The 5 Best Games Like MTG Arena

We all love a bit of MTG Arena, we do.

It’s slick, easy to download, easy to play, and you can actually do a fairly good job of being competitive without spending any money.

That being said, sometimes you need a break, or you just want something a little different.

Sometimes you need the best games like MTG Arena, rather than the thing itself.

The best games like MTG Arena

All of these games are different to MTG Arena, so it’s natural that you might bounce off of them.

It’s also likely that you’ll have heard of some of them, but maybe if you’re getting sick of seeing Tibalt in all of his glory, now is a good time to check them out once again.

So, here are the best games like MTG Arena.

5 – The Elder Scrolls: Legends

The Elder Scrolls: Legends is the first game on our list from Dire Wolf Digital, but it’s not their best one, at least not in our opinion. Legends has you playing on a board as you’d expect, but it’s split into two different lanes. One of these lanes obscures what you’ve played for a turn, which allows for a bit of on-board strategy akin to Yu-Gi-Oh.

It’s a lot of fun, and if you happen to be a fan of the Elder Scrolls games on top of being a card fiend, then you’re going to have a great time with it. It’s got a bit of a learning curve, but you should have no issue getting into it if you commit a little bit of time to Legends.

4 – Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

It’s impossible, or at least it should be, to mention games like MTG without mentioning everyone’s favourite Pharoah and the Shadow Realm. Yu-Gi-Oh has been going strong for an incredibly long time now, and there’s a lot of good reasons for that, most of which are to do with the gameplay and the absurd things you can now do if you master the systems.

Duel Links is possibly the best digital version of the game we’ve ever had (and there have been a lot of them), so it’s a great entry point for new or returning players. As this is the only other game that’s got a physical equivalent, it doesn’t take advantage of some of the potential synergies of the other games on the list, but that’s never stopped Yu-Gi-Oh from doing the obscene regularly.

3 – Hearthstone

We probably don’t need to tell you about Hearthstone, but it also seems grossly unfair to not discuss it properly given that it undoubtedly led to MTG Arena coming into existence. Hearthstone is probably the first digital CCG to have really broken away from being just a card game.

The mix of visual effects, card design, and the ever-evolving formats available, all combine into one incredibly satisfying experience. Sure, it’s hard to imagine any game from Blizzard doing poorly, but Hearthstone laid the groundwork for nearly every digital CCG in existence, and it’s still a great game on its own too.

2 – Legends of Runeterra

Look, we like a good list here at MTG Rocks. They’re fun to write, they’re fun to read, and they’re fun to watch. Normally though, we have a clear idea of what the top few spots should look like. With this list though, the top two spots are fairly interchangeable. If we to be writing this next week, it’s possible that Legends of Runeterra would be at the top of it.

Legends of Runeterra, for those who’ve yet to hear about it or play it, is a digital CCG from Riot. It stars characters and places from their other games, and it’s one of the best ones around by a long way. Rather than each player having a turn, you instead take turns to be the attacker. This means you can play cards every turn, and so can your opponent. This one small thing changes absolutely everything.

Legends of Runeterra is just as strategic as any other CCG, but it’s a lot more about combat, and there’s something undeniably exhilarating about that. You can still play control decks or try for alternate win conditions, but the heat of the battle feels more akin to an action game at times, and it’s hard to beat that.

1 – Eternal

All of the games on this list are good, and Legends of Runeterra is incredible, but very different to MTG. Eternal is incredible but incredibly similar to MTG, but it takes advantage of things that Arena simply can’t.

Eternal comes from Dire Wolf Digital, and this game specifically was developed by a team that includes several notable MTG players including Luis Scott-Vargis and Patrick Chapin. That’s definitely why the game feels so familiar if you’re an MTG aficionado, and it’s also why you’re highly likely to fall head over heels for this one.

While Eternal undoubtedly has MTG in its heart, it goes beyond that and uses the digital elements of the game to allow for decks and combos that simply couldn’t be done in a paper game. It’s also a lot better at being a free-to-play game than Arena is, and you can still on top of the meta by simply playing regularly. Just go and play it, okay?