Last updated on January 15th, 2026 at 07:49 pm
Magic: The Gathering Arena – Strategy Game Review
Magic: The Gathering Arena is a Strategy/Card game from Wizards of the Coast LLC, first launched in 25th March 2021.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 142,095+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Magic: The Gathering Arena Stand Out
Welcome to the digital Multiverse! Magic: The Gathering is the original trading card game- and now you can download and start playing for free with your friends from anywhere!
Magic: The Gathering Arena empowers you to discover your strategy, meet the planeswalkers, explore the multiverse, and battle friends around the world. Collect, build and master your unique deck that will become its own legend. Your battle is only the beginning; duel on stunning battlefields, and enjoy Arena’s game changing battle effects and immerse yourself in the game. Start playing for free, challenge your friends, unlock cards, and feel the magic of the original fantasy CCG!
NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY
Never played Magic before? No problem! Magic: The Gathering Arena’s tutorial system takes you through the playstyles so you can find your strategy and decide if you’re the type to overwhelm your opponent with brute strength, if subterfuge is more your style, or anything in between. Meet characters from around the multiverse and try out spells and artifacts that make learning to play the original fantasy collectible card game quick and fun. It’s never been easier to play Magic! Collect cards to build a deck that matches your personality, then master your strategy to battle friends and be part of the TCG that started them all.
GAME ON(LINE)
The original TCG is now digital! Explore the fantasy worlds of Magic: The Gathering Arena and build your deck, play a variety of game formats to collect cards, master multiple strategies, and hone your skills against friends or the AI. With multiple game formats like Draft and Brawl, 15 unlockable collectible decks, and explosive card combo effects: Your ideal Magic: The Gathering playstyle is at your fingertips! Show off eye-popping cosmetics like avatars, card sleeves, and pets and collect daily rewards to grow your collection and build powerful decks that reflect your personal strategy.
CHALLENGE AND PLAY
Duel your friends for glory or enter in-game tournaments for exciting prizes! With Draft and Brawl pairing, there is always someone to game with. Special in-game events offer exciting rewards, and with Esports qualifiers your Pro-Magic dreams are closer than you think in the Arena Premier Play League! Queue into casual battles to hone your strategy at your own pace, or battle in Esports qualifiers and frequent tournaments to flaunt your mastery.
FANTASY AND MAGIC
Dive into the fantasy planes of Magic: The Gathering and write your own legend through Magic’s immersive lore and vibrant card art. Find your path through the multiverse using only favorite characters and their most iconic spells and artifacts, or create a theme deck with a narrative that makes sense only to you. Your story is only just beginning!
All prices inclusive of VAT.
Wizards of the Coast, Magic: The Gathering, Magic: The Gathering Arena, their respective logos, Magic, the mana symbols, the planeswalker symbol, and all character names and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC. ©2019-2025 Wizards.
Please visit https://company.wizards.com/legal/wizards-coasts-privacy-policy to view Wizards of the Coast's privacy policy and https://company.wizards.com/legal/terms to view Wizards of the Coast's terms of use.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Magic: The Gathering Arena is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 9th December 2025
Recent improvements include:
FLAMEO HOTMAN!
Starting Nov 18th, The action, adventure, and spirit of Avatar: The Last Airbender awaken in Magic: The Gathering. Master the mechanics of bending that best fit you and enjoy jumping into the world of Team Avatar – maybe even take your own life-changing field trip with Zuko.
There’s no need for a secret tunnel – just download now and start playing!
Download & Availability
Magic: The Gathering Arena is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Magic: The Gathering Arena on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Only card game we say our woman hates lol.
So many shuffling complaints, yet not change. Physical card does not give this: Rigged game keep giving us land flood every 3 games when we only have 22 lands out of 60. Seems the coding for land shuffling is dependent on the types of lands other than basic. Card with 4+ mana keep shows when the deck mainly consist of 1-3 mana.
Even though we love it, we have to say that playing against people who buy the expensive more powerful cards, is frustrating. We cant afford it anymore. We play and use our earned coins to purchase thingsthat is what we love.
Magic is the best game ever made and this is a legitimate and well crafted way to play it.
Add the sonic bundle or Warhammer, transformers. If final fantasy and Avatar can get card in that game, surely you can give one of those.
Magic is really fun for adults but not a lot of kids is on it. But Im a kid and Im on it. When we play magic we feel happy. It is good for big kids and adults we love it it is kid friendly and very fun. We love magic.
If you like 0&1s representing ur magic collection this is your only option.
This game is fun to play especially when Im just chilling out and not doing anything crazy. Highly recommend it.
Ive been playing for about 3 years now and we love everything about mtg arena. Really good down time game especially when you cant meet up with your friends to play.
Seriously, dont try to draft in paper without pants on, just download this and nobody will know. Its a great game with constant updates. Some sets are better than others, but with so many different ways to play ( standard, limited, events, pioneer, alchemy and more) that when one format is not great, there is another to feed the need.
As one of the original closed Beta testers whose been playing since the beginning of the game we prefer the mobile version over the pc client in many ways because we can play on the go and play while we are at our LGS and go over partial deck lists for our paper decks or actual edh versions of our brawl decks. We also teach magic to people at conventions so we also use arena as a tool to help new players get associated with the game after we teach them basics and gameplay with a mock game. Only downside is the occasional crashing on mobile. But it is what it is. Also the shuffle system is pretty trash too but thats a coding issue that we doubt is ever going to be fixed.
The game has a lot of customization. Fun and easy way to learn magic.
This is a great game. We think the tutorials are helpful. Everything about this game got us addicted to MTG.
We started playing Magic again not long ago. We then found Arena and Brawl. We like to make decks in Brawl that mimic our paper decks for Commander nights with our friends. Its an easy way for us to see if the new mechanics for the new sets work in our decks. Brawl also works off Oath Breaker, so making a Planeswalker commander is awesome. Wish there was ranked Brawl, but the coin challenges are fun to complete. Love this game and Magic in general. Whenever someone asks us to teach them, we first start here, so they can learn about tapping lands.
Ive been a paper fan for years before getting into Arena. Our biggest concern joining the game was a lack of standard play experience – Ive managed to draft over 100 games without ever spending any money in the last year alone. We can relate to the frustrations of RNG but ultimately, this game is as good as the paper version aside from the occasional bug. Weekly updates and even more frequent patches keep this from becoming an issue for us. There is a ton of support, and the only things people dislike seem to be related to the cards themselves, not the app. If we were going to make one request to the developer, we think it would help casual players if there was a better matchmaking algorithm for who you get paired against in non-ranked matches. Im a little more competitive than some folks, but we like to test-play deck changes without affecting our rank and will enter the casual queue. Sometimes in doing so we run into folks just goofing off with their decks, and when they lose immediately it is fun for neither of us. Maybe if there was a way to select casual play only to avoid mixing the competitive testers and the we just built a fish tribal deck for fun people. And we know we said one request, but we should be able to add friends from recent players. That is our only other grievance lol.
The game is great. Looks amazing, the deck building is great, and being able to play when and where ever and not have to keep track of the minutiae of card rules and miss something makes it flow a bit faster. HOWEVER, the game drains your battery and heats your phone a lot! Be mindful of this while you play, as you may need to charge as you go (more heat risk) or charge after playing.
Overall the app is really well done, especially the card search filters. We would like to see a few corner cases given consideration, such as in the Formats segment in the Codex theres an alignment issue with the example cards on our iPad 9th Gen. We wish quests would reset at midnight local time rather than 3am. A huge feature Id love to see is a wishlist of cards we dont have but might want to spend our wildcards on; maybe future card rewards could be slightly skewed towards this list. We wish the card Abiding Grace wouldnt prompt for a selection when only one option must be chosen; similarly if one chooses identical lands with Cultivate. We also would LOVE to see every Secret Lair added to Arena. We would definetly shell out the money for the Marvel one. App would also benefit from a referral system.
Very fun game and a good learning tool for new people to mtg. Only real complaint is that you get no experience if you loose a round. We get people shouldnt be able to join a game and back out for xp but if youre battling for 20-30 mins and loose its a lil frustrating. Other than that been having a blast with it.
This game is perfect for people who love magic and may not be able to physically play in person! You can easily create decks for beginners to experienced players!! The BUT comes in with the game modes it has EVERYTHING BUT 2v2 duels or any battle more than two players, we wish they would add a 2v2 or a 4 for all game mode, other than that this is the best experience you can get for a card game digitally that feels just like the original game.
The game is truly awesome but we noticed that even after 5 years of people asking they have failed to put in a way of scrolling thru hands of over 15 cardsyou basically end up with a pile of cards you cant use.
It plays great while it works wish the letters on the cards were easier to read we started playing this game when it first cam out and we still have love for the game now . Our only complaint with this one is it drags sometime it could just be our we pad though.
The only thing we wish for is an easy way to get our physical cards in this game. We know its probably not possible though.
Doesnt have all sets and we understand it takes a lot to have them all but its missing key sets like battle for zendikar any sliver related sets and we find it annoying that we play against little Timmy who has cards from sets that arent purchasable but for some reason they got a code to redeem for a deck with cards not on the store or played a event they barely add back to the game either make it fair for everybody to get the chance at the same cards or dont add them.
After years of this game Ive come to the conclusion that most games are rigged (in your favor or not) You will get 2-4 wins before your matched up with someone who curves out, and has a great match up into you. Most games one of the players will be landflooded even when we ran a deck with only 10 lands we got flooded more often than would ever happen in paper magic. And lastly the fact that you cannot play Modern, Vintage, legacy, Pauper, or 4 player commander(brawl) is just disappointing.
Great app just wish you started with more life in brawl like real commander.
Only reason put 3 had to use tablet for whatever reason to complete fist couple matches would glitch not let us select a card or something along those lines. Second has either difficulty loading or infinite loading screen that happens rarely normally reset app and its find.
Lots of server load screens and frequent app reset needed.
Its really good for people who wanna test things out before they buy the paper magic version. However, for some reason this game when you get man flooded, theres no way to get out of it. For instance, we were playing a game commander and we scried 22 land and or Mana rocks in a row. Thats statistically improbable.
After the recent update Sparky keeps showing up on the home screen every.single.time. Its really bothersome. We had to turn the sound off cause she does not stop talking.
Unfortunately, this game just isnt very newbie friendly. Packs are simply too hard to come by to expand your own deck, tutorials for deck building are limited, if present at all. Ranked matchmaking is pretty terrible, and often puts us (a newbie/guy who has no idea what hes doing) against more experienced players that have better cards or have a better handle on the rules from playing irl. We really wanted to enjoy this game, but we just cant. We find it very sad that the game has limited player-to-player interaction aside from actually battling. The UI is rather confusing in some areas as well, but we dont care so much about cosmetics. Really wish that these sorts of things could be fixed, but we dont think they can as its more of a player side issue.
It leaves a lot to be desired. Having no direct correlation with commander due to missing cards and forcing people to play the brawl rules with the horrible alchemy cards. They could add a mode thats commander but without the fluff. Standard is great and our second favorite way to play. But standard is in a horrible place any way paper or digital. The worst is waiting for other players to even take a turn. We know its not their fault. But its still a problem. Servers are also kinda a mess. 3/5 will change once we see better improvements.
We love Magic we have been collecting and playing for over 20 years. The shuffler in this game is rigged. Shame on you hasboro. We have had insane bad luck on this app that we never encounter in paper magic. Especially when we are on a winning streak or 1 loss away from needing to spend more gems to keep playing. Far too stingy with prices and rewards. Greed is warping the game we love.
Good but constantly made us redo literally everything with a 2 hour proscess of entering data every single update.
Great game. Feels like playing paper magic, just needs a way to trade in cards you dont want for ones you do in order to be perfect.
Constantly disconnecting mid match. Doesnt matter if you have full bars of 5G or are on WiFi. Occasionally will not let us take action on our turn and will force us to wait for the timer to run out.
In function it is like the game but we swear to god theres some sort of rigging mechanic in the shuffle system for each game. Ive been man screwed/flooded before but the consistent streaks in which it happens in this app is ridiculous and only seems to be consistently good (along with matchmaking) whenever you make a new deck almost like a hidden incentive. Ive gone on to have 90 percent win rates with new decks but the day after it drops significantly. At the end of the day maybe we just dont have good Fortunate or skill with magic but Ive played this game A LOT and it just gets so much more frustrating than the real life version. Especially after you spend enough both real and digital currency in the app. Another complaint and its not really the fault of the game but there is a big surplus of players who just make the same decks and youll see them over and over again and it gets tiring with having to deal with a two/three turn mossborn hydra in a landfall deck consistently. Compound that with getting mana screwed as often as it happens in this game and you can visualize the frustration. It gets to the point where we just stop playing this and the physical version as much.
We just uninstalled. We play a very competitive deck in historic and we win pretty much every time we play. Usually 8-2. The game will decide when you need to lose. Same deck 0-10. WTF.
We know for a fact that the game worked fine before the avatar set update. Get it together guys.
Unless you enjoy never unlocking cards and constantly loosing to players that spend money on the game because you only get to use starter decks against players with cards you dont have access to, then this is the game for you. Only gave it 2 stars because we love MTG.
90% of the player base is very cringe when they are inconvenienced for one millisecond they immediately leave after holding you captive in match and as soon as we do one thing they dont like the game ends with them quitting how unfun cant do anything about it either.
The app is inconsistent, especially when not at home. MtG kinda ruined itself anyway- far too many products, unpredictable power scaling, and all decisions made with shareholders in mind. You can feel the corporate influence. Best of 1 games used to feel fun, we just feel like Im constantly being tricked now. PLEASE let us disable Sparky. We cant stand it- Sparky is still offering tutorials we took a year ago, leave us alone.
If the match times out due to the game not being able to process so many effects, ending in a draw, it should at least give the players the rewards of the missions they progressed in that match even though it ended in a draw. It makes a long game wasted, often. But our friends and we love this game. Its amazing. Make the servers handle processes 20x more capable, and then it would be fine for the types of games we play, long drawn out games.
A gosh darn hoot to be sure. Can play casually. Not p2w.
Its pretty fun still getting used to it but we are really enjoying it.
Oles 280 turns withput drawinga land. After we won 7 game we a row?! Uninstalled you assf4gg0ts of the coast.
This is a great way to play magic when you cant get to your local game shop to play in person.
Came for the vivi and staying for the avatar.
Title says it all. No ads. Just a great game. Better in many ways than paper magic.
We play exclusively Brawl. The amount of times Ive lost to infuriating nonsense is ridiculous, but the amount of times Ive won with it too is even better. Five stars.
We played MTG back in 99 through 2004. The game was very enjoyable. We remember Ice Age alliances Mirage we even had some fourth edition this app combines all that its a very enjoyable experience whether playing standard or historic great download.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2025.54.0
- Size: 1,194.11 MB
- iOS: 15.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, KO, PT, RU, ES
- Content Advisory: Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
- Developer: Wizards of the Coast LLC
Last updated: 9th December 2025 | Genre: Strategy, Card | Developer: Wizards of the Coast LLC