The war of the year has launched on MTG Arena and Wizards of the Coast is already planning their next marketing move.
Magic: The Gathering newest expansion, War of the Spark, has been a resounding success on MTG Arena and over the last week in April during its pre-release. To keep the hype train going, Wizards of the Coast announced it’s adding Japanese alternative-art planeswalkers to MTG Arena. Not as digital cards, though, but as card sleeve options.
Magic: The Gathering is running a poll on Twitter via the MTG Arena account, asking players to choose which War of the Spark Japanese alternative-art planeswalkers they’d like to have available in card sleeve form. Liliana is the overall favorite amongst fans, followed by Vraska and Jace.
Not everyone on Twitter, however, is pleased with the card sleeve option. Calling out Wizards of the Coast for being money hungry, many players wanted to know why the Japanese alternative-art planeswalkers weren’t being offered as digital cards on MTG Arena.
“We knew players would want the artwork, so we picked something that players would be able to use regardless of the deck or cards they wanted to play,” was the official response from MTG Arena on Twitter.
Card sleeves are purchased in the MTG Arena store and can only be bought with gems. The gems are purchased with real-life money or can be earned when playing Limited draft on MTG Arena. Digital cards, however, can be earned with in-house gameplay or unlocked with wild cards—of which free-to-play players can do without spending cash.
MTG Arena hasn’t released a date regarding the War of the Spark Japanese alternative-art planeswalkers card sleeves at this time.
