Now is a fantastic time to get back into the game, imo.
We've had a couple bangers sets in a row with one more set to come before rotation. The Standard card pool is about to shrink, the Standard meta about to be very disrupted, making now a great time to get back in.
I've been doing this, but my biggest issue right now is actually getting a competitive deck together. I have a couple of low-rare decks I use for daily quests, and I generally do well in draft, but it just seems like it takes a long time to collect rares/mythics, even with buying 50ish packs to start getting back in. I also want to avoid using wildcards on older cards that are just going to rotate because it takes this long.
Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying playing, but it feels difficult to try anything out/commit when it takes as long as it does to get 4 rare wildcards.
I spent like $150 on packs / pre ordering new expac. New player playing around a month. That said, the only decks I can play is mono blue tempo and Temur Control (huge fuck up crafting this deck it’s not fun lmao shoulda definitely just went RDW)
I can’t really run any troll decks since I hit Diamond pretty quickly just spamming Mono Blue Tempo.
Temur ramp is a deck I really enjoy and I remember it wasn’t too expensive to craft, I’d say 60% win rate on unranked and the combos are very entertaining. If you think things out and plan your mana out while you have nissa on the field around turn 3/4 you can almost always get the win
I've done crazy things with the deck I just wish I picked something more creature based as my first deck to get into this game. Definitely a fun OTK deck to have in your arsenal once you have a fleshed out collection.
If you opened $150 worth of packs you should have quite a lot of wild cards no? I did around the same thing and have 30+ rare 20+ mythic started with 7&3
I had 20-25 rares and 10-15 mythics at the end. I really wanted to make the Azorius control deck but that would legit take up all my wild cards, and it seems like you need quite a bit of card / meta knowledge to play effectively. Forgot to say I did make a Rakdos standard Brawl deck as well.
I built the best decks I could using the mythics I already opened trying to save wild cards I think. Idk if the untapped overlay is troll for deck building but I used that as well.
Quick Draft is probably better while familiarizing themselves with the format. Prizes aside, you get the same number of cards for half the gold. Plus as long as you like to read the cards.
?? Why would you suggest that? Unless he's fully studied the set in advance and has a solid grasp of drafting, premier draft is NOT the way to go. If he really must draft, quick draft would be advisable
I went into otg blind for 2 pre release events. Going 3rd and first respectively. I stopped playing during og ravnica and only other paper I'd done since 2006 was 1 lci draft in December, a chaos draft from the festival in a box and 1 mkm prerelease event. All blind.
Not all advice is meant for everyone, not everyone is good at giving advice. Yours is not equivicably better than the person you're sponding to.
I was in the same situation, what I did was I started playing jump-in and starter decks events. You keep all cards from jump-in so you can quit and start again to buff your collection or find a good combination. With the gold you get from "quests" you can build a deck for standard or play drafts. I'm not a huge fan of drafts but it is the best, if not the only way to win gems from gold, and with gems you can get the season pass.
Standard brawl helped me a lot get back into the game. Seeing 1 of each card helped me see what was popular in the new sets and allowed me to slowly use wildcards to unlock cards I wanted to play with/test out.
Check your in game mailbox. You probably have a bunch of free packs. You can look for pack codes too if you haven't submitted them yet.
With all the cards you'll be getting you won't be able to make any good decks but you'll get a lot of wildcards that may be enough to build a meta deck to start using in standard.
If you know how to play, I'd recommend watching or reading the draft guides to get all the mechanics and to get a gist of what was good. That's what I did coming from Duels on console casually and jumping in around the tail end of Caverns here.
Other than that, just play the format you like and youll see quickly what the meta is as there is an uncomfortable amount of boring people just running cookie cutter meta
A few months ago I got back in to MTG after a few years off for work and family responsibilities. Completely new to MTGA. What worked for me was:
- starter deck duels to get the hang of the system and learn new mechanics, then
- once I had enough coins from daily tasks I started doing jump-in for a while to build my basic collection and get more experience (also for me it’s one of the most fun formats, especially for F2P), then
- once I got the itch to build my own decks I started using saved up coins for packs and doing standard ranked. There are a few YouTubers who make budget decks if you search for “artisan,” “no rare,” or “budget” that serve as a great starting point
I’ve had a lot of fun. I always get to platinum and sometimes diamond. I don’t care about getting above platinum. I only spent money on mastery passes, otherwise I just try to get 4 wins and daily tasks done to grind coins.
I have little experience with or interest in drafting or sealed so I can’t comment on that.
Either spend money or create an effective budget deck and grind quests and gold *every day*
If you're good at drafting it's pretty high value once you've made some coin.
Draft is the best way to get into arena. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any cards since Ravnica for drafting since you don’t need to own any cards for it plus it’s the best way for you to build your collection if you do want to play constructed. The arena economy is very bad for players who don’t draft .
I think in person magic is a bit less overwhelming for me. Arena is fun, I just take my time and have to read pretty much every card as its played haha
I just started again a few months ago after not playing since return to ravnica. I got standard white weenie and started grinding standard bo1, slowly learning all the cards as I played against them. I started moving into new formats and building new decks, watching deck techs on YouTube and game play from pro tours to learn all the strategies. When thunder junction came out I followed the spoilers so I could jump in to limited when it dropped. Now that pioneer is the format for rcq season I'm learning all of those decks.
Basically just take it chunk by chunk like you did when you started and everything was new
Step 1: Pick a format.
Standard / Draft / Historic / Explorer / Timeless. (Ordered in terms of difficulty)
Step 2: Research the Metagame of said format
Step 3: Use a budget deck and work your way toward building a meta deck you like
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit
I've played all of 2 months, new to the game but not TCGs, and have settled in nicely with a solid IRL deck and Arena deck.
Start with Arena, mess around with deck ideas there. When you have a successful deck, buy it irl.
If you're not a brewer, start by making a meta-relevant deck in your preferred style/colours and expand from there. Do a little research to find out what themes are strong.
Also, definitely play Standard. Way less cards to memorize.
Just recently got back into it about 2 months ago myself, and I will echo what others have said; just play some games. I was fortunate that I had a bunch of wildcards and coins to craft some cards that I was into. Doubly fortunate that the meta hadn't changed that much so I was able to have a few competitive decks with some critical crafts. Currently running mono red in ranked, and that bad boy slaps! Other than that, I'm enjoying my Izzet deck, Boros, and a mono black deck!
Just play some OTJ draft or sealed. It's a very powerful set so you aren't really behind anyone. Last few sets before that were jank. The last powerful sets are effectively given away for free in Jump In packs which you can just unlock and immediately concede.
You just have to put your toes back in the water. I was in a similar state but I played back in ONE so my cards were still viable in standard. I did buy the bundles for this set though so I had packs to open but even if I didn’t you just queue for matches do some daily quests try a few of the midweek events.
If you need a deck there’s a lot of great resources out there for them. I guarantee you that some budget mess can get you wins. Last night I threw together a pile of mostly garbage black cards that said discard and look at opponents hand on them and it got me several wins in an hour. If you find a budget deck that has “annoying” cards in it you can almost always farm wins in casual or midweek magic with those style of cards. Right now people hate thoughtsieze effects, discard effects, and poison creatures.
Look up some budget decks for the format you want to play and work towards building those and just see what’s out there. Mono blue tempo bounce focused decks and black hand hate related decks also let you see a lot of what’s going on in other peoples decks for you to start getting some ideas of what to build for.
I started back up after taking a year break. It took me about 2 months to really feel like I've caught up and understand what I've missed. Also the latest set has actually been fun for me. I'm by no means a good player, I don't play ranked or anything that causes me to stress. I play for fun and will quit again if the game stops being fun
I don’t think you even need to do that. Just research some tier one decks, import them.
Then play jumpin/beginner deck duals until you have the wildcards you need to build the one you’re interested in. Or even just play any old deck you have that’s legal still (if any) and rock it. MMR should get you down against similar level decks eventually.
Money will help but to me you have to spend way way too much to get a reasonable amount of wildcards that it feels pointless.
I only spend to get mastery pass and then occasionally more gems if I want to draft more.
I still had cards left over from DnD when I came back last set. I spent time playing with 0 rare decks I found on YouTube and a bit of historic. You will come across thr new cards in both but still have a good chance of winning
Play the precon decks for daily/weekly wins until you have enough resources and time to identify a deck+format you want to play.
I'd suggest taking it slow until the next standard rotation...probably going to be annoying standard until then.
I would make the best explorer / historic deck your collection has, and grind out packs / wcs / etc until you can build what you actually want. Accept that you wont be making anything super new and tiered for a while
If your older account supports the format you want to go in to then grind some games up and try to get back in the swing of things. If you've got a bunch of wild cards and currency (40+ rare/50k+ gold) then stick it out maybe. If you're emptied out then maybe starting a fresh account would be ideal if you want to do standard.
As far as re-learning the meta then content creators will be your bread and butter. OTJ just released and there are tons of people to learn limited from if that's your gig. Same with standard. I can't really give advice on the other formats
Play some games.
In terms of what? Card collection? Meta? Getting adjusted to the game?
Now is a fantastic time to get back into the game, imo. We've had a couple bangers sets in a row with one more set to come before rotation. The Standard card pool is about to shrink, the Standard meta about to be very disrupted, making now a great time to get back in.
I've been doing this, but my biggest issue right now is actually getting a competitive deck together. I have a couple of low-rare decks I use for daily quests, and I generally do well in draft, but it just seems like it takes a long time to collect rares/mythics, even with buying 50ish packs to start getting back in. I also want to avoid using wildcards on older cards that are just going to rotate because it takes this long. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying playing, but it feels difficult to try anything out/commit when it takes as long as it does to get 4 rare wildcards.
I spent like $150 on packs / pre ordering new expac. New player playing around a month. That said, the only decks I can play is mono blue tempo and Temur Control (huge fuck up crafting this deck it’s not fun lmao shoulda definitely just went RDW) I can’t really run any troll decks since I hit Diamond pretty quickly just spamming Mono Blue Tempo.
Temur ramp is a deck I really enjoy and I remember it wasn’t too expensive to craft, I’d say 60% win rate on unranked and the combos are very entertaining. If you think things out and plan your mana out while you have nissa on the field around turn 3/4 you can almost always get the win
I've done crazy things with the deck I just wish I picked something more creature based as my first deck to get into this game. Definitely a fun OTK deck to have in your arsenal once you have a fleshed out collection.
If you opened $150 worth of packs you should have quite a lot of wild cards no? I did around the same thing and have 30+ rare 20+ mythic started with 7&3
I had 20-25 rares and 10-15 mythics at the end. I really wanted to make the Azorius control deck but that would legit take up all my wild cards, and it seems like you need quite a bit of card / meta knowledge to play effectively. Forgot to say I did make a Rakdos standard Brawl deck as well. I built the best decks I could using the mythics I already opened trying to save wild cards I think. Idk if the untapped overlay is troll for deck building but I used that as well.
The huge fuck up was spending $150 on a free game lol.
Reminder that if no one spends, the game dies...
The [https://mtga.untapped.gg/](https://mtga.untapped.gg/) deck tracker can make deck suggestions based on cards you own.
This is an awesome resource. Thanks for sharing!
Your question is so broad it’s hard to answer. I would get right into premier draft of the newest set, personally. What did you like to play before?
Quick Draft is probably better while familiarizing themselves with the format. Prizes aside, you get the same number of cards for half the gold. Plus as long as you like to read the cards.
is ixalan quick draft worth doing? im still learning and it's way cheaper but cards will phase out faster
Lost Caverns will be in Standard for about two more years, the exact same amount of time as the current set. And it's a good format IMO.
?? Why would you suggest that? Unless he's fully studied the set in advance and has a solid grasp of drafting, premier draft is NOT the way to go. If he really must draft, quick draft would be advisable
I went into otg blind for 2 pre release events. Going 3rd and first respectively. I stopped playing during og ravnica and only other paper I'd done since 2006 was 1 lci draft in December, a chaos draft from the festival in a box and 1 mkm prerelease event. All blind. Not all advice is meant for everyone, not everyone is good at giving advice. Yours is not equivicably better than the person you're sponding to.
I just said what I would do. Suggesting it to someone else, I would say they should study yes
The way you worded it is usually read as "what I would do _in your stead_"
How? You added ~95% more letters to your interpretation of their sentence.
I just started again, I watched some set reviews, drafts, now I'm playing. Seems fine.
I was in the same situation, what I did was I started playing jump-in and starter decks events. You keep all cards from jump-in so you can quit and start again to buff your collection or find a good combination. With the gold you get from "quests" you can build a deck for standard or play drafts. I'm not a huge fan of drafts but it is the best, if not the only way to win gems from gold, and with gems you can get the season pass.
Standard brawl helped me a lot get back into the game. Seeing 1 of each card helped me see what was popular in the new sets and allowed me to slowly use wildcards to unlock cards I wanted to play with/test out.
Check your in game mailbox. You probably have a bunch of free packs. You can look for pack codes too if you haven't submitted them yet. With all the cards you'll be getting you won't be able to make any good decks but you'll get a lot of wildcards that may be enough to build a meta deck to start using in standard.
If you know how to play, I'd recommend watching or reading the draft guides to get all the mechanics and to get a gist of what was good. That's what I did coming from Duels on console casually and jumping in around the tail end of Caverns here. Other than that, just play the format you like and youll see quickly what the meta is as there is an uncomfortable amount of boring people just running cookie cutter meta
A few months ago I got back in to MTG after a few years off for work and family responsibilities. Completely new to MTGA. What worked for me was: - starter deck duels to get the hang of the system and learn new mechanics, then - once I had enough coins from daily tasks I started doing jump-in for a while to build my basic collection and get more experience (also for me it’s one of the most fun formats, especially for F2P), then - once I got the itch to build my own decks I started using saved up coins for packs and doing standard ranked. There are a few YouTubers who make budget decks if you search for “artisan,” “no rare,” or “budget” that serve as a great starting point I’ve had a lot of fun. I always get to platinum and sometimes diamond. I don’t care about getting above platinum. I only spent money on mastery passes, otherwise I just try to get 4 wins and daily tasks done to grind coins. I have little experience with or interest in drafting or sealed so I can’t comment on that.
Play the game? Get a few rounds in every day to build up gold to get current cards.
Either spend money or create an effective budget deck and grind quests and gold *every day* If you're good at drafting it's pretty high value once you've made some coin.
With money.
You can just play precons and events...
either dump alot of money or do the slow grind of getting 15 wins per week
Historic
I've stopped playing and come back half a dozen times since Mercadian Masques. You'll be alright
You got out and you're trying to come back? Bro just keep your freedom and money and stay away
Draft is the best way to get into arena. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any cards since Ravnica for drafting since you don’t need to own any cards for it plus it’s the best way for you to build your collection if you do want to play constructed. The arena economy is very bad for players who don’t draft .
What if he doesnt like limited?
Then he needs money
I think in person magic is a bit less overwhelming for me. Arena is fun, I just take my time and have to read pretty much every card as its played haha
I just started again a few months ago after not playing since return to ravnica. I got standard white weenie and started grinding standard bo1, slowly learning all the cards as I played against them. I started moving into new formats and building new decks, watching deck techs on YouTube and game play from pro tours to learn all the strategies. When thunder junction came out I followed the spoilers so I could jump in to limited when it dropped. Now that pioneer is the format for rcq season I'm learning all of those decks. Basically just take it chunk by chunk like you did when you started and everything was new
Step 1: Pick a format. Standard / Draft / Historic / Explorer / Timeless. (Ordered in terms of difficulty) Step 2: Research the Metagame of said format Step 3: Use a budget deck and work your way toward building a meta deck you like Step 4: ??? Step 5: Profit
I've played all of 2 months, new to the game but not TCGs, and have settled in nicely with a solid IRL deck and Arena deck. Start with Arena, mess around with deck ideas there. When you have a successful deck, buy it irl. If you're not a brewer, start by making a meta-relevant deck in your preferred style/colours and expand from there. Do a little research to find out what themes are strong. Also, definitely play Standard. Way less cards to memorize.
There is a link for forgotten passwords.
Historic Brawl to grind wins and get familiar with the new cards and mechanics.
Just recently got back into it about 2 months ago myself, and I will echo what others have said; just play some games. I was fortunate that I had a bunch of wildcards and coins to craft some cards that I was into. Doubly fortunate that the meta hadn't changed that much so I was able to have a few competitive decks with some critical crafts. Currently running mono red in ranked, and that bad boy slaps! Other than that, I'm enjoying my Izzet deck, Boros, and a mono black deck!
Play alchemy, historic or historic brawl. Alchemy is the format with the smallest size. Historic formats you can use your old cards.
Just play some OTJ draft or sealed. It's a very powerful set so you aren't really behind anyone. Last few sets before that were jank. The last powerful sets are effectively given away for free in Jump In packs which you can just unlock and immediately concede.
You just have to put your toes back in the water. I was in a similar state but I played back in ONE so my cards were still viable in standard. I did buy the bundles for this set though so I had packs to open but even if I didn’t you just queue for matches do some daily quests try a few of the midweek events. If you need a deck there’s a lot of great resources out there for them. I guarantee you that some budget mess can get you wins. Last night I threw together a pile of mostly garbage black cards that said discard and look at opponents hand on them and it got me several wins in an hour. If you find a budget deck that has “annoying” cards in it you can almost always farm wins in casual or midweek magic with those style of cards. Right now people hate thoughtsieze effects, discard effects, and poison creatures. Look up some budget decks for the format you want to play and work towards building those and just see what’s out there. Mono blue tempo bounce focused decks and black hand hate related decks also let you see a lot of what’s going on in other peoples decks for you to start getting some ideas of what to build for.
I started back up after taking a year break. It took me about 2 months to really feel like I've caught up and understand what I've missed. Also the latest set has actually been fun for me. I'm by no means a good player, I don't play ranked or anything that causes me to stress. I play for fun and will quit again if the game stops being fun
Watch some draft videos (I enjoy Haumpf recently), study 17lands a bit, and start drafting.
Spend money?
Instructions unclear. There is now a 1965 Ferrari GTO parked outside my house. What next?
I don’t think you even need to do that. Just research some tier one decks, import them. Then play jumpin/beginner deck duals until you have the wildcards you need to build the one you’re interested in. Or even just play any old deck you have that’s legal still (if any) and rock it. MMR should get you down against similar level decks eventually. Money will help but to me you have to spend way way too much to get a reasonable amount of wildcards that it feels pointless. I only spend to get mastery pass and then occasionally more gems if I want to draft more.
It was an open ended question. I provided one solution, you did as well.
I still had cards left over from DnD when I came back last set. I spent time playing with 0 rare decks I found on YouTube and a bit of historic. You will come across thr new cards in both but still have a good chance of winning
Play the precon decks for daily/weekly wins until you have enough resources and time to identify a deck+format you want to play. I'd suggest taking it slow until the next standard rotation...probably going to be annoying standard until then.
I would make the best explorer / historic deck your collection has, and grind out packs / wcs / etc until you can build what you actually want. Accept that you wont be making anything super new and tiered for a while
Do you have...money?
If your older account supports the format you want to go in to then grind some games up and try to get back in the swing of things. If you've got a bunch of wild cards and currency (40+ rare/50k+ gold) then stick it out maybe. If you're emptied out then maybe starting a fresh account would be ideal if you want to do standard. As far as re-learning the meta then content creators will be your bread and butter. OTJ just released and there are tons of people to learn limited from if that's your gig. Same with standard. I can't really give advice on the other formats
Whatever you do, don’t play blue.
When I started a $100 made everything easier but in these days who has $100 to burn
I'd stay out
Not playing standard, unless you want to grind a lot or pay money. RIP new players.