Magic: The Gathering Arena open beta is now live

I've been following the progress of Magic: The Gathering Arena since the very beginning of its closed beta status (was "lucky" enough to get a key). As a big fan of this immensely popular collectible card game, my expectations are quite high. Plus, everyone who's into this type of games knows that after the issues that plagued Magic Duels, there's no room for mistake.

So far, it seems that things are going in the right direction. That is not to say that MTG Arena doesn't lack polish, additional testing and overall quality-of-life improvements. However, the good news is that you can finally play it whenever you want.

Magic: The Gathering Arena is now in open beta and there are more than enough players searching for a match most of the time, so you will be playing with your favorite deck within minutes.

As soon as you install the game and create an account, you will be greeted by a tutorial that you can skip. Once that's done, you'll be given several "basic" decks that you can use to start your quest for advanced play modes and daily (and weekly) missions. This is actually how you earn more in-game cash that you can then spend on booster packs that give you more cards (of course, you can do this the "easy" way by paying with your credit card, too). But if you're reading this article, you probably know how it all works in the TCG world.

What I dislike about the game's current state is that you cannot "add" friends and play against them. Of course, I am not the only one who is not happy about it, so let's see what happens as the game comes closer to its official release. In the meantime, you can still participate in "casual" play online, as well as check out the competitive modes and get a chance to test your favorite deck combinations. Oh, and if you play with "real-life" Magic cards, too, you might want to know that these will now come with codes that you can use in Magic: The Gathering Arena for extra rewards. Not bad at all.