One of Magic: The Gathering Arena players’ biggest gripes is no more after Friday’s update, which both added the new Ravnica Allegiance card set to the game and implemented alternate rewards for players who receive a fifth or greater copy of a rare or mythic rare card.
In Magic, players can’t play more than four copies of a single card in a deck, so if you happened to luck into five copies of some awesome card, well, you were out of luck. That’s not a problem in tabletop because you can just sell the physical card, but in digital it’s a real pain—that was a chance at a better card. Now when players unwrap a pack and get a duplicate rare or mythic the system just automatically replaces it with another card of equal rarity. If you’ve collected every rare or mythic rare in the set and pull more, Arena just gives you gems, the game’s premium currency, as a substitute. The duplicate protection also works in sealed events, like drafts, converting the duplicate cards into either gems or progress towards your vault.
The 0.11 update also introduces Magic’s newest set, Ravnica Allegiance, to the digital game ahead of its tabletop release on January 25th. Along with new special effects for all the mythic cards, it also introduces some cool effects for Ravnica’s guilds. Ravnica, a massive, nearly endless city, is ruled by various powerful guilds. The various guilds each have their own unique game mechanic. Magic Arena has added special music for each guild when its cards are played, giving the battlefield a bit of Ravnica flair. There’s also a special visual effect for when each guild’s special mechanic is activated.
You can read the full 0.11 patch notes here or and download and play Magic: The Gathering Arena at its website.
