for android download Magic: The Gathering Arena

The game has been optimized to support smaller screen sizes and touch-based controls. “There may be decks or board states that aren’t as conducive to mobile play due to the intrinsic limitations of the platform.Wizards of the Coast said that Magic: The Gathering Arena players can expect the same experience enjoyed by those on desktop. “Some games of Magic can be rather complex,” Wizards wrote, in what may be the biggest understatement of 2021 so far.

Arena will likely fail in those situations. Magic is a weird and wonderful hobby, and players can gin up some really bizarre strategies and situations. With luck it will be easy for newcomers to pick up, but if you’re moving from the PC version you would do well to check out the official website for details on how the controls are changing.īear in mind, however, that this is still early access. There’s a lot more tapping than there is right-clicking, and only by hitting the right “zone” of the playing area will you be able to access contextual options. That’s allowed the playing field to occupy most of the screen, while also giving users a bit more room to hold on to their phone near that one side. How exactly do you smash a sprawling tabletop game like Magic onto a mobile phone? Very carefully, says the team at Wizards.įirst off, player avatars have been moved all the way to one side. I’ve never had to wait around for a pick-up game, that’s for sure. The servers are also extremely well populated. For veterans, it’s also much faster than playing a game in-person.

It’s also a really good teaching tool, in that it helps visually and mechanically reinforce the rules for new players. Having spent some time with the PC version of the game, I can say that it faithfully recreates the experience of playing Magic. Even local stores have flocked to Arena, which is now the place to be for Friday Night Magic at Home events, which began in March 2020. If anything, the ongoing pandemic has sped things up.

That limitation hasn’t slowed adoption of the game’s new platform. None of the cards you own physical copies of will translate over to Arena, with one exception: Planeswalker decks do come with a code to unlock their cards online. That’s because it is effectively separate from the physical version of the game. Arena is free to download, but you’ll need to spend money to create a decent collection of cards online.

For android download Magic: The Gathering Arena