MTG is pay to win (or at least has a very high table stakes) because most of the skill comes in deckbuilding not in play. There aren't enough play decisions in

MTG is pay to win (or at least has a very high table stakes) because most of the skill comes in deckbuilding not in play. There aren't enough play decisions in the game to gain a large piloting edge consistently. When most of the skill is deckbuilding you basically need access to the whole pool of cards in order to play the best deck for the current metagame (this changes a lot online). For example, bant shift was a really good deck for GP denver, it was a very bad deck within a week after GP denver as people were prepared for it and played decks that had good matchups vs it.