I am a long time Magic: The Gathering enthusiast.
My journey started in late 1994 with Fallen Empires and lasted through late 2000 with Invasion. During that time, I played the physical game, the original PC version and the young Magic Online.
Life and a lack of funds to keep up led to me dropping out from the Magic scene, just dabbling on occasion when they released one of their series of on-line games but it wasn’t until the Beta of Magic Arena that I really started playing a great deal again. Here was a version of the game that, initially, let you play either for free or at a very low cost, concentrating on just the sets currently in Standard. You could play for half an hour per night, get enough “money” to continue buying packs, and stay relatively competitive.
Awhile later, they added a new format, Historic, which was necessitated when sets started rotating out of Standard. Even though it didn’t match anything in the physical format like Standard did (Magic Arena started with Ixalan), it was embraced as a way to play with older cards that you “owned”.
There was also a nice rhythm to the set releases, four per year. There were approximately three months to gather, learn and play the new cards added to the game.
All that changed in 2021 when five sets were released to standard, including the poor decision to release a two-parter less than two months apart. If that weren’t bad enough, Magic Arena added a secondary set to each of the releases called Alchemy which added new cards and “nerfed” (aka changed the way existing cards played) to try and balance the environment.
Alchemy was made a permanent part of Historic which ticked off a wide swath of the community. They wanted to be able to play their older cards as issued, not in some sanitized version. This led WOTC to concoct the Explorer format.
So that means there are now four different major formats in Magic Arena, each with their own list of legal cards:
- Standard – The latest sets with an up to two year shelf life before they are “rotated out” of the format.
- Alchemy – Standard legal cards with changes to their powers along with newly released Alchemy only cards.
- Historic – All cards released to date in the Arena format including changes brought on by Alchemy rebalances and new Alchemy issued cards.
- Explorer – All cards released to date in the Arena format in their original form without the Alchemy changes or new Alchemy cards.
…and this is where I tapped out. Too many new sets per year and too many formats was just too much for my aging brain. Plus, I haven’t even talked about some of the fringe formats such as Brawl and Jump In that also changed the card mix.
I honestly hate that Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro took the game that way. As Magic has become a bigger and bigger part of the Hasbro profit picture, I’m sure that pressure was brought upon WOTC to go harder to increase those profits, but it destroyed the game for me.
At one point, I would have put Magic at the number one spot on my all-time list of games, and it remains one that has brought me wonderful memories over the years. I just don’t see myself dipping my toe back into that pool, physical or on-line, for a very long time.
