opponent to hit the concede button. It's either that, or watch helplessly until the heat-death of the universe. Below, a video of this by "RiddledWith Adventure" on YouTube.
]]>The great granddaddy of collectable card wizard em' ups is back in style, and cribbing a few style tips from Hearthstone today, as Magic: The Gathering Arena opens its doors to all, free-to-play. While technically now in 'open beta', that's just a warning sign that the paint might still be wet, and a couple bugs may still be lurking around - there'll be no account wipes from here. The game is effectively out now, and after playing the closed beta for a while, I reckon it's a solid starting point for Magic novices and experts alike. Below, the launch trailer.
]]>Magic: The Gathering might be the great granddaddy of card-battlers, but it's still cool, dammit - you'll be able to see for yourself when Magic: The Gathering Arena enters open beta next week. You kids may have your Hearthstones, your Eternals and even your Slay The Spires, but there's still nothing quite like passively aggressing someone to death with an all-blue shutdown deck. The free-to-play CCG launches into open beta on September 27th. Below, a bizarre launch trailer featuring Danny Trejo, who apparently knows a thing or two about elves.
]]>While I'd never describe myself as a die-hard fan, I've dabbled in Magic: The Gathering since the 90s across its physical form, the early RPG-like Microprose adaptation of the game, and even a bit of Magic Online, which is still running despite having barely changed over the past 15 years.
The latest digital adaptation, Magic: Arena is currently in closed beta testing, and the developers have just outlined their initial economic plans for the game. While it may sound a little daunting, the abridged version is that this sounds more generous than Hearthstone for casual players, at the very least, although they've yet to pin down the final real-money pricing for the game.
]]>In the manner of a bodyguard hurling themselves in front of a bullet, I am hurling myself in front of a story about Magic: The Gathering's digital free-to-play card game, Magic: The Gathering Arena [official site] in order to protect Alice and Brendan from it. SAVE YOURSELVES, FRIENDS!
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