bad news: not friendly. it's rather brutal for new and casual players.

good news: it's the most popular online card game by a long shot and only 7.6 percent of digital card game players in the U.S. buy in-game content., so...

spending money will give you a bit of an advantage. alright. priority order for spending. stop according to your budget. first $5 you spend is on a welcome bundle. 10 classic packs and a legendary. you get a legendary in the first 10 packs of every expansion, but Whispers and Mean Streets are rotating out in April 2018, so keep that in mind. next $15-ish is to get 10 Knights packs. if you wanna drop $50 at any point then the preorder for the next expansion, Kobolds, is coming out in early December. it's a good deal but limited. then after that it's mainly splitting between Classic, Knights, Kobolds, and then some of the older expansions if you feel like it and don't mind that they'll be rotating out fairly soon. I started not that long ago, relatively speaking, but dropped enough into Whispers and Mean Streets to get Aya and Y'Shaarj. made a huge difference. but yeah. after that it's just split evenly-ish between Classic, Knights, and Kobolds. Ungoro doesn't rotate out until April 2019 but the quest legendaries suck, though you might as well pick up ten packs, just to get one of them even if it's just for dust.