In theory, MTG Arena has the potential to be leaps and bounds better than paper Magic: The Gathering. That may be a controversial statement, but Arena is more accessible, cheaper, and has physically impossible features. Sure, you might not be able to riffle shuffle a digital client, but that’s a small price to pay.
Unfortunately, while MTG Arena has incredible potential, realizing that potential is a lot easier said than done. Right now, MTG Arena is missing a huge amount of content, features, and support that keeps it far behind paper. Ideally, each set release should help to close this gap somewhat. Sadly, it feels like Outlaws of Thunder Junction is a step in the wrong direction.
On top of being bizarrely expensive, thanks to a multitude of new mythics, Outlaws of Thunder Junction appears to be worryingly buggy!
Beautiful but Botched
Sadly, MTG Arena often misses out on parts of an MTG set that paper players relish. Preconstructed Commander decks, for instance, have never been properly released on MTG Arena. Rarely, a few face Commanders from a set’s precons have appeared on the platform, however, that is hardly the norm.
Thankfully, while hopeful Brawl players are often left disappointed, MTG Arena does get one thing right… ish. While you can’t find them in packs, MTG Arena does offer many of the card variants through the game’s store. Purchasable for either Gold or Gems, these cosmetics are usually a great way to customize your deck… provided they work, that is.
Unfortunately, it seems some of the latest cosmetics on MTG Arena aren’t working exactly as intended. If they are, then Wizards of the Coast has made these cosmetics needlessly difficult to use in-game. The cosmetics in question are the set’s Borderless Dual Lands, which can be bought for 1,500 Gems (around $10).
First released in Kaladesh, this cycle of enemy-colored fast lands have already been playable on MTG Arena for some time. Thanks to this, many players were unsurprisingly excited to purchase the panoramic new art bundle, since they already own the cards. Unfortunately, Outlaws of Thunder Junction has thrown a wrench into these plans, as u/IzzaKieb recently discovered.
Bafflingly, the new panoramic borderless card style only works with the new copies from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Even if you have four copies from Kaladesh, you can’t enable the cosmetic at all. Thankfully, you should just need one copy of the Outlaws of Thunder Junction variant to enable the style, but that’s still far from perfect.
Sad Scam Game
Unsurprisingly, many MTG players aren’t too happy about finding out this curious detail. Since no information about requiring Thunder Junction cards is on the store page, many have been left feeling cheated. On Reddit, this led some players to comment how they “feel disgustingly scammed by Wizards.”
Thankfully, while Wizards’ sneaky lack of information is obviously not ideal, there should be a solution for frustrated players. As u/Dualmonkey notes, Wizards customer service “will also certainly refund you.” Worryingly, we know this since this isn’t the first time this issue has happened, and players have been through this process before.
Unfortunately, should you choose to refund your gems after making this purchase, you may never get the card style again. Not only will the art be removed from your account, but you may be locked out from re-purchasing the bundle. This can make re-acquiring the card style incredibly difficult down the line, should you ever change your mind.
Given this has all happened before, unfortunately, it seems unlikely Wizards is going to change their philosophy overnight. That being said, if they did, it would certainly please a lot of players. As u/jethawkings comments, “They’ll sell more of these skins if they just didn’t care about which set the printed from.”
Sadly, unless Wizards tests out this potential sales model, there’s no telling whether or not it would work. Given it’s a change that players would quite like, we can only hope Wizards will experiment in the future. For the time being, however, we’re just stuck dealing with this slightly annoying occurrence every set release.
Bugs on Bugs
Disappointingly, while the latest MTG Arena store snafu is causing the most frustration, it’s hardly the only new bug. Thankfully, some of these aren’t all bad, such as the French text for Decimate. For some reason, on MTG Arena, the text for this card baffling reads “WWWWWWWW.”
Likely caused by a translation error, this bug is definitely more on the comical side, even if it does interfere with gameplay. The same can’t be said, however, for the sideboard issue the game is currently experiencing. For many players, the sideboard is not rendering properly, causing major issues in best-of-three play.
Thankfully, both of these bugs should be on Wizards’ radar, with fixes hopefully coming soon. The same is likely true of the bug featuring the new Outlaws of Thunder Junction pet going walkabouts. While it can be a little distracting, if past precedent is anything to go by, MTG Arena players may not want this bug fixed.
At the end of the day, it’s clear that Outlaws of Thunder Junction has hardly been a perfect set release. Thankfully, since patches can be implemented and features improved, it shouldn’t be long until everything is ship shape. In the meantime, there are still plenty of fantastic cards that MTG Arena players can enjoy from this new set.
Read More: Thunder Junction Limited Data Showcases the Rise of Power Creep
