Magic: The Gathering Arena Mobile soft launches on Android

Wizards of the Coast’s extremely popular digital card game Magic: The Gathering Arena is out now on mobile, launching as an early access title on Google Play today with full Android and iOS versions coming later this year.

In Magic: The Gathering Arena you use decks of cards to generate five separate colours of mana, and then play them to summon creatures, cast spells and activate special abilities. You use your selected deck to battle opponents, with the goal of reducing their life-total to zero before they can achieve the same against you.

The game was first released on PC in 2019, and the mobile version includes cross-platform support to prevent the playerbase from being split. Therefore it includes all content the PC version has, as well as all the new cards available in the new Viking-themed Kaldheim expansion.

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Besides new cards, Kaldheim also introduces two new mechanics. The first is an ability called Boast, which lets you activate an ability only if a creature attacked this turn. The second is Foretell, which allows you to exile cards from your hand face down to cast at a later time for its foretell cost.

“We want fans to have fun, enjoyable experiences with the long-awaited mobile version of Magic, and we want to make sure our releases are polished and ready to play,” said the official reveal of Magic: The Gathering Arena Mobile earlier this month. The UI of the game has been tweaked to account for touch-screen devices, which makes the experience as smooth as possible.

You can download Magic: The Gathering Arena Mobile in early access later today on the Google Play store for Android. The full version for iOS and Android is coming later in 2021.