I play mostly standard, but like to draft whenever I have enough gold or gems to do so. Be aware that the Historic format in Arena will include Alchemy which has some digital only cards and mechanics that don’t exist in paper. Some people like it, I don’t care for it.

Be sure to redeem all the codes for free packs before spending wild cards.

I think brawl is the best if you’re looking to be effective with wild cards. It’s a less competitive format that you’ll be familiar with if you have played edh, and you will spend less wildcards solely because you can only have 1 of each.

As for what I play, when I started I crafted the best mono red standard deck I could and farmed my 15 wins of the day until I could afford to build any brawl/standard deck i wanted with my wildcards. But that path requires you to really like playing red.

Historic is expensive and the only format I do not recommend.

90% of the time I’m playing Explorer since I like my decks always being available, and I’m not a big Alchemy fan, but I do dabble in Historic/Standard/Historic Brawl on occasion.

Red aggro decks would be a good starting place, they’re good enough to keep you playing and cheap enough that you arent burning tons of wildcards on most decks. Then as you build up your wildcards and test out other modes you’ll have a better starting place.

I actually prefer Historic over Explorer because I like playing with the older cards on Arena that aren’t Pioneer legal. Definitely harder to get into though, I’ve been playing since launch and already have a large collection.

Depends on what you’re looking for. Do you want to play competitively and gain ranks for the season rewards, or just have fun with it?

For just having fun with it I’ll echo the recommendations of Brawl (probably Historic Brawl). For competitive, Explorer is probably the safest bet. It’s a bit more competitive than Standard, but Standard is pretty high power nowadays anyway.

I enjoy Explorer lately although the meta is very stale some days.

Otherwise Historic Brawl is fun. When I feel particularly casual I just skip opponents on there if I stare down the 6th Atraxa pile in a row.

Also, for me Explorer feels nicer than Historic lately due to the digital only mechanics taking hold in the meta. Just not my favourite style of play.