The Guide to Wildcards on MTG Arena

By: Thyane

In Magic: The Gathering Arena, Wildcards are the single most important resource for building powerful, fun, and competitive decks in the constructed formats like Standard, Pioneer, Alchemy, Historic, Timeless, and Brawl. For new players to the platform, optimizing how you earn Wildcards can save you hundreds of dollars. This guide will show you exactly how to min-max the system to collect as many Wildcards as possible without, you know, just buying them straight up and wasting money. 

What Are Wildcards?

Wildcards are your classic blank slate cards that have unlimited potential.  You can redeem for any specific card of the matching rarity. Instead of opening hundreds of randomized packs hoping to find a specific card, you simply trade a Wildcard for it. They have four types to match the four Magic rarities:

 Common: Super abundant and easy to get.

 Uncommon: Highly accessible, used for core synergy pieces or powerful removal.

 Rare: The absolute bottleneck of the Arena economy, needed for dual lands and make up most of the cards in a constructed deck. 

 Mythic Rare: Hardest to obtain, used for format-defining bombs and planeswalkers. Somehow, many players often have more of these than rares. 

Methods to Get Wildcards

Direct Purchase (Not Recommended)

You can purchase Wildcard bundles directly from the MTG Arena Store using real money. However, this is generally not cost-effective compared to playing the game efficiently.

Opening Packs 

Opening booster packs purchased with Gold (earned from daily quests) or Gems is the simplest engine for Wildcards. This also builds progress towards the Wildcard Wheel and Golden Packs.

Random Drop Chance

Every booster pack you open has a random chance to contain a Wildcard, instead of a normal card. This is great as it can help you get Wildcards just from buying packs with leftover gold or gems. 

The Wildcard Wheel

Progresses every time you open a pack. Opening 6 packs guarantees an Uncommon Wildcard, and opening another 6 guarantees a Rare, with the fifth rotation giving a Mythic Wildcard instead. Both are on separate wheels and will give prizes staggered so as not to give you both an Uncommon and a Rare on the same pack. 

Golden Packs

Buying packs from all sets awards progress toward a Golden Pack. Every 10 packs bought yields 1 Golden Pack containing 6 random Rares/Mythics, with a high chance to be a random Wildcard. This does not care if the packs are bought with gold or gems. 

Other ways to get wildcards. 

To buy packs, you need gold and gems. Here are the primary events you can play to generate Gems and packs.

Constructed Format Events

For this, you need to bring your own deck to compete in Standard, Pioneer, Alchemy, Historic, Comp. Brawl, or Timeless.

Best-of-One (Bo1) Events

• Entry Cost: 2,500 Gold or 375 Gems
• 0 Wins: 25 Gems
• 1 Win: 50 Gems
• 2 Wins: 75 Gems, 1 Pack
• 3 Wins: 200 Gems, 1 Pack
• 4 Wins: 300 Gems, 1 Pack
• 5 Wins: 400 Gems, 2 Packs
• 6 Wins: 450 Gems, 2 Packs
• 7 Wins: 500 Gems, 3 Packs, 1 Play-In Point

Best-of-Three (Bo3) Events

• Entry Cost: 5,000 Gold or 750 Gems
• 0 Wins: 50 Gems, 1 Pack
• 1 Win: 100 Gems, 1 Pack
• 2 Wins: 150 Gems, 2 Packs
• 3 Wins: 600 Gems, 2 Packs
• 4 Wins: 800 Gems, 2 Packs
• 5 Wins: 1,000 Gems, 3 Packs, 4 Play-In Points

Limited Draft Events

Drafting lets you test your skills to build a deck vs other players out of passing packs. You keep all the cards you draft, which speeds up collection building.

Premier Draft

Draft with 7 other human players. It features a high-stakes, competitive prize structure that heavily rewards high win rates.

Quick Draft

Draft against bots with no timer. Perfect for beginners to take their time and easily "force" specific colors, or you can go as fast as needed. 

Pick 2 Draft

A rapid drafting variant against 3 other players where you take two cards per pack. Rewards scale from 50 Gems + 1 pack (at low wins) up to 1,300 Gems + 3 packs for 4 wins.

Midweek Magic

A free, rotating weekly event running Tuesday through Thursday. Prizes usually consist of two random rare cosmetics and a small amount of gold or individual card rewards. I recommend playing this for free value if the format seems fun. 

Min-Maxing Tips & Tricks

Pre-Craft Commons and Uncommons

Before you open a massive stack of booster packs for a brand-new set or before you go drafting, use your excess Common and Uncommon Wildcards to craft the commons/uncommons of that set first. When you open your packs, those slots will instantly convert into Vault progress instead of just doing nothing, allowing you to get a ton of free progress out of the ordeal. 

Duplicate Protection

Arena has duplicate protection for Rares and Mythics. If you open a pack and roll a Rare you already own 4 copies of, the game automatically swaps it for a Rare you don't own from that set. If you own every Rare in the set, you get 20 Gems instead (40 Gems for Mythics). This system is great for powering through the sets and fully collecting all of a given set. This also allows for getting Gems for more packs later down the line. 

Crack your Vault

When you collect a 5th copy of a Common or Uncommon, it goes into a slightly hidden/obscured progress bar called "The Vault." (The little treasure chest in the corner is where you can see the progress bar for the vault) 

  Common: Adds 0.1% progress.

  Uncommon: Adds 0.3% progress.

Upon reaching 100%, opening the Vault grants 3 Uncommon, 2 Rare, and 1 Mythic Wildcard. 

So, in the end, there are quite a few ways to beat the system and get a lot of wildcards without having to spend all the money. Good luck out there building what decks you want!