I can only speak for MTG Arena. Been playing it 100% for free since a bit before DMU came out. I play pretty much the number of games that give me stuff, often 4 wins/day because I don't have time to play more.
Mythic in Standard is possible (played cheap monoblue last season to diamond 1, mono black now almost mythic) and having some fun drafting. 0% need to invest any money. Obvioulsy I won't have all the stuff but that's fine. I'm ok with identifying one deck I like to play for standard and then just drafting until coins/gems run out (ideally never because the winrate is good enough). I also don't care at all about cosmetics and was happy to see there's even an option to turn them sort of off (hide alternate card styles). I still got quite a lot of free cosmetics as well.
It is however interesting that they do have a pretty good value "first buy" option. I was always curious if it is priced so cheaply to get people from a "I'm a free player mindset" to...well payed once, might as well buy more now (+the friction of setting up payment is gone).
I'm an avid board gamer and I can say very confidently that I would never get into any paper based CCG because the pricing/collection is just ridiculous to me. If it wasn't for the free to play online veryion, I wouldn't play magic (I did buy some of the stuff back in the college days but quickly realized what a money sink this would be). I do/did collected some LCGs and still rank Android Netrunner as one of the best gaming experiences in my life.
Mythic in Standard is possible (played cheap monoblue last season to diamond 1, mono black now almost mythic) and having some fun drafting. 0% need to invest any money. Obvioulsy I won't have all the stuff but that's fine. I'm ok with identifying one deck I like to play for standard and then just drafting until coins/gems run out (ideally never because the winrate is good enough). I also don't care at all about cosmetics and was happy to see there's even an option to turn them sort of off (hide alternate card styles). I still got quite a lot of free cosmetics as well.
It is however interesting that they do have a pretty good value "first buy" option. I was always curious if it is priced so cheaply to get people from a "I'm a free player mindset" to...well payed once, might as well buy more now (+the friction of setting up payment is gone).
I'm an avid board gamer and I can say very confidently that I would never get into any paper based CCG because the pricing/collection is just ridiculous to me. If it wasn't for the free to play online veryion, I wouldn't play magic (I did buy some of the stuff back in the college days but quickly realized what a money sink this would be). I do/did collected some LCGs and still rank Android Netrunner as one of the best gaming experiences in my life.