MTG: Free to Win?

Now that the comprehensive exams are behind me, I can get back to my normal routine (Study-Play-Write versus Study-Study-Study). Last night, I came across an interesting thread on our local Facebook page (MTG Tambayan) which I would like to address in this entry. The thread asked the question: Is MTG pay-to-win?

The term pay-to-win emerged from the prevalence of a new-ish business model for games. This model is the free-to-play model. A bit of Wikipedia digging revealed that this model has existed since the early 90’s, but it seems that it did not become immensely popular until more recently. In a nutshell, the free-to-play model deviates from the old business model for games in that one does not need to buy the game. Rather, one downloads the game for free and has access to most of its content. The part of the game that players do not have access to usually needs to be paid for in order to access. This, along with ads, is how this new business model generates revenue. The term pay-to-win was coined in response to the realization that for some of these free-to-play games, the part of the game that players cannot access without paying can actually give them a considerable advantage in the game should they decide to pay and access it. In online collectible card games (CCGs) such as Hearthstone, spending money means gaining access to significantly more resources than non-paying players, which meant being able to assemble tier one decks much quicker.

Having fleshed out the details above, l will now attempt to answer the question: Is MTG pay-to-win? There are two parts to my answer. The first part argues that the term pay-to-win does not technically apply to MTG since in the first place, the game is not free-to-play. The second part covers what I think is the bigger point of the matter, which is whether or not only those with enough money to build the best decks can be competitive MTG players. For this my answer is: Yes on paper; no on MTGO, and I will support this with some anecdotal evidence.

So for the first part, MTG is not a free-to-play game. We pay for cards on the secondary market; we pay to enter tournaments; we pay to buy packs for playing draft with our friends. Almost nothing about the game is free. The nature of MTG as a collectible card game with cards of different rarities also means that assembling different decks will entail different costs. These costs are dictated by the secondary market which in turn is heavily influenced by tournament results. That is, decks that do consistently well will typically become more expensive than decks that do not.

On paper, I do not believe it is possible to play competitive MTG without consistently spending money. I say this because as I explained in a previous post, paper tournaments are so negative-sum by nature that it is not possible to generate revenue playing them regularly with just an above-average win-rate (60%). As such, no one but the best players can make playing paper MTG a self-sustaining hobby. On the other hand, it is very possible to do so playing MTG online. In fact, as I had previously said, all it would take is a 60% win rate in friendly constructed tournaments. As long as you win 3 out of every 5 matches on average, you stand to make a bit of money while also covering costs for succeeding tournaments. So ultimately, I do not think that MTGO is pay-to-win. You do still need to pay in order to get the cards that you need for your decks, but playing well will reward you with the ability to generate enough tix to buy those cards and not have to put more money into the game.

Finally as promised, an anecdote. I started playing online in December of 2016, using the US$50 that WotC reimbursed me with for the train ride from Amsterdam to Rotterdam where the 2016 World Magic Cup took place. Since I had practiced a lot of KLD sealed for WMC and did not want to shell out cash to buy any cards, I decided to play the friendly KLD sealed league exclusively. I did this for the next couple of months, occasionally needing to pay more cash into the game to buy into sealed leagues. During the summer of 2017, I had generated enough winnings and built enough confidence to try out constructed. So, being the cheapskate that I am, I started with Pauper. My first deck was a Mono Red aggro deck that cost all of 5 tix (P250). I scrounged through the bots for the cheapest versions of lightning bolt and other staples. Eventually I generated enough tix to buy into better pauper decks, building UB flicker, Burn, Kuldotha Boros, and finally Affinity (I think among these, only affinity cost more than 20 tix at time I built them). I also built my first standard deck in the same summer, but that was a very cheap New Perspectives deck that I wanted to test (and eventually piloted) for GP Manila. I built my first tier 1 deck (Ramunap Red) before the end of the year and qualified for my first MOCS Playoff event in the first quarter of 2018 piloting UW Gift (I scrubbed out horribly in the playoff event piloting Ad Nauseum, if you were wondering). Long story short, the last time I paid for anything to play MTGO was in March of 2017, about three months after I started. All of the constructed decks I built were built using tickets earned playing the game. I consider myself an above average player with a solid 65% winrate but I am certainly not alone in this category and I am certain that many people reading this entry are just as skilled as or better than I am at slinging spells. Thus, making MTGO both free-to-play and “free-to-win” is very doable.

May the shuffler be with you!