We all want to get as many MTG Arena cards as possible, while spending the least amount of money and time doing so, so we really need to focus on the best way to get MTG Arena cards. While you might be tempted to just buy any MTG Arena Booster pack, you should some thought and strategy into it first.
You see, there is a max limit of 4 copies of a card, that you can own in your library and thus play in your deck.
The 5th card and above, becomes vapour and is added as “points” to a system called the MTG Vault, which does not give you a good return on your investment for these unused cards by the way.
Click here to see How the MTG Arena Vault Works as well as How MTG Wildcards Work
By buying MTG Arena Booster Packs (with Gold or Gems), from Card Sets (Eldraine / M20 / Guilds of Ravnica / Ravnica Allegiance and War of the Spark), that you have the LEAST cards of, is by far the best strategy here, in order to grow your collection without letting cards go to waste.
We do however need to use a bit of foresight when doing so.
First, let’s look at how many cards there are in the entire Magic the Gathering Standard set.
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How many cards are there in current MTG Arena Standard Sets?
The complete current Standard Set for 2019 MTG comes to a total of 1,468 cards, which is broken down into each of the 5 sets, as follows:
- Throne of Eldraine Set = 300 Cards
- Magic Core 2020 (M20) Set = 344 Cards
- Guilds of Ravnica Set = 276 Cards
- Ravnica Allegiance Set = 273 Cards
- War of the Spark Set = 275 Cards
In MTG Arena, we get all the Basic Lands cards for free, which in each set is as follows:
- Throne of Eldraine Set = 20 Land Cards
- Magic Core 2020 (M20) Set = 20 Land Cards
- Guilds of Ravnica Set = 5 Land Cards
- Ravnica Allegiance Set = 5 Land Cards
- War of the Spark Set = 15 Land Cards
This then comes to a total of 65 Land Cards, which we can then subtract from the original total of 1,468 cards, giving us a new total of 1,403 MTG Arena Cards to collect.
This brings our official total MTG Arena cards per set amounts to:
- Throne of Eldraine Set = 280 Cards
- Magic Core 2020 (M20) Set = 324 Cards
- Guilds of Ravnica Set = 271 Cards
- Ravnica Allegiance Set = 268 Cards
- War of the Spark Set = 260 Cards
We do however get a VERY nice boost in reaching this total, just by creating and playing on a free MTG Arena account for a day or two. In actual fact, we are able to reach just over 700 cards, including some Booster Packs from Dailies and MTG Arena Promo Codes for some free cards and Card Styles.
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Free Cards just from playing
If you check out my tutorial on How to get started in MTG Arena, you should see that after reaching level 25 (and spending no money or opening no booster packs), you should currently have the following amounts of cards (give or take a few random reward cards from dailies) in your collection:
- Throne of Eldraine Set = 1
- Magic Core 2020 (M20) Set = 206
- Guilds of Ravnica Set : = 192
- Ravnica Allegiance Set = 184
- War of the Spark Set = 73
Total – 656 Cards
Looking at the above list of cards, we can quickly see that we have the least cards in Throne of Eldraine, followed by War of the Spark, Ravnica Allegiance, Guilds of Ravnica and M20, in which we have the most.
While at first glance, you might think, “WOW, I already own 192/276 Guild of Ravnica cards – Sweet!”, you must remember that there are 4x Copies per card, so in actual fact, you only own 192/1084 (276×4 = 1084).
Here is a list of each MTG Arena set’s total amount of cards, including 4 copies of each:
- Throne of Eldraine Set : (280×4) = 1,120 Cards
- Magic Core 2020 (M20) Set : (324×4) = 1,296 Cards
- Guilds of Ravnica Set : (271×4) = 1,084 Cards
- Ravnica Allegiance Set : (268×4) = 1,072 Cards
- War of the Spark Set : (260×4) = 1,040 Cards
In total, this comes to 5612 MTG Arena cards + copies!
That is a far way from our current 656 cards – only 11.69% in fact.
If we compare their totals to our current collected card totals, we can quickly see that we have a lot of collecting to do.
- Throne of Eldraine Set : 1/1120 Cards (0.09%)
- Magic Core 2020 (M20) Set : 206/1,296 Cards (15.89%)
- Guilds of Ravnica Set : 192/1,084 Cards (17.71%)
- Ravnica Allegiance Set : 184/1,072 Cards (17.16%)
- War of the Spark Set : 73/1,040 Cards (7.19%)
With this in mind, when starting with a new account, you have a ton of leeway to buy Booster packs from any of the MTG Arena sets that you like, especially in Throne of Eldraine and War of the Spark, as its very unlikely to reach 5 copies of any card at this point in time.
The only time this might happen is if you craft a set of 4 cards using Wildcards, as now any Booster Pack that drops this card, will immediately go to the Vault. This is a catch 22, as you need 4 copies of a card to optimize your decks, so this will inevitably happen if you start crafting early on.
You might also want to immediately want to buy into Eldraine, (which is fine, you can), but just remember that you will be getting a total of 46 Eldraine Booster packs (368 cards), through the course of you completing the 92 levels, on the Free Eldraine Mastery path.
These 368 cards already amount to of 32.85% of the total 1120 cards in the Throne of Eldraine total set. So just something to keep in mind and not spend all your Gold and Gems on only Eldraine Boosters, otherwise you will start to see a lot of your cards becoming wasteful Vault dust, half way through the mastery tree.
What I personally did was, buy Booster Packs for War of the Spark, as well as Ravnica Allegiance & Guilds of Ravnica sets first, after buying an initial 10x Eldraine Boosters (just to get me going in the set), as this really helped grow my library without risking and Vault casualties.
Remember, you can rather buy cards from other sets, using Wildcards, than risking too many copies from buying too many Boosters of a single set.
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Play Draft Ranked Events
If you have some Gold or Gem sitting in your MTG Arena wallet, then by far the best way to grow your collection of cards, is by playing Draft Ranked events.
They give a lot more cards than just buying Booster Packs do, so make sure to take advantage of this.
Check out my article on just how many MTG Arena cards you can get from a single event by paying on 750 Gems
Conclusion
We’ll guys and gals, that’s it from me for this article on the best way to get MTG Arena cards.
I hope you have enjoyed it and learnt something you didn’t already know.
Let me know if you have anything I should add in, or correct, in the comment section below.
See you in the Arena of Magic – where we gather 🙂
~Ozarc
Further Reading
- How many cards are in the Throne of Eldraine Set
- How many cards are in the Guilds of Ravnica Set
- How many cards are in the Ravnica Allegiance Set
- How many cards are in the War of the Spark Set
- How many cards are in the Magic Core 2020 Set
- How to find the MTG Arena Vault and how it works
- What are MTG Arena Wildcards and How to get them
- MTG Arena Promo Codes (FREE Cards)
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