Yes, it is pay-to-win, just like MTG often is in real life due to physical card scarcity. There are, however, many free ways to play where money would not help you. I love the draft, sealed, and Jump Start limited formats as they are great ways to practice for real drafts and sealed events, plus you cannot buy yourself a good deck in these formats, it's all RNG what cards you will get. If you're playing this because you really want to try playing standard, you'll probably be disappointed as these formats are dominated by people with the best cards and deck compositions possible. The good news is that by playing the limited format games, you can progressively unlock more cards for free to play in standard by winning and even just by playing in the case of drafts and sealed events. Commander format missing from the game is a huge downside for this game, as that is simply the most popular MTG format by a mile. Players have set amounts of time to play cards. This is great because someone cannot infinitely lock up a game, forcing their opponent to quit. This is not a perfect solution though, many people will run these timers to their max, especially while losing, in an attempt to force their opponent to quit. The best strategy I've found for dealing with these people is to bust out a YouTube video on my phone and start running the timer out back at them, this usually gets them to stop or straight up quit the game as they should do since they're clearly aware they have lost the game.

Yes, it is pay-to-win, just like MTG often is in real life due to physical card scarcity. There are, however, many free ways to play where money would not help you. I love the draft, sealed, and Jump Start limited formats as they are great ways to practice for real drafts and sealed events, plus you cannot buy yourself a good deck in these formats, it's all RNG what cards you will get. If you're playing this because you really want to try playing standard, you'll probably be disappointed as these formats are dominated by people with the best cards and deck compositions possible. The good news is that by playing the limited format games, you can progressively unlock more cards for free to play in standard by winning and even just by playing in the case of drafts and sealed events. Commander format missing from the game is a huge downside for this game, as that is simply the most popular MTG format by a mile. Players have set amounts of time to play cards. This is great because someone cannot infinitely lock up a game, forcing their opponent to quit. This is not a perfect solution though, many people will run these timers to their max, especially while losing, in an attempt to force their opponent to quit. The best strategy I've found for dealing with these people is to bust out a YouTube video on my phone and start running the timer out back at them, this usually gets them to stop or straight up quit the game as they should do since they're clearly aware they have lost the game.