Just like last year, Wizards of the Coast announced its entire Magic: the Gathering 2021 set schedule during in one go today, alongside the kickoff of Zendikar Rising preview season.
Don’t miss our coverage of today’s Zendikar Rising previews and Secret Lair announcements.
There will be five—yes, five—Standard expansion sets in 2021: Kaldheim, Strixhaven: School of Mages, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, and two sets on Innistrad.
All of Magic’s sets in 2021.
Wizards says that they will still release four Standard sets per rotation year and that they are shifting the timing around slightly by moving the Winter set, which has traditionally been released in late January or early February, into the end of 2021. While Wizards didn’t give any firm release dates, and other sets may shift their release dates forward as well, the most likely reason to move the Winter set forward is to release it November or December in order to take advantage of the holiday shopping season.
There will also be two supplemental sets that will not be Standard-legal: Time Spiral Remastered and Modern Horizons 2. Wizards didn’t preview any cards from the Standard sets, but did preview a few from Time Spiral Remastered—timshifted versions of Chalice of the Void, Path to Exile, and Relentless Rats—and revealed that Modern Horizons 2 will have all five enemy fetch lands.
Check out all seven sets below!
Standard Legal Sets
Kaldheim
Kaldheim is a Viking-inspired plane that was first seen in 2009’s multiplayer supplemental set Planechase. It was first mentioned on the card Skybreen, a specific location on Kaldheim.
According the the timeline Wizards provided, Kaldheim will be released in Q1 2021.
Strixhaven
The second Standard expansion set of 2021 will take us “back to school” for Strixhaven: School of Mages. Strixhaven is “the most elite magical university in the multiverse,” said Product Architect Mark Heggen, “and it consists of these five colleges that are battling it out with their own takes on magic. It’s a set unlike anything we’ve done before.”
That description gives Strixhaven a very Harry Potter-like vibe and we’ll find out more in Q2 of 2021.
Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
Dungeons & Dragons is also owned by Wizards of the Coast and has long had a huge impact on Magic. D&D tropes and items have found ways to make their way into the game one way or another, either through tournament-legal cards like Bag of Holding or silver-bordered crossover cards like Sword of Dungeons & Dragons.
Finally, over 20 years after Wizards acquired D&D, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms will be a “full, black-bordered, Standard-legal set, set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons,” Heggen said.
It is scheduled for Q3 2021, which is when a Core Set would normally be released. However, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms will replace the expected Core Set 2022.
“We’re going with Adventures in the Forgotten Realms instead of the Core Set,” said Principal Product Designer Mike Turian. “We’re looking for a way to keep bringing new worlds, new creative treatments to Magic,” he continued, which is difficult with reprint-reliant sets like Core Sets. “Magic and D&D have always gone hand in hand—even when we’re talking about Zendikar Rising, the Party mechanic is really based from playing RPGs like D&D and getting inspired by that. We really want to tap into more resonance and the D&D set, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, really allow us to do that better than the Core Set.”
Innistrad: Werewolves and Vampires
2021 will conclude with not one but two Innistrad sets! Innistrad: Werewolves and Innistrad: Vampires are placeholder names, according to Turian, but “they capture the spirit of what each set is about.”
“We’ve had so many ideas for how to bring back that kinda classic Innistrad feeling—fun stuff with werewolves, fun stuff with vampires—we actually couldn’t fit it all in one set, so we’re doing two Innistrad sets,” he continued. “Two, full-sized sets.”
Though they are stacked on top of each other in Q4 of 2021 in the set release timeline, Turian said that the two Innistrad sets are “actually going to be spaced apart by a number of months.” This is because Wizards is shifting the release date of the Winter set (the second of the Innistrad sets, in this case), which has traditionally been released in late January or early February, into the end of 2021. “While both are slated for the latter part of 2021, there are still four Standard sets per rotation-year, we just shifted the timing around slightly,” Wizards said.
Supplemental Sets
Time Spiral Remastered
The next remastered set, Time Spiral Remastered, will be released sometime between the release of Kaldheim and Strixhaven in Q1 and Q2 2021, if Wizards’ timeline is to be believed.
Time Spiral Remastered will be the first remastered set to get a tabletop release, following 2015’s Tempest Remastered on Magic Online and August’s Amonkhet Remastered on MTG Arena. It will take all three of the sets from the Time Spiral block—Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, and Future Sight—and combine them into a single, draftable set.
Similar to the original Time Spiral set, Time Spiral Remastered will also include its own version of timeshifted cards, which will put more modern cards in the original Magic card frame. Wizards showed off three such cards today: Chalice of the Void, Path to Exile, and Relentless Rats.
Three previewed timeshifted cards from Time Spiral Remastered.
Modern Horizons 2
Modern Horizons 2, the sequel to 2018’s very popular Modern Horizons, is scheduled for the back half of 2021. As part of the reveal, Wizards confirmed that all five enemy fetches—Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats, Misty Rainforest, Scalding Tarn, and Verdant Catacombs—will be included in the set at rare.
Modern Horizons 2 is “going to have some of the sensibilities of Modern Horizons 1,” said Senior Communications Manager Blake Rasmussen. But, “obviously, the fetch lands break the no-explicit-reprints rule” of the first Modern Horizons.
Turian expressed his excitement about the set saying that “it lets us draw from all different aspects of Magic and blend mechanics together and blend cards together that other sets wouldn’t be able to have.”
“Modern Horizons 2 is like, oh, what are the cards and abilities that you just [say], ‘I wish this card would exist!'” he continued. “Modern Horizons 2 lets us go and make them into reality.”
“It’s the wish fulfillment set for our designers,” added Creative Producer Meris Mullaley.
Commander?
While no Commander products were announced today, Rasmussen said: “We are definitely doing Commander in 2021. You’ll learn more about that as we get closer to those products. This last year we combined the Commander products with the regular releases—look for some more of that to continue.”
As for the already-announced Zendikar Commander decks, we’ll see their entire contents next Wednesday, September 9.