I'm wondering if this is because Marvel also has Marvel Snap which they don't want Arena competing with. Or the rights for both paper and digital were just too high for Wizards

Regardless of the reason, yay for more Universes Within! This makes it a lot easier for them to reprint those cards in paper as well since the art + creative is already done

Tl;dr: The MTG Arena team is organizing for better working conditions

Yeah my main feeling about these bans was "good riddance"

Yes it's power 2 or less, sometimes called Daunt behind the scenes but it's never been officially keyworded

You got 4/6! missing Vigilance and Combat damage from your creatures can't be prevented

Just a big ol' pile of very specific abilities

This was in their initial letter:

Layoff Protections: Employees currently live in fear of suddenly losing their jobs, with no warning and through no fault of their own. We have the opportunity to create strong layoff protections so that we can feel secure in creating long-term careers here at WOTC.

Remote Work Protections: Leadership is instituting a mandatory RTO, forcing numerous remote employees across the US to work from a physical office or be forced to resign. This painful choice is splitting our employees between their homes, communities, and the jobs they love. Based on company profits, we have demonstrated the ability to meet and exceed our product goals without the in office structure; workers should be able to continue working in the way that is best for them.

Generative AI Protections: Over the past few years, pressure has ramped up from leadership to adopt LLMs and Gen AI tools in various aspects of our work at WOTC, often over the explicit concerns of impacted employees. WOTC lacks a robust AI policy, leaving opportunities for abuse and communicating a level of disrespect for artists and other creatives. We want to establish clear guidelines around AI, emphasizing worker protections.

Sustainable Workload: Employees’ experiences with “crunch” (intense, mandatory unpaid overtime) to meet deadlines vary widely by team and project, with some teams crunching on a regular basis just to get planned work out the door. Increasing workload without matching headcount has led to many workers having unacceptable experiences with crunch. We need to take better care of our employees by enacting strong protections around workload expectations.

Defined Career Progression: Many workers at WOTC feel like they are prevented from advancing in their role, either because opportunities for advancement are sparse or because requirements and opportunities are poorly defined. Employees’ roles should be clearly defined, and they should be able to grow their careers through meaningful raises, role changes, and promotions.

Our Free Time is Our Own: Currently, if an employee makes anything creative in their free time, with their own resources, Hasbro may claim ownership. What we do in our free time should not be dictated by the company; neither should what we make in our free time be owned by the company.

We are Stewards of Magic: Our employees and players care about doing the right thing with, and for, the games we make. Short term, profit-driven decisions may be lucrative, but we want to focus on partnerships and products that grow our games sustainably, that inspire us as employees, that excite players, and continue to foster WOTC’s positive reputation.

All very reasonable demands imo

I dislike using them inside my decks because of how often they curl. However for my Commander I will often try to spend the extra money for an extra shiny card since they almost never get shuffled into the deck

However I am a little disappointed how often the foiling is just not that impressive. Coming from playing Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid I do miss their more bombastic foil cards

Really cool design for a Boros commander, I can see this legend being popular

Haughty Djinn was originally printed in DMU, and given that Dominaria has a long history of Djinn going back to Alpha, Smirking Spelljacker is probably from there. Older Djinn didn't really have a cohesive visual identity, but comparing it to djinn from the more recent Dominaria sets, it seems to match up

Out of all the Djinn in Magic, only two other in-universe planes have had Djinn, Ravnica and Strixhaven. Strixhaven is the other possibility, but Spelljacker looks pretty wispy which would align more with Dominaria

I can't really blame anyone for wanting to walk away right now. When they first announced UB, admittedly I felt like people were overreacting. I thought they would be printing UW versions of most cards and that it wouldn't go beyond Commander release 1-2 times a year. Turns out I was very, very wrong. I think I was already tired about the constant UB releases and the encroachment into Modern, but Standard really solidified my distaste for it.

It's not like I hate everything about it, I think they've made some very cool designs that I don't know would ever get made otherwise. But in every case there's a card I like I would always rather have a UW card over the UB card. And the rate they're printing them has made it impossible to print UW versions to keep up.

Power creep is definitely happening, I feel like I'm less concerned about it because I played Yu-Gi-Oh before Magic, and compared to that the power creep in Magic is much slower. Still, it's made me much less interested in Standard given that it was nice to have a lower power format but now it feels almost as fast as other formats. I still enjoy Modern but looking at how MH3 in particular pushed out so many of the decks before it and how Wizards constantly drags its feet on banning obvious problem cards... It does not inspire confidence.

Obviously this new path is profitable, but I hardly think they need it. Based on sales of Bloomburrow and Dragonstorm they likely still would be doing fine with a slower release schedule and only in-universe sets. But it just wouldn't satisfy Hasbro's shareholders and the constant pressure for more profits, especially since WotC is basically propping up the rest of the company. I don't know how long they can keep this up, and I still enjoy so much of Magic that I don't really want it to crash, but there's just so much that's happening the I wish wasn't happening.

These are just Magic cards that happen to have Play-Doh art. Way less bothersome than seeing Dwight on a card.

Was excited for this until I saw that it's only available at events. Those 59 unique cards are going to be expensive as hell. And who knows when we'll get another dedicated reprint set

As expected from a starter kit, pretty basic cards. It does seem like there's an Equipment theme going on, and City is a new land type that could be interesting

Some notable exclusions:

On Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, and Mana Crypt

We would be plugging our ears if we did not acknowledge the elephants in the room when it comes to this series of unbans: the September bans of Dockside, Lotus, and Mana Crypt. Many players out there probably immediately scrolled down this long article as quickly as they could to discover the fates of these cards.

We did talk about these cards and are not unbanning them at this time.

Opinions from the Commander Format Panel varied. Some believe Commander is more fun without them, others would like more time to see how the Commander Bracket system is adopted before doing anything here, and others felt it's too soon to do anything with these cards. There were a few people who were open to doing something with Jeweled Lotus now, but that was not the majority opinion. The overwhelming majority of the panel did not want to do anything with any of these cards at this time.

I will be transparent and say that I believe if any of these are ever to return, the most likely one is Jeweled Lotus due to its one-shot nature, iconic feel, and ability to help support high-mana value commanders. I want to be clear, this is not me saying that will ever happen, but that was the one among the panel with the most traction.

I know many of you love these cards. Many of you are also glad you no longer have to play against these cards. There's always that kind of push and pull with powerful and potentially ban-worthy cards in Commander. I appreciate there are many people in both camps, and that no matter what happens with these cards, somebody will feel like they didn't get the result they wanted. However, we wanted to talk about the cards here honestly and what was said internally for transparency.

These cards will be something I'm sure we'll talk about next year. But for this year, the book is closed on these three cards.

I was wondering why Narcomoeba got the pre-emptive hit until I looked and saw that Pauper has its own version of Oops (Almost) All Spells. Somehow, all roads lead to Balustrade Spy

Disappointed but not surprised

Good that Vivi is finally banned but between UB, the rapid fire release schedule and WotC's repeated mismanagement of the format I still don't have enough interest to come back to Standard

Yeah, it's pretty epic

Seeing an announcement about boosters gives me a knee jerk reaction of "what now?" but overall I think these changes are pretty minor and slightly positive. But also I really don't care for foil commons/uncommons so losing them for Japan Showcase arts and increased chances of a rare/mythic sounds good to me. Don't care about collector boosters either so them losing 3 cards doesn't really matter to me

I'm surprised, I didn't think we'd ever see a new pox given how much they avoid resource denial these days. I guess they're okay with it at 5 (heavily restricted) mana

You'll enjoy the borderless arts then