After a 5-6 year hiatus of MTG i've recently gotten back into it, playing the paperback version with a few mates. I had a look at the site and found MTG Online and it looks pretty neat, being able to buy booster/theme packs digitaly and play against anyone else, the lack of an opponent is almost never a problem and there are tournaments, which, for an Australian player are harder to find IRL. Before I sign up and committ too much money however I want another opinion (or a few) so does or has anyone else here played MTG online? Good/bad experiences?

Thanks

We're pretty much in the same boat - I used to play the old PC game back in the good old days too, but yes, you actually PAY for booster packs online and they get added to your "online" deck. It costs $9.99 to sign up an account and you can spend that money in any way you want at the store; booster packs are $3.69 each and theme decks (starter packs) are around $11 if i remember correctly. You can win additional booster packs when you play in tournaments and add them to your collection, or you can just play friendly games against friends or strangers around the world.. pretty cool. The only bad thing is, if what i read was correct, you can't ante anything, so you have to play tourneys to win cards - im not positive on that tho. Oh yeah, there's one other thing I think is very cool - if you collect an entire set of cards, one of each in a particular expansion, you can redeem your online cards for a real set of them. Basically, they remove all the cards from your online arsenal and mail you a physical copy of all the cards. Very nice.

The link is . There's no subscription cost, just the sign up fee of $9.99 (which you get to spend at the shop anyway) and then you pay for your cards from there. I know it's pretty steep but I just love the game and spending $50 - $100 should be enough to give me enough cards to play casually whenever i want and mix decks around a bit. I don't think they use all the sets ever produced, IIRC they go back as far as the Invasion series, maybe a bit further back but not all the way to the beginning.