Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we usually talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective… but today some big news hit, and we have to discuss it.
In case you missed it, Wizards dropped the most recent State of the Beta, and it’s a doozy. While there’s a lot of info in it, the most impactful for most people has been the announcements regarding Historic, the format on Arena where our old cards will be playable.
While there was some good news, including clarification that there would be ranked Historic, best of three, and more, there was one huge bombshell: starting in November, it will cost 2 wildcards to craft 1 Historic card.
As expected, this has caused an outrage on most social media. People are calling it greedy, a betrayal of trust, and they do have a valid point. We were told that our cards would continue to be playable after rotation, and while that’s still technically true, it’s a lot harder to swallow when any small upgrades to our old decks will cost twice as much.
Of course, Wizards is a company. They have to make money. They want to encourage people to play Standard as much as possible because that is their cash cow. A few years down the road, when Historic is a more established format, players could just sit on their decks, make a few small tweaks each season, and that’ll be that. They’d have no reason to buy new Standard decks, similar to how die-hard Modern and Legacy players rarely buy Standard decks too.
But! Just because (1) Wizards needs to make money, and just because (2) they want to encourage people to play Standard, that doesn’t mean they have to go about it this way. There are a ton of other methods they could use to achieve those two goals, so let’s go over ten of them.
1. Don’t do anything
Let’s be honest, this is probably the best method: just letting things be. Don’t charge extra for Historic wildcards, and let everything work itself out.
Will this potentially encourage some players to just sit on a few Historic decks and never buy Standard cards? Probably. But at the same time, formats in Magic change all the time, even non-rotating ones. When Standard sucks, people play Modern; when Modern sucks, people play Draft; when Draft gets old, people go back to Standard.
The most recent Modern metagame up until the Hogaak ban was miserable. Even as a die-hard Modern fan, if I had the option to play either Hogaak-Modern or Standard online, I would play Standard.
The same thing could apply to Standard and Historic on Arena, with players going back and forth between them when they’re good/bad. Standard may be in a good place now, but there will come a time when it’s not as good, and people need a reasonable alternative or else they’ll just go play a different game. If Historic is affordable, they’ll play that; if it’s not, they won’t, and they’ll go elsewhere.
Like many other people, I’m hopeful that this will be the change that Wizards makes. But if they don’t, then it’s worth exploring some other ideas, such as…
2. Do more with Draft
Speaking of Draft, as a die-hard Modern/Legacy fan myself, back before Arena I didn’t play much Standard for years, but I still drafted.
I love drafting the new sets when they come out, even if I didn’t play Standard with the cards, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. Wizards can still make plenty of money off Historic-only players who like drafting even if they never touch the Standard queue.
This could be especially true if Wizards does more variety with the drafts. Every time Omniscience draft comes up, I always fire it up two or three (or ten…) times just because it’s so much fun to do something new. They could easily get me to play more Draft if there was a different spin on it every week.
Maybe something like the Ben-Stark-proposed “no rare” draft? Or draft where 20-30 cards are taken out of the format? Or draft where you have to build a 60 card deck? I’d definitely be down to try each of those a couple times, and likely other “Historic only” players would be too.
3. Make Historic part of the Mastery Pass
If Wizards desperately needs to charge us extra to have the privilege of playing Historic, then there’s an easy way already built into the program: the Mastery Pass.
They could limit the Historic queue only to people who have purchased the pass. And then, as part of the rewards along with the pass, you could get those new reprints they talked about in the State of the Beta. Having cool reprints like Snapcaster Mage, Liliana of the Veil, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Bloodbraid Elf, and more would definitely incentivize people to get the pass.
Sure, it’s still a paywall, but at least it’s something that a lot of players are already purchasing, and something that could be earned through grinding gems from Draft.
4. Charge a 100-500 gem/month “Historic Ticket”
If Wizards doesn’t want to tie Historic to the Mastery Pass, then they could just have it as a separate item, something like a “Historic Ticket” that you have to buy to play in the Historic queue each season.
Again, it’s not ideal since it’s still a bit of a paywall, but if Wizards will literally die unless they charge us more to play Historic, I’d prefer they did something like this than double wildcards.
5. Charge gems for “Historic Masters” packs/events
Like we mentioned earlier, in the State of the Beta, Wizards said that they’ll be introducing reprints of old cards into Modern in batches every quarter. The first batch will be 15-20 cards released in November.
If cards like Path to Exile, Lightning Bolt, Stoneforge Mystic, or Mox Opal are released, they will undoubtedly shake up the Historic format. People playing old Standard decks will simply not be able to realistically compete against people playing Modern/Legacy-legal cards. If they want their deck to remain competitive, they will have to get the new cards.
Wizards hasn’t announced the details about how we will get those cards yet, but if they charged gems for them, then that by itself could easily be the barrier into Historic that they seem to want so badly.
Sure, you can play your mono-red deck from Standard in Historic… but it won’t be able to compete with the mono-red deck playing Goblin Guide, Lightning Helix, and Monastery Swiftspear. Historic players will want these cards for their decks, and they’ll shell out gems for them; there’s no need to have the extra wildcard barrier too.
6. Have fun Standard/Brawl events
You know what’s a good way to get people to play with Standard-legal cards? Make Standard fun!
The events on Magic Arena like singleton, Pauper, Ravnica constructed, and Standard Shakeup have been some of the most fun I’ve had playing Magic in years. The only part that sucks about them is that they go away so quickly. Since they only last a few days, we’re not really incentivized to spend wildcards and build new decks. But if the events lasted longer, a week or two instead, then I would be much more willing to spend wildcards on a fun deck to play for 7-14 days.
Even if I was a die-hard Historic-only player, eventually the format is going to get stale. I would gladly spend wildcards to take a break for a week or two to play something that looks like a blast.
7. Have big Standard tournaments
You know what’s a good way to get people to play Standard? The same thing that’s always gotten people to play Standard over Modern/Legacy: big tournaments!
Yes, the price of Standard decks is usually cheaper than the price of most Modern and Legacy decks, but that hasn’t always been the case. There have been several times throughout the past ten years when Standard decks were more expensive than Modern decks, or approached the price of Legacy decks… and people still played Standard.
There were many reasons people bought into Standard decks like that, but a significant one was that Standard has the biggest tournaments. If you want to go to the Pro Tour, then the vast majority of the time you have to get there by playing Standard, and you have to play Standard on the big stage.
Right now, Arena is lacking that. Imagine if there was an “Arena Grand Prix” every month (or every week!) that you had to pay to enter and win real cash prizes and Pro Tour qualification. People would go nuts! Tons of people would play Standard with regular tournaments like that, no matter what was going on with Historic.
8. Shake up Historic
If Wizards is worried that Historic-only players will just sit on their one or two decks and never buy new cards, then give them a reason to change things up!
They could easily have the first half of each season be “regular Historic” and then the latter half be “shakeup Historic” where they ban the top cards from the past month and a half. Sure, some people wouldn’t be able to play their decks because some cards were banned, but it would force them to find creative replacements, or spend wildcards on a different deck for half the season, or play Standard/Draft for a while.
The Historic format is something Wizards could easily have fun with and experiment with, rather than just seeing it as a monster that’s eating away their potential money.
9. Historic wildcard “tax”
I’m not a huge fan of this idea, but instead of charging two wildcards for a Historic card, they could instead charge one wildcard plus a gem “tax.”
For example, if you want to craft a Historic common it could take one wildcard plus 5 gems, a Historic uncommon could take one wildcard plus 10 gems, a Historic rare could take one wildcard plus 25 gems, and a Historic mythic could take one wildcard plus 50 gems.
Again, I don’t really like this idea, but it’s still more appealing than double wildcards.
10. Just, you know, make cool/powerful Standard cards
Even though Modern and Legacy are seen as formats where you buy a deck and then never have to spend anything ever again, that’s not entirely true.
My first Legacy decks were Merfolk and Affinity… and those are unplayable in the current format. I’ve had to buy many, many more cards and decks to stay up to date.
I’ve been playing blue/white control in Modern since the format first started… and it has changed completely over the past nine years. I’ve had to buy Restoration Angels, Geist of Saint Traft, Nahiri (remember when she was a thing?), Keranos (him too!), Search for Azcanta, big Teferi, little Teferi, Narset, and now the whole Stoneforge package just to name a few.
Yes, it’s not buying a whole new deck every year, but it’s still a decent amount. Formats change, new cards get printed, and as long as they do, Historic players will want them in their decks, and many will pay to get them. As long as Wizards just keeps making good cards, the rest will take care of itself.
And then we can avoid any PR nightmares…
at least until the next State of the Beta.
So what do you think? Do you have any suggestions for alternative paths Wizards could’ve taken?
As always, feel free to let me know on Twitter or on Twitch!