This is a long-term commitment that will eventually lead to additional format support beyond Standard and Historic.
Delving into Magic’s history: We plan to bring more of Magic’s history into MTG Arena through Historic and set remasters.A gateway to Magic: We want MTG Arena to be the definitive way for new and old players alike to jump into Magic: The Gathering whenever they want.To both help current conversations and lend context to the path ahead, we want to talk about our goals for MTG Arena and what this means for players as we begin to look beyond Standard. Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about what MTG Arena is ultimately meant to be as a game. In November 2019, Wizards put out the following statement: With the addition of Historic to Arena, Wizards made another few interesting announcements. This was all added for Brawl, of course, but they’re steps in the direction of Commander, too. The same goes for recognizing a legendary creature’s color identity and using that in deck building as well.
The software in Arena most likely didn’t include the ability to build a deck around a legendary creature until Brawl was added. Gavin VerheyĪgain, this is not saying anything directly about Commander, but a few things can be taken from this. MTG Arena doesn’t currently have a format like Commander where you build around a legendary creature, and now you can finally get that experience there! Before the year is out, you’ll be able to play 1v1 Brawl on MTG Arena. July of 2019 brought another update, this time about Brawl coming to MTG Arena: This leaves the door open for Wizards to bring Commander to the digital platform should they so choose.Īpart from us speculating and asking questions on Reddit and the MTG Arena Forum, WotC kept quiet on the topic for a couple years following that last announcement. Second-and this is important for us Commander enthusiasts-this suggests that older formats should also be not-too-hard to incorporate into Arena, too, aside from time constraints. So, new things that come out for Magic should be able to be integrated into Arena with some ease. First is that new mechanics, modes, formats, and card types can, at the very least, be finagled into MTG Arena. You can gather a couple of things from this. That means the shackles are off for our industry-leading designers to build and create cards and in-depth gameplay around new mechanics and unexpected but wildly fun concepts, all of which can be adapted for MTG Arena thanks to the new GRE under the hood. We’ve created an all-new Games Rules Engine (GRE) that uses sophisticated machine learning that can read any card we can dream up for Magic. We want to create a game that can evolve. There are, however, a few somewhat-relevant statements that we can interpret in different ways.īack in September 2017, WotC made an announcement about the way they designed MTG Arena: Omnath, Locus of Mana | Illustration by Mike BierekĪs far as official announcements from Wizards go, there haven’t been any relating specifically to Commander on MTGA. In fact, Mark Rosewater addressed this in an answer to a question posed on his Tumblr blog in November 2019: It’s no wonder Wizards has started to produce lots of products specifically geared towards Commander players. We also have a great article on 5-color commanders showcasing the true craziness that can be found in Commander.Ĭommander has become the number one format for both new and old players to get into over the years because it provides the perfect combination of playing Magic and having fun with your friends. Both are very useful to help orient you on your journey into this incredible format. If you want to find out more, you can visit WotC’s page on Commander or, for a more in-depth dive into the format, head on over to the founders’ page. You’re allowed one copy only of any card except basic lands.Only cards of your Commander’s color identity are allowed in your deck.Pick a Legendary Creature as your Commander.The name was eventually re-branded as “Commander” when Magic became more popular years later. They originally called it Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH for short) after the original Elder Dragon cards. Karador, Ghost Chieftain | Illustration by Todd LockwoodĬommander was invented by a couple of MTG judges who wanted something fun to do on their off time.