Opening Magic: The Gathering Arena for the First Time in Five Years
This is my first time playing Magic: The Gathering Arena in five years. I literally haven't opened the app. I was in Mythic last time I played, and I grew up playing Magic: The Gathering as a kid. Some of the main things I want to answer here come from the fact that I'm a full-time YouTuber. I'm wondering: do I want to get back into Magic: The Gathering Arena and create content around it as the main game I play for my gaming channel? I've also played a lot of Marvel Snap since I last played Magic: The Gathering Arena, and I've gotten into a bunch of other games too. So let's dive into this and see how much fun it is here — and see if there's a big community for Magic: The Gathering. Would there be any use in me making content? Do I want to try to climb to Mythic again?
I think it's crazy that they've added the Marvel Universe in here. That's pretty crazy. So I'm collecting rewards from forever ago, and I don't have any decks that I know right now. I think it's kind of hard to come back to a game like Magic: The Gathering when you haven't played in a while, because I know how much work I have to do just to be able to play comfortably. I know what I don't know at this point, which is a lot. I know I loved playing Magic as a kid, and it's so nostalgic. There's so many moments of "oh, I remember that."
When I was playing before, the deck that got me to Mythic was built around Winota, Joiner of Forces — and obviously a few other cards, but that was the centerpiece of the deck that got me to Mythic. That card was amazing. I'm not even sure why I'm opening all these cards at this point.
Magic Takes Serious Time and Serious Thinking
You just need so much time to play Magic. You need to look at all the cards and play against all the cards, and that's what makes it fun. It's a game where there's a lot of studying. I love a game that's very mental, where you've got to think. It does make it a little harder to create content, though — in some ways. It can make it a little harder for me to create content because if I play Call of Duty Zombies, for example, I can just talk and go on and on, because the game itself is kind of mindless. But Magic requires a lot of thinking. And I think that's good — to play a game that requires more thinking, to actually use your brain. I've also gone back and forth on whether I should just play a lot of different games, because it's really hard to play a bunch of different games. Playing a bunch of different games is kind of crazy.
They ban historic cards. They ban historic pioneer cards. They restrict timeless cards. Oh my goodness. So my new rankings are pretty far down there — bronze tier four, the starting place. Do I get some packs to open? I get one rare wildcard. Just clicking through all the stuff I earned took three minutes, and I haven't even played a game yet.
So Many Modes — Where Do I Even Start?
I'm not even sure where to jump in and which game to play. I click play, obviously, and then — I don't have any of my decks set up yet. Yes, thank you, I remember how that works. It's so intimidating to jump back into this. It's like, where do I start? I could just hop into standard play, pick a deck, and see what happens. I probably should just play a bot match at this point — playing a bot match might be a good idea, just to use a deck and warm up against it.
It's crazy how many modes they have. How can you find people for this many modes? Standard ranked, alchemy ranked, historic. Back when I played this five years ago, I think they only had two modes — they just had standard and historic. Now they have standard, alchemy, historic, pioneer, timeless, and competitive brawl. That's crazy. That's crazy how many different things they have in here. How can they keep players for all these things? It might be easy to just pick a single-mana deck. I'm going to just play a bot match at this point. And can we make the volume a little less loud? I think the thing to do is just jump into a bot match, because I barely know what I'm doing — and we can make my face a little smaller and the watermark a little smaller too. That three-mana deck is probably good, so we'll keep that.
Warming Up Against a Bot
At this point, I might as well play a bot. Marvel Snap integrates the bots in pretty smoothly. What I don't like about Marvel Snap, though, is you can't even tell if you're playing a bot or not. Hold up — all right, so we'll just kill that off. I don't need them to have any more mana. The interface sure looks beautiful. At the beginning of your turn, if an opponent lost life... oh, this has flying and that doesn't, right? Yeah, all right, so we'll play that. They've sure made the graphics absolutely beautiful. What if I get smoked by a bot? That'd be so bad.
All right, let's go. Whenever... ooh, all right, that should be pretty good, so we'll put that on him. And then we can destroy this creature — I think that's the one I want to destroy, right? Oh yeah. Oh man, why can't... oh, it's power, not health. Crap. Add one mana of any color — we don't want to allow them to add a bunch of mana, that's for sure. And then this guy gets a counter. All right, one attacker, we're going in. And we get lifelink — so nice. This guy is set up to grow. Dang, all I got are swamps, man. Come on. At least I have lifelink. So this guy's just getting bigger and bigger right now. Finally, a little murder in here. All right, so we're going to take out this 4/2. Nice. This is getting pretty good right now. Dude, that lifelink is crazy. Oh, why have they not killed this yet? Why did they do that? That was so stupid. That was so dumb. Oh man, I just barely can't finish them. All right, looks like we're going to beat the bot here pretty easily. That was not too hard — hopefully that's not what she said. We wiped the bot out pretty easily with this basic deck. That's a good sign. It took like five minutes. So that was fun, and it definitely makes me want to play some more Magic: The Gathering.
Should I Get Back Into Magic?
At the same time, that was a bot, so I've got a lot to learn going in against real people. Realistically, I've got packs to open. I'd probably need to start getting some of these bundles, get a deck that's good, and research a bunch of decks. There's a lot of work if I want to get back into it. So the question is: should I get back into it? I'm interested to know what you think — and would you watch more of my Magic: The Gathering content? If so, thank you. You can find all of my gaming videos on my Games playlist.
Well, I'm going to play this game today and see: do I want to play more? Are people interested in watching more? We'll see what happens.