I used to play a little bit of kitchen MtG and got into MtG:Arena a couple years ago, but got frustrated with playing the same four decks after several months. That game isn't very welcoming to us free-to-play plebs.
A couple of weeks ago I've found out you can play Arena on an Android phone and decided to give a try. My phone is too old to run it though, so I had to download it from a shady site and sideload. It freezes for like five minutes before it starts, these fps drops, the UI is too clunky for the phone, but it's playable.
The people on reddit who were discussing sideloading Arena where also hyping up Legends of Runeterra. Supposedly the game is very generous to free-to-play players, so I downloaded it too.
LoR is a much better mobile experience for sure, but I've played through the whole prologue, won a bunch of games against the bots, tried all the seven newbie decks several times and I don't think I'm having fun yet. Like I boot up Arena, play a couple of my old "historic" decks against Arena's shitty AI, get my combos and it's still fun. LoR leaves me cold. I don't get it.
Should I dive dipper into it and learn the minutia mechanic and strategies? Maybe it becomes fun when you get you cool big boy decks? Am I ruined my MtG and forever unable to enjoy other collectable card games?
LoR was ok but only kept my interest for a couple of months. I've been playing MtG arena since beta. It really is free to play friendly, I play at a pretty high rank and have only ever spent $5 and that was for a cosmetic set. It may be a touch grindy to get a decent collection but so is LoR and every other ftp TCG. I fairly easily get over 20 packs a month plus tons of free random cards.