That (and pauper) are the best ways to play. Or using preconstructed decks.
Trying to be competitive in Modern or Standard or even EDH requires spending at least $500+ per deck unfortunately (Vintage & Legacy even more I'm guessing). Though if you have a group of friends who play casually, it can be fun.
The most fun I had was a company MTG bracket where we opened a new pack once a week. We'd keep the same cards throughout the whole block (3 sets back in the day, so quite a while). Trades were allowed but only between the same rarity. So everyone had to build a deck with (roughly) equal power, and had to think of a relatively original deck using the cards available to them.
There was still some metagaming. Getting ahold of mythics had a greater degree of randomness, and if you had a buddy that was running a separate color deck you could effectively pool cards.
The most popular formats of Magic by far are "kitchen table" (totally casual, play with whatever cards you own), and Commander, a casual multiplayer format where super-powerful decks are generally frowned upon.
Competitive Magic is a tiny tiny fraction of the overall market. It's also totally possible and reasonable to build competitive decks on Arena with a pure F2P account, if you're into that.
kodt|2 years ago
Trying to be competitive in Modern or Standard or even EDH requires spending at least $500+ per deck unfortunately (Vintage & Legacy even more I'm guessing). Though if you have a group of friends who play casually, it can be fun.
Manuel_D|2 years ago
There was still some metagaming. Getting ahold of mythics had a greater degree of randomness, and if you had a buddy that was running a separate color deck you could effectively pool cards.
dcsommer|2 years ago
TillE|2 years ago
Competitive Magic is a tiny tiny fraction of the overall market. It's also totally possible and reasonable to build competitive decks on Arena with a pure F2P account, if you're into that.
joshuamorton|2 years ago
Manuel_D|2 years ago