In this post, I provide a guide that seeks to help players build a self-sustaining collection of standard legal cards on MTG:A. Following this guide should enable the average player to minimize the cost of playing the game while being able to have access to most tier 1 decks within 1 month after a new set releases.

Background

The MTG:A economy differs significantly from paper magic or MTGO in that while in the other two platforms, the only cards that are of value to collect are playables, each rare and mythic card in MTG:A has value. This is because of the dual protection system. Whenever you open a pack, if the rare/mythic of the pack is something you already have 4 of, the system generates a new rare/mythic that you do not have yet. Thus, each crap rare/mythic that you collect a set of helps in that you will not open those cards in future packs anymore. This also means that there are two general strategies with which one can go about completing a new set on MTG:A. These are:

1.) Buying a ton of packs





2.) Playing limited

Option 1 is expensive and is unlikely to be sustainable. There are about 260 rares/mythics (already counted as sets of 4) that you need to collect every expansion. This means you need to spend at least 260,000 gold. This is not achievable in the timeframe between sets. You can buy the packs at pre-order price but that still means spending money every set.

Thus, Option 2 is the only viable option for those who do not want to throw money regularly into the game. However, in order for option 2 to work, one should at least have some skill in playing limited. Truly, you lose in limited each and every game, then you can stop reading now as this guide will not work for you. However, if you manage to at least win some games, then there is hope.

Prerequisites

This guide requires the following:





1.) 20,000 gems and 100,000 gold. I’m setting these numbers because there is a need to put in at least some money into the game to avoid grinding beyond 5 wins a day. Also, these are close to the actual figures that I worked with in my case. The idea is you spend $100 on the 20k gem cache once and then never have to spend any more in the game. Alternatively, you can also work with 200,000 gold if you’ve managed to grind this much.





2.) Some knowledge of limited play. As mentioned previously, how well you are able to execute this guide is a function of your ability to play limited. However, as will be shown, you do not need to be stellar at limited to make it work.

The steps

1.) Upon release of the game, play 10 sealed pools using gems. Do not open any prize packs.





2.) Once ranked draft is available, play 20 drafts using gold. Do not open any prize packs.





3.) After playing all 10 sealed and 20 draft pods, open your prize packs.

Expected outcome

Each sealed pool gives you exactly 9 rares/mythics. Six from the opened packs and 3 from the prize packs. You are not supposed to open the prize packs until after you finish your drafts in order for you to maximize dual protection since packs opened in limited pods are not dual protected. Each draft should net you at least 3 rares/mythics on average plus 1 prize pack for a total of at least 4. I do advise rare drafting as much as you can until you have a set of said rare, even if they are crap rares that won’t even make it in your deck.





This means that by the end of your run, you would have at least 170 rares/mythics from the set. This should let you have access to most of the playable rares. You will still need to spend wildcards, especially for mythics as those would be more difficult to complete, but you should have access to most tier 1 strategies by the end of the month from release.





Most importantly, your winnings from the limited games should be such that you now have 20k gems again and some gold. This way, it will be as though you just cycled your gold back to gems and did not spend any gems at all. This way, you can spend the rest of the season accumulating gold again, and by the time the new set arrives, you should have enough gold to repeat the process all over again.





So, how good should you be in limited to pull this off? Below is a table that shows the expected winnings based on your average number of wins per pod.

Win rate 0.25 0.4 0.5 0.571429 0.625 0.666667 0.7 Average Sealed Wins 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Winnings from 10 pods 4400 7300 10000 12300 14100 15600 16700 Average Draft Wins 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Winnings from 20 pods 2500 4600 6900 9000 10800 12300 13400 Total winnings 6900 11900 16900 21300 24900 27900 30100

Thus, if we assume that your average sealed and draft wins per pod are the same, you need to win 4 matches on average per pod in order to make enough gems. However, you can mix and match these numbers depending on your performance. For example, in my case, I average 3.1 wins on draft and 4.4 wins on sealed. That is still enough to recoup the gems I used.

Even if you do not recoup all the gems back, you still recoup some back which is still better than spending everything on packs. For example, if your average wins is 2, then after your limited run you will have about 11900 gems left. That is still more than half of what you need for the next set. Also, it means you were able to essentially “buy” 170 packs for the price of 140 packs. However, a significant drawback worth mentioning here is that you lose out on about 15 rare/mythic wildcards, which means your exchange rate between random pack rare/mythics and wildcards is 2:1. If you value wildcards at more than this rate, then you would be better off buying packs. It’s very difficult to valuate because there is no way of telling how many of those extra 30 rares/mythics are playable rares/mythics.

Most importantly, these numbers show that the average level limited player with a 50% win rate can still expect to recoup about 85% of their gems back. Thus, you only need to work a little harder to make the difference up in gold for the next set.

My Experience (Season 1 of Coreset 2020)

Following my draft experiment during WAR, where I was able to accumulate 176 WAR rares/mythics. Since then, from ICRs and free WAR packs, my WAR collection is up to 235 which means I am only missing 32 cards from that expansion. I was able to recoup 16650 of the 17020 gems I had going in and spent 75000 of the 90000 gold I had saved up, leaving me with 15000 gold.





Two months later, I have saved up enough gold and got some additional gems from ICRs to begin the task anew with Coreset 2020. This time, I started with 18590 gems and 122,000 gold. Also, instead of doing only ranked drafts, I followed the regimen detailed in the previous section. However, I only did 9 sealed pods instead of 10 and only 17 draft pods instead of 20. My objective was to get as many cards as I was able to get during WAR, and I already hit over 180 cards by the time I was doing my 14th draft so I opted to just save the gold for the next expansion. Overall, after opening the packs, I was able to accumulate 189 Core2020 cards. My average win rate in sealed was 4.4 games per pod (59%), while in draft it was 3.6 games per pod (55%). This was better than my performance during WAR. As a result, the entire exercise cost only 56650 gold, the equivalent of about 57 packs. Thus, the value exchanged by undertaking the limited run was 57 packs and 3 rare/mythic wildcards in exchange for 189 cards, resulting to a 47:1 random rare/mythic to wildcard exchange rate.

Conclusion

Having a sustainable, tier-1 level collection of cards on MTG:A is not impossible, neither is it overly difficult. With a modest time investment, initial cache of gems, and some limited knowledge, the average player should be able to cycle gems from one set to the next, always emerging with enough cards to play multiple competitive decks within the first month of release.

May the shuffler be with you.