Editor’s Note
This analysis breaks down the value of the *Avatar: The Last Airbender* Mastery Pass for *MTG Arena*, providing clear benchmarks for both new and experienced players to determine if it’s a worthwhile purchase.
If you’re a new player, you hit the “worth it” at Level 17. As a more experienced player with a full collection of previous sets, though, your “worth it” level is around 44, more details on that further down.
Wizards tweaks what you can get with the Mastery Pass every time they release a new one. They try to find a balance between not giving too much while still giving enough to entice players to spring for the Mastery Pass without feeling like they’re being cheated.
This can leave us non-whale players in a… weird spot. Let’s see if the math makes sense, or if you should skip it this time around.
We all know that Wizards can push our buttons. If reddit is anything to go by, it seems like everything they do riles someone up. The Mastery Pass is no stranger to the peanut gallery, so save it for the comments, and let’s jump into what you get, shall we?
The Avatar: The Last Airbender set mastery has a final reward at level 54, and you level up for every 1,000 XP. There are 26 packs and five mastery orbs to be won on this track.
Go on a journey for the Mastery Pass and you can earn:
Aang profile avatar
20 packs (4xTLA, 4xOM1, 4xEOE, 4xTDM, 4xDFT,)
10 Avatar: The Last Airbender mythic rare individual card rewards
uncommon ICRs for levels beyond 61
New Adventures sleeve
Master the Elements exquisite sleeve
40 Mastery Orbs
15 common card styles
10 uncommon card styles
1 player draft token
4,000 gold
1,200 gems
3 Appa companions
The Through the Omenpaths set mastery has a final reward at level 46, and you level up for every 1,000 XP. There are 23 packs and five mastery orbs to win on this track.
Go for the Mastery Pass and you can earn:
Sliver Gravemother avatar
20 packs (4xOM1, 4xEOE, 4xTDM, 4xDFT, 4xFDN)
10 Through the Omenpaths mythic rare individual card rewards
uncommon ICRs for levels beyond 60
Druneth, Reviver of the Hive sleeve
Fateweaver exquisite sleeve
35 Mastery Orbs
15 common card styles
10 uncommon card styles
1 player draft token
4,000 gold
1,200 gems
3 Sliver companions
In early versions of Magic Arena, you could get five packs a week if you got the wins. Wizards brought in the weekly reset system and made adjustments over time.
All the rewards in the mastery pass have gem values attached to them in the Arena store. However, one important thing to note here is that cosmetics are a pretty subjective issue. Because of that, I’ll leave cosmetics to a section of their own and give my final verdict without considering them. Don’t worry if you like collecting cosmetics; I’ll also assign a value to those in their own area.
I use gems as a currency to keep things simple. Let’s start with gems and gold since these are the easiest to quantify. A similar unit of price makes it simple to compare cost and benefit.
I’ll give you two numbers: “cosmetics-are-valuable” vs. “cosmetics-ain’t-sh*t.”
The easiest way to get a baseline for what things are worth is by looking at pack prices. Thankfully the first thing that we need is already done: how much packs are worth.
Packs are simple since they’re worth a solid 200 gems.
For cosmetics, let’s start with mastery orbs. These can be redeemed for card styles and sleeves for each color. In each set’s Mastery Emporium you can earn the orbs to get all the cosmetics for that set if you have the mastery pass. With the free set mastery you can earn five orbs, which is usually good for two sleeves and a card style, or five card styles, however you want to divvy up the pawprints.
If we take a look at Arena’s Store, we can deduce that common card styles are set at 400 gems, uncommon styles are 600 gems, a rare card style costs 1,000 gems, and mythic styles come in at 1,200 gems. Card sleeves, on their high end, are 1,200 gems.
