So glad they brought this back, all of these guys deserved it.

Ken Yukuhiro, Jean-Emmanuel Depraz, and Javier Dominguez will be inducted into the Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame during MagicCon: Atlanta later this year. The ceremony will be held in person and streamed on twitch.tv/magic and the Play MTG YouTube channel on Sunday, November 15, 2026.

Sad that my dark horse/favorite Shahar only got 1 vote 😞

Couple thoughts after thinking about it a bit more:

• This smells a bit like a quieter way to just raise the price of boosters. Drafts will cost more now, which sucks. They say "Because that is six more boosters than Set Booster displays have right now, be aware the price of a Play Booster display box will be higher than that of a Set Booster display box." Most likely this coincides with a per-booster price increase too which probably (partly) drove this.

• Impact on draft seems way higher than they're leading on, even though they address this. An average of 3 cards from the List per draft has to increase variance. Granted it's now 50 cards instead of 300 in the List, and there is thought to tie it into the set, but that's still more variance. Relatedly, possibly opening 4 (!) rares but 3 fewer commons also has to change the game quite a bit too. 2-rare packs seem not crazy at least, and 3 fewer commons is substantial.

• I'm glad we're going back to just 1 type of booster pack though, I didn't like 2 different packs.

• I hope all cards from the List now make it to Arena! Could be a cool way to get more reprints there.

How many different ways can they sell us the exact same card before players just get fed up? If I want to (digitally) play Modern I have to buy the card on MODO, if I want to play Historic I have to buy it on Arena, and if I want to play Commander I have to buy it a third time? This is their master strategy?

Yeah I agree, it’s a least possible WotC is relying on the artist’s claim.

This is 100% AI generated/assisted in some way and anyone who’s ever used Midjourney or any of them can see this. I’m surprised WotC made such an immediate denial, they could’ve at least looked into this more fully given the potential fallout.

Wow I legitimately thought this was fake at first. Bloomburrow looks like it could be fun but really not loving more UBs and what seems like 0 connection between sets anymore. Another Modern Horizons as well, yikes. Hate that just none of this really appeals to me.

I like the unbans, but this is about as close to "no changes" as they could get without explicitly making no changes. Really was hoping for more unbans at least!

The explanations are very thorough and it does feel like they have a pretty good handle on the current state of the formats, which is nice. I still think they're wrong about [[Orcish Bowmasters]] and to a slightly lesser extent [[The One Ring]] though.

I think Bowmasters is not fine in Modern/Legacy and I still think The One Ring is just going to increasingly become oppressive. Yes it's at their "4 mana threshold" and it's not one archetype dominating with it, but I think its ubiquity is probably a downside and that we're going to see it clogging up games everywhere. Really curious and interested to see how the formats evolve!

I find this to be a pretty crappy argument and outcome. Essentially it’s a lame duck standard with Vivi completely warping the format for 2 months because we need to “think of the RCQ players.” Doesn’t even acknowledge how many will not play an RCQ because of this crappy meta.

So play Vivi or anti-Vivi the next few months (or get destroyed) then replace your deck when Vivi eats an all but certain ban. Great plan.

I find it more alarming that they’re doubling down on the overall ban strategy. While they plan to add a few more times during the year, they’re still dodging the real issue. They won’t acknowledge that turbo charging cards over 18 sets in a standard window will require (quite a few) emergency bans!

They love to cite how great these sets are for attracting new players but do they really become players? This is rhetorical at this point as we’ll never see the data but what is the actual player retention rate from these sets? If they knew this and it was good they would show it.

I realize the goal is to now convert them to a more accessible format like Standard but my gut says most of these buyers are one time buyers and are not actually growing the game long term. As long as they keep cranking out sets then this will be fine financially for a while but I can’t understand the long term thinking here, particularly as this pretty much forces enfranchised players to now cross the Rubicon. This is a fundamental shift/fork in the game.

My crazy long shot that’s never coming back as is, sadly: Dredge. I think it’s such a fun and unique mechanic, and cards like Life from the Loam are excellent examples of how it can be done well.

More realistically: I’d love to see Buyback again, an old one I loved from Exodus. Capsize every turn!

Exactly, and add on top the straight up lying that it was print to demand!

Couldn’t even discount the extras instead of destroying them because they need to maintain the high price at all times. Crazy.

Wow Donato is a huge name/artist and long time MTG artist. This one is definitely not as egregious as others but I agree that the back arm and stairs (at least) are pretty damning, and the obvious other similarities aren’t helping.

Even if this was accidental, why she used reference art from such a well known artist in the same space is kinda strange, as is why she changed so little from it.

+1 for here! would love to be able to contain spoilers to one community for discussion and to enable better subscriptions for folks.

Never thought I’d see artwork like this in a Standard set again, this is really nice and reminds me old school artwork.

I might be reading it wrong but I think the first one enters with one +1/+1 counter b/c Gev's ability targets an opponent (not each opponent). The second one would be 2 counters assuming you hit a different opponent, etc.

Hilarious that Nadu, designed for Commander but released in a Modern set, is now banned in Commander too (after it's collateral damage in Modern).

Kinda do not agree with the fast mana bans :-/ I understand their reasoning but I haven't thought they were banworthy at all.

Unbelievably sad 😞 He contributed so so much to EDH and Magic in general, perhaps more than anyone else aside from MaRo/Garfield considering how impactful the format is. Dealt with a constant stream of criticism too despite all that.

Stupid cancer. I'll be thinking of him and his family, hope they find peace.

If you could let me know what you’re searching for I can take a closer look, but essentially on the search page the fastest way to locate a community on another server is to type the url of that community (for example, https://mtgzone.com/c/mtg) or it’s Lemmy address (![email protected]).

I’ll write up a getting started guide as well on this and searching/connecting/interacting with other Lemmy websites.

Wow this feels like a pretty significant color pie break. I realize they’ve printed black enchantment removal a few times before (Feed the Swarm) but this is an instant and seems like they’re just shifting to giving this to black now. Seems like kind of a shame to me.

I appreciate them writing this and taking it on the chin here but honestly there is so much in here that's pretty damning about their design process. Nadu was a massive mistake but one that seems negligibly correctable.

Mistake 1: not enough playtesting!

Majors describes the testing they did. He cites no actual numbers or anything but I think that makes it pretty clear how deficient it is/was:

For both Modern Horizons 2 and Modern Horizons 3, we brought in a small group of contractors and worked on the set in a dedicated sprint as a collaboration between that group and a small number of play designers. The playtesting time is more dense, as the group is singularly focused on the set without other responsibilities, but shorter in terms of weeks.

Emphasis mine. I would wager that this is probably 2-3 contractors who played for probably a few weeks with the people who designed the set, a group who is obviously stuck in groupthink and can't see differently. There's no wonder they miss issues like this.

Mistake 2: changing cards again without testing

Again we have a card that was changed at the last minute and shipped as-is.

I missed the interaction with zero-mana abilities that are so problematic. The last round of folks who were shown the card in the building missed it too. We didn't playtest with Nadu's final iteration, as we were too far along in the process, and it shipped as-is.

How many times does this need to bite them before they just actually playtest every single text change? It's crazy to me.

Mistake 3: no automatic flags for certain high-risk abilities

They all missed the interaction with 0-mana abilities, OK fine. But why is there no automatic flag for high risk abilities? Off the top of my head:

• unbounded triggers
• triggers that draw you cards
• triggers that put cards directly into play
• triggers that occur whenever the permanent is targeted
• triggers that give things to all of your creatures

Original Nadu had every one of these, and there are no doubt many many more things that should automatically create a higher scrutiny/testing regimen. They added the 2-times-per-turn cap at the last minute but removed the by-an-opponent limiter!

Software can easily flag cards that should be tested more fully, or recommend problematic interactions. They don't seem to be doing this at all, instead just accepting a certain % of failure/risk. This is so preventable.

Mistake 4: putting Commander cards in Modern sets

This one is a personal pet peeve of mine and really irritates me more than everything else. This card was designed specifically for Commander yet it went into a set ostensibly for Modern/Legacy.

In one of these meetings, there was a great deal of concern raised by Nadu's flash-granting ability for Commander play. After removing the ability, it wasn't clear that the card would have an audience or a home, something that is important for every card we make. Ultimately, my intention was to create a build-around aimed at Commander play, which resulted in the final text.

If the card is for Commander, put it into a Commander set! This is also extremely damning from a design perspective--they removed the flash ability and then didn't think the card would be played at all!

So much of this seems to be preventable with better processes or using technology in even basic ways, ways they are no doubt not even close to taking advantage of. It's a shame because these sets could be better and the playerbase wouldn't have months of crap like this, or a Pro Tour absolutely ruined by a preventable card.

One of the two controversial "take backs" Seth had: https://www.twitch.tv/magic/clip/VenomousSolidBaconDansGame-LnIY9xnX9rDABQLR

Ken played Broodspinner off Cavern of Souls so while it was uncounterable, it was still targetable by a counter. Seth goes to sacrifice 2 treasure tokens to play It'll Quench Ya! but unwinds it himself, remembering out loud that Ken named Spider on his Cavern.

Not sure how I feel about it; watching it in the moment I felt like he cast that and can't take it back, but also Ken didn't call a judge and just went with it. His hands never left the treasures either. I think overall the "spirit of the game" would be that Seth was just thinking out loud and didn't fully commit to it, but a game like this should definitely require more precision.