Wizards of the Coast has walked back their previous announcement that Historic cards would cost two Wildcards to craft on MTG Arena. Instead, Historic cards will cost one Wildcard to craft, just like cards that are legal in Standard.
Read: Historic is a new format on MTG Arena that will include cards available in the game that have rotated out of Standard.
“The best piece of feedback we received and discussed was how much players want to test and brew new and different Historic decks,” Wizards said, “and we certainly want players to be able to do so.” Wizards also emphasized that “MTG Arena will always focus on Standard gameplay” with “Historic as a complimentary experience, much like…Singleton and Pauper,” but that “the 2:1 redemption created the wrong kind of incentive structure.”
The original announcement two weeks ago that those Historic cards would cost two Wildcards to craft, while Standard cards would continue to cost one Wildcard, was met with some serious skepticism. But Wizards said that the decision to double the cost for crafting historic cards was couched as part of “[f]inding a balance for the long-term health of MTG Arena.”
Executive Producer Chris Cao said that MTG Arena was “Standard-focused” and that the reason why Historic cards would cost two Wildcards to craft was in order to maintain the game’s focus on Standard and preserve the “health of the game.” He explained that Wizards did not want to fragment the player base with too many play options and risk diluting the Standard queues.
Historic Cards and Queues
Wizards also walked back their original announcement that packs from Historic sets would only be purchasable from the store in bundles of 45 packs. Going forward, those sets will be available in all bundle sizes.
They confirmed that they will begin adding the “new” cards that they will be adding to MTG Arena’s Historic format in November. However, they backed away from their original goal of adding 15-20 new cards, saying that they are “thinking through what the right target of cards to add is.”
Additionally, Wizards revealed details about how the Historic queues would work. The always-available Historic queue will be Best-of-One and will advance quests but not count towards players’ daily and weekly win rewards. The Historic Ranked queue available in December, as well as the monthly Historic events, will function like the rest of MTG Arena’s queues and award progress towards quests, wins, and Mastery XP.