Learn essential tips for Magic: The Gathering Arena, including deck building, mana conservation, and exploring new planes for booster packs.
- Remember when cards can be used. Instants can be played most any time, but sorceries can only be played (by default) during one's own main phases. Creatures with Flash, and sorceries following Quicken, can be played any time instants can, making for surprise combos.
- Make sure created decks have a fighting chance. A basic formula is having about 20 creatures, 20-24 lands, and the rest as instants/sorceries/extra creatures. A deck with too many creatures, too few lands, or no utility given by sorceries/instants tends to flat-out suck, often in many ways.
- Learn good mana conversation. For instance, let's say one has 3 mana and a Millstone on the field. When's the best time to use Millstone? Right as the turn begins? Generally, no. Millstone isn't likely to be essential, so it can probably be put off until the end of the foe's turn. This allows mana to be devoted to necessities. (Example: if one wastes two mana using Millstone, one might lose the chance to kill an annoying creature or block a particular spell.) Mana is lost in-between turns, so feel free to expend any remaining before then -- the opponent will use the same wait-and-see tactics!
- Try different decks. Maybe one starts with a green deck and finds that it's too slow for a situation. Maybe one's white deck is great for life gain but can't cope with the foe's instant win condition. Maybe one's black deck is powerful, but the opponent's control cards constantly foul things up. Don't hesitate to make a new deck and try it out, or even adopt strategies and cards the opponent's using, when possible.
- Explore! When a new plane is unlocked, try doing some of the exploration duels to earn new booster packs. Whether it's Theros or Zendikar, there'll be great cards to find -- some mainstays, some seemingly worthless. Later, maybe one'll want one of those "worthless" cards for a particular combo or build.
Walkthrough:
Pre-walkthrough notation guide! Here's things I judge opponents' decks on.
CONTROL: How good the deck is at forcing inopportune situations on the foe via abilities and noncreature cards. Things like bouncing, mandatory sacrifices, hand destruction, creature theft, etc. Doing noncombat damage affects this rating, too, though not as much as the listed acts.
DRAWPOWER: How good the deck is at maintaining a sizeable hand. The more creatures/instants/sorceries that give card draws, the higher this rating is.
SPEED: How fast the deck is at filling the field and putting the opponent on the ropes. This doesn't factor in how easy it is to kill them, only how quick they can get in position to take advantage of a foe who can't deal with 'em properly.
STAYPOWER: How well the foe's monsters stay on the field. Abilities like Undying and Regeneration will typically improve this rating.
STRENGTH: How tough the creatures are in general. This is mostly based off creatures' power rating.
SYNERGY: How well the deck's thematic unity is -- whether its parts work together or it's just thrown-together dreck.
RETRIEVAL: How well the deck can fetch cards from the graveyard and library. Decks that lack cards for either have a "none" rating.
P.CHANGES: Planeswalker difficulty changes. Some decks change their lineup a bit on the highest difficulty and will be listed here (if any).
When first accessing the game, one:
- receives booster packs for pre-purchasing and/or owning Magic 2014
- receives a "Soul of Zendikar" promo code
- can set the difficulty (walkthrough is for default "Mage" difficulty)
- select a persona (profile icon) that best represents you!
Some of these can be checked or changed in the Help & Options tab, and it's recommended to visit there to make sure one's got all the preferences set just so. For instance, changing window size, dialing down the LOUD volume, turning on/off abilities (like whether the game does positive card effects automatically, although I dunno why anyone would do this), etc.
First-time players will automatically be brought to the Tutorial screen when accessing single-player mode. Those unfamiliar with Magic will want to go through in order (it's very intelligible for a guide), though old hands can skip to the final battle. There's a Steam achievement for going all the way through.
Next, one picks a color of one's favorite affinity. This will narrow down the options for the premade deck one chooses.
- Blazing Intellect [Blue/Red]
- Chaos & Slaughter [Black/Red]
- Cruel Denial [Black/Blue]
- Echoing Roar [Blue/Green]
- Freezing Winds [Blue/White]
- Heed the Call [Green/White]
- Heroic Charge [Red/White]
- Life and Death [Black/White]
- Natural Order [Black/Green]
- Smash and Burn [Green/Red]
NOTE: The walkthrough was created before the free Master of Monsters and Riddles of Steel add-ons. They will be able to add extra oomph to most strategies listed within, especially recyclers like "Sheoldred, Whispere
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