This is probably one of those cases where most players were already doing it this way anyhow, because they weren’t aware of the actual rule (which I’d have to say is not intuitive).

The initial shock of Universes Beyond is well behind us at this point.

No, it isn’t.

I could complain about this, or explain why I don’t want it, but what good would it do? The fact that they’re making this announcement means it’s already too late to stop it.

Interesting statistic:

The number of Best-of-One Standard Constructed games ending before turn four has essentially doubled since the release of Duskmourn: House of Horror.

Important to note – wildcards will be given out, but the banning takes effect today, so I don’t know if there’s actually any window to do the “crafting in anticipation of wildcard refunds” thing. (Edit: wildcards have now been given out.)

I’ve saved up some gold for the Kaldheim flashback draft that starts tomorrow; any advice you fine folks may have on that format would be welcome!

“Creatures you control get +10/+10”

I hope this one is called “Bag of Colossus Hammers”.

Artifact Creature – Phyrexian Construct

Let’s assume this is a reprint. Here are the possibilities. What’s your vote?

I haven’t heard that Snow or Poison are going to be in this set, so that rules out some things. I think Zenith Chronicler is likely because it plays well in Commander. Personally I’m rooting for one of my pet cards, Phyrexian Walker. It’s probably a dark horse but I think as zero-cost creatures go it’s one of the fairest.

It crossed that threshold for me a while ago. “Diluted” is the right word. If somebody asked me to describe Magic to them now, I don’t know what I would say.

Oh my god, they’re doing Omniscience Quick Draft.

For anyone who hasn’t done Omniscience Draft before: I strongly advise against paying currency to play it. (Since I wrote that, they changed the starting hand size to 3, but it didn’t really improve things.)

Arena could really be better about handling large numbers of triggers and/or tokens. There’s no reason why creating 250 tokens needs to be substantially more work than creating 2, and I suspect that the reason why it is is because there’s a lot of redundant stuff – animation, sound effects – that it could be skipping, but isn’t.

This isn’t a complaint, but the memorial sleeve seems like an odd choice. People would use, say, a Sheldon Menery memorial sleeve because they know who he was. But Arena team members are generally not public figures. Fewer people will use this sleeve because there isn’t that connection or context. I feel like a different kind of commemoration might have been more fitting, although I admit I don’t know what else I’d suggest. A free thematic event, maybe?

This week’s Midweek Magic is Brawl where your commander has to be from Duskmourn. Some of those commanders are questionable choices. You can use Altanak but you can’t do the Say Its Name thing, and you’d have to go to some trouble to use its discard ability. You can use Kaito but not its ninjutsu ability.* Again, I’m not complaining, I just think it’s odd.

* What do you think the chances are that ninjutsu will one day receive errata to be usable from the command zone? Affected creatures would be Higure, Ink-Eyes, Nashi, and maybe Yuriko.

For example, you could imagine bracket one has cards that easily can go in any deck, like Swords to Plowshares , Grave Titan , and Cultivate , …

Swords to Plowshares, which is currently banned from Historic and will probably never be printed into Standard again, is in the lowest power bracket? Am I misunderstanding the purpose of these brackets?

I know one-for-one removal isn’t as good in Commander as it is in two-player formats, but even so. Adding Swords or Grave Titan would noticeably raise the power level of every Commander deck I’ve ever built. Apparently my decks are in bracket zero.

It’s this one:

I’d assume the problem was with my computer or my connection if it were happening all the time, but it seems to be limited to games with this backdrop.

I’m sympathetic to this complaint, but COVID-19 is what took me away from paper Magic. I was out of the game for three years and I’m only back now because of Arena.

I agree with most of this.

Regarding the speed/balance issues – I really just want to play Magic with a much, much lower power level than anything that is currently supported, but WotC has been pushing the power level for so long that I don’t even know if we can get back there. I would be open to playing something like Standard Pauper or Standard Artisan, but even that is probably way beyond where I really want to be. I want to turn the clock back 15 or 20 years to when 2R got you a Goblin Chariot instead of a Screaming Nemesis.

Regarding the Arena interface – I turned off voice lines and background music, changed my graphics settings to Low, and set my default pet to none, all within about a month of starting Arena. And then after a while I just started leaving my headphones off anyway. I put up with emotes for over a year, but broke down and disabled them within the past month or so. It’s been an improvement. I feel bad that I might be missing the occasional sincere “Nice” or “Thinking”, but not as bad as I used to feel about getting a premature “Good game” or a “Your Go” during a complex turn. I would love a setting to disable non-essential animations. Sleeves, pets, ripple effects in the background. I play Arena despite those things, not because of them. And the card highlighting! I realize it actually provides information but I’d still shut it off in a second.

As for sitting through combos… Arena really needs more sophisticated skipping controls. MTGO has had “Pass until end of turn” and “Pass until next turn” for two decades.

I would like to see Sol Ring banned, partly because it’s an obviously overpowered card and partly because it reduces space in your deck. Your options are to accept that the real deck construction rules are “Sol Ring plus 98 cards”, or to accept that you’re voluntarily building an underpowered deck, neither of which are satisfactory IMO.

That said, I think it’s interesting that their logic for not banning Sol Ring echoes the reason why I thought Gush shouldn’t have been banned from Pauper: it’s “the iconic card of the format”, and telling people that they’ll get to play it is a good advertisement for the format.

Give me your Zendikar Rising draft tips! It runs for a week starting tomorrow and I’ve saved up some gold to play it. I’ve never drafted it before but I’ve been practicing a bit on Draftsim, and what I’ve got so far is that W/G landfall and U/B Rogues seem good. What about Wizards, is that a viable archetype?

Yeah, I was hoping to see more (or any) actual cards with Phasing, like Sandbar Crocodile. The highest Mirage block card on the list was Teferi’s Veil at #18, and there was sadly no mention of one of my pet cards, Dream Fighter, who can block first-strikers, flankers and deathtouchers with impunity. But I suppose it’s Wizards’ fault, really, for making the original batch of Phasing cards underpowered, and then never revisiting the keyword.

I feel there are much better examples, but I wanted to stop thinking about it.

A relatable sentiment.

I admire the restraint it took to write calmly about a subject that must be pretty personal for Mark.

I think Mark is misunderstanding what “stop designing for Commander” means. His response here would be more appropriate if fans were saying “stop balancing for Commander” – which of course nobody is. I don’t know about anyone else, but speaking for myself, when I say “stop designing for Commander” I mean “stop printing undercosted legends with as many abilities as you can jam into a text box”. It is okay – preferable, even – if one card can’t do everything by itself.

I think Mark is probably right about playtesting, in that no amount of additional resources would be enough to guarantee they’d catch every mistake. But I still don’t love the “eh, what can you do” attitude. I keep thinking, maybe they could hire a consultant with experience in an industry where rigorous testing is the norm. There’s got to be room to improve their processes.

The event schedule says that Midweek Magic this week is Momir, but actually it’s “Phantom Golden Sealed”. You build a sealed deck from six packs containing all rares and mythics.