Oh no... that doesn’t bode well for me then

They stated in the past that they expect you to open roughly 20-30 packs per month if you grind out your (profitable) wins every day. In fact, the 3 "free" packs every Friday are just being given out to simulate what they (at least at the time of implementing the current economy) expected the final economy to look like. Which is similar to the current one, but a couple other game modes that will give you those 3 "free" packs instead of them just being handed to you.

Hopefully they listen to all the negative feedback, but people gave them negative feedback all throughout the NDA period apparently and they went with an even worse economy, so I honestly don't know what they are planning on doing at this point in time. All I know is that so far they have deliberately prevented anything from directly replacing/threatening Paper.

Edit: In case anyone is wondering, no, I am not playing the closed beta anymore. It isn't any fun to be more than a month behind everyone else with no way to catch-up, playing the same boring aggro deck every game isn't fun, and I don't feel like grinding out daily wins that aren't going to mean anything when the wipe comes around when the grinding isn't fun.

Grinding can be fun. Grinding out cards in Magic 2013 was fun. Grinding out armor in MHW is fun.... to me. Getting a pack every 3 out of 5 days with nothing meaningful for my collection is soul crushingly bad grinding.

I'll probably start seriously grinding the game once they announce they are doing the "final" wipe. If I think I want to play and gems are at all reasonably priced and the economy isn't ****.

I'm not convinced this is going to get ported to consoles any time in the near future, so the fact that you are apparently waiting/hoping for an XBONE release means you are going to be waiting/hoping for quite a while.

Ok that’s good I guess

Haven't played it yet, but based on streams, this game actually looks pretty ugly. The lands are inconspicuous, and tapped creatures / lands aren't obvious. I'll probably still try it when it gets to open beta, but ugh, it's not something I'm excited to play.

It's actually a really nice board to play on. The mechanics are really good with the exception of tapped mana jumping all over. The angle of tap get's comfortable real quick to be honest. I haven't noticed it since the first few days playing in January.