21 Powerful Tips and Tricks to Win More in Magic Arena

Last updated on June 28, 2024

Magic video games have come a long way since their beginnings. The interface of Magic: The Gathering Online (MTGO) needed a facelift, and that's when Magic Arena (MTGA) came along as a way to solve its predecessor's problems and have a more appealing look for players who prefer to play from their computers and mobile devices.

Since this is a video game after all, it's worth knowing all the hidden features related to it. Let’s explore MTGA's keyboard shortcuts, adjust some of Arena's in-game settings, and some valuable tips and tricks to elevate your game and gain an advantage over your opponents. You can unlock even more hidden features with Arena Tutor to make stats like win rate easily visible and you can track your improvement.

MTGA Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcuts and Hotkeys

CTRL: Temporarily Enable Full Control

You may have noticed the game automatically using your resources or allowing your opponent to take their turn immediately after playing a card, especially if you have no further actions. By using this command, you’ll hold priority throughout the turn, causing the client to pause at each phase and step during the turn, rather than automatically passing priority, even when you have no actions to take. This can be beneficial in certain situations where you want to cast a spell and take an action while it's on the stack, or prevent triggered abilities from your cards from resolving automatically, like using Village Rites with Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger‘s ability on the stack.

CTRL + Shift: Permanently Enable Full Control

As with the above, this one lets you hold priority, but it lasts until you disable it instead of being active until the end of the current turn.

Z: Undo

Sometimes, you want to cancel a play or undo tapping mana incorrectly. This allows you to do it depending on the scenario, as only some plays can be undone. I mostly use it with cards that let you select multiple targets or abilities before casting it, and I decided to play a different card instead of that one.

Enter: Pass the Turn

This passes priority until the opponent makes a play before your turn is done and changes the game state.

Shift + Enter: Pass the Turn Unconditionally

This is the equivalent of MTGO's F6 shortcut. This lets you skip any actions regardless of what triggers may go to the stack or cards your opponents play. While most of the actions that happen in MTGA are quick, they may feel differently when your opponents are going off with their combo.

Space: Pass Priority

You pass priority until the next phase, essentially working as a “Next” button. This can become handy when you’re holding a card and don’t want your opponent to know you have an action, as if you press it quickly, it creates the sensation that you aren’t holding priority for anything.

L: Display the Turn Phases

While you can set the phases to be shown at any time from the configuration menu, you can also choose to toggle between them being visible or not by pressing L.

Q,Q: Float All

This is by far one of my favorite shortcuts, at least when it comes down to performing combos around adding infinite mana. Double pressing Q will cause the auto-tapper to add mana for all sources that can produce it instead of you having to manually tap each land individually for extra mana.

Hold Q: Float Stack

While Hold Q may seem complicated at the beginning, it's helpful when you control multiple mana abilities of the same card. For example, if you have a bunch of Islands and want to tap all of them, you can hold Q and tap one of them to make all Islands tap.

This also applies to mana dorks like Llanowar Elves or other permanents that produce mana like Mind Stone.

Right-Click: Zoom in on a Card

Arena automatically zooms in on cards while they're on the stack. However, if you want to take a second look, you can right-click on them to see them in depth. Another key feature of doing this is that you can also choose to see the original printing of the card, in case any alterations have been made to its abilities, power/toughness, etc.

Tab: Cycle Chat

This may not affect the gameplay portion as much, but if you actively use the chat as a primary way to communicate with other players inside the game, this can become quite handy.

Hold Alt: Show Collection Overlay in Draft

When choosing the cards you want to pick while drafting on MTG Arena, you can hold the Alt key to see how many cards you already own in your collection from the ones available in the pack. This is useful if you want to complete and prioritize your collection in the draft portion.

MTGA Gameplay Settings

Auto Tap

One of the best things that MTGA offers is the ability to auto-tap lands to avoid the time-consuming task of paying mana by yourself. While this may save time, it’s somewhat useless in best-of-one where there’s no time limit, and in some cases, it may be better to tap the mana by yourself rather than having the bot do it, especially if you’re playing more than two colors in your deck.

Auto Order Triggered Abilities

While auto-ordering triggered abilities can save you some time, it might be worth reordering them as they stack. For example, if two creatures die and one gives -1/-1 to all creatures while the other gives +1/+1 to yours when it dies, it’s often better to stack the latter first rather than the former to avoid your creatures dying by your own creature’s ability.

Separate Creatures from Non Creatures in Deck Building

While this can apply to almost any format, it's most commonly used when playing Limited formats on Arena, where you want to reach the 15-creature threshold that most decks tend to run. This can also determine how many card types you have based on the “type” filter, which is relevant when building decks that rely on synergies between a certain kind of card or strategy.

In-Game Tricks and Strategy

Bluffing: You’re Revealing More Information Than You Think

Bluffing in Magic is pretending you have a card, or playing in a certain way so it makes your opponent think you have a card that may foil their plans, and subsequently make them play differently. You can often bluff holding a counterspell in a control deck, for example, but this can be tricky if you have no stops or actions.

This is where holding full control or setting stops on the game is beneficial, as you’ll make your opponents fall into your line of play. Even bluffing cards like Snakeskin Veil that can protect your creatures against popular removal spells can make your opponent hold off on casting their interaction, leading them to waste time.

“Training your opponent” into combat tricks is another way to bluff. This means that you can perform certain attacks that otherwise would become useless without a combat trick. Let’s say your opponent has a 1/2 and you attack with your own 1/2. This results in both creatures walling each other, and nothing successful comes out of it. You can continue this play pattern until your opponent gets caught by surprise when you use your pump spell when they block with the wrong creature.

Phases

Phases are strange on MTGA, especially for someone who mostly plays MTGO these days. This is because on the latter you can set up stops on each step you want to pause, regardless of the stage of the game, whether the upkeep, precombat main phase, end step, and so on. This is different on Arena, as you can still do it, but it only lasts until you reach that phase, and the toggle disappears as you move out of it.

What’s more difficult is that if you want to separate stops from phases between yours and your opponent’s, you need to use the ones at the sides of each avatar and not the one at the bottom left corner if you aren’t playing on mobile. This can be tedious at first, but you’ll get used to it once you accommodate. Some tricks can be done with narrow cards, like putting a stop at the end of your turn and enabling full control when Teferi, Hero of Dominaria‘s untap ability triggers. This way, you can access 2 more mana if timed correctly that can be used to cast an X-mana spell like Sphinx's Revelation.

Calculating Lethal

Another option set to default is the ability to assign combat damage. If you toggle this button, you can distribute combat damage as you please rather than having the program do it for you. Your opponent will double-block on occasion, but you'll want to assign damage to just one creature and let the other one live instead of killing both. Turning off this option allows you to manage how damage is distributed.

Quick Multi-Block and Multi-Attack

Depending on the board state, you can use a series of tricks to make blocks and attacks easier. For example, suppose you plan to multi-block a creature. In that case, the traditional way is to drag each blocker to the creature that you’re blocking, but if you click and hold onto a creature and then click on a second one while holding down the right-click, you can assign both at the same time, and this can be done with many creatures at the same time as well.

This same scenario can happen when attacking, and it can be particularly useful when attacking other permanents like battles and planeswalkers. Another neat thing comes when using tokens of the same kind. You can click on the number of the tokens once they’re stacked to have them all attack at a single target. The same applies to defense where you can drag the number and block an attacking creature your opponent controls. This can be a powerful strategy when you have many tokens and want to overwhelm your opponent with a concentrated attack or defense.

Recognizing Complex Board States

Having a million tokens from Scute Swarm is never cute to handle as the controlling player or the one with the painful job of blocking. Other times involve staying on top of the graveyard against reanimation strategies, or most of the time, it’s just hard to keep up with the game's pace, especially if you don’t know what some cards do or are new to a format. Because of this, I’ve compiled a list of things that you can start applying to your gameplay on MTGA to smooth things out and get the most out of it.

• Take advantage of the numbers on creatures or permanents with the same name. This is usually applied to tokens, but remember that you can just grab a full stack and select each at once.
• Pay attention to the highlights that appear on some cards. Have you noticed that some cards may start glowing with a white frame on them? This is because your opponent is looking at a card at that time. This also triggers on the opponent’s side if you hover over cards. With the above, you can “trick” your opponent into choosing the wrong target, as you can hover a card from your hand that you don't care about losing to a Thoughtseize or a creature on the field with removal. If you hover over a card, you won’t be selecting the card your opponent chooses, but at least you can influence the decision your opponent may make.
• The hovering also happens in other places, like the graveyard, so if you see that your opponent is constantly looking at theirs, chances are that they’re planning to use some kind of reanimation spell to get back a creature, so you can plan before that and even know what creature they may be getting back soon.
• Put stops on key phases like precombat main phase, attack step, and postcombat main phase when you have no plays to make and you still want to bluff a spell. This is key because while you can also use full control, it’s very obvious if you start doing it at a given period if you haven’t throughout the game, signaling that you are, in fact, using full control and likely your opponents will infer you don't have anything. Doing things the way I mentioned simulates how phases work if you were to have a spell, and the sequence is smoother than having to hold full control at all times, meaning your opponent has a hard time knowing if you have something or not.
• Hitting the “Next” key (Space) quickly is critical for bluffing spells when you're low on mana. For example, let’s say you have a Snakeskin Veil in hand with only 1 green mana, and your opponent knows that it's the only green instant in the format. You can start hitting space after your opponent takes actions that don't require you to cast the card, as otherwise, they’ll know something is up, and they’ll infer that you have the exact card they may be thinking about and plan around it.
• If you've been paying attention to your games, you’ll know that the game automatically passes the turn if you play a land and have no more plays to make. To prevent this, I usually put stops on my first and second main phases if I know I can't play anything after dropping the land but still want to bluff an action or a spell.

I know these don’t strictly fall into the complex board state definitions, but paying attention to the small details, especially with phases, is a massive part of MTGA that you may need to take very seriously when you’re competing at high stakes tournaments or even when you have invested some gems in the events that the platform provides.

Wrap Up

Hat Trick | Illustration by Sebastian Giacobino

As you may have seen, playing MTG digitally can be challenging if you want to get the most out of the platform. Hopefully, this guide has been useful for you in that regard. Put Draftsim's knowledge to work for you with Arena Tutor and power up your gameplay with meta deck data, Draft suggestions, and in-game tracking.

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