On May 7th, Wizards of the Coast announced that they will be extending the Standard rotation cycle to three years instead of two years. This news comes in response to the low turn out of players playing Standard at local game stores and their way to begin revitalizing Standard physically versus digitally with Magic Arena….
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There are a lot of pressures on paper Standard. Rising costs are a big issue, as the chase cards in each set have skyrocketed in their cost. Standard has to compete with other popular formats, particularly Commander, for both player attention and product support. Tournaments on the local, national, and international levels have become less frequent and only occasionally feature Standard as the main event. All of these are important and valid pressures, but one often goes unstated: MTG Arena.
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Last week, we started taking a look at some of the pressures on Magic: the Gathering’s Standard format. Paper Standard, that is, playing Standard face to face with physical cards, has dropped off significantly in terms of engagement since the COVID-19 pandemic. Even with local game stores open and trying to run events, in many…
Read MoreLast week, MTG’s vice president of design, Aaron Forsythe, finally asked the question so many of us have been wondering about for two years: why is paper Standard dying in Magic: the Gathering? What is Standard? Standard was, for a very long time, the entry format for Magic: the Gathering. It was a Friday Night…
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In case you missed it, the Magic: The Gathering World Championship was held this past weekend, from October 28 – 30, 2022. The main attraction of the Magic30 event in Las Vegas, MTG Worlds pitted the top 32 players from around the world in a massive Draft, Standard and Explorer battle. The prize: $100,000, the…
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For the last several weeks, my home FLGS has been running a Standard MTG league. For almost as long, I have been trying to get our nearly undefeated champ to give me his decklist so I could do a write-up on it. Finally, now that the league is winding down and he is experimenting with builds ahead of The Brothers’ War, Collin has given me the sauce.
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Since The Meathook Massacre was banned, Magic the Gathering players have been recalculating their decks to fit the changed metagame. A week later, Esper, Grixis, Rakdos and Jund are still on top of the heap by most measures. This could just be because players are standing by the decks they sunk hundreds of dollars into…
Read MoreFirst “leaked” by Redditors who stumbled across the URL over the weekend, Wizards of the Coast dropped a major Banned and Restricted announcement on Monday. Early speculation was that the hammer might be dropped on Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or some other important Pioneer card. Few expected Standard and Modern bans. On The Chopping Block…
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