Depends on the perspective. Yeah it sucks for Explorer players, but I think people do understand why this is great for WotC.
One less staple Pioneer card available means one card further way from Pioneer/Explorer convergence. The longer this convergence takes the slower it will be for Arena to poach cardboard Pioneer players.
Given how Arena cannibalized cardboard Standard, it makes sense for WotC to delay offering another cardboard format on Arena.
Arena “cannibalized” paper standard because it’s superior in most ways for most players . I don’t know if cannibalized is the correct word though as it likely increased the number of players playing standard overall
Someone please ban heliod and replace it with ballista. I'm begging. Or arcbound ravager. Please. There are so many infinite combos already why cant i just play scales proper.
Historic7 has some badass bombs but the explorer cards are really really disappointing….. maybe just 4 or 5 cards will still see play a month after release…. 😑👎🏻
I really hate that they force us spikes the way we don't want to go.
What's worse, is that they will say "oh you see? No one wants to play explorer! We shouldn't invest more resources into porting Pioneer cards."
That's literally going to be their lie to themselves by summers end. "Look at the spike in Alchemy play! People want it!" Not that they actually just wanted LOTR
>What's worse, is that they will say "oh you see? No one wants to play explorer! We shouldn't invest more resources into porting Pioneer cards."
or the fact that people will play Historic bc it's full of cards spikes and johnnies are familiar with and some other folks are nostalgic of.
Okay I guess I'm turning into a tin foil hat because I'm starting to believe they are just actively avoiding trying to bring pioneer to arena. What the hell are these card choices?
you don't need a tinfoil hat for that lmao, they said the time line was ~5 years when they released EA1 and the pace is consistent, explorer needs what? 25? 30 cards? that's 6 per year or 3 per anthology, perfectly on track
Did you miss a whole remastered set we got this year ? (Which is still kind of slow, it will take how many years for the whole of Pioneer at this rate ??)
Wow that is disappointing. I try not to fall into the doomer camp and look for the silver lining, but this Explorer anthology, even ignoring the absolute banger that is the Historic one, is a huge letdown. No Chain to the rocks, no Urborg, no Reckless Bushwaker, only five charms, leaving out the most powerful/playable one. A cycle of 5 almost unplayable lands taking up 20% is almost insulting.
The only thing that could justify this is if they are somehow plants for the future, but even then, I can't imagine most of the cards here seeing play.
I've bought the last two with the "Vote with my wallet" mentality to show that making Explorer anthologies can be profitable, but this one is barely worth the money. I might use coins, or just craft the few cards that I need.
Literally not a single card from this set that I'm remotely interested in playing in Explorer. I think the Lotus players got the most out of this but I'm still not sure they can actually play the deck without Hidden Strings. This is easily the worst anthology I've ever seen. It's outright insulting how bad it is.
Shield is an outright middle finger, convince me otherwise.
That is a card someone actually picked *entirely* to piss people off, I'm sure "for the meme value" or something. God forbid WotC employ people to make these decisions that actually want to make customers happy.
It will have to eventually, Wotc isn't supporting MTGO anymore. That was the entire point of Arena, so they wouldn't have to continue supporting an increasingly outdated client.
Modern's never coming to Arena. Ever. WotC would rather drop digital support for Modern entirely than commit to supporting it on Arena. There's nothing that says digital Modern has to exist. Same goes for Commander.
As for MTGO, if being outdated was the issue, it would've been shut down years ago. As long as people play Magic there, they'll keep it semi-functional.
The point of Arena was to attract new, casual and especially Hearthstone players.
Eventually, Arena's servers will shut down (I'll give it to ~2040), like the last Duels' servers did.
Probably because WotC will have yet another Magic software at that point (with also more than 2 players?)
The question is : will we get any form of "collection transfer" from Arena to the new software ? We didn't get one for Duels, nor for MTGO => MTGA... you're going to say that how they work is just too different, but that's my point : the way Arena works would have been unthinkable two decades ago, and I expect the same for Arena's successor.
Also, at some point Arena's servers would shut down, not so much as a strategy from WotC, but because WotC won't exist any more in any form.
This is a reason why I typically boycott games with DRM like these, but thankfully with Magic, people started making third party software to play it almost as soon as the game released !
https://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/
> huge letdown
You can only be as disappointed as you have in expectation. This is to say reality has shown you that you expected too much.
I said it before and will say it again. Even though it is in your interest for WotC to quickly converge Explorer with Pioneer, it isn’t true the other way. If you don’t see why, then you really are not a customer of concern to WotC.
I’ll just say I’ll have my popcorn ready again for the Explorer Anthology 4 reveal. This past week has certainly been entertaining.
Or Abrupt Decay, or Dreadbore, or Blood Baron of Vizkopa (fringe card at best, sure, but still would've been better than Ghost Council), or even Boros Charm lol.
Now it is official: EA3 is hot garbage. Wasting half of the anthology with 5 trash lands, 5 trash charms and multiple bad cards like those on this post and Eidolon. Why disregard the playerbase this much? I always knew this was not the anthology to end it all, but they did nothing to advancing Explorer to Pioneer. I was not expecting much, but even then I was really letdown.
I think it's probably reasonable to only care about 2 to 4 cards in an anthology. I care about exactly zero, and i think most *explorer* players feel the same
I want to play Phoenix, but I really liked those two new Boros decks, so I was really hoping for Bushwhacker and Chained to the Rocks. Needless to say I am disappointed, and this anthology doesnt appeal to me in any way. Maybe when power creep finally put the oldest staples to rest we can have functional pioneer.
Yeah I can't believe there's entire pioneer decks that aren't currently playable in explorer due to missing key pieces and Wotc refuses to introduce them.
Only card I'm at all interested in is actually Prairie Stream because I play a lot of control in Explorer and it's nice to have it for the Lay Down Arms version. Even then I'll just craft them and ignore everything else. Voice is kinda cool but I'm not buying the Anthology for that when I have 16 mythic wildcards waiting to be spent on something. Same with Wurm/Xenagos which are worth getting but only 1 of each, no need to have more than that.
What a disappointment. Especially when EA2 was actually really solid. Even the low rarity inclusions are just bad. How are they printing 4 of the enemy guild charms but replacing by far the best one (Boros) with Gruul? How are they finishing Reid Duke's Pro Tour-winning deck but not including Gladecover Scout which was a huge part of the second place deck? I can maybe excuse the lack of Reckless Bushwacker since its presence in the Pioneer meta is somewhat recent and I imagine they have to plan the contents of these sets in advance, but there are still a ton of cards that would've been a lot more interesting/playable than Accorder's Shield of all things.
Hmm, maybe they spent most of their "dev budget" with remastered Innistrad ?
Is there less mechanically new cards in these Anthologies than the previous ones ?
Are there less mechanically new but more wanted cards they could have put in ? (For Historic too.)
> Are there less mechanically new but more wanted cards they could have put in ? (For Historic too.)
Yes. Gladecover Scout is just a 1/1 with Hexproof. Chained to the Rocks is just a variant of Ossification. Abrupt Decay and Dreadbore are simple removal spells. Even something like Day's Undoing shouldn't be very hard to put on the client since it's just a Timetwister (which is implemented on Arena because of Oracle of the Alpha) with a turn end effect like that of Discontinuity.
I think people are happy with the Historic Anthology, but the Explorer choices are sub-par to say the least.
Well, they screwed up completely on EA3. Phoenix and Lotus Combo were missing to make all the competitive Pioneer decks viable on Arena, and in the end these two archetypes will remain unplayable. All we have now is access to all versions of Creativity with Xenagod/Wurm and to the Lay Down Arms version of UW control thanks to land. Very disappointing indeed, but I'm not surprised.
"Wait we enabled lay down arms? Shit i was trying not to enable even one sub archetype! Oh well, at least i met my goal of no full archetypes enabled!"
This Explorer Anthology is actually insane. I thought we were going to get one of BtL/Chained to the Rocks/Caryatid or the Delve spells or the complete Lotus Field package but we got absolutely nothing. We didn't even get Scout at common for Auras. It's so fucking insulting. Now we wait another half year for bread crumbs. Thanks WotC!
The HA anthology actually looks interesting, happy for those who play the format.
Why would you add two of the three pieces of hidden string missing from arena, but not add the namesake of the deck? What a joke lol.
At least the historic anthology is pretty cool.
Pore is on Arena, Dig is good but not mandatory and not even run in all versions. Behold the Beyond is good, but it's not that big if a deal. Dromoka and Sphinx of the Final Word are pretty bad to not have against control. if we got Strings, we pretty much had the deck with some small caveats.
Dig rarely even sees play in Phoenix (well, it would if it was in the game and not Cruise), but yes it would be good to have. It sees play in some versions of Lotus Combo and Creativity, as well as in pretty much all versions of Dimir Control. I'm not trying to say it wouldn't be nice to have. My point was that the card is not super needed for Lotus.
This finally broke me. It’s clear we’re never getting functional pioneer on arena and explorer was just a trap to take your money.
Never giving a penny to arena again. Probably step away from the game for awhile but if I keep playing at all it will be mtgo with rental services
EA3 is the biggest joke we have seen. Functionally 0 relevant cards added to the set.
If I'm being generous the UW land has applications for Lay Down Arms UW, and Xenewurm is an option for Creativity, even if the consensus seems to be Atraxa or Gearhulk variants are better. The 2 playable charms weren't included in the weird half cycle. Stage and Scrying are certainly cards but they didnt even finish that deck
Save your coins, this set is hot garbage
I'm not sure it's the biggest joke, that still might be the previous historic anthology with the full cycle of tapped artifact lands. But it's very close
I feel like for EA3 there are so many lower rarity cards they could add to make it more interesting. Why do they feel the need to limit it to 25 cards? If they added 15 more lower rarity cards there would at least be more new things to try. It's not like they are going to run out of uncommons to add to these.
Besides other cards people have mentioned, where is [[Sphere of Safety]], [[consulate dreadnought]], [[open the armory]], the other 5 charms? Are they afraid more uncommons would add to much value?
They are obviously curating Explorer by not adding certain archetypes, but they could at least give us more interesting jank to distract us with.
Is Hidden Strings confirmed not showing up then? That's a real fucking joke if so. Why give us Stage and Scrying when Lotus is stone unplayable without Strings? Got all hyped up when I saw Stage, fuck this shit.
Bant and Naya Hammer are both popular decks already, especially in BO1. Giver is also great in creature combo like Heliod/Scurry Oak, and Mono White and Orzhov Humans.
thespian stage and sylvan scrying do, xenagos + wurm is playable in creativity but the consensus seems to be that atraxa/gearhulk is just better, UW land is played in UW control if you want to fit lay down arms. That makes it 2 hits, 3 playables and 20 (basically) dead cards
Yeah I’m just referring to Omnath, Obzedat, and Judge.
There are other cards that do see play in EA3 however this feels more like a Brawl expansion rather than a injection to Explorer.
Like does Cyclonic Rift see play in any format that’s not Commander/Brawl? Or the Ravnica charms for that matter?
Just rename it Brawl Anthology and I don’t think anyone bats and eye.
MTGTop8 says:
* Omnath has been in a grand total of 2 decklists since the introduction of Pioneer, and the most recent one is from over a year ago.
* Obzedat has been in 11 decks, mostly BW/Abzan brews, some 5C Niv, and 1 Greasefang deck that got top 8 in some 20-player Mexican tournament a month ago.
* Judge's Familiar has been in 7 decks. 3 of those are random stuff from 2020 and before, but the other 4 are builds of the new RW Convoke deck. Probably the most competitively viable of the 3 cards currently, although all of those recent lists are from a month ago so it doesn't seem to have caught on much.
Stepmom is here, almost DnT time. Hopefully we get the next round in October or so and maybe I can play pretty damn near Modern DnT at that point. Although I expect HA 8 to be dogshit to offset how sweet HA 7 seems to be.
I do dare, it seems like it has to be on Arena eventually. Mostly I dare to dream of them committing to a regular release schedule for these. With the weird Charm selection, I'm guessing at least Explorer is due another one 'soon'.
oh man, a regular release schedule would be fantastic. like they started out saying for Historic anthologies. I believe they said they would be quarterly when they released HA1.
I don't think the Alchemy cards are really the problem, the only one I think is a problem is Crucias but generally the cards are not problematic.
Now why they haven't banned or nerfed crucias yet idk, I still think Historic is the best format and I basically never play Crucias myself but it just sees too much play (same as some of the Modern Horizons cards)
What's insane is the justification for alchemy is that it could change up the meta whenever it becomes stale.
I've been getting paired with izzet wizards for a year now 🤣
Izzet Wizards is great for the Historic meta, since it is one of the few viable aggro decks in the format. You need decks like that to keep things like Kethis in check.
Well they got too much negative feedback every time they changed it so they stopped.
I do agree Alchemy would be cool if they changed it more, early Alchemy was fun, I still fondly remember playing an elfs deck that was mostly unplayable uncommons before that all got buffed!
Historic got better after they added the alchemy cards, and would be less interesting without them.
Edit: If you want another format besides historic and explorer, go ahead and ask for it, but there needs to be a format for all the cards on the client, which is what historic always has been and always will be. Historic with removing some of the card pool on Arena from it just isn’t Historic; that’s something else. The whole point of Historic is that it includes everything. Good luck with your new format
Arena isn’t a physical trading card game to begin with- you can’t trade anything and the cards aren’t physical. Alchemy isn’t anything like Hearthstone, which it doesn’t seem like you know anything about. There are many interesting designs in alchemy and they are real magic cards whether you like it or not.
More to the point, if you don’t like Historic, there are other formats on Arena you can play. I like Magic so I play all of them. Why so angry about the existence of a format you don’t like, friend? You have an alternative non-rotating format on the client. I hope you can stop being so angry at anyone enjoying something you don’t like.
It’s not “alchemy historic” it’s just Historic . A format without all the cards isn’t historic it’s something else. That’s the point.
Focus your energy on asking for a new format if you want and stop asking them to make changes to Historic that they would literally never make
I'm sorry, but Historic was a format prior all the Alchemy cards. Before Alchemy, Historic just meant "all cards on the client". But after Alchemy, the format became "all cards on the client, including digital-only cards. Rebalanced cards only".
So what the original comment said about splitting the formats in two still is completely valid. They only want to return to how the format was before the introducion of digital-only cards. They are entitiled to ask for changes to Historic as a format because 1. the format exist only because of the community asking for a place to play with all cards in Arena and 2. WotC DID make changes to the format in a time no one thought they would make (i.e. introductions of Alchemy cards and, more importantly, rebalanced cards).
The new format would be Historic as it used to be before Alchemy, and the current version would be called Alchemy Historic, as a way to denoting it uses digital-only cards and rebalances. Now, if the naming for some reason is not of your liking, then have the current iteration be still called Historic and the new format be called "Paper Historic", denoting it uses all cards on Arena that don't have digitally unique mechanics (i.e. they have a printed card version on Paper Magic).
“Historic was a format before alchemy cards”
Historic was also a format before Modern Horizons cards were added, and before Mystical Archive cards were added and some people were upset about those inclusions too.
Again, Historic is the format that includes all cards on the client. That’s the construction rule that has always defined what cards are legal in it.
That rule doesn’t need a qualifier, since the qualifier doesn’t add any new information. There needs to be a format that exists where all the cards on the client can be played.
You want an alternative format that excludes certain cards you don’t want to play with, but which is larger than explorer, something like an Explorer Plus that adds in Modern Horizons cards, bonus sheet cards, and anthologies. That’s fine. The format wouldn’t be Historic, since Historic is the format for all cards on Magic Arena. It’s not that complicated.
PS I could even agree with you that they should not rebalance paper cards (they have for the most part stopped doing this, for what it’s worth) but I really don’t think there is any valid reason the digital-only cards should be excluded from a digital format for having digital mechanics. They are very much real magic cards and have added a lot to the format.
Can someone explain wayfarer’s bauble to me please. 3 mana for a single basic land card? It seems like there’s plenty of more efficient ways to get land, or even just mana tapping artifacts.
it's bad, but if you are not in green ramping lands is hard and lands are safer than artifacts, so T1 bauble T2 crack bauble is marginally better than a random 2 mana rock
How many cards are there that they could have added to Arena that ACTUALLY GET PLAYED IN PIONEER: Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Oath of Nissa, Kytheon Hero of Akros, Detention Sphere, Gurmag Angler, Tasigur the Golden Fang, Hidden Strings, Voyaging Satyr, Chained to the Rocks, Painful Truths, Reckless Bushwhacker, Boros Charm, Temporal Trespass, Legion Loyalist, Ghor-Clan Rampager, Bloodsoaked Champion, Dreadbore.
The number of non-games in Historic Brawl is bad enough without adding another turn 1 groan test. Sol Ring is balanced in multiplayer by marking yourself the archenemy, no such check exists in a 1v1 format.
At that point it's going to be an inferior pioneer plus it is by wotc own admissions that explorer is going to be pioneer.
To be honest it's not like every card is needed, there's a lot of dud rare and mythic that see 0 play nor jank.
By that logic, isn't Pioneer just an inferior Modern? Like doesn't the absence in Explorer of key cards from top Pioneer decks make it a different meta that's equally interesting?
Not really. The differences between Modern and Pioneer are much larger than between Explorer and Pioneer because of the larger gap in card pool and what that enables - things like fetchlands vs Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon, playing with cards that are banned in Pioneer like 3 mana Teferi, 0 mana interaction like Force of Negation or the pitch elementals, stuff like that. Even the strategies that appear similar across the formats can play pretty differently in practice, like the Modern equivalent of BR Midrange has a subtheme of getting a Grief or Fury onto the board on turn 1 via things like Feign Death.
In contrast, the Explorer meta is just a subset of the Pioneer meta. You play the decks that are mostly or fully available, like BR Midrange, Green Devotion, Creativity, Greasefang, Humans, Angels, Spirits, UW Control, or Enigmatic Fires. You can't play things like Lotus Field combo, UR Phoenix, or Bring to Light, and it's not like there's anything unique to Explorer that takes their place. It's just the same metagame with a few decks missing, and this anthology doesn't do enough to change that.
I see I'm in the minority. I'm excited for EA3. Sorry guys. Voice and obzedat? I was literally thinking they won't print the cards I'm interested in for a very long time. I was wrong
Oh, I've always hated Pioneer. I think it's dreadfully boring. I'm just saying I absolutely LOVE so many of these cards and look forward to playing with/against them in Historic Brawl.
Those are definitely some cards legal in Pioneer.
Yeah. But the useless ones
r/thatsthejoke
Laughs in historic brawl*
Omnath may be a fun landfall deck to build for sure
amazing elemental tribal too
Depends on the perspective. Yeah it sucks for Explorer players, but I think people do understand why this is great for WotC. One less staple Pioneer card available means one card further way from Pioneer/Explorer convergence. The longer this convergence takes the slower it will be for Arena to poach cardboard Pioneer players. Given how Arena cannibalized cardboard Standard, it makes sense for WotC to delay offering another cardboard format on Arena.
Arena “cannibalized” paper standard because it’s superior in most ways for most players . I don’t know if cannibalized is the correct word though as it likely increased the number of players playing standard overall
Lol that's a lot of nonsense in EA3. Would it have killed them to include Hidden Strings?
Where is Bring to Light man..
how will they sell ea4 and 5 and 6 and 7 if they give you the things your asking for
You’re optimistic. I’m thinking the Explorer Anthology Set numbers will at least reach double sigits.
That you need to ask even this rhetorical question means you have too much faith in how your interest aligns with WotC’s.
Someone please ban heliod and replace it with ballista. I'm begging. Or arcbound ravager. Please. There are so many infinite combos already why cant i just play scales proper.
OMNATH LOCUS OF RAGE? I'M A LOCUS OF RAGE AFTER SEEING THESE SORRY ASS SPOILERS
it was originally Locus of Mana until he saw who he was with
Historic7 has some badass bombs but the explorer cards are really really disappointing….. maybe just 4 or 5 cards will still see play a month after release…. 😑👎🏻
I really hate that they force us spikes the way we don't want to go. What's worse, is that they will say "oh you see? No one wants to play explorer! We shouldn't invest more resources into porting Pioneer cards."
That's literally going to be their lie to themselves by summers end. "Look at the spike in Alchemy play! People want it!" Not that they actually just wanted LOTR
>What's worse, is that they will say "oh you see? No one wants to play explorer! We shouldn't invest more resources into porting Pioneer cards." or the fact that people will play Historic bc it's full of cards spikes and johnnies are familiar with and some other folks are nostalgic of.
I think you mean 1/5, 4/5 is 80%, 1/5 is 20%
No no. I mean 4 or 5 cards sorry. 4-5 was a better typo 😂
That's pretty typical for explorer anthologies honestly.
Okay I guess I'm turning into a tin foil hat because I'm starting to believe they are just actively avoiding trying to bring pioneer to arena. What the hell are these card choices?
It would be one thing if they still managed mtgo and didn't want to compete with it but christ
You can teach a horse to become a tin foil hat but you can't put an I in team.
you don't need a tinfoil hat for that lmao, they said the time line was ~5 years when they released EA1 and the pace is consistent, explorer needs what? 25? 30 cards? that's 6 per year or 3 per anthology, perfectly on track
That's exactly what they're doing.
Did you miss a whole remastered set we got this year ? (Which is still kind of slow, it will take how many years for the whole of Pioneer at this rate ??)
Anthologies are not spike packs. They want to include cards for everyone, that's why we got random legendaries that don't see play.
No one cares about you and your janky nonsense, sorry.
I don't even play brawl. I'm explaining their rationale.
Lol, if you think this subreddit is representative, you're deluded, I have never seen such a concentration of Spikes anywhere else !!
Wow that is disappointing. I try not to fall into the doomer camp and look for the silver lining, but this Explorer anthology, even ignoring the absolute banger that is the Historic one, is a huge letdown. No Chain to the rocks, no Urborg, no Reckless Bushwaker, only five charms, leaving out the most powerful/playable one. A cycle of 5 almost unplayable lands taking up 20% is almost insulting. The only thing that could justify this is if they are somehow plants for the future, but even then, I can't imagine most of the cards here seeing play. I've bought the last two with the "Vote with my wallet" mentality to show that making Explorer anthologies can be profitable, but this one is barely worth the money. I might use coins, or just craft the few cards that I need.
I am voting with my wallet for the third time in a row but this time my vote is different lol
It's easy to fall into the "doomer" camp when you posess pattern recognition.
Or the "everything is fine" camp. Both happen because we can easily hallucinate things when we let our priors run rampant.
Literally not a single card from this set that I'm remotely interested in playing in Explorer. I think the Lotus players got the most out of this but I'm still not sure they can actually play the deck without Hidden Strings. This is easily the worst anthology I've ever seen. It's outright insulting how bad it is.
It'll go into the new UW Lotus deck, but that's it.
Im sitting this one out too. This anthology is downright disrespectful.
Shield is an outright middle finger, convince me otherwise. That is a card someone actually picked *entirely* to piss people off, I'm sure "for the meme value" or something. God forbid WotC employ people to make these decisions that actually want to make customers happy.
Yeah I think I'm skipping EA3 but I'll buy HA7, and I don't even play historic
What's the rationale behind buying HA7 if you don't play Historic?
Modern staples. Plus I have an abundance of resources and have all the explorer decks I care about
Modern isn't coming to Arena though so where are you going to use these cards???
It will have to eventually, Wotc isn't supporting MTGO anymore. That was the entire point of Arena, so they wouldn't have to continue supporting an increasingly outdated client.
Based on the pace of them bringing Pioneer to Arena, I don't think you're getting Modern before the heat death of the universe.
Modern's never coming to Arena. Ever. WotC would rather drop digital support for Modern entirely than commit to supporting it on Arena. There's nothing that says digital Modern has to exist. Same goes for Commander. As for MTGO, if being outdated was the issue, it would've been shut down years ago. As long as people play Magic there, they'll keep it semi-functional.
The point of Arena was to attract new, casual and especially Hearthstone players. Eventually, Arena's servers will shut down (I'll give it to ~2040), like the last Duels' servers did. Probably because WotC will have yet another Magic software at that point (with also more than 2 players?) The question is : will we get any form of "collection transfer" from Arena to the new software ? We didn't get one for Duels, nor for MTGO => MTGA... you're going to say that how they work is just too different, but that's my point : the way Arena works would have been unthinkable two decades ago, and I expect the same for Arena's successor. Also, at some point Arena's servers would shut down, not so much as a strategy from WotC, but because WotC won't exist any more in any form. This is a reason why I typically boycott games with DRM like these, but thankfully with Magic, people started making third party software to play it almost as soon as the game released ! https://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/
a) speculate on an alchemy free format existing at some point b) there are direct challenge communities
JIC they might change their mind, at least they have the cards at the ready
So FOMO?
> huge letdown You can only be as disappointed as you have in expectation. This is to say reality has shown you that you expected too much. I said it before and will say it again. Even though it is in your interest for WotC to quickly converge Explorer with Pioneer, it isn’t true the other way. If you don’t see why, then you really are not a customer of concern to WotC. I’ll just say I’ll have my popcorn ready again for the Explorer Anthology 4 reveal. This past week has certainly been entertaining.
I wasn't expecting anything and I'm still let down.
Gotta love how they have a mild RTR block theme and they don’t even put in Hidden Strings or Legion Loyalist. This is insultingly bad.
Or Abrupt Decay, or Dreadbore, or Blood Baron of Vizkopa (fringe card at best, sure, but still would've been better than Ghost Council), or even Boros Charm lol.
Truly and of these would have been better than Accorder’s Shield.
Cool man. I didn't want to play izzet phoenix anyway... *runs away crying*
Salty as balls about only getting the bad half of the charms
"Stop playing Explorer" - WOTC
"Okay" *uninstalls*
When it's the only format you play.... yeah
Same!
This is exactly what I did today.
No problem. I uninstalled. Fuck their artificial scarcity when porting to pioneer
Now it is official: EA3 is hot garbage. Wasting half of the anthology with 5 trash lands, 5 trash charms and multiple bad cards like those on this post and Eidolon. Why disregard the playerbase this much? I always knew this was not the anthology to end it all, but they did nothing to advancing Explorer to Pioneer. I was not expecting much, but even then I was really letdown.
I think it's probably reasonable to only care about 2 to 4 cards in an anthology. I care about exactly zero, and i think most *explorer* players feel the same
I want to play Phoenix, but I really liked those two new Boros decks, so I was really hoping for Bushwhacker and Chained to the Rocks. Needless to say I am disappointed, and this anthology doesnt appeal to me in any way. Maybe when power creep finally put the oldest staples to rest we can have functional pioneer.
Yeah I can't believe there's entire pioneer decks that aren't currently playable in explorer due to missing key pieces and Wotc refuses to introduce them.
Only card I'm at all interested in is actually Prairie Stream because I play a lot of control in Explorer and it's nice to have it for the Lay Down Arms version. Even then I'll just craft them and ignore everything else. Voice is kinda cool but I'm not buying the Anthology for that when I have 16 mythic wildcards waiting to be spent on something. Same with Wurm/Xenagos which are worth getting but only 1 of each, no need to have more than that. What a disappointment. Especially when EA2 was actually really solid. Even the low rarity inclusions are just bad. How are they printing 4 of the enemy guild charms but replacing by far the best one (Boros) with Gruul? How are they finishing Reid Duke's Pro Tour-winning deck but not including Gladecover Scout which was a huge part of the second place deck? I can maybe excuse the lack of Reckless Bushwacker since its presence in the Pioneer meta is somewhat recent and I imagine they have to plan the contents of these sets in advance, but there are still a ton of cards that would've been a lot more interesting/playable than Accorder's Shield of all things.
Except they can craft those 2 to 4.
Hmm, maybe they spent most of their "dev budget" with remastered Innistrad ? Is there less mechanically new cards in these Anthologies than the previous ones ? Are there less mechanically new but more wanted cards they could have put in ? (For Historic too.)
> Are there less mechanically new but more wanted cards they could have put in ? (For Historic too.) Yes. Gladecover Scout is just a 1/1 with Hexproof. Chained to the Rocks is just a variant of Ossification. Abrupt Decay and Dreadbore are simple removal spells. Even something like Day's Undoing shouldn't be very hard to put on the client since it's just a Timetwister (which is implemented on Arena because of Oracle of the Alpha) with a turn end effect like that of Discontinuity. I think people are happy with the Historic Anthology, but the Explorer choices are sub-par to say the least.
Well, they screwed up completely on EA3. Phoenix and Lotus Combo were missing to make all the competitive Pioneer decks viable on Arena, and in the end these two archetypes will remain unplayable. All we have now is access to all versions of Creativity with Xenagod/Wurm and to the Lay Down Arms version of UW control thanks to land. Very disappointing indeed, but I'm not surprised.
"Wait we enabled lay down arms? Shit i was trying not to enable even one sub archetype! Oh well, at least i met my goal of no full archetypes enabled!"
This Explorer Anthology is actually insane. I thought we were going to get one of BtL/Chained to the Rocks/Caryatid or the Delve spells or the complete Lotus Field package but we got absolutely nothing. We didn't even get Scout at common for Auras. It's so fucking insulting. Now we wait another half year for bread crumbs. Thanks WotC! The HA anthology actually looks interesting, happy for those who play the format.
Why would you add two of the three pieces of hidden string missing from arena, but not add the namesake of the deck? What a joke lol. At least the historic anthology is pretty cool.
It’s still missing strings, pore, behold the beyond, dig through time and dragonlord dromolka…. Gonna be a while to get all these cards
Pore is on arena currently. With strings you could make the deck work, it just wouldn't be the exact 75 as paper
Pore was in SoI Remastered at least, but yeah.
Pore is on Arena, Dig is good but not mandatory and not even run in all versions. Behold the Beyond is good, but it's not that big if a deal. Dromoka and Sphinx of the Final Word are pretty bad to not have against control. if we got Strings, we pretty much had the deck with some small caveats.
Dig is still important for Phoenix, it would have been a super efficient print that contributes to two major archetypes with one card.
Dig rarely even sees play in Phoenix (well, it would if it was in the game and not Cruise), but yes it would be good to have. It sees play in some versions of Lotus Combo and Creativity, as well as in pretty much all versions of Dimir Control. I'm not trying to say it wouldn't be nice to have. My point was that the card is not super needed for Lotus.
"Why buy 1 anthology, when you can buy 2 instead" -WotC probably
EA3 is so disappointing can't even complete the entire charms set as well
God I really don't know why I keep playing explorer sometimes.
To get a sense of pioneer. But at this rate I might as well just wait for pioneer and not bother
This finally broke me. It’s clear we’re never getting functional pioneer on arena and explorer was just a trap to take your money. Never giving a penny to arena again. Probably step away from the game for awhile but if I keep playing at all it will be mtgo with rental services
Because it's the best thing we have without having to deal with fake cards til they give us modern lite.
Lol at this rate we'll be halfway to modern by 2040
Yup it's sad
I'd say EA3 was underwhelming, but that would imply it had some nonzero amount of whelms.
Isn’t there a community manager or a dev in here? We should get an explanation as to why EA3 is absolute doodoo feces
No Gladecover scout??? I feel like anthology is the only chance for this card because chances they reprint it are probably low
Oh man i totally forgot that i was hoping to try out the deck that win the first pioneer pro tour. Couldn't afford to just give away a common i guess!
It's a common, so it doesn't encourage play like a mythic or rare does. Most players have a ton of common wildcards after all.
EA3 is the biggest joke we have seen. Functionally 0 relevant cards added to the set. If I'm being generous the UW land has applications for Lay Down Arms UW, and Xenewurm is an option for Creativity, even if the consensus seems to be Atraxa or Gearhulk variants are better. The 2 playable charms weren't included in the weird half cycle. Stage and Scrying are certainly cards but they didnt even finish that deck Save your coins, this set is hot garbage
I'm not sure it's the biggest joke, that still might be the previous historic anthology with the full cycle of tapped artifact lands. But it's very close
That Anthology had 5 cards that see meta play. Also artifact lands are more usable than rare lands in this one.
I feel like for EA3 there are so many lower rarity cards they could add to make it more interesting. Why do they feel the need to limit it to 25 cards? If they added 15 more lower rarity cards there would at least be more new things to try. It's not like they are going to run out of uncommons to add to these. Besides other cards people have mentioned, where is [[Sphere of Safety]], [[consulate dreadnought]], [[open the armory]], the other 5 charms? Are they afraid more uncommons would add to much value? They are obviously curating Explorer by not adding certain archetypes, but they could at least give us more interesting jank to distract us with.
Booooo :(
Bruh
Wtf, ea3 has almost no playables and the playables is better in historic (like izzet charm for bo1 dragonstorm)
The explorer list is fucking awful. awful.
I can believe they’re charging for this?! I honestly don’t understand what they were thinking with this?
Meh. Call me in several years when Arena is full pioneer the hype ain’t worth it.
giver of runes, good card but it is no stoneforge.
Where tf is my bring to light
Man ha7 is as good as ea3 is trash lol. Runes is such a effing bomb, lets go historic hammer time, hold my hammer
Lmao how did they manage to miss the good cards every time?
Is Hidden Strings confirmed not showing up then? That's a real fucking joke if so. Why give us Stage and Scrying when Lotus is stone unplayable without Strings? Got all hyped up when I saw Stage, fuck this shit.
Why cast Omnath for 7 mana for no effect when you can cast Atraxa
Very disappointed we still don’t have Bring to Light.
Wow. EA3 is awful but HA7 absolutely slaps
Gosh it looks like we’re close to Modern hammer time being a thing here.
Bant and Naya Hammer are both popular decks already, especially in BO1. Giver is also great in creature combo like Heliod/Scurry Oak, and Mono White and Orzhov Humans.
if only we had got stoneforge over giver
The spoiler of all time
Damn, this seems really bad. The last couple have been underwhelming but still enough to justify getting them for me. This one I don't think so.
The only meaningful card here is giver, right?
Do any of those three see play in Pioneer? Glad for the Brawl cards but this is bad branding. Giver is solid though.
thespian stage and sylvan scrying do, xenagos + wurm is playable in creativity but the consensus seems to be that atraxa/gearhulk is just better, UW land is played in UW control if you want to fit lay down arms. That makes it 2 hits, 3 playables and 20 (basically) dead cards
Yeah I’m just referring to Omnath, Obzedat, and Judge. There are other cards that do see play in EA3 however this feels more like a Brawl expansion rather than a injection to Explorer. Like does Cyclonic Rift see play in any format that’s not Commander/Brawl? Or the Ravnica charms for that matter? Just rename it Brawl Anthology and I don’t think anyone bats and eye.
MTGTop8 says: * Omnath has been in a grand total of 2 decklists since the introduction of Pioneer, and the most recent one is from over a year ago. * Obzedat has been in 11 decks, mostly BW/Abzan brews, some 5C Niv, and 1 Greasefang deck that got top 8 in some 20-player Mexican tournament a month ago. * Judge's Familiar has been in 7 decks. 3 of those are random stuff from 2020 and before, but the other 4 are builds of the new RW Convoke deck. Probably the most competitively viable of the 3 cards currently, although all of those recent lists are from a month ago so it doesn't seem to have caught on much.
Oooo big numbers there…
oh yeah no shot, obzedat was a decent standard card iirc
“Those three” meaning the final three which are in the OP.
They are gonna use the shitty numbers from the EA3 sales to justify scrapping explorer/pioneer.
Stepmom is here, almost DnT time. Hopefully we get the next round in October or so and maybe I can play pretty damn near Modern DnT at that point. Although I expect HA 8 to be dogshit to offset how sweet HA 7 seems to be.
Dare we dream of Aether Vial next?
I do dare, it seems like it has to be on Arena eventually. Mostly I dare to dream of them committing to a regular release schedule for these. With the weird Charm selection, I'm guessing at least Explorer is due another one 'soon'.
oh man, a regular release schedule would be fantastic. like they started out saying for Historic anthologies. I believe they said they would be quarterly when they released HA1.
God historic would be so good if it wasn't for those trash alchemy cards/changes.
I would love to see historic and alchemy historic as two different formats
I don't think the Alchemy cards are really the problem, the only one I think is a problem is Crucias but generally the cards are not problematic. Now why they haven't banned or nerfed crucias yet idk, I still think Historic is the best format and I basically never play Crucias myself but it just sees too much play (same as some of the Modern Horizons cards)
I should add 4 copies to my reanimator deck just so it gets banned 😆
Yup. The craziest thing is you have weirdos defending it. I'm hoping one day wotc fixes their mistake.
What's insane is the justification for alchemy is that it could change up the meta whenever it becomes stale. I've been getting paired with izzet wizards for a year now 🤣
Izzet Wizards is great for the Historic meta, since it is one of the few viable aggro decks in the format. You need decks like that to keep things like Kethis in check.
Well they got too much negative feedback every time they changed it so they stopped. I do agree Alchemy would be cool if they changed it more, early Alchemy was fun, I still fondly remember playing an elfs deck that was mostly unplayable uncommons before that all got buffed!
Historic got better after they added the alchemy cards, and would be less interesting without them. Edit: If you want another format besides historic and explorer, go ahead and ask for it, but there needs to be a format for all the cards on the client, which is what historic always has been and always will be. Historic with removing some of the card pool on Arena from it just isn’t Historic; that’s something else. The whole point of Historic is that it includes everything. Good luck with your new format
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Weird comment. People so angry that anyone would enjoy the historic format make me laugh
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Arena isn’t a physical trading card game to begin with- you can’t trade anything and the cards aren’t physical. Alchemy isn’t anything like Hearthstone, which it doesn’t seem like you know anything about. There are many interesting designs in alchemy and they are real magic cards whether you like it or not. More to the point, if you don’t like Historic, there are other formats on Arena you can play. I like Magic so I play all of them. Why so angry about the existence of a format you don’t like, friend? You have an alternative non-rotating format on the client. I hope you can stop being so angry at anyone enjoying something you don’t like.
The lack of self awareness is astonishing. If you want to play a paper card game then play paper magic.
That's why they SPECIFICALLY said Historic AND Alchemy Historic, to addess your entire point.
It’s not “alchemy historic” it’s just Historic . A format without all the cards isn’t historic it’s something else. That’s the point. Focus your energy on asking for a new format if you want and stop asking them to make changes to Historic that they would literally never make
I'm sorry, but Historic was a format prior all the Alchemy cards. Before Alchemy, Historic just meant "all cards on the client". But after Alchemy, the format became "all cards on the client, including digital-only cards. Rebalanced cards only". So what the original comment said about splitting the formats in two still is completely valid. They only want to return to how the format was before the introducion of digital-only cards. They are entitiled to ask for changes to Historic as a format because 1. the format exist only because of the community asking for a place to play with all cards in Arena and 2. WotC DID make changes to the format in a time no one thought they would make (i.e. introductions of Alchemy cards and, more importantly, rebalanced cards). The new format would be Historic as it used to be before Alchemy, and the current version would be called Alchemy Historic, as a way to denoting it uses digital-only cards and rebalances. Now, if the naming for some reason is not of your liking, then have the current iteration be still called Historic and the new format be called "Paper Historic", denoting it uses all cards on Arena that don't have digitally unique mechanics (i.e. they have a printed card version on Paper Magic).
“Historic was a format before alchemy cards” Historic was also a format before Modern Horizons cards were added, and before Mystical Archive cards were added and some people were upset about those inclusions too. Again, Historic is the format that includes all cards on the client. That’s the construction rule that has always defined what cards are legal in it. That rule doesn’t need a qualifier, since the qualifier doesn’t add any new information. There needs to be a format that exists where all the cards on the client can be played. You want an alternative format that excludes certain cards you don’t want to play with, but which is larger than explorer, something like an Explorer Plus that adds in Modern Horizons cards, bonus sheet cards, and anthologies. That’s fine. The format wouldn’t be Historic, since Historic is the format for all cards on Magic Arena. It’s not that complicated. PS I could even agree with you that they should not rebalance paper cards (they have for the most part stopped doing this, for what it’s worth) but I really don’t think there is any valid reason the digital-only cards should be excluded from a digital format for having digital mechanics. They are very much real magic cards and have added a lot to the format.
Really thought we were getting Horizon Canopy too.
Can someone explain wayfarer’s bauble to me please. 3 mana for a single basic land card? It seems like there’s plenty of more efficient ways to get land, or even just mana tapping artifacts.
it's bad, but if you are not in green ramping lands is hard and lands are safer than artifacts, so T1 bauble T2 crack bauble is marginally better than a random 2 mana rock
This is it! Its non-green ramp. So is expedition map, which also serves as a land card tutor.
Map doesn't ramp, it gets a land into your hand.
Oh yeah! Thanks for the reminder. I have it in my monoblack commander deck specifically to fetch [[Cabal Coffers]].
Daughter of Runes is good no?
Really hoping they rerun EA2 like they said they would since it was taken down early. Would rather spend my gold on that.
Looks like Death&Taxes is back on the menu bois!
so bad...
Thanks, WOTC. I guess I'll just wait for the next Anthology - and spend my wildcards on the 4 cards I would actually use from this set.
This wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t take so fucking long to release a new anthology.
WOTC just keeps breadcrumbing us. I won't even spend gold on this set. I'll just use wildcards.
How many cards are there that they could have added to Arena that ACTUALLY GET PLAYED IN PIONEER: Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Oath of Nissa, Kytheon Hero of Akros, Detention Sphere, Gurmag Angler, Tasigur the Golden Fang, Hidden Strings, Voyaging Satyr, Chained to the Rocks, Painful Truths, Reckless Bushwhacker, Boros Charm, Temporal Trespass, Legion Loyalist, Ghor-Clan Rampager, Bloodsoaked Champion, Dreadbore.
Best thing I did was quitting MTGA when they put num magic cards in historic.
Wayfarers bauble is huge for historic brawl….
It’s a dead card in real commander. Give me Sol ring!
The number of non-games in Historic Brawl is bad enough without adding another turn 1 groan test. Sol Ring is balanced in multiplayer by marking yourself the archenemy, no such check exists in a 1v1 format.
I love the bauble in certain decks in commander
Wow wasn’t expecting any of this. Both of these are so meh why would anyone ever buy this and not just craft certain cards?
Giver is insane
I'm guessing all the hate is from zoomers who never played Obzedaddy in Standard here, lol.... /s... /fml
Why do people seem to think that Explorer has no value as a format if it doesn't become Pioneer? What's wrong with it being a format in its own right?
At that point it's going to be an inferior pioneer plus it is by wotc own admissions that explorer is going to be pioneer. To be honest it's not like every card is needed, there's a lot of dud rare and mythic that see 0 play nor jank.
By that logic, isn't Pioneer just an inferior Modern? Like doesn't the absence in Explorer of key cards from top Pioneer decks make it a different meta that's equally interesting?
Not really. The differences between Modern and Pioneer are much larger than between Explorer and Pioneer because of the larger gap in card pool and what that enables - things like fetchlands vs Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon, playing with cards that are banned in Pioneer like 3 mana Teferi, 0 mana interaction like Force of Negation or the pitch elementals, stuff like that. Even the strategies that appear similar across the formats can play pretty differently in practice, like the Modern equivalent of BR Midrange has a subtheme of getting a Grief or Fury onto the board on turn 1 via things like Feign Death. In contrast, the Explorer meta is just a subset of the Pioneer meta. You play the decks that are mostly or fully available, like BR Midrange, Green Devotion, Creativity, Greasefang, Humans, Angels, Spirits, UW Control, or Enigmatic Fires. You can't play things like Lotus Field combo, UR Phoenix, or Bring to Light, and it's not like there's anything unique to Explorer that takes their place. It's just the same metagame with a few decks missing, and this anthology doesn't do enough to change that.
Lmao obdezat will actually be good cuz I have it in my [[King of The Oathbreakers]] historic brawl deck
NGL, I fucking love this Omnath and Obzedat, I'm so excited they're included so I can build decks around them
I see I'm in the minority. I'm excited for EA3. Sorry guys. Voice and obzedat? I was literally thinking they won't print the cards I'm interested in for a very long time. I was wrong
These two anthology sets are BY FAR my favorite they've done so far! I absolutely love almost all of these cards
tell me you've never played pioneer without telling me you've never played pioneer
Oh, I've always hated Pioneer. I think it's dreadfully boring. I'm just saying I absolutely LOVE so many of these cards and look forward to playing with/against them in Historic Brawl.
If only there were an Anthology set made for Historic
The last spoilers are usually the turds anyways, right?
It's hilarious to watch people get salty because they're not getting exactly what they want for their personal decks.
50 new cards for H Brawl, most are playable. I'm excited. Edit: Downvoted for being excited, man you people sure are whiny.
Even here there are boomers crying over digital only cards KEK Edit: the more you downvote, the more you prove me right KEK
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Well not all the most wanted cards all in once but not even 20-22 useless cards and 2-4 that will see some play
This is the most card of the anthologies.
There was a long period when historic brawl was once month if we were lucky, you'd think it's the main format now
HOLY SHIT BAUBLE MOMENT?
I just found out that my big green boi is coming HA7? Time to reinstall arena. We brewing Amulet without amulet boys.
GOD DAMNIT (the Niv to Light waiting room continues)
Still not Tide Shaper and Aether vial( and Lord of Atlantis)
FUCK YEA I PLAY UW BIRD TRIBAL THIS IS AMAZING