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?