New Player Experience Changes – November 2025
Posted on Nov 12, 2025
Greetings! I’m Ryan Spain, Creative Director for Magic Online, and I’m here to tell you about some improvements we’ve made to our new-player experience.
More Cards for More Decks
Last year, we added five preconstructed decks to every new account so that new players could try out our most popular Constructed formats without having to buy anything. Those decks are still available:
• Commander – Braids, Nightmare Arisen
• Legacy Burn
• Modern Infect
• Pauper Delver
• Pioneer Humans
While these were a good start, with only some commons supplementing the five decks—two copies of each common from the eight most-recent sets—there wasn’t as much variety in the early play experience as we wanted, and not a lot to work with for players who wanted to build their own decks.
To offer wider play variety and an improved deckbuilding palette to Magic Online’s free experience, we’ve moved hundreds of commons and uncommons from the Account Upgrade Kit—the first purchase new players make on Magic Online—into the new-account collection. Additionally, we expanded the free recent-set commons to include all sets going back to Dominaria United instead of just the last eight! Finally, we added additional cards to the new-account collection targeted at Pauper and Commander, with an eye towards the four new Commander options we added to round out the Braids, Nightmare Arisen preconstructed deck: Loot, Exuberant Explorer, Odric, Master Tactician, Kiora, the Rising Tide, and Zada, Hedron Grinder.
Now with nearly 3,000 total cards including more than 100 legendary creatures for Commander options, brand-new accounts offer much deeper deckbuilding and play experiences for players who haven’t upgraded their accounts yet. And when they do, we’ve added over 140 rares and mythics to the Account Upgrade Kit, also with the new Commanders in mind.
And don’t forget the free Super Jump! league: draft two phantom Vintage half-decks guaranteed to contain Power Nine, combine, and battle! With all of these great options, the free-play experience has never been deeper on Magic Online.
In addition to the increased play depth, we’ve updated the flow of the new-player experience as well.
Welcome Aboard!
As anyone who has ever played MTGO at any point in its history knows, Magic Online doesn’t have a tutorial, or any new-player experience, which hurts our ability to keep new players around. Many never even open their free decks before giving up on us. Exactly what an ideal onboarding experience would be for Magic Online is still open to design and debate, but the longtime state of having no handholding at all for new players needed to change.
First and foremost, we wanted to make sure every new player opened the five Starter Decks without fail instead of possibly overlooking them, buried in the Sealed Product category in the Other Products tab of the player’s Collection as they were. Now they are opened when the player opens their Starter Kit, and opening the Starter Kit is the only thing a player can do after agreeing to the Magic Online terms. We have also improved the look and clarity of the dialog after opening the Starter Kit:
Not only are players now guaranteed to add these decks to their Collections, but they can also view the Starter Deck contents right from this dialog!
After browsing their new decks and the thousands of cards they just opened (or not), clicking Continue takes new players to a dialog that allows them to jump right to the first experience of their choice!
We already have two improvements planned for this dialog: first, make it look better, and second, give players a way to bring it back up again as a gameplay menu. Right now it allows players to choose where to start, but the menu dialog never comes back after making that initial choice. We realized that many new players will want to use the more than once, but we didn’t want to delay the delivery of this critical new-player improvement just because we are further improving its look and function from here.
Account Upgrade Kit
Once a new player decides they want access to all game features, including trading, chat, direct Buddy challenge, and prize-based event play, the Account Upgrade Kit is the purchase that unlocks the full Magic Online experience.
We’ve added even more rares and mythics to this value-packed $4.99 USD purchase. It adds an additional 1,500 cards, bringing the grand total to over 9,000 cards—now tradable—after upgrading an account! Now that’s an instant collection.
Super Jump! – Draft Vintage Half-Decks for Free
Don’t forget we also have the free Super Jump! queue! The format is like a cross between Vintage Cube and Jumps, where you draft two Vintage half-decks—each containing a Power Nine card—and combine them. Boom, deckbuilding done, battle. As an endless free-play queue available to even brand-new accounts, it lets new players learn to pilot Magic Online while battling with iconic power cards for free on a level playing field, and take as much time as they need to get a feel for the breadth of Magic Online's capabilities.
You can find the Super Jump! event by clicking Limited on the top navigation options to find the Play Lobby with Super Jump! plus (after upgrading) Pack Wars, and all our Limited-format offerings.
Format Buttons - Play Right Away
The five format buttons take you straight to the Constructed Play Lobby for that format. Click Join Now and you will either fill out a match and it will start immediately, or you will create a match with an empty seat (or seats for Commander) and wait for players to join.
If you want to customize the game, click Custom Match in the bottom right corner to set specific parameters.
Got a specific buddy in mind? They can add you as a Buddy at this point and challenge you to a game. (You cannot direct-challenge Buddies yourself from the Home scene until your account is upgraded)
Start Brewing
Click Go under View Your Collection to begin building decks with several thousand cards. You can also build wish lists and binders for trading from here. Once you have a deck fully built, you can click Play Now or the Play button beside the deck’s name to instantly join an available match (or create one if needed).
Game Guide
Finally, learn all about the nitty-gritty of Magic Online from our online Game Guide at MTGO.com.
While there are other tactics we could do to improve the experience of trying Magic Online for the first time, updating the first login sequence was the highest priority. None of the other onboarding improvements we could implement matter as much as setting up the first play session to have the best chance of producing a second.
So if you’re coaxing your buddy to give Magic Online a shot, or you’re just joining us, welcome!
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