It's been years since I played MTG. Post Hasbro buy[out, WotC's ability to be a steward for the game has steadily declined with its profits. I think Arena is fine, but honestly what I loved where the times I showed up at tournaments and got to interact with live people and shuffle actual cards. The online grind of Arena games (particularly the awful BO1 format which is NO good for MTG at all) wasn't for me.
I know there are other card games and every once in awhile I would dabble in them, but I've loved MTG and its gameplay for so long that I have a particularly high bar.
A month ago I tried Flesh and Blood, and it passed that bar.
There's a lot of cool stuff about it, but what I really want to emphasize is:
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it's all about lines of play. A game can go short in FAB and you still have a dizzying amount of plays that you could have made, should have made, and actually did make. From turn 1 you are making relevant decisions. There is no turn 1 "Land, go" and hope that your hand develops to a point that you can actually play the game. From Turn 1 you have all your equipment and resources you need to do stuff in your hand. Round to round you get different cards in hand (you generally fill up to 4 every turn), so each turn you see a lot of different plays and opportunities for making skilled and learned decisions.
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it's pretty cheap to collect. The majority of cards I have in my current deck are ones I got right out of buying some boxes (like 1 of each gets you all the commons and most rares - I am assuming 2-3 boxes give you a complete playset of just about everything you need. There are some cards that are pretty expensive and definitely what you need to play at the most competitive levels of the game, but overall you can put decks together rather cheaply that feel like they are functioning well and playing games, even against decks with all the expensive cards.
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It's the best parts of a tcg and a fighting game. You get the richness of trying different combos and combinations, but you also get rewarded with developing character loyalty. You can play whatever character you want, and while not all characters are viable at the upper echelons of play, each is rewarding on its own and you can do impressive stuff by simply understanding your character better than your opponent understands theirs.
OK, so...you wanna try it out?
There is an incredible learn to play digital tutorial at https://www.felttable.com/fab - go there.
If you like the play of the game, you can try out the FAB Blitz precontstructed decks. They are really good and only about $11-15 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fab+blitz+deck&sprefix=fab+blitz%2Caps%2C111&ref=nb_sb_ss_pltr-ranker-10hours_1_9
Last: if you wanna play some online games, hit me up :)