How do wildcards work in MTG Arena?

Wildcards are special items that can be redeemed for any card of the same rarity. You get wildcards from opening packs (guaranteed at set intervals) and from the wildcard track. There are four tiers: common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare. Rare and mythic wildcards are the most valuable — spend them carefully on cards you know you need for a specific deck rather than speculative crafting.

MTG Arena Beginner's Guide — Getting Started

I downloaded Arena in 2020 during lockdown, thinking I would play a few games and move on. Three years and several thousand matches later, it is still my primary way to play Magic. Arena is the best free-to-play card game available, but it has a learning curve—not just the game itself, but the economy. I wasted my first batch of wildcards building three mediocre decks instead of one good one, and it took me weeks to recover. This guide will save you from making the same mistakes.

Getting Started

MTG Arena is free to download on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. Your account syncs across all platforms. When you first log in, Arena walks you through a tutorial that teaches the basic rules of Magic. After the tutorial, you unlock a series of Color Challenges—single-player missions that give you free mono-colored starter decks.

Complete all the Color Challenges. They are boring, but each one gives you a full starter deck with usable cards. After finishing them, you unlock two-color starter decks over the next few days of daily logins. Do not spend any resources (gold, gems, or wildcards) until you have all the free decks.

The Economy: Gold, Gems, and Wildcards

Gold

Gold is the free currency. You earn it from daily wins (250 gold for your first win, up to 750 total per day from wins) and daily quests (500 or 750 gold each). Gold buys packs (1,000 gold per pack) and event entries (Quick Draft costs 5,000 gold). My daily routine: complete the quest, get 4 wins, and stop. Going beyond 4 wins has diminishing returns that are not worth the time.

Gems

Gems are the premium currency. You can buy them with real money ($4.99 for 750 gems, up to $99.99 for 20,000) or earn them through Draft and events. Gems buy packs, the Mastery Pass (a seasonal battle pass), and premium event entries (Premier Draft costs 10,000 gold or 1,500 gems). The most efficient way to earn gems as a free player is Quick Draft—even a mediocre 3–3 record returns 300 gems plus the cards you drafted.

Wildcards

Wildcards are the most important resource in Arena. They come in four rarities (common, uncommon, rare, mythic) and each one can be redeemed for any card of that rarity. You get wildcards from opening packs (one in every pack, plus guaranteed rare/mythic wildcards after opening a certain number of packs).

This is the most important advice in this guide: Do not spend rare and mythic wildcards casually. They are the bottleneck that determines how many competitive decks you can build. I recommend saving them until you have identified one deck you want to fully build, then crafting that entire deck at once. Spreading wildcards across three partial decks gives you three decks that all lose.

Building Your First Competitive Deck

Here is the process I recommend for new players:

Play with the free decks for a week. Figure out what play style you enjoy: aggro (fast, aggressive), midrange (balanced threats and answers), control (slow, reactive), or combo (synergy-based wins).
Research one deck. Check tournament results or content creators for a Standard deck that matches your style and has a reasonable wildcard cost. Mono-colored aggro decks are usually the cheapest and most straightforward.
Craft the full deck. Do not build half the deck and fill with substitutes. A complete competitive deck wins more games (and earns more rewards) than two incomplete ones.
Grind daily wins and quests. Four wins per day with a competitive deck efficiently builds your gold and pack reserves for the next deck.

Game Modes Explained

Play (Unranked)

Casual best-of-one games with matchmaking based on a hidden MMR and deck strength rating. Good for testing new decks or completing daily quests without risking rank. The matchmaker tries to pair you against decks of similar power, so jank decks tend to face other jank decks.

Ranked (Best-of-One and Best-of-Three)

Competitive ladder from Bronze to Mythic (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Mythic). Winning earns you pips; losing loses pips. Below Gold, you cannot lose rank tiers (only pips), so you always progress. Above Gold, you can be demoted within your rank.

Best-of-one (BO1) is faster and more popular. Best-of-three (BO3) includes sideboarding and is considered more competitive. I play BO3 for serious grinding because sideboarding adds a significant skill edge.

Quick Draft

Draft against AI bots, then play BO1 matches against other players. Costs 5,000 gold or 750 gems. This is the single best way to build your collection as a free player because you keep every card you draft AND earn gems based on wins. Even going 0–3 gives you 50 gems plus a pack plus every card you drafted. Going 7–x returns 950 gems (profit) plus two packs.

I recommend Quick Draft as your primary gold sink once you are comfortable with the draft format. It is better value than buying packs directly.

Premier Draft

Draft against 7 other human players, then play BO1 matches. Costs 10,000 gold or 1,500 gems. Higher stakes than Quick Draft with better rewards at high wins but worse at low wins. Only enter Premier Draft when you are confident in the format—the competition is tougher.

Events and Specialty Modes

Arena regularly runs limited-time events with unique rules: Momir's Madness, Artisan (commons and uncommons only), Singleton, and more. Some events have great rewards (card styles, XP, gold). I always check the event rewards before entering—some are worth the gold, others are not.

Free-to-Play Strategy

I played Arena free-to-play for the first year and built three competitive Standard decks. Here is how:

Never skip daily quests. Reroll 500g quests hoping for 750g. This alone is 5,000–6,000 gold per week.
Get 4 wins per day minimum. The first 4 wins give the most gold per time spent. Going beyond 4 has diminishing returns.
Draft for value. Quick Draft is the best way to build your collection. Even mediocre records return value above buying packs.
Focus one deck at a time. Craft one competitive deck fully before starting another. A complete deck earns more daily wins.
Buy the Mastery Pass with saved gems (when you have enough). The Mastery Pass pays for itself in packs, gold, and gems if you play regularly.
Do not craft cards that are about to rotate. Check the Standard Rotation schedule before spending wildcards on older sets.
Rare-draft in Quick Draft. When a rare you need shows up in the draft, take it even if it is not the best pick for your draft deck. Building your collection is more important than going 7–0 in a single draft.

Understanding Formats on Arena

Arena offers multiple formats beyond Standard:

Standard: The default format. Cards from the most recent sets.
Alchemy: Digital-only Standard variant with rebalanced cards and digital-only mechanics. Some players love it; others avoid it because the rebalances can change your deck without warning.
Explorer: Arena's version of Pioneer. Non-rotating, using Pioneer-legal cards available on Arena. The card pool grows with each new set and anthology release.
Historic: Arena's large-pool eternal format. Includes all Arena cards plus curated anthology additions. Features digital-only cards and mechanics.
Timeless: No bans, just restrictions. Cards banned in Historic are restricted to one copy in Timeless. The most powerful Arena format.
Brawl: Commander-lite on Arena. 60-card singleton with a commander and Standard-legal cards. 25 starting life.

Climbing the Ranked Ladder

Here is what I have learned from grinding to Mythic multiple seasons:

Play one deck. Mastery of a single deck wins more games than switching between three decks you half-know. I reached Mythic for the first time by playing mono-red aggro for 200 straight games.
Track your results. Use a tracker (Untapped.gg is free) to see your win rate by matchup. This tells you which matchups you need to improve at.
Do not tilt-queue. If you lose three games in a row, stop. Your decision-making deteriorates when you are frustrated. I take a 15-minute break after two consecutive losses.
Time your sessions. Early morning and late night tend to have weaker competition because casual players fill those slots. Peak competitive hours are Friday and Saturday evenings.
BO3 for climbing. If you are an above-average player, BO3 rewards skill more than BO1 because sideboarding adds edge. The variance in BO1 can be frustrating.

The Wildcard Math

Understanding exactly how wildcards work helps you plan your collection efficiently:

Every pack opened contains 1 uncommon or higher wildcard
The wildcard wheel guarantees a rare wildcard every 6 packs and a mythic wildcard every 24 packs
Opening a 5th copy of a rare/mythic you already own gives you 20/40 gems respectively (called "vault progress" or duplicate protection)
A typical competitive Standard deck requires 20–30 rare wildcards and 4–8 mythic wildcards

At roughly 1 rare wildcard per 6 packs, you need to open approximately 120–180 packs to build a single competitive deck from scratch. That sounds like a lot, but between daily quests, event rewards, the Mastery Pass, and draft, a regular player opens 80–120 packs per set cycle (roughly 3 months). After your first set cycle, building subsequent decks is faster because you already own many of the staples.

When to Buy the Mastery Pass

The Mastery Pass costs 3,400 gems (roughly $20) and lasts one set cycle. It is worth buying if you play Arena at least 3–4 days per week, because it returns approximately 4,000 gems worth of value (packs, gold, gems, cosmetics, and draft tokens). If you play less frequently, you will not earn enough XP to unlock the valuable rewards.

My approach: I save gems from Draft until I have 3,400, then buy the Mastery Pass when I know I will be playing regularly that season. I have never spent real money on Arena and have maintained a complete Standard collection for three years using this method combined with Quick Draft grinding.

Common New-Player Mistakes on Arena

Crafting cards from rotating sets. Check the rotation schedule before spending wildcards. A card that rotates in 2 months is a bad wildcard investment.
Opening packs from many different sets. Focus your pack opening on 1–2 sets to maximize duplicate protection and vault progress. Random packs from many sets give you a scattered collection.
Ignoring limited formats. Draft is the best way to build your collection. Even bad draft records return more value than buying packs directly.
Conceding too quickly. Arena rewards wins, not games played. Conceding when you are slightly behind means you miss come-back wins that would have earned daily rewards.

Related Resources

Check current Standard-legal sets in our Standard Rotation Guide. Learn the game's formats in our Formats Explained Guide. See what cards are banned in the Banned & Restricted List. Use our Mana Base Calculator to optimize your Arena decks, and browse our Hypergeometric Calculator to check your odds of drawing key cards.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is MTG Arena free to play?

Yes, MTG Arena is completely free to download and play. You earn gold through daily wins and quests, which can be spent on packs and events. While you can spend real money on gems for faster collection building, it is entirely possible to build competitive decks as a free-to-play player through smart resource management.

What is the best starter deck in MTG Arena?

The mono-colored starter decks are regularly updated, but historically the mono-red (aggressive) and mono-green (ramp) decks perform best for grinding daily wins. After completing the color challenges, pick a two-color starter deck that matches your play style. Upgrade whichever deck you enjoy most rather than spreading wildcards thin across multiple decks.

How do I get wildcards in MTG Arena?

Wildcards come from opening packs. Every pack contains one uncommon or higher wildcard. Additionally, there is a wildcard wheel that guarantees a rare wildcard every 6 packs opened and a mythic wildcard every 24 packs. The best way to accumulate wildcards is to open many packs through Quick Draft, daily quest gold, and (optionally) the Mastery Pass.

What is the difference between Quick Draft and Premier Draft?

Quick Draft ($5,000 gold / 750 gems) lets you draft against AI bots at your own pace, then play BO1 against humans. Premier Draft ($10,000 gold / 1,500 gems) has you draft against 7 other humans in real time, with better rewards at high wins but worse at low wins. New players should start with Quick Draft for the lower risk and relaxed drafting pace.