Yep, this is exactly what I meant when I said the game state becomes inscrutable.

I think we all figured this was coming, Alchemy has never been super popular, even when it was originally introduced, and the extra burden of commissioning art and designing/testing cards is probably not worth the effort now that there are 6-7 Standard releases a year.

There's also the fact that there wasn't really a meaningful reason for digital-only cards to exist. Yes, there are effects that only work or are only practical in digital-only formats. But there's not enough designs that are sufficiently impactful or differ significantly from non-digital mechanics to justify making new cards with every set.

Is the benefit of perpetual lasting in the graveyard/hand/library good enough to justify using it over the much more supported +1/+1 counters? Does conjuring a card really feel that different from creating a token copy of a card? The only mechanic that felt like it was truly doing something interesting and fresh were Drafting cards from Spellbooks, but the massive variety of cards made it hard for your opponents to predict what cards you had. I feel like revealing the card you drafted would have alleviated this issue. I think there were also some good uses of Seek, Intensity and Conjure, but not enough to overcome the burden of acquiring new cards for another format

Rebalanced cards sounded great in concept, but the reality of having to remember two cards with the same name and art but slightly different stats/effects was just confusing. Glad that they're reverting all changes in Arena going forward.

Ultimately, Alchemy was a solution in search of a problem. Sure at the time it was introduced there weren't as many formats and the meta was slower, but simply working on adding more existing cards/formats probably would have been a better use of their time. And eventually those problems solved themselves anyways.

One of the issues with digital design Alchemy kept running into is that even if you can design more complex cards/effects due to the ability of the computer to track it, doesn't mean you should. The game is still played by humans after all, and the players need to be able to have a mental state of the game or else it feels too random.

Can a player track the odds of drawing a Lightning Bolt when several were conjured into the deck? Will a player remember which creatures in the graveyard had perpetual modifications without obsessively checking every turn? It's a lot of mental load for things that don't really matter as much as more easily trackable on field effects

I've always felt that Alchemy was overwhelmingly complicated, even in digital-only. I agree it's a cool concept, but Magic has enough crazy interactions, replacement effects, and trigger-storms as it is; adding wild stuff like permanent alterations to cards in hand/library just makes the game state inscrutable.

I hope they introduce alternatives to Historic and Brawl that exclude them, since I'd love to play those formats without Alchemy cards.

I think the concept of Alchemy is cool, doing digital only mechanics. I also think Alchemy is horrendous for the paper only people trying out MTGA, getting bombarded by broken ass cards you never knew existed

I mean...yes? Red and green are the mana generating colors, so of course it makes sense to put the tokens in those colors..

Ah, yes, Heartwood Tokens. Because red and green are notoriously bad at generating mana or accessing Treasure Tokens.

It doesnt need to be affinity to make strix work. Any deck with dimir colours can play 4 without any downside, and if you are not affinity, you are not getting vandalblasted.

Perhaps a new kind of white affinity focus deck appears or something in esper with Strix because it is also an artifact.

A friend brought esper affinity with Glint Hawk for a “weird pauper decks” event! Lens flare also for the flavour. It did surprisingly well.

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

Strix seems really good for Grixis affinity but at the same time Vandalblast seems really bad for every form of affinity. I don't remember if there are any affinity builds with White in it, but I can imagine they'll pop up now with Dispatch

Disparch seems very strong and so does Baleful Strix, but I wonder how much will they influence the meta.

Feels weird indeed that a Secret Lair influences legality, but its good to see that the panel is extra careful with those changes.

I have been enjoying a lot these chapters!

😂

The real answer is take WotC out of the equation. Hasbro does not care one bit for competitive play if it does not make them more money. WotC does what Hasbro tells them: print and sell as much shit as you can for as much money as you can so that they can tell investors they sold this many units for this many dollars and they expect to do more next quarter. Not one thought enters the minds of the CEOs that it's a game that people play for enjoyment.

Going for a garden walk here, but my two cents (it comes around to competitive play):

D&D players already showed how to do it. Take the game away from WotC. Rules can't be copy written. Create an Open Source rule set for the game and call it "Spells: The Open Sorcery" or something better. You can even call it a "MTG Compatible" product. Change anything that might be trademarked: mana symbols, tap symbols, etc. I'm not sure if it'd be required, but you could change the wording if needed for legal reasons; instead of tap, say spend or something. Instead of mana, call it ether, creatures are minions, artifacts are relics, lands are domains, upkeep is the reset step, etc.

Normalize proxies. It's not like Wizards isn't already printing proxies. They sell Secret Lairs for a stupid high premium which are basically proxies for 20 cent cards that cost them 2 cents to print. They have so many alternate styles and art now that unless you're looking at old cards, how the hell are you supposed to know if it's a WotC card or not when you're sitting at the table? And of course there's the whole Magic 30 scam.

Now you've got the groundwork for anybody who wants to play competitively to be able to just print out their deck and go play. No more pay to win and a much larger potential competitive player pool.

So, you just need events. Game stores probably don't want to sanction proxy events so that they don't ruin their relationship with WotC, so the players need to make these happen. It won't start with 100-1000 player signups. It might only start with a handful of players for a given event, but if they are done with notice and frequency, they'll grow.

For smaller events like that, it can be done in somebody's garage, or a park, maybe the local library if they have a conference room you can reserve. There are also places like movie theaters or bowling alleys that also rent out space for things like birthday parties if you've got a larger group. Entry fees can be put to renting the space and prizes can be cool proxies or altered art cards.

There's ways to do it on the cheap and still be fun. Even a well made flyer for the event can be a cheap collectible for anybody who attends. These days it's cheap to print whatever you want on a coffee tumbler or 3 ring binder or what-have-you, so interesting prizes are easy enough to come by.

Create novel events. Since it's about taking the game back and making it what you want, you can create alternate rules for the event. You can have no ban list. You can have cube events. You can do blocks. You can do chaos draft. You can do any format you want. You can create your own rotating format with curated sets. There are tens of thousands of cards to pull from, or you can make your own cards and you can try your own hand at game design. You don't need WotC for any of that.

If one of these regular events takes off it can form into a league. There can be any number of leagues, but if one or two grows enough, it's simple enough to track things in a database for players who want to climb ladders to get to larger events.

And then promote it all. There are plenty of disillusioned YouTubers who may put up videos of these events if it's done well and with the spirit of a game for the players in mind.

Love the shooter as a prize. Might actually get me not to try splashing a fourth color

No, i did not think you meant Commander is lesser. It is very different, and I wish WoTC push 1v1 Commander more, and multiplayer 60 card.

Brawl was a great format, i wish it had done better.

Throw some chicken nuggies in there and I'm in!

Yeah and sorry in no way did I mean to say Commander is "lesser than" or anything like that if I came across that way. I just meant that it's completely different from the 1v1 competitive stuff/experience that LGSs I grew up with were all about. It's definitely fun, I just think it's rise in popularity came at the cost of competitive 1v1 magic and I kind of lament that.

WotC is Commander-first now and it's not even close, and I know this has been one of the main reasons local events just don't happen anymore like they used to.

While I loved (I say past tense because when I closed my shop I gave up Magic) commander, I miss 60 card.

The Commander Parties were fun to run, but I would have a group of players who would come In and wanted to play plain commander. They would end up in a pod with someone wanting to do the party and then refuse to acknowledge the night's rules. This ended up souring people to the commander parties. Since my shop was in a small town, a lot of times I would only get enough for a single pod, maybe 2, and 3 on a really good night.

This is sad to hear, and No slight on you. I ran an LGS for 7 1/2 years. The last time I really got an FNM with more than 4 players, that was not commander/prerelease, was either 2019 or 2021.

I tried so much to get people in to play at my shop. I only charged if we were doing a sealed/draft/prerelease. I gave out the WoTC promos, I gave out my standard decks I built, I threw a pizza party (0 attendees for that one).