Necro Resurrecto!
Any Arena players here? A few months back, I taught my D&D group Magic. Two of them jumped in with both feet and in looking for all things Magic, they stumbled across a free browser based game called Arena. I was skeptical about downloading it, but, once I did, holy smokes was I glad! It's just fantastic!! You start with several tutorials, all mono decks versus the AI. As you progress, you open more decks. I forget how many, but, after you get six or so, the tutorial is over. Then, it's time to jump in to live duels.
The options to play are varied. You can enter draft tournaments, play one offs or best of threes, ranked matches or just for fun. The card selection is outstanding. The current sets that are legal, War of the Spark, Ravnica, Ixalan, Core 2019, the new set, Ixoria, and maybe a few more as well as Historical sets can be collected and played. You can spend real money to seed your collection or power up and (try to) dominate. You can also go the free route and grind. Every day you have a task, cast 20 Black or Green spells, Destroy 25 of your opponents creatures, etc. You get coins and XP for completing the day's task. Coins can be used to purchase Boosters and entry into tournaments and XP unlocks a new prize for every 1000 earned. The prizes range from more coins to single cards to whole Boosters. Plus, there are daily rewards for wins as well as bigger bonuses for winning 15 matches in a week.
The three things that make this truly great are
1) All the cards you collect, you keep. Yes, it's digital. And I get the tactile pleasure of shuffling and playing cards. But, the pure joy of having a bunch of cards to choose from to build any kind of deck you want is still there.
2) You can build any kind of deck you have the cards for. That's right, full control of how your deck is built. White or red weenie, blue/black denial, green Trample deck. Whatever your collection can bear.
3) The community is super active. I rarely have to wait more than 15 seconds to find a match. The ranking system has 6 Levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and Mythic) and four Tiers in each level. You are matched within the same Level, so, if you are a Tier 3 Gold, you will be matched with another Gold player regardless of Tier.
There is so much more I could go on about. The duels allow you to Mulligan your starting hand if you choose to. Once you start, it plays out exactly how you would play if you were face to face. Cards go into the field of play and are resolved as they should be. It's great to have someone else keep track of your +1/+1 counters or damage taken during Upkeep or whatever mechanic is in force. The duel plays out until there is a winner and then you can go find a new match!
A really neat thing about this is, opening Boosters gains you 'Wild Cards.' Six Boosters opened gets you a Common Wild Card. 12, an Uncommon. 18 is a Rare and 24 is a Mythic. A Common Wild Card can be traded for ANY Common card in ANY set in the Arena game. Same for Uncommon and so on up the line. Plus, opening Boosters may net you a Wild Card, too.
I can't stress enough how awesome this game is. All the cards and opponents you could ever want. Play any type of Deck you can construct. And yes, Bison, they have Commander cards.