While Magic: The Gathering is known for being an expensive card game, its newest online game, Magic: The Gathering Arena, is a lot more friendly to your wallet. Everything from getting cards and building decks has never been easier than it is in Arena.

Of course, you can buy whatever you need, but the game gives you plenty of free cards and resources so you don’t have to. But first, let’s talk about the different ways you can get cards in general before learning the best ways to get free cards in Arena.  

Different ways to get cards

There are plenty of different ways you can get cards while playing Arena. Opening Packs online is the first way—just like in real life, you’ll get cards by buying and opening booster packs. You can buy them with Gems or Gold, with Gold being the main currency that you’ll earn by playing the game. 

Buying Packs for 1,000 Gold gives you points toward crafting cards as well. You also have a chance to pull a crafting token of any rarity instead of getting a card.

Saving up the points to craft cards isn’t all that difficult, especially if you’re getting resources by opening Packs. By being strategic and buying Packs that are in the same set as the cards you want, you may even pull some of the cards in your deck. 

Using the Deck Builder tool in Arena enables you to build decks with any cards in the game. You can use this in a few different ways. By planning a deck first (or importing one from the internet), you can see how many of each crafting item you need to craft a full deck. You can also see what set the cards you want are from, making it easy to know which Packs to buy.

So, since Gold buys Packs, both Packs and Gold will net you free cards in some way. You can get both resources free through a few different methods.

Challenges: Gold and Packs

One of the best ways to get Gold is by doing Challenges. These reset daily, and you’ll see them on the home page when you log in. You can have three Challenges at a time, and you can generally make enough Gold to get a pack a day. Depending on the Challenges, you may be able to get more than that. 

Sometimes Challenges ask you to do things like use Red Spells or take out a certain number of Creatures. If your deck isn’t geared toward completing a specific Challenge easily, you can either reroll for a new Challenge or use one of the starter Standard decks Arena gives you. You can also knock out multiple Challenges at once, so keep this in mind if you need to do ones with different colors.

Crafting cards

Magic: The Gathering Arena gives players a way to craft cards and get what they need for a specific deck, and it’s an incredibly intuitive system.

Opening Packs gives you Wildcards, which can be used to craft cards that you want. There are four different kinds of Wildcards: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Mythic Rare. These coincide with the rarity of cards in MTG, and they can be used for cards of the same rarity. 

You can craft with Wildcards in the Deck Builder, and it’s really easy to do. By filtering to show all the cards available and specific colors or mechanics, you can see what cards go well together in a deck. You can also import a deck that you found online or from a friend, even if you don’t have all the cards in the deck.

Once you know what cards you need, you have a few options for what to do next. First, you can click the Craft All button to see how many Wildcards you need and craft all the cards (if possible). If that’s not possible, then you know what kinds of Wildcards you still need to complete your deck.

You can also adjust your deck to use more cards that you already have if you’re close to finishing your deck. Any cards that you want to craft later, you can throw on the sideboard or clone the deck. 

This is how most people get cards in Arena. Every other method acts like a boost for how quickly you can craft a deck. Even with all of the free resources, you’ll want to think carefully about what cards you craft. 

Daily Deals

The Daily Deals in Arena’s in-game Store will also occasionally run sales for Gold. Essentially, for 50 Gold, you can buy 550 Gold. While this doesn’t sound like a lot, it happens surprisingly often. It’s an easy way to get half a Pack’s worth of Gold every now and then. 

This is also a great way to get neat variations of cards. This also uses Gold, but if you have a deck or a specific card you really like, then it’s a great way to show it. There are occasionally themed sets you can purchase with Gold, which can unlock new cards as well as new artwork for cards you may already have.

There’s also a Golden Pack reward for buying 10 Packs in the Store. These only work with the newest set though, and you can tell which set you’re getting bonuses for by looking in the top left corner of the Store page. 

Free starter decks

Every so often, Magic: The Gathering Arena will give you Standard decks as sets rotate in and out. You can use the cards in these decks to build new decks. This isn’t a very reliable way to get cards, but don’t forget they’re there. 

This is another reason why it’s good to create the deck you want in the Deck Builder before saving Gold or pulling random Packs—you may have cards you didn’t realize you did. 

The Mastery Pass

The Mastery Pass is Magic: The Gathering Arena’s take on a battle pass system. There’s a free version that unlocks rewards every few tiers and a paid version that has rewards for every tier. Most of the free rewards are all Packs! They’re also pretty frequent, so if you focus on maximizing the Daily and Weekly rewards, you can rack up a lot of Packs quickly.

You can advance in the Mastery Pass by earning EXP through winning games. This is boosted a lot by the Daily and Weekly Challenges and rewards. 

Win rewards

Every week, there are 15 rewards you can get by winning a game (all in all, you have to win 15 games a week to get all the rewards). These rewards range from EXP to the Mastery Pass, Gold, and even Packs. This is one of the most rewarding ways to get Packs and Gold. However, it is limited to 15 wins a week. This can go by quite quickly if you play a lot of Arena. 

There are also 15 rewards you can get from daily wins. However, these are much smaller in comparison, but they do add up (especially if you get these done every day). 

Luckily, these wins can come from any game mode. This makes it easy for you to play how you want to play while still getting the rewards you want. 

Events

There are all kinds of Events held in Magic: The Gathering Arena, and these Events are great for getting cards through Packs and Gold in general. The only downside is that many of these Events cost Gems, which is the currency that’s mainly purchased with real-world money. 

However, if you do have Gems from a Mastery Pass or through other methods, you can use them to enter into some of the Premier Events. These net you more rewards than other Events.

There are competitive Events for various gameplay types, such as Standard, Historic, and Alchemy. There are also Draft Events, where you can pick and choose cards from Packs you’ll open at the beginning (depending on the type of Draft, you may be able to keep these cards). There are also fun Events that challenge you with specific requirements about what kind of decks you can use. 

Now that you know the best ways to get free cards in Magic: The Gathering Arena, go put your knowledge to good use and farm those cards! You can download Arena on the Epic Games Store.