Hearthstone Has Had its Economy Reckoning: Is it Time for Magic Arena as Well?
“I wish cardboard wasn’t so expensive,” I always lament when getting together with friends to play Magic: The Gathering. Ever since childhood, I’ve always savored the feeling of busting open a fresh pack of cards, drinking in the whiff of new-card-smell. Then, I grew up, and realized just how expensive these things are. As the COVID-19 pandemic set in and foiled any attempt at in-person cardboard-slinging, I dove back into Hearthstone and Magic Arena only to find my problems followed me: even the price of digital cards hurts.
As a former paying Hearthstone player and a more current Arena player, the digital economy of a collectible card game is always frustrating. Recent outrage over the failed overhaul of the Hearthstone Rewards Track is a testament to this. While the online environments of both games save their players from the woes of hundred-dollar format staples like some paper formats of Magic, the “freemium” model still has its hiccups. In the case of Hearthstone, the devs seem to have listened. Still, the design of the Magic Arena collection seems to be an impediment to a fun, affordable play experience. Perhaps a change is in order.
The miser I am, I climbed to the best of ranks in Magic Arena with the worst of decks. I scrimped and saved every piece of gold from every quest and invested every last wild card into crafting a Historic Mono-Red Burn deck because I am the worst kind of person. Then I climbed to Mythic with it. All the way, the joy of my success was blunted by the cheapness of my strategy. Where were my demons or dinosaurs? Where were my flashy planeswalkers? Lightning strikes get old after a while.
Upon reflection, I realized a greater issue exists with the Magic Arena economy than that of Hearthstone. In both cases, the games feature a ladder with rotating sets and an eternal format ladder. However, in Hearthstone, if you focus on the standard ladder, you can always disenchant your cards for arcane dust to spend on new ones.
In Arena, you are stuck with your cards for good. Additionally, the wildcard system makes for less freedom in building the deck you want than Hearthstone does. With wildcards being rigidly based on the rarity of the desired card, I often found myself with a glut of mythic wildcards when I really needed more regular rares to stay relevant in the meta. The need for sixty cards in a Magic deck compared to Hearthstone’s thirty puts an additional strain on the cash-strapped player.
While Hearthstone’s new economy slowed down free to play progression, Magic Arena’s economy faces a different problem: the game’s collection system is not optimized for freemium digital play. Maybe it’s time, then, that Wizards of the Coast does away with its wild cards and lets us craft cards too. Or maybe, we can get those sweet Arena codes from the paper product we buy. After all, Pokémon TCG players get codes, so why can’t we?
