Magic: The Gathering arena or MTG, published by Wizards of the Coast, has now gone live for mobile devices. The company’s launch of the card game on smartphones after a period of beta testing has resulted in numerous comments - both positive and negative. This free-to-play mobile game is live on both App Store and Google Play Store. As now MTG fans can play this game on the go on their Android and iOS smartphones, new opinions are emerging every day. Let’s see what the advantages and disadvantages of playing MTG on your smartphone are.
More About the Mobile Version
Not only that you can now play MTG on your phones, but you can enjoy all the best features like events, deck building, card sets (even the new set Kaldheim), and formats. In essence, all you need to do is download the game and use your Wizards Account to access your collection. Players can now match against each other and complete quests even on their mobile devices. As far as the controls are concerned, logically, you will be using your touch screen for all the gesture controls.
This two-decade-old game has managed to gain 40 million fans all across the globe, and now that Wizards of the Coast has launched the mobile version, a lot is about to change. The notion of playing card games online has been present for quite some time, as many online casinos with
free spins on sign up offered a variety of such games. Since online casinos and the whole iGaming and gaming sectors saw potential in mobile gaming - the switch to the mobile gaming market happened. The company launched the initial version only for Android devices, but a couple of months later, iOS users could download and play it as well.
Advantages of Playing MTG on Your Smartphones
To move on to the important part: What did most players like about this version? Well, apart from it running smoothly, the game has quite intuitive and user-friendly controls. As long as the internet connection is strong, there should be no lags and connection issues when you are playing against someone online.
Playing
Magic: The Gathering on your smartphones is convenient, and it is more accessible. Anyone who feels like playing can just take their phones out of their pockets and start. It is that easy. Starting a match on the phone wherever you feel like it, is probably one of the main reasons the majority of MTG fans will download this game.
Disadvantages of Playing MTG on Your Smartphones

One of the first disadvantages that the players noticed is that the things can get a bit clustered on the small mobile phone screen. You will mostly notice this when you are making a new deck, as you won’t always be able to touch the card that you had in mind. Selecting the wrong card one too many times will probably get on your nerves, but you will probably get used to this and overcome it soon.
Another disadvantage might be the wordiness of the designs. If you think Strixhaven: School of Mages and Full-Text Lands Secret Lair are wordy, think about reading these paragraphs of text on your phone. Anyone who has been playing Magic: the Gathering knows that it is just part of the game. But, when the switch to mobile happened, this suddenly became a much greater problem. And the number of words on a card can result in a card having a totally different format. And while reading that text on your computer might not seem that hard, it feels off when presented on the phone.
Imagine having some sort of vision impairments - you will probably find playing video games on a phone troublesome. But with the poorly designed features that are not thought through, you might have an even worse playing experience.
Conclusion
All in all, the game has some great features, and the majority of
Magic: The Gathering fans will love having the option of playing on the go. Still, if Wizards of the Coast wants to increase their players’ base and work on inclusivity, they might also try to work on some of these issues.
Other than that, the card game itself seems pretty standard, and it holds onto the core elements of the 25-year old tradition. Thus, if you think that some of these minor issues won’t affect your playing experience that much, you will probably have tons of fun playing during school break, while commuting, or on a lunch break.
Author’s Bio
Leslie Alexander is a Content Lead at Gamblizard who loves to share her extensive iGaming and Gaming experience with other people interested in these industries. She loves writing about hot topics in the IT niche, and she is a passionate gamer in her free time. Leslie even thinks he could’ve been a professional gamer hadn’t she fallen in love with writing at a young age.