I've never played the card game, but I had played other of the various electronic versions of Magic. This version, like all the others, is an extremely faithful representation of the core gameplay mechanics that encapsulate and define the Magic universe. That, plus the fact that this is a free to play game (at least on XBox 1), will help you kill a lot of hours without hitting your pockets.
Here are two areas that the game is sorely lacking though:
Broken online matching
It's obvious to everyone except the game designers, I suppose, that a level 1 player shouldn't be matched up against a level 40 (highest level in game) player. Yet, that is by far the most common matching that I've seen after playing for nearly a month. This is bad.
But what's worse is that the reward is the same whether you beat someone your same level or 39 levels your senior. That is 30 coins for the winner; zilch for the loser. And since coins are how you gain more cards to create better decks, it is very clear that the current matching system is setup to reward those who already have great decks (i.e. spent a lot of coins), especially when you take into account that the other way that you can amass coins is simply through purchasing bundles of them with your (or maybe your daddy's) credit card! The result is level 1 players with starter decks playing and consistently losing to level 40 players using decks that literally contain every planeswalker in the game. Again, this is bad.
There is a simple solution that could solve this quite easily though; and I know how simple this can be because I'm a software engineer at one of the most renown companies on the planet. That solution is to actually match players by their level! On top of that simple fix, you could improve the reward system too. Let's say you create a spectrum where players can be matched with anyone +/- X levels from themselves, where X is less than or equal to 10. Then you could create multipliers that affect your reward depending on the number of levels between players. Something like an additional 1/3 coins for every level higher and conversely subtract a coin for every level lower. This scheme would mean that rewards for the versus mode would range between 20 and 90 coins, which in the worst case is still better than the 15 coins they give you for beating AI controlled opponents.
No trading economy
There is no marketplace to trade for cards, so the only way you can get a particular card you are hoping to add to your collection is to get lucky and have it included in one of the official booster packs that can be purchased via the in-game store. An opportunity was lost to create a vibrant trading economy here, as it really seems that the Wizards of the Coast & Stainless Games folks were short sighted and focused only on how they can make money directly.