I would loved to have been in the WotC offices Monday when the news dropped of a new entrant into the digital CCG arena.

All of a sudden what they thought was a two horse race between themselves with MtG:Arena and the 800lb gorilla Hearthstone by Blizzard, looks like becoming a three horse race with the addition of Riot Games and Legend of Runeterra.

I suspect WotC were hoping in the current climate that they would be picking up a shed load of new players as those disenfranchised with Blizzard and Hearthstone look for a viable alternative.

Although I would imagine that the number of engaged players would drop drastically once the new arrivals realised they can only play on their PC, and not on their mobile device of choice. Although to be fair to WotC, Mac owners will be getting Arena hopefully sometime before the New Year.

However that was before the sign up for early access to new kid on the block Legends of Runeterra (LoR) was opened up on Monday. Like Arena LoR is only available on PC. However the button is already on the website for the Apple App Store. Which would imply that they plan to release LoR sooner than later on mobile.

The scary thing for WotC with Riot Games entering the fray is that Riot Games know this arena. All those years of experience developing the online behemoth that is League of Legends. All the experience that this has got them in the e-sport arena. The customer base they have to market to. A customer base that trusts them, and is highly engaged with them, and is more at easy using a digital product.

WotC are not generous with their in game economy in Arena. It stinks, and is the major reason why I won’t play the game. Close second is it’s not on iOS/iPadOS.

If Riot Games get the game play correct, and they get the in game economy correct, then they will have a hit on their hands. As soon as I get my invite to play (yes I did sign up for early access) and had sometime with the game I’ll post my thoughts.

In the meantime it will be interesting to see just how WotC and Blizzard react to the new guy on the block.

Yesterday WotC made some MtG announcements.

First up the official trailer for Throne of Eldraine was released.

I really like this trailer. It continues the high production values started with the War of the Spark trailer/teaser.

I didn’t like that War of the Spark trailer. It looked amazing. But the animation, particularly of the people in it just didn’t look natural. Plus the facial expressions, especially Liliana just didn’t convey any emotion. Plus there was a story of such but not a great one. It didn’t sell the set for me.

Now this new trailer fixes all the issues I had and mentioned above with the previous trailer.

For me this trailer almost gets up to the level of the Pixar shorts. I know some will hark to Shrek for the feel of this. But I love the fact there is a story being told, with some sort of battle going on in the background.

The animation of the gingerbread couple, and the emotion on the iced faces is really good. The human animation has improved as well.

I think the trailer sells the fairy tale element of Throne of Eldraine really well. However the Arthurian legend side doesn’t really come across.

Ok here is that new trailer…

This was followed up with the announcement of the sets that are coming out in 2020.

At the start of 2020 we return to Theros and it’s underworld. Q2 sees an all new plane, Ikoria. Which is a monster world, where we get to play monsters and make monsters apparently. Coreset 2021 is Teferi themed. And the year closes with a return visit to Zendikar and it’s original adventure world.

There was also a look at the new Brawl decks Commanders that are coming out for Throne of Eldraine. Which didn’t inspire me. They also said Brawl is coming to Arena (still dead to me) and marks playing Arena can play Brawl now.

What did you think of the announcements?

Yesterday WotC released on Android (get real I’m an Apple fanboy, I’m not going to share an Android link) and iOS their official MtG Companion app.

So why should you be bothered about this?

Well over time this I believe is the app that WotC want you to have as your go to app for paper MtG. I’ve seen talk of eventually at store and Magicfests that you will be able to submit match results, see pairings, and standings for tournaments. Which will be pretty cool.

But before we get to that stuff and any other ideas they have planned we get this open beta that is aimed at the kitchen table players at home.

Wisely I think WotC are keeping it simple, by giving players a way to run events/tournaments at home amongst a group of friends.

There are apps and websites already out there, and have been for years that allow you to run tournaments. Such as Tourney on iOS or Challonge that is web based. Naturally being more established applications they offer more functionality, most of which is relevant to MtG players. They also have their advantages and disadvantages.

So at the moment you can create a home tournament for between 2 and 16 players. Which can be constructed, sealed or draft. With rounds that are either best of 1 (yeah WotC still hold out that this will take off, but what you do in the privacy of your own home is up to you, freaks) or best of 3.

Nitpicking but I dislike the splash screen art. The screens have an awful lot of dead space. A great example of this is the leaderboard. It looks like the name and position has had an argument with the win/loss/draw stats.

On the other hand I do like the pairings screen and how easy it is to update results.

But this is cosmetic stuff really. Easily fixed.

Functionality I’d love to see is being able to select between round robin and swiss for generating the pairings. I’d love to have the save functionality expanded from just groups, but the results of the tournaments for that group.

For me this companion app truly warrants the beta tag. Unlike Arena.

As the start of a conversation during the beta phase of this apps development, it’s a pretty good start.

You will need TestFlight installed to get this on iOS during this open beta period.

Oh and here is the original post on the WotC website announcing the app.

Over the weekend at a panel/talk at SDCC Chief MtG Game Designer extraordinaire Mark Rosewater dropped some bombs about the new set coming out at the start of October and changes to products/boosters.

This post is going to be my thoughts on what was said/written, and won’t cover everything. If you want to see what the full article says you can pop on over and read it on the WotC site HERE.

New Set

So let’s start with the name of the new set (which was actual released Friday) and that is Throne of Eldraine. As this tweet from during the talk shows it’s got a pretty cool theme in my opinion.

And I have to admit from the art they shared on Twitter, also during the talk (one or two bits I’ve shared below), I’m loving the look and art.

I love the mashup. Just with the pieces shared so far I was going oh that’s “Snow White”, that’s “The Little Mermaid”.

But below the mashup between what obviously is King Arthur and Snow White, and the Planeswalker emblem made out of a castle/Camelot in the middle. I hope this becomes a playmat. It’s a fantastic mashup of genres.

But the whole look has a kind of twisted fairy tale feel to it. I’ve seen a similar take before, just can’t put my finger on where. Does it get more twisted than the Goldilocks and the Three Bears below. What a wicked, twisted, image. I have expect this image to be shared over the internet naming and shaming Goldilocks and her trophy hunting of bears.

So after that pretty awesome art. Which did the intended job of getting me excited for the upcoming set. Let’s look at the fiddling with booster packs and cards!

Changes Already in Place

“…the chance of getting a foil has increased from less than one in four boosters to one in three.” Maybe I was unlucky but I didn’t seem to get more foils when opening boosters. Not a very scientific, fact based opinion. But I don’t record those sort of things whilst opening a booster box.

The new token frames, and particularly the art on them for Core Set 2020 has been stunning. Everyone at my FLGS has been commenting how much they like them.

The New Frames

I’m indifferent to the changes that are coming like the borderless Planeswalker cards, extended art frames and the showcase frames. I’m pretty sure if I pulled one, especially the borderless Planeswalker cards of a Planeswalker I really wanted, I’d be jumping the moon with excitement. Like I would now if it was a foil. And I’m pretty sure if I pulled any of them I’d be “oh wow”. Because even though the card images look cool on screen. They really look amazing when held in the hand. The images do not do the physical card justice.

Collector Boosters

An interesting product indeed. $20 – $25 boosters! I have no doubt this will sell. How much it will impact the sale of regular booster boxes or boosters I don’t know. It’s also going to be interesting to see how this effects the secondary market. Technically it’s putting more copies of the rare and mythics out there, especially in the new frames, and also more foils. It might be something I’d buy an odd booster of. But do the math 36 (assuming that a booster box is 36 packs and not 24) x $20. That’s $720 a box. An FLGS might sell a box for slightly less. But this has the potential to be the most expensive MtG product yet! But there are folks out there that will pay this.

Brawl Decks

Falling under flogging a dead horse. Brawl has been dead for over a year now. In fact it burned brightly for a couple of months, and then disappeared. WotC have announced that with Throne of Eldraine they will be producing preconstructed Brawl decks. So Brawl versions of Commander and Challenger decks. Too little too late? This was a product players were calling for when Brawl was introduced. But now?

When I read the article I thought why? Surely WotC know this is a dead format? Then I saw the tweet below.

I still think that WotC are missing the point with 1v1 versions of multiplayer formats. It’s the multiplayer part that makes them popular. But with them introducing the format to Arena, it’s natural that they would try and resurrect and breathe life back into the format. Because let’s face it they want the Arena players to be able to go into their FLGS and play the format also. Which I don’t think will happen.

I’m not sure the Brawl decks will sell. Unless all the cards in the Brawl decks are standard legal and these “new mechanically unique cards” become core to a top tier standard deck. I just don’t see these decks selling as well as the Commander products, or for that matter the Challenger decks.

No one plays the format. So why buy decks for a format no one plays? Unless it’s for the cards to use in other formats.

And yes Arena is still dead to me. And when it eventually does come out on iOS it will still be dead to me. WotC will have to do something they will never do and be generous with all the Arena codes I have sitting in a pile gathering dust, and let me use them all. But from the sidelines, the restrictions on the number of codes that a person can use is still ridiculously mean. The new master tree thing looks like another way to fleece players. It seems the only lessons WotC are learning from the video game industry is all it’s worst practices.

We won’t revisit why Arena is not beta software. Ok let’s, if you are running million dollar events relying on the software, paying celebs and streamers to use and stream your software. Then that’s not beta. You don’t run high profile events on beta software. That was shorter than I thought.

In the meantime they continue trying to bend the physical game to make life easier for Arena players, what looks good for streaming, and easier for their coders.

Also in a weeks time it’s spoiler season time once more…

From leaked spoilers last week we already know the core mechanics that will be in the four new Commander decks. But I’ll talk about those and how I feel about the new decks at the time of the spoilers.

So that’s my thoughts. What do you think of theses announcements?

After Prerelease usually comes Release weekend when your FLGS holds draft events using the new set.

But WotC have been fiddling with the events, and the order they happen. So not only will your FLGS be doing the above draft events, they will also now be holding an Open House.

Open House events are great for those that want to learn MtG, or try it to see if they like it, or returning players who haven’t played in a long while.

At the Open House you will be given a free welcome deck (it’s free so will not have any cards of value in it) and taught how to play.

You then get to play some games of MtG against other players, and after about 4 games you get given a free promo card.

For the Open House I believe it’s this lovely full art Liliana’s Triumph.

The Welcome decks are great for learning, however they are not something you would use at say FNM or whatever event replaces Standard Showdown.

For those two events you really want to get one of the new Challenger decks. They are a great basis to build a deck from, plus straight out of the box unchanged competitive (ie you will win a game or two with them).

The Planeswalker decks are great for casual play, but once again not strong enough for the more competitive events.

So if you like MtG after trying it. Depending on if you want to just be casual or competitive you know what the next best product is to buy.

Obviously you could jump right in and build your own deck. But that requires buying boosters or singles, learning how to build a deck, and is a steepish learning curve.

With it also being draft weekend as well as the open house, you could always hang around and take part in the draft event.

If you did you’d get this sweet promo…

I won’t explain draft here, but it’s a fun format that doesn’t require you to have a deck or lots of cards to build one from. If you do decide to take part in the draft event the store owner and other players will be more than willing to help you and give advice.

So next Saturday head on down to your FLGS to learn how to play MtG, get a free welcome deck, play some games and get a promo card.

This weekend is a big weekend in the MtG world. It’s Prerelease weekend for the new set War of the Spark, and it’s also MagicFest London.

To allow vendors and the organiser to sell booster boxes and other War of the Spark products at MagicFest London WotC have relaxed the rules in the UK. So UK Stores can sell everything Prerelease weekend, and not have to hold off a week.

While WotC are taking valuable sales away from your FLGS, you are able to attend one of the many Prerelease events your FLGS will be holding.

In fact with all the top MtG players and competitive ones migrating to London to prove themselves, this is probably one of those times when the odds are in the favour of the average player to do well at their FLGS. While the cats away and all that over used cliche.

Oh and another token gesture thrown at the UK FLGS they don’t have to wait until midnight to hold their first Prerelease event this Friday. So many if not all will be holding an earlier Prerelease event also.

Me I’m attending my usual slot on a Saturday. Hope to see you there.