I don't think it's the volume of sets that will suffer, but the quality of the set design in those sets. I feel like if resources are allocated more towards the UB cards we'll see all the cool and interesting mechanics and cards printed in those sets and then Standard becomes the afterthought.

I pretty much agree with all of your points, but wanted to add a few more that have gone into me taking a long Arena break:

• All rares are effectively ~$5, and mythics cost even more

One of the greatest aspects of the game pre-Arena was that there were literally thousands of cheap cards (cheap rares/mythics) to make playing off-meta or fun decks affordable. Some are even quite competitive, yet in Arena the cost for every rare and mythic normalizes around the same price. Roughly $6/rare if you buy gems for packs, or about $2.50/rare if you buy rare wildcards directly. However, there is a cap on the direct buy WCs.

Having ALL rares equalized in a rather high price forces everyone to spend their WCs on only the highest performing rares and mythics. If you only have $20 for Arena, you're not going to spend it all on 4 jank rares for a pet deck, you're going to use them on the top tier rares in the tier 1 decks.

I believe this has unbelievable consequences in game play all the way to player mental health, and after a while I was looking at just how much I was spending to stay current in Arena and I was sickened by it. Not even kidding here -- I never had more than a few hours a week to play, so I was putting in about $200/set! I stopped in January 2024 and haven't returned but at this point I think it's essentially impossible for the economy to change.

• Not interested in the play patterns

This is not Arena-specific, but all of the formats available on Arena right now are inundated with play patterns that I don't find enjoyable. Starting with Timeless, because it's the most powerful format, I don't even watch gameplay on Twitch or Youtube anymore because it's not interesting. That is a huge problem I think, because it doesn't look fun to play. You have horrible play patterns like the boros energy cards, Grief+Reanimate, all of the silly Alchemy cards like Juggernaut Peddler, and when you combine everything the game is literally decided on turn 2. That is not fun at all, in fact that feels like the opposite of fun to me. I like puzzles and board state and cards that do pretty much one thing, where through the combination of one-things you can create a complex game. We don't have that right now.

With Standard, often Standard players say the format is healthy or "healthier than it's ever been" and I contest that with it's flat out not fun to play and not fun to watch. That's my experience. Look at the # of Twitch streamers. Look at CovertGoBlue quitting the game because he found Standard to be too unenjoyable. These are the real effects of what WoTC is doing to the format -- making it faster and more powerful, more pushed rares and mythics, and way less deck design thought. The fact that Sheoldred is still in standard makes me sick.

I have been getting into Pioneer lately because I think it's perhaps the only interesting format left to play, and with that I may get into Explorer but I really wish the card pool was equal to Pioneer. I think that's a huge mistake they're making in slow-rolling the card releases.

• Brawl is unplayable

If anyone can give me one reason why Nadu isn't banned in Brawl I'll concede, but the fact that it hasn't been banned (as well as Rusko and Baral imo) tells us everything we need to know about Brawl: WoTC. doesn't. give. a. shit. They don't care at all, and the lack of not only meaningful but ANY updates at all to queuing or banlist is enough of a reason to hard avoid it all together.

This is a format where players just auto-concede to certain commanders that they don't want to play. Imagine managing a popular game where tons of your playerbase hates aspects of it so much that they just concede to take a loss when they see a set of cards you design to be fun. This is the opposite of fun to me, and again I think it non-trivially contributes to negative player mental health.

I could go on but this has gotten long already. I appreciate the post because some of this stuff I have been thinking about for a long time.

Yea I agree, I thought this was the cancelled one but maybe they changed their minds? 😝 I am exited though, I've always thought there is more than enough content in the game's history to make a tv show out of.

I think this is just all a bad take from Mark. I understand his position and that this blog is mostly a defense for WoTC's decisions, but this just misses every one of the complaints for me. He's basically saying "this is hard, I've been doing this for 30 years, trust us" while not addressing the actual complaints.

To me these are arguments why Maro, Michael Majors, and the entire FIRE team should be let go and new people brought in. Doing this for 30 years and still making these mistakes means that someone else is making the decisions and those decisions are not and won't be in the best interest of the game.

What I see is them asking $270 (!!!) for 120 cards. 12 boosters of 10 cards each, for $270 is just insanity to me. Right out of the gate you're spending $2.25 per CARD. The first and last collector booster box I ever opened was for Neon Dynasty and even those 12 packs felt bad given the cost. I remember trying to stretch it out over two days. This feels even worse for the same exact price and I just cannot understand who is paying it.

I think The One Ring has been slipping under the radar with all the focus on Nadu. Nadu is definitely a problem but The One Ring is being run in nearly every other deck and I just cannot see how this is a good thing for any format. If aggro, midrange, combo, and control are all running the same card I think that's a clear sign the card is not only too strong, but too easy to run as well.

There just aren't any downsides, not even color pips, to prevent auto-including it and the upside is to high that it's often the right decision to just run 4 of them. I saw a number of games in PT MH3 where the game was almost over but the player behind casts TOR and then ends up winning from the card advantage it generated.

I don't play Legacy but I've always been a big fan of the format. It's very interesting to hear their thoughts on how negatively impactful Grief has been for the format. I think it's frustrating but expected that Wizards delays banning a card from the current active set that they're promoting. They haven't even shipped out Gift Bundles yet (July) so to ban a card from the set before people even receive the product is definitely never happening.

I do think that Grief creates non-games, and I think non-games are truly antithetical to "fun" and fun should be the #1 concern for every game in existence. The fact that they're not banning it means they care more about money than fun.

I think they quietly renamed Historic Brawl to "Brawl" and then Brawl became "Standard Brawl". That's just from what I've seen online but I don't if that's formal or anything.

It makes sense but I still don't like it. Viashino Sandstalker is one of my most beloved cards!

https://mtgzone.com/post/376725

This is cool, kind of like Dark Omnath in a weird way. They're both 4/4s for 4 but instead of landfall Vito utilizes permanent sacrifice.

I will first say you can ask as many questions and post as many things as you want to this community and you will always get answers from people, and the questions will always be well-received.

Are you looking to just play with your child, or are you looking to play at a local store or something else? That will help us narrow things down a little.

Does black white deck where you clean the board with wrath of god then return zombies from the graveyard work?

If you are just looking to play casually at home, this deck and all deck ideas you have will be playable and fun. This tends to not do so well in the current formats, but there is a deck you can play on Arena in the Historic format that you might like. Search for "Historic Orzhov Zombies", and here is an article and video from 2021 about the play style: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/historic-101-orzhov-zombies

How do you play with two sided cards? Are they just for sleeves?

There are a few types of two sided cards, sometimes referred to as MDFCs (Modal Dual Faced Cards):

1. Lands, like Clearwater Pathway let you decide which one to play at the time. You would pull the card out of its sleeve and switch it if you want to play the back side.
2. Spell-lands, like Kazandu Mammoth, let you play either side as well, except one side is a land and one side is a creature or spell. You can only pick one.
3. Saga creatures, like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, you must play the enchantment (front) first, and then after the saga finishes its lore counters, you flip it over and put the creature into play.

There may be more types but this is a good primer.

Where to get informed? What works now? I see more people are playing chilled, for a difference back then you would get obliterated.

I would suggest starting with Youtube videos, and search for things like "Metagame overview for new players" or "Meta decks for returning players" or something like "2023 Standard meta overview". The videos are extremely helpful I find. You can also search for "_____ Deck tech" where the blank is the type of deck you are curious about. Like "Orzhov zombies deck tech", and sort videos by newest.

The next best place is your local game store. These stores are wonderful places for educating people, and normally filled with other players looking to help and looking to expand their play groups.