Summary
Magic: The Gatheringhas managed to do pretty well for itself in a world of video games and instant digital gratification. I’ve been out of the hobby for a long time, so I had no idea how smartly the company had integrated its physical card game with its digital one.
It’s Been Years Since I’ve Bought an MTG Deck
My wife expressed a desire to get back into MTG, having discovered that there was a local venue where people played in the town we moved to fairly recently. Now, dusting off our old decks, most of these cards were from 2014. Clearly they weren’t going to be legal for Standard, and frankly, we didn’t have viable decks the last time we played anyway.
So, off to the comic book store, and I picked up a Bloomburrow starter kit, and an MTG Foundation pre-release box. A good start I think, and we can play each other at home until we’re familiar with the rules again.
What’s This? A Code in the Box?
Cracking open the starter kit, to my surprise, I found a digital code. I’d been aware that MTG has had a few apps that allowed people to play the game on a tablet or computer. I’d tried one of the early ones on my iPad, but it was so much less polished thanHearthstonethat I couldn’t really stick with it.
MTG: Arenaisn’t adigital version of the gameI was familiar with, but with code in hand, I downloaded the app and logged in using my account.
It Unlocks the Physical Deck I Bought in MTG: Arena
It turns out you have to redeem the code on the website, and not in the app. However, once I figured this out, I saw both of my Bloomburrow decks added in full to the game.
Arena is a free to play game, with Wizards of the Coast making their money by selling you digital booster packs. That’s pretty much par for the course. However, giving me a free digital copy of the physical decks I just bought as a free bonus isbrilliant.For one thing, it means I have the original deck list and can put it back together whenever I want easily. However, the advantages go much further than that I think.
Now I Can Practice for Friday Night Magic
Giving me a digital copy of the decks that I might actually take to an in-person MTG event means that I can practice with my deck as much as I want, even if I don’t have other opponents inmeatspace.
It also means no wear and tear on my physical deck no matter how much I play. So I can save my real deck for real games. The only downside here is that I wish the two decks had separate codes, since it’s meant to be a two-player starter kit after all.
Experimentation Is Easier Than Ever
Since you can edit your decks in the MTG Arena app, it also means I’ll have an easier time trying out variations of my base deck as I run into things I don’t like about how it plays.
I’m genuinely excited to play MTG again after giving it up for such a long time, and with this modern digital hybrid approach to the game, it’s actually going to be practical and convenient to keep playing, even if I only have a few spare minutes. I can just grab my tablet and have a round.
This is something I definitely hope Wizards of the Coast sticks with, and it’s a great reason to go out and buy the decks instead of simply getting them as digital in-app purchases.
