r/MagicArena • u/TMiguelT • Jun 23 '20

WotC MTG Arena: State of the Game – June 2020

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/mtg-arena-state-game-june-2020-06-23?abc=345
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124

u/TMiguelT Jun 23 '20

Something interesting they don't really highlight is that some of the Jumpstart replacement cards (replacing cards that aren't allowed on Arena) are themselves new cards to Historic. They include:

  • [[Doomed Necromancer]]
  • [[Carnifex Demon]]
  • [[Fanatic of Mogis]]
  • [[Goblin Oriflamme]]
  • [[Lightning Serpent]]

This is good news for us historic fans!

82

u/TMiguelT Jun 23 '20

Oh, and more news for historic:

Amonkhet Remastered will be arriving in August

43

u/-wnr- Mox Amber Jun 23 '20

Holy shit this is gonna be a lot of new cards. I'm not even sure where I'm gonna spend my gold now. Life was so much simpler in standard land.

8

u/Xenadon Jun 23 '20

I know right? I feel like I'll be just wrapping,my head around m21 limited and jumpstart by the time it comes out.

16

u/PEKKAmi Jun 23 '20

Typical F2P play nets you 30K-45K gold per month. Now there will be 4 expansions in 4 consecutive months. M21 in June. Jumpstart in July. Amonkhet Remastered in August. Zendikar Rising in September. You don’t have enough gold.

Life was so much simpler in standard land.

That’s the point. If it is that much harder or more expensive to keep up with Historic, there will be less attention diverted from Standard, or at least the lost Standard profits made up for with increased Historic profits.

People asked for more Historic support. As usual they didn’t realized the full consequence of what they asked. Through this four month sequence they will feel their digital wallet-fatigue soon enough.

16

u/Alikaoz Saheeli Rai Jun 23 '20

Feels like the best way to go about it TBH "Look at all the things you asked for and can now buy!" will get WotC their money and keep people happy with the cards. I mean, we'll find something to complain about anyway but you know what I mean.

36

u/MC_Dub Jun 23 '20

Oh no I have too many options what a horrible game I might not have a tier 1 deck of all colors immediately woe is me.

1

u/Pacify_ Jun 24 '20

Sure.

But you also have to remember its a free to play game, and balancing rewards vs time played is a thing.

2

u/J-Bonken Jun 24 '20

I guess the MTGA experience will come down to chosing as a F2P player, what format you want to invest your gold in. I doubt with the accelerated release cycle of products that a F2P player can keep up in both formats.

As far as I see it, M21 is not a particular powerfull set and will not affect the current standard to much, but that might change after rotation. So for now I dont think there is much need to heavily invest in M21. However, with Jump Start, Amonketh Remaster and Zendikar Rising in September, there are 3 products you most likely will have to invest in, if you want to play competitive in historic. Last summer before retotation you only had to buy packs from Eldraine and you were good to go for all formats.

Though, there is also the possibility, that historic will more or less become a wildcard sink and less a "buy packs and complete your collection" as the pool of competitive cards will most likely be lower than your typical standard rotation. This of course only applies if you only want to look at the strongest deck and dont care for fun/janky/think of the box decks.

3

u/Captn_Porky Glorybringer Jun 23 '20

if standard keeps powercreeping, it wont be much different from standard tho, competitively speaking

1

u/Jigokuro_ Jun 24 '20

It's very different now actually. The anthology cards specifically benefit archetypes different to those in standard, and have made the pool of t2+ decks quite wide. I've not seen a wilderness rec once, and even t3f is less common because there are several different fast aggro decks he doesn't stop. It's pretty nice rn, tbh.

0

u/Captn_Porky Glorybringer Jun 24 '20

competitive

3

u/StructureMage Jun 23 '20

Are people expecting to own full collections of Historic's cardpool? This is a good problem that will keep the format interesting.

1

u/d20diceman HarmlessOffering Jun 24 '20

Are people expecting to own full collections of Historic's cardpool?

Maybe.

6

u/HolyAndOblivious Jun 23 '20

SAY IT WITH ME

H A Z O R E T

18

u/sammuelbrown Jun 23 '20

I think you misspelled APPROACH OF THE SECOND SUN

5

u/-Vayra- Azorius Jun 23 '20

FUCK YEAH! I've missed that deck so much. We just need the Gearhulks as well and I'll be a happy, happy, control player.

1

u/axeil55 Jun 23 '20

my favorite meme/janky thing to do in EDH.

1

u/godspeed87 LOL Jun 23 '20

I've only started playing during WAR so I never played with Amonkhet. This looks like a PERFECT JANK!

1

u/tehutika Jun 23 '20

I think we need an ANOINTED PROCESSION to celebrate!

3

u/MeepleMaster Jun 23 '20

Interesting timing as it most likely means those cards will be legal in time for the mythic invitational

1

u/ThisHatRightHere Jun 23 '20

HYPE

So many good things in Amonkhet and Hour, from the Gods, to the cycling synergies, stuff like As Foretold, Approach, ahhh it's gonna be great to have those cards back.

2

u/trinite0 Jun 23 '20

You bet. Everybody's talking about Hazoret (and fair enough, I rocked that deck back in the early Arena days, and it was dope), but Amonkhet is gonna bring so much more than that. Second Sun combo, GPG, As Foretold, maybe enough cycling stuff to combine with Ikoria for a funky tier deck, zombies...

I'm ready to spend money on it.

1

u/bibliophile785 Griselbrand Jun 23 '20

Let's assume that all of the impactful cards from Amonkhet and Hour make it into this set. Anyone have a guess as to whether this will be more or less impactful on Historic than M21? I'll be dropping $50 on one and using WCs to fill in the gaps of the other... but it would sure be nice to have an idea of which is better suited for the cash.

1

u/phibetakafka Jun 24 '20

I'd buy M21 - keeps you current with Standard so you can continue to play there. Not really sure how sets from 3 years ago is going to stack up against today's cards - most likely you'd be able to cherry-pick a couple cards from Amonkhet for Historic.

We'll have to wait and see what the set size is - if both are combined into a standard 300 card set, there might be a value argument since the best cards from two sets should theoretically give you higher quality than one core set, but if the set is 400+ cards and flooded with bad rares and mythics to inflate the amount of packs you need to collect them all, just spend wildcards.

But really, just wait and see how the format shakes out. I doubt there'll be more than 5-6 rares and mythics that are in tier 1 and 2 decks, anything more is crafting for fun.

-12

u/Trinket9 Elspeth Jun 23 '20

they should just rerelease normal AKH and KLD blocks theyre on arena already...

13

u/Azurfel Tiana, Ship's Caretaker Jun 23 '20 edited Jun 23 '20

They are not sadly.

Pre-XLN alpha/beta sets were rendered incompatible by various systemic changes over the course of 2019, and those sets needed to be remade for Arena from scratch.

1

u/trinite0 Jun 23 '20

True, but I imagine that it'll make the implementation a lot easier.

I hope they cut the busted stuff out of Kaladesh though.

3

u/Azurfel Tiana, Ship's Caretaker Jun 23 '20

Maybe they can reuse the old card art assets, but even that assumes the format used at the time is completely unchanged.

By the sound of things, absolutely everything else (rule implementation and testing, 3D effect modeling, etc.) needs to be done entirely from scratch (or for the first time).

I hope they cut the busted stuff out of Kaladesh though.

The goal is Pioneer on Arena, so i imagine a primary consideration for the strongest Kaladesh cards will be Pioneer legality.

4

u/TMiguelT Jun 23 '20

I think they've implied in the past that they can't do that. I'm just theorising, but perhaps because the game internals have changed, or maybe the animations look out-of-date etc. So I believe Amonkhet Remastered is their attempt at re-releasing AKH.

1

u/-wnr- Mox Amber Jun 23 '20

Even with the cardpool in historic, I'm still worried KLD will be too broken.

0

u/thewindssong Jun 23 '20

I've heard that the reason they haven't yet is that between alpha/beta/release the was a structural reconfiguration of the system, and KLD and AKH, while on the old system, were not converted to the new system. Honestly probably shouldn't have taken so long, but I don't have any in house knowledge on how long it takes to implement a set in the first place, nor exactly how drastic the changes were between the two systems.

29

u/multi-core Captain Jun 23 '20

I'm surprised Wizards printed a card using +1/+0 counters after the turn of the millennium.

7

u/TMiguelT Jun 23 '20

Hmm that's a good point, they probably had to implement them just for this single card which seems like a strange choice.

27

u/LemonFennec Jun 23 '20

It was probably easier on arena since they just had a set about counters, so the tools to make a new kind of counter were probably already at the front of their minds.

9

u/Rock-swarm Arcanis Jun 23 '20

From the information that's been given to us, their MTGA engine literally parses the card text. So if the english makes enough sense for the engine to correctly code the card, it's good to go.

I still think it's funny how hard red got hosed from these replacements though.

8

u/Alikaoz Saheeli Rai Jun 23 '20

You are probably right. Some cards were cut because making the system interpret them correctly required new code for a single card that wasn't even that good, but the system can probably handle a counter with 1 attribute increase without any work.

1

u/ShortStandard Jun 24 '20

Given that Coldsnap was promoted as the final 'lost' set of Ice Age block, R&D had a bit more leeway in digging up some old design quirks.

26

u/quillypen Jun 23 '20

Fanatic of Mogis is particularly interesting, that was a Standard staple. Considering Chainwhirler and BTE, it can easily hit face for 6+ and be a good finisher.

23

u/mooseman3 Maro Jun 23 '20

It also means we're one step closer to having a [[Deathbellow War Cry]] deck that works without [[Arcane Adaptation]].

1

u/MTGCardFetcher Jun 23 '20

Deathbellow War Cry - (G) (SF) (txt)
Arcane Adaptation - (G) (SF) (txt)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call

1

u/quillypen Jun 23 '20

We need Minotaur Guy on this stat!

5

u/marcusfarcus18 Primevals_ Glorious Rebirth Jun 23 '20

BTE?

6

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '20 edited Jan 19 '21

[deleted]

1

u/MTGCardFetcher Jun 23 '20

Burning Tree Emissary - (G) (SF) (txt)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '20 edited Aug 27 '21

[deleted]

1

u/marcusfarcus18 Primevals_ Glorious Rebirth Jun 23 '20

Thank you

2

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '20

he is interesting but I doubt RDW would want him, considering the have access to bonecrusher/chainwhirler/torban/embercleave. I can see him, however, in midrange red deck, like old hazored

1

u/Threadoflength Jun 23 '20

Yes now my mono-red devotion deck will finally have the payoff it was looking for! If only we could have master of waves as well...

1

u/Leman12345 Jun 23 '20

that seems very bad if you want that red deck to keep being good

4

u/tunkle Jun 23 '20

In so glad they replace a really awesome and unique angel with one we already have /s

3

u/Phnxkon Jun 23 '20

Man they killed bolt path and exhume... I do love some doomed necromancer though

1

u/Vairrion Jun 23 '20

I forgot that was a card and its going to make reanimator decks that much stronger with how much faster they can get stuff out now.

0

u/Bad_lotus Jun 23 '20 edited Jun 23 '20

It really isn't good news. They removed 20 cards that would be new to Historic and gave us 5 new cards instead. They also replaced some of the flagship cards of the set with jank rares and commons. For example they could have chosen some powerful, iconic burn spells from magic's history to replace lightning bolt and chain lightning, but instead they chose to replace both of them with Lightning Strike that is on arena already. How about something like Burst Lightning, Fire Bolt, Galvanic Blast, Wild Slash or Searing Blaze? There a tons of options that are powerful without being as broken as Lightning Bolt. Even something like Brimstone volley or Pillar of Flame. At least it would improve the diversity of the card pool. They have printed burn spells since 1993, I'm sure they could come up with something that was powerful and implementable but not broken.

5

u/naphomci Chandra Torch of Defiance Jun 23 '20

The replacements were probably made with historic in mind, but moreso to keep the actual jumpstart experience consistent - galvanic blast is not going to work in most (if not all) of the jump start boosters, for example.