MTG Arena Wildcards: How to Get Them and When to Use Them

Are you wondering how to get MTG Arena wildcards? Unsure which cards – if any – should you spend your wildcards on? Perhaps you want to craft a card in MTGA, but you worry that you’ll regret it later.

Worry no more, as you’ve come to the right place! We’ll tell you how you can get more wildcards, and how you should best use them.

What Are Wildcards in MTG Arena?

Let’s start with the basics. A wildcard is a unique card that can be traded for another card of the same rarity type. There are four rarity types and each has its own color:

• mythic (red)
• rare (gold)
• uncommon (blue-ish)
• common (silver)

How to Redeem a Wildcard in MTG Arena?

Here are three simple steps to craft any card on MTG Arena:

1. Click on “Decks” in the top bar. Then click on “Collection” in the bottom left corner.
2. Find the cards that you want to craft. You can do so, by using the “Search bar” in the top left corner. Don’t forget to click on the “Craft” button in the top right corner, in order to see the cards that you don’t own yet. Click on the card you want.
3. Select how many cards you want to craft by using the icons below the card, then click “Craft”. Make sure that this is really the card you want, as there is no confirmation window.

That’s it, you now have the card you wanted in your collection.

The other option you have is to create a full deck in the Deck builder.

You click on Decks, then the “Plus” icon. Once again, you’ll have to select the Craft button, to see the cards missing from your collection. When you’re finished with building your deck, just click “Craft All”, and all appropriate wildcards will be converted into the cards that you don’t own in this deck.

How To Get Wildcards in MTG Arena?

For the most part, there are 4 ways of getting wildcards:

1. Opening a pack.
2. Filling the progress wheel by opening multiple packs.
3. Opening the Vault.
4. Buying the Wildcards bundle.

Let’s explore each of these options in more detail.

Opening a Pack

The most common way of obtaining wildcards is by opening MTG Arena booster packs.

Each booster pack has 8 cards: 5 Commons, 2 Uncommons, and 1 Mythic/Rare. One card per rarity has a chance of being upgraded into a wildcard.

For example, instead of Marauding Dreadship you could get a common wildcard. You can use it to craft any common you want, even a Marauding Dreadship.

The drop rate for wildcards varies, depending on the rarity. You have better odds of getting a common wildcard, than an uncommon one, and so on. The exact drop rates can be found in the following table:

So, on average, you have to open 24 packs to get a single rare wildcard and a single mythic wildcard. That’s not that great, but thankfully, you’ll get additional wildcards while you’re opening packs. How? By filling the Progress wheel.

Filling the Progress Wheel

As you open booster packs, you have radials that fill up and track the amount of packs you open. The more packs you open, the more they fill up, until they’re full. Then you get the wildcard and the radial will reset.

To check your wildcards’ tracker progress, click the “Packs” tab and in the top right corner you will have two radials. A smaller one for tracking the next Uncommon wildcard drop, and a bigger one for Rare or Mythic wildcard drop progress.

So, for every 6 booster packs that you open, you will get an Uncommon and a Rare wildcard. This will repeat 4 times, then the Rare wildcard in the circle will change to a Mythic wildcard. When it’s full, a Mythic wildcard will drop and the progress reset, and it will revert to a Rare wildcard.

Opening the Vault

The third way of obtaining wildcards is by opening the vault.

When you collect a full playset (4 cards) of a specific common or an uncommon, you can still open them, but you can’t actually use them. To solve this problem, all the extra commons and uncommons you open contribute to filling the vault.

Each extra common fills the Vault by 0.11%, while each extra uncommon fills it by 0.33%. For example, for getting the Vault to 100% you’d need 400 commons and 170 uncommons.

Once you get the Vault to 100%, a Chest icon will appear in the top bar. You can click on it in order to get:

• 3 uncommon wildcards
• 2 rare wildcards
• 1 mythic wildcard

You can find more in-depth information in our MTG Arena Vault Guide.

Buying the Wildcards Bundle

The fourth, and last option you have is to buy wildcards, using actual money. There are two Bundles that you can choose from. They can be found in the Store in the Bundles tab.

You can get four rare wildcards for $9.99 (€10.99) or four mythic wildcards for $19.99 (€21.99). One account can purchase a maximum of 10 Rare and 10 Mythic bundles. (That’s a total of 40 rare and 40 mythic wildcards.)

Now you know how you can get Wildcards on Arena, the only question that remains is how to make the best use out of them

5 Tips for Redeeming Wildcards in MTG Arena

Deciding what to craft in MTG Arena depends on your goals and what you’re working with. Nevertheless, there are some general tips, that everyone could use, especially, if you’re just starting out, and don’t have too many wildcards.

Here are the five most important rules you should follow in order to get the most value from your wildcards:

1. Play first, craft later.

You start your first game on MTG Arena and a big Giganotosaurus destroys you. You immediately spend your rare wildcards to craft four scary dinosaurs for yourself, and you’re ready to battle.

However, upon the next few games, you realize that your opponents can easily deal with it with cards like Go for the Throat and Ossification. Even when it survives, they just block it with a random Soldier token. You decide that you’d rather play something else. But, whoops – your wildcards are gone.

That’s why you shouldn’t spend all of your MTG Arena wildcards immediately. Instead, focus on building fun decks with what you have, or perhaps try the sample decks you got for free.

2. Decide what type of deck you want to play.

In Magic the Gathering, there are 4 major type of decks:

• Aggro: Aggressive deck with plenty of cheap creatures, wants to finish the game as quickly as possible.
• Control: Slow deck, trying to eliminate each opposing threat, and win afterward. Usually playing very few or even zero creatures.
• Midrange: Adaptive deck, slower than aggro, faster than control. It plays plenty of value creatures.
• Combo: Deck that wins in an unusual way. For example, by playing Thousand-Year Storm and casting a bunch of cheap spells like Opt and Shock.

As combo isn’t always present, we’d recommend you pick one of the first three archetypes. When you do so, you can then craft cards with that in mind.

Let’s say you’ll choose aggro archetype. All the card that you craft should be the ones that work well in an aggressive deck. This way, you’ll eventually be able to play multiple good aggro decks.

If you were to do the opposite and craft some cards for aggressive decks, others for midrange decks, and a couple of cards for control decks, you’d be left with three mediocre options.

3. Don’t forget about lands.

When players think about what to craft in MTG Arena, they’ll often think about big flashy spells like Atraxa, Grand Unifier. The truth is, you will have a hard time playing Atraxa and other cards in your multicolor deck without rare lands. You’ll need your Spara’s Headquarters and Jetmir’s Garden.

Four, and three color decks require more rare lands than two color ones. So it’s really smart to focus on a two color deck first and then branch into the third color. Therefore, new players often try to build a good mono color deck, such as mono red aggro or mono blue tempo.

If you decide to do that, you won’t have to spend any rare wildcards on lands. But remember, two color decks are often more powerful.

4. Check new player decks.

You start the game with 5 preconstructed decks. In the next five 5 days you get a quest for a booster and a quest for a new player deck. When you finish with those quests, then you’ll get a special one for five more decks.

It’s really for the best if you wait until you unlock all of these before you start crafting cards. Decks come with some rare lands and some pretty powerful cards. They can also give you a feel of what you’d like to play, so you won’t waste your wildcards. If you don’t want to wait, at least check all the decks here. This way, you won’t be crafting cards that you’ll get for free anyway.

If you don’t know, you can also redeem code “PlayBro” (case-sensitive). Just go to Store in MTG Arena, and click on Redeem Code. You’ll get three Brothers’ War boosters for free! You can find more codes in our Arena Codes article.

5. All that is gold does glitter.

There are four rarities among the MTG cards – mythic rare, rare, uncommon and common – from the most to least rare. But in MTG Arena, the most valuable resource isn’t a mythic rare wildcard, but a rare one.

That’s because most of the mythic cards have expensive mana cost, and you sometimes need just one or two in a deck. Rares on the other hand are the cornerstones of a deck. On top of that, you’ll need playsets of rare lands.

So be careful when spending rare wildcards. You’ll be getting more of them than mythic ones, but the demand for them is much higher.

What to Craft in MTG Arena? TL;DR

So to wrap things up, here are the steps you should take when crafting your first cards on Arena:

1. Unlock 10 additional starter decks.
2. Decide on which archetype you want to play.
3. Start with one or two color deck.
4. Craft the best cards for your favorite archetype and colors.
5. Have fun. 🙂

If you don’t agree with our suggestions and just want to have fun with your favorite cards, that’s awesome too. If you enjoy a particular type of card very much, just go for it and craft it.

Conclusion

We hope we helped you a bit with deciding what to craft in MTG Arena. If you fell like we missed a card we should totally talk about, fell free to leave us a comment.  That’s what Magic is all about. If you want to start playing paper Magic, check out our article about best buys for beginner and learn how to get some Sample Decks for free.

If you want more info about MTG Arena check the official site.

Last but not least, check our Instagram. You’ll get info about our newest articles, tips and of course – Magic the Gathering memes. 🙂 Have fun crafting cards on Arena and may you always draw the perfect starting hand.