I knew that they were going to be highlighting Hexhaven but I’m a little disappointed at how much of the story it seems to be occupying. I didn’t really need or care to know about their entry and graduation requirements (especially since it’s not really actually real?). Hopefully there’s more info about the wider Echoverse in the story

Hydra, Kraken, and Phoenix each printed in a single color they’ve never been printed before

I would have said Red for Hydra but the very first Hydras started out in Red. Maro has mentioned that Krakens/Leviathans are very Green in nature and only Blue because of the water connection, Phoenixes seem like they’d fit into White/Black with the self-reanimation

new restriction for whether a cycle of dual lands enters tapped

Interesting, I expected that they would have done the ally counterparts to the SoS lands given Hexhaven, but it seems there’s an entirely new set of lands

prepared spell that’s a red version of a popular blue instant (the color it should have been in)

My bet is a Red version of High Tide

“that many 5/5 red Dragon creature tokens with flying are created instead.”

Red version of Divine Visitation it seems. I wish they’d make a Green version given that they’ve said they want Green to focus on big tokens more than lots of small tokens

Legendary Creature – Homunculus Scout

Echoverse version of Fblthp?

Omnipresence

Green version of Omniscience but letting you play any number of lands instead of spells?

Rescue Girl, First Responder

Heh, sounds like an inverse version of Massacre Girl

Yoshimaru, Scrappy Stray

He just can’t catch a break in any universe :(

More spoilers can be found on Scryfall (currently 21/121 cards spoiled)

Answer:

Such a great one, the details of pillars being melded Phyrexians is great, and brings some of that old-school Phyrexian horror that got toned down on other cards in this set

Yeah my main feeling about these bans was “good riddance”

I remember playing it in Standard UW God-Pharoah’s Gift that was the scourge of my LGS. In my defense I told them to play more artifact destruction/graveyard hate. Made me really love this card for how good it was at hand filtering early game and how it became serious card advantage late game

Same, I’m totally obsessed with Duskmourn’s lore and wish there was more of it. Only wish they’d redesign some of the tackiness with the survivors/tech so that it makes more sense with the worldbuilding

All three of the in-universe sets for 2027 feel like absolute bangers, and given the focus on them with the trailers it feels like WotC is trying to apologize for all the UB lately. Of course, there’s still 3 UB sets planned next year so not like they’re actually gonna change anytime soon

Was excited for this until I saw that it’s only available at events. Those 59 unique cards are going to be expensive as hell. And who knows when we’ll get another dedicated reprint set

I imagine it will depend on what boosters stores decide to use for the draft, since it sounds like Chaos Draft + Leyline of Anticipation

This was in their initial letter:

Layoff Protections: Employees currently live in fear of suddenly losing their jobs, with no warning and through no fault of their own. We have the opportunity to create strong layoff protections so that we can feel secure in creating long-term careers here at WOTC.

Remote Work Protections: Leadership is instituting a mandatory RTO, forcing numerous remote employees across the US to work from a physical office or be forced to resign. This painful choice is splitting our employees between their homes, communities, and the jobs they love. Based on company profits, we have demonstrated the ability to meet and exceed our product goals without the in office structure; workers should be able to continue working in the way that is best for them.

Generative AI Protections: Over the past few years, pressure has ramped up from leadership to adopt LLMs and Gen AI tools in various aspects of our work at WOTC, often over the explicit concerns of impacted employees. WOTC lacks a robust AI policy, leaving opportunities for abuse and communicating a level of disrespect for artists and other creatives. We want to establish clear guidelines around AI, emphasizing worker protections.

Sustainable Workload: Employees’ experiences with “crunch” (intense, mandatory unpaid overtime) to meet deadlines vary widely by team and project, with some teams crunching on a regular basis just to get planned work out the door. Increasing workload without matching headcount has led to many workers having unacceptable experiences with crunch. We need to take better care of our employees by enacting strong protections around workload expectations.

Defined Career Progression: Many workers at WOTC feel like they are prevented from advancing in their role, either because opportunities for advancement are sparse or because requirements and opportunities are poorly defined. Employees’ roles should be clearly defined, and they should be able to grow their careers through meaningful raises, role changes, and promotions.

Our Free Time is Our Own: Currently, if an employee makes anything creative in their free time, with their own resources, Hasbro may claim ownership. What we do in our free time should not be dictated by the company; neither should what we make in our free time be owned by the company.

We are Stewards of Magic: Our employees and players care about doing the right thing with, and for, the games we make. Short term, profit-driven decisions may be lucrative, but we want to focus on partnerships and products that grow our games sustainably, that inspire us as employees, that excite players, and continue to foster WOTC’s positive reputation.

All very reasonable demands imo

Looks like a Mountain to me

Just caught up with this, lots of cool tidbits about Reality Fracture:

• Tam is an artificial person created by Jace to be his spy in the regular Multiverse
• Tam’s card includes an unnamed mechanic that represents Jace in his role of The Theorist, that they’ve described as “really crazy”
• Reality Fracture is described as “Planar Chaos”-like but will NOT break the color pie
• Hexhaven features 5 ally-colored schools that mirrors the enemy color schools because people kept asking for more Strixhaven schools
• There will only be a single Commander deck for Reality Fracture

100% the money came with a big legal document attached to it saying “Don’t take any legal action against us or give us any bad publicity”

It’s such a weird situation. Like on one hand, these kinds of things don’t happen as a mistake. You can’t accidentally Photoshop another artist’s work and submit it as your own. But at the same time, it seems weird that an accomplished artist would submit such an obvious hack job. With the last time we saw plagiarism (Jason Felix and Crux of Fate) it was with a relatively unknown fanartist, but this is literally the previous art for the same card, which was massively relevant in basically every format it’s legal in. There’s no way someone wouldn’t notice, which makes it even stranger that the art directors did not.

Just a terrible situation, and while I don’t think there’s any excuse for this, there’s still a lot of questions on how this ended up ever going to print in the first place

Card art is done entirely freelance with the exception of a small set of concept artists/directors/graphic designers they have on staff IIRC

Disappointed but not surprised

Tl;dr: The MTG Arena team is organizing for better working conditions

Yes, all regular boosters contain 1 Instant or Sorcery card from the Mystical Archive, at the above pull rates. If you check the Spoilers community you can see the current revealed cards under [SOA] (whereas the main set is [SOS])