MTG

Surprising level of transparency here when it's very easy to just ignore these kinds of questions, even if it's a bit roundabout.

"[W]e have to take into account numerous factors to make sure that boosters packs are equally desirable. One of the biggest factors is the overall average powerful level of the cards."

Translation: no one would (theoretically) buy "under-powered" Standard boosters if they were the same price as "high-powered" masters boosters. This doesn't really appreciate players who want to draft or want Standard cards (and would therefore buy Standard packs regardless) but I'm sure they have people there doing this all day every day.

Congratulations to @kaiyo@lemmy.world for winning our subscriber giveaway! Sending tons of positivity for great pulls, let us know what you get!

We got 59 submissions to the post from 2 weeks ago. For the curious, I plugged them all into wheelofnames.com and the linked video shows the results.

Can’t wait to do this bigger and better at 5,000! Thanks to kaiyo and everyone for being a part of the community.

Quote:

wildcardgamez asks: Bloomburrow and Duskmourn were both mentioned as Q3, and the next sets were for 2025, does this mean nothing from Q4 2024 was revealed? Maro: The slides oddly missed Q4, so the sets weren’t labeled accurately as to when they release. They do release (for now) in that order.

First up, here are some things you can expect:

• a new type of token (at least done as a cohesive theme)
• a card that can activate to copy enchantments
• Adventures on a new permanent type
• an artifact that has two different artifact subtypes normally associated with artifact tokens
• a creature type from Alpha gets a draft archetype
• fairy tale Sagas
• multiple legendary Foods
• a new card with a lobotomy effect
• a creature with two triggers, one for artifacts entering the battlefield and one for enchantments
• a new mechanic that batches together three items that have been in the game since Alpha but never batched before

Next, here are some rules text that will be showing up on cards:

• “If a permanent entering the battlefield causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time.”
• “Look at the top twenty cards of your library.”
• “it produces three times as much of that mana instead.”
• “Sacrifice all Reflections you control.”
• “Creatures you control with +1/+1 counters on them have all activated abilities of all creature cards exiled with CARDNAME.”
• “have base power and toughness 4/4 and flying.”
• “exile up to one other non-Fox creature”
• “Land creatures you control”
• “Whenever you tap an untapped creature an opponent controls,”
• “X is 2 plus the number of cards in your graveyard that are instant cards, sorcery cards, and/or have an Adventure.”

Here are some creature type lines from the set:

• Creature – Mouse
• Creature – Rabbit Unicorn
• Creature – Faerie Shapeshifter
• Creature – Elf Fox Knight
• Creature – Giant Archer
• Creature – Plant Wurm
• Creature – Elemental Raccoon
• Legendary Creature – Rat Noble
• Legendary Creature – Vedalken Scout
• Legendary Creature – Human Warlock Bard

Finally, here are some names in the set:

• Candy Grapple
• Charming Scoundrel
• Food Fight
• Protective Parents
• Scream Puff
• Stroke of Midnight
• A Tale for the Ages
• Three Blind Mice
• Three Bowls of Porridge
• Up the Beanstalk

Preordain is unbanned in modern. Mind's Desire is unbanned in legacy.

Bit of fluff in this but some of the insights from Mark in this Lessons Learned. I particularly like the nuked ability, Debt, from Guilds of Ravnica as well as his lesson in WAR about making sure players get what they're expecting.

• Unstable: not everything happens quickly. Sometimes the key to success is to have a vision and slowly work toward it, even if it takes great time. This is not only true of Un- sets but also mechanics, themes, and set ideas.... So many of my successes started with great doubt from the rest of R&D. The key is realizing that good ideas can win out, but they require a lot of nurturing and refining.

• Dominaria: the importance of iteration. "We began vision design not knowing how we were mechanically executing on our theme [of history]. We got to solutions, not because we had a sudden epiphany of how to do it, but because we took ideas and worked on them." Mark uses Saga and historic as examples.

• Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance: overall system and structure is more important than any one design or mechanic. "Something that works well in a vacuum but doesn't integrate with the rest of the set is a problem." Mark goes over an unused Orzhov mechanic called Debt (certain spells give debt counters to your opponent and at the end of the turn, your opponent could pay 1 for each debt counter they wanted to get rid of and would lose 1 life if they had any remaining debt counters).

• War of the Spark: you can't fight your theme "I was designing a Planeswalker war set, but the audience wanted a Planeswalker war set. I was focusing on the wrong thing.... You must understand what your set is asking for and then figure out how to bring that theme to life. The best Magic designs deliver on the thing that players want most."

Summary:

Themes for the Future

• Innovation for the Future and Honoring the Past
• Creating Something for Everyone
• Commitment to Magic Lore and Story

2023

Coming August 10th - Secret Lair Commander Deck: Angels

Wilds of Eldraine is the first set of the "Omenpath Arc", the start of a 3-year storyline culminating in 2026.

Jurassic World UB coming with next Ixalan set, like Transformers with BRO.

Additional LTR holiday release coming in November

MTG Arena

• Anniversary events upcoming in September
• Better duplicate protection to be introduced in WOE
• New achievement system to be added
• SOI last remastered set "for a while", but full Khans of Tarkir set to be added by the end of the year.

2024

Release schedule

Ravnica Remastered

• Akin to Dominaria Remastered along with retro frames

Murders at Karlov Manor (Q1 standard set)

• Top down murder mystery set based in Ravnica
• Not a "normal" Ravnica set - not focused on guilds
• Focused on solving mysteries
• Comes with Ravnica: Clue Edition, a multiplayer Magic experience

Fallout UB Commander Decks

• Themes set to represent factions from the world
• Coming March 2024

Outlaws of Thunder Junction (Q2 standard set)

• Brand new plane featuring multiple villains from across the multiverse

Modern Horizons III

• Introducing double-face cards to MH in a complex drafting format
• Coming to Arena, available to draft and play at launch.

Arena additions

• Pioneer masters- Draftable set intended to make Arena "Tournament Pioneer" complete
• Integration of local FNM play into Arena (stuff like XP on your account)

Assassin's Creed UB

• Introducing "Beyond Boosters" - a new kind of booster unique to the setting, featuring new cards and reprints

Bloomburrow (Q3 standard set)

• Start of the "Dragon Storm" story arc
• No humanoids. Only anthropomorphized animals (mice, rats, frogs, birds, etc) at their normal sizes - but with magic and weapons

Duskmourn: House of Horror (Q3(?) standard set)

• Top down modern (70s/80s) horror set
• Brand new world set inside one giant mansion

2025

(very loose info on sets in development)

Innistrad Remasterd

Codename Tennis

• "Death Race" set taking place across three different worlds via the Omenpaths
• Two worlds from premiere sets with no "return". Third world seen on cards but never visited in a premiere set

Codename Ultimate

• A return to Tarkir
• A blending of Khans of Tarkir and Dragons of Tarkir

Final Fantasy UB

• Tentpole release like LTR
• Will encompass each main FF release all the way up to FFXVI
• Will be available on Arena

General Arena plans

• Better new player experience
• Improving collectibility and personalization
• Figuring out 3+ players on Arena

Codename Volleyball

• Start of unnamed story arc (codenamed 'Metronome')
• Set in outer space as a top down "Space Opera"

Codename Wrestling

• A return to Lorwyn

2026

(extremely loose concepts. Still in vision design)

Codename Yachting

• Return to Arcavios

Codename Zipline

• "Capstone Event Set" for the previous arcs (like March of the Machine and War of the Spark)

What will be banned? Maybe we will see unbans?

I play only Explorer, so I hope for [[Karn, the Great Creator]] ban. Without wishboard MonoG will need to have answers in maindeck, so [[Storm the Festival]] won't be as consistent as now. Midrange deck, that have combo-finisher ( with [[Pestilent Cauldron]] ) and can loop [[The Stone Brain]], seems too strong right now.

About unbans. I don't know about 2 cards:

• [[Nexus of Fate]]
• [[Leyline of Abundance]]

Will they break current Pioneer? The rest can't be unbanned.

For the next few weeks, I'm going to post some of the old articles we wrote or published on MTGZone.com back in the late 90s and early 2000s! There's not a lot of content but some of it is still kinda relevant today 😛

This article was originally published in January 2003. All spelling and grammar mistakes are left as is. I have modified the referenced cards to link to the scryfall page for the card.

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I remember a time when you could actually buy a preconstructed deck, or "precon" as I like to call them, and put up a fighting chance against your friend's deck. I'm talkin about Tempest block and maybe even Urza's block. White Heat, Dominator, and that near-mono-red burn deck from Tempest block rocked. They gave you good, usable cards like Paladin en-Vec, Counterspells (Forbid and Mana Leak), and Aluren. Rares that could pay the rest of the deck off on the market and in the trading scene. And you got three of them.

I don't know what happened after that. Maybe they realized that they could make more money doling out cheap rares (and only two, nonetheless), that certain cards weren't even getting played by the little kids at sealed deck/draft tournaments, or just that they felt like screwing us out of $10. But not knowing the sorry state they have hit, I decided on buying one to get myself up-to-speed somewhat on the current Type II environment. Browsing through the card lists of the current four none possessed even the possibility that they could win and were very poorly put together. They look like what my 10 year old cousin scraps up when he plays his friends: 20 basic lands, some cool non-basic ones with pretty pictures, huge creatures that won't hit the table (check out the green/red "Devastation" from Onslaught), and mediocre spells only prolonging your death. None are worth buying; you can't even sell all the cards back to dealers for half the deck's price.

So if you want some advice, it would be cheaper and much more worthwhile to make up your own deck of cards from the set and buy them online or at a store. You'd actually get cards you want, would play, and would use again. And you'd gain valuable deck-making experience. I hope more people, especially players newer to the game that buy them to learn, notice that we're getting ripped off and that Wizards of the Coast should know how to make a decent deck.

Your thoughts are welcomed,
~Mike Gioia

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This was originally published in January 2003 on MTGZone.com.

Normally, when you play and win a game with any deck from the Starter Deck Duel event, you gain those cards from the deck in your collection. Right now it's bugged and not adding the cards. From the latest patch notes:

In addition to the new decks, players will also have each of the current new player deck cards added to their collection. (NOTE: We've discovered some bugs with this that we're working to address)

See the recent patch notes for more info.

I believe you can open a support ticket to get the cards added, and I also think that if you have previously won, then the cards will still get added once the bug is fixed.

This is Mark's 20th (!) anniversary as head designer! He lists out a bunch of highlights and lessons from each of the sets in the previous year, a few that stood out:

• There needs to be more synergy between sets. This has been true since blocks went away and one I really hope they improve upon (or just bring blocks back!).

• Many players liked having a set (Brother's War) that looked back at one of Magic's greatest stories. "Players liked seeing old characters they recognized in card form.... They also liked how the design made the artifacts feel like a throwback while still applying modern design technology."

• The Transformer cards (in Brothers War) felt out of place. Happy he identified this one. "[T]he core of the set for many players was nostalgia. These players felt seeing cards of a different IP flew in the face of that."

• All of the lessons from Aftermath! Set was too small, most (all?) players didn't like paying the same amount for fewer cards, the set was sold as story-focused but not much happened story-wise, and many players were unhappy about Planeswalkers losing their sparks.

The last playgroup I had wasn’t conventional; we didn’t play commander, but we also weren’t heavily 1v1, we all played modern decks but our games were both group ffa games and 1v1 games, and we had to balance our decks for both.

One thing that helped our games stay balanced was that we very often played planechase on top of that — not with the standard rules, though, rather than each player bringing a deck of planes, we just used a full set of planes (we played proxy back then), and had one big plane deck which was “neutral” to any player, and existed to help weaken combos and strengthen general purpose strategies.

Also now that i’m trying to get into commander, commander feels like a fun place for the mechanic, whether under standard rules or the “neutral all planes shared deck” variation i played.

Is this an unpopular opinion?

Congratulations to the Top 8 players at Pro Tour The Lord of The Rings!

Ashiok will also be the only PW card in WOE.

*Also also, apparently one PW per set will be the norm going forward!

Collections of the images shared via Twitter for the preview panel

Collections of the images shared via Twitter for the preview panel

Collections of the images shared via Twitter for the preview panel

Coverage is at https://twitch.tv/magic and starts at 5am Eastern Time today and tomorrow and at 4am on Sunday.

I posed this question a few days ago as a comment and was encouraged to make it into a standalone post. I'm asking it specifically within the context of Commander, but suggesting your workflows for other formats would probably be helpful for people who aren't me :P

As someone who has been casually playing MTG for several years, I'm only now starting to try to build my own EDH decks from scratch (as opposed to just buying and tweaking precons). I've tried to do my due diligence and research important topics like ramping & mana bases, read articles & posts about determining wincons & threats, and have scoured through EDHREC and Skryfall for thematic/synergistic cards... And all of that is great for finding cards that *could * work in a deck.

But this is the part that most articles & instructional pieces stop at (or glaze over). So now I have a giant pile of theoretical cards for a theoretical deck, and no idea which ones I should actually purchase or playtest with. There is no one-size-fits-all method for paring down your deck, so I'm hoping to hear how you, personally, go about doing it (and whether or not you've come across articles that address this part).

Currently I’m trying to use tags on Moxfield but it’s mostly a confusing mess as I try to trim down ~200 possibilities into a lean, functioning deck. Tags seem a bit too inflexible when I'm trying to tag by both function (ramp, threat, protection) and priority.

Big thanks to Mike, Andrew, gildedjake, and LovesTha BGU who have already chipped in some ideas at this comment. I'll leave it up to them whether or not to repost their comments here.