Wizards of the Coast announced this afternoon that both Historic Anthology 3 and a permanent Historic Ranked queue will come to Magic: the Gathering Arena on May 21 with the game’s May update.
Historic Anthology 3
MTG Arena’s May Update will be when the game’s “turns back to Historic,” said Andy Clautice, an Events Designer for MTG Arena. “Historic is a much bigger part of Arena during this release.”
As part of the return of the Historic format, Wizards will be releasing Historic Anthology 3 with the update on May 21. It will contain 27 cards, up from 25 in Historic Anthology 2, but cost the same at 4,000 gems or 25,000 gold. As part of the announcement, Wizards also showed of two of the cards from the anthology: Phyrexian Obliterator and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger.
Historic “is our format that we get to sculpt and make it look like something we think is really cool,” Clautice continued, and Historic Anthologies are a key way to accomplish that. Phyrexian Obliterator, for example, “really serves a deck that is not super prevalent in Historic right now—there’s not a strong Mono-Black (deck) that is really making a lot of waves. And one way to try and strengthen a (deck) like that is to give them something that is just for them.”
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, on the other hand, “is obviously a huge, huge impact card if you can make the mana for it,” Clautice continued. “There are ramp decks that already exist in Arena, but this is (intended to push) the really dedicated” ramp decks.
The remaining 25 cards in Historic Anthology 3 will be revealed as part of a preview day on May 8. All of the preview locations will be posted a few days before on May 5.
Permanent Historic Ranked Queues
When Historic first came to MTG Arena late last year, Wizards announced that the Historic Ranked queue would only be available for two months. After that, Historic would what they called an “off-season” where the format would only be available in a best-of-one unranked queue.
But Wizards has big plans for Historic this year. “We’re going to have a lot more Historic content coming up,” Clauticce said, like Jumpstart, Amonkhet Remastered, and Pioneer Masters. “And the way that we’ve been rotating Historic and Standard doesn’t really make sense for the content that we’re going to be putting out for the rest of the year. So that Ranked queue, after it comes on in the May update, it’s just staying on.”
“It’s here for good,” he concluded.