Analyzing the Magic Showcase 2021 and MTG's future

This week,

Magic Showcase 2021

took place live, an online event where Wizards announced its entire release schedule for the end of 2021 and for 2022. Several news were announced, with a return to Kamigawa, a retelling of the Brothers War, announcing a partnership with Fortnite and Street Fighter, among other very relevant points for the Magic and its community and what we can expect in the future. In this article, I plan to take an initial look at what has been announced, as well as a critical look at Universes Beyond products and comment on the absence of any announcements regarding the future of competitive Magic.

The first product that will arrive in our hands is the Pioneer Challenger Decks, on October 15th, and this addition was certainly the best choice Wizards could make to support a format that was largely harmed by the pandemic, as 2020 would be the year Pioneer would officially be the format played at MagicFests and other events. However, the absence of events in 2020 coupled with a poor format management, which left it for months in a polarized state between three combo decks, were very detrimental to Pioneer and significantly affected its popularity, making it an unpopular format, and that got no support during this period. I commented in another article that Wizards needed to expand Pioneer support with dedicated products because it's the only way to get players interested in the format, and Challenger Decks are

exactly

the ideal product to introduce players to Pioneer, as these decks mean they can simply buy them, sleeve them up and play, while they can also later invest and improve them. Great move by Wizards, great opportunity to make Pioneer have more space in stores, and great way to spark players' interest in entering an eternal format in an accessible way. That said, I'll do a brief analysis of the lists (which can be checked out here).

Azorius Spirits

is probably the most interesting deck (at least for me, a regular Tempo player), but the one that seems to require the highest amount of investment to get an optimized version. The deck has great cards, but its manabase is weak compared to other decks (2 Glacial Fortress is disappointing, and a Temple of Enlightenment playset makes me wonder if Wizards understands the concept of Tempo), it has all the staples needed for the Azorius version of the deck, but the main cards are found in small numbers like 1 Selfless Spirit and 1 Brazen Borrower, plus 2 Spell Queller. Of course, we can't expect Challenger Decks to get the full list, but of all decks, Azorius Spirits seems to be the one that would require the most investment to make it the ideal and competitive version.

Mono-Red Aggro

is very well-built and probably the best pick and play list in the bundle, as its game plan appears to be pretty straightforward and opens up many opportunities against unprepared players. The deck has essentially everything you need to have the opportunity to win games, and the only significant omission is Eidolon of the Great Revel, a card that would naturally be awkward for a new player to use as it requires a certain understanding of how/when to cast it. To improve the deck, it is necessary to include the Eidolons and Den of the Bugbear. And if you want to invest even more in the deck, you can always choose to upgrade it to Boros Burn, which would require cards like Shocklands, Inspiring Vantage, Battlefield Forge and spells like Boros Charm, in addition to Lurrus.

Orzhov Auras

is extremely well-built and the only questionable part of it is that it only has two copies of Stonecoil Serpent (we could talk about the Thoughtseize singleton on the Sideboard, but I didn't expect more than that, and this will definitely reduce its price tag as this product will be widely distributed and open). It comes with the inclusion of eight duals and the ones not on the list are just the ones you don't expect to be (Godless Shrine and Brightclimb Pathway), but the deck even includes a copy of Lurrus and I believe this is the first Challenger Deck to ever come with a Companion. The only downside of this deck is not the cards, but the timing: Orzhov Auras is not a deck that is currently on the rise and has hardly made any results in Challenges for a few weeks now. Finally, the

Lotus Combo

list seems to be the most well-constructed of the lists and seems quite complete, even with the obvious exclusion of some alternative winconditions like Ugin or Jace. The deck even has two copies of Dig Through Time! The list, however, like Orzhov Auras, seems outdated and hasn't been updated for the latest versions of the deck that closes the combo using Emergent Ultimatum, but these products tend to be produced months in advance, and It's unusual to see “outdated” versions of decks appearing on Challenger Decks. As a final consideration, this product is very well-made, very welcome and will likely be a great gateway for players to get to know Pioneer. My advice is that the Pioneer community itself promote the product or even buy for the archetypes you don't have, precisely to motivate Wizards to create more Pioneer-dedicated products, expanding the format's popularity while also helping to make the format accessible. Reprints are always welcome, especially when it comes to Commander Staples in a premium version with alternate art. There is an audience for this, and it seemed odd that Wizards hadn't announced the continuation of the first Commander Collection. If this product uses the same structure and availability as the old

Signature Spellbooks

, I believe we will see a decrease in price in its Staples. There's not much to be said for this product, and I can't imagine other strands of it coming out because it doesn't seem like the kind of booster that would be a big hit, but it depends on which Staples in Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow will be available in this set, which makes it highly beneficial if widely played cards are included in the formats, as their availability will be increasing. In the end, the success of this product will depend on how much Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow will impact the game.

After sixteen years, we will be heading back to Kamigawa, but definitely not the Kamigawa we met in 2004/2005. When we first visited Kamigawa, the central focus of the story was the Kami War, where Konda, lord of Eiganjo, crossed the veil between the mortal and spirit realms and kidnapped the son of O-Kagachi, the most powerful among the Kami, which led to the attack of the spirits on the mortal world, a war that the inhabitants of Kamigawa had no chance of winning to begin with. The war ended only twenty years later, when Michiko Konda, along with Toshiro Umezawa, managed to free O-Kagachi's son and defeat Konda, and Toshiro was taken by the Myojin of Night's Reach to Dominaria. This whole story, however, is in the past for our return, as Neon Dinasty will set 2000 years after these events (which makes sense, since Tetsuo Umezawa, the Mandara champion who would defeat the tyrant Nicol Bolas in the distant past of Dominaria, is a descendant of Toshiro) and the plane became a place with strong identifications with the Eastern Cyberpunk world. As mentioned in the live, what this set does is take everything that people liked about Kamigawa and recreate the rest from scratch, so I don't think we'll see most of the mechanics we saw in early sets, while we'll see the descendants of several characters and legends from 2000 years ago. In mechanics, I believe the only ones that can see any return are

Ninjutsu

and

Arcane

, possibly both with new interactions and new ways to use them. We'll probably also see the return of

Samurais

and perhaps decent tribal support for them. I particularly welcome the idea of ​​revisiting planes that seemed “forgotten” by Wizards in recent years, when we've revisited places like Innistrad, Zendikar and Ravnica so many times, and I hope that this trend will repeat itself in the coming years in planes that remain in the community's heart such as Lorwyn, Alara and Tarkir.

Streets of New Capenna

is a set inspired by gangster movies and based on existing 20th century mafias, but with an extra touch of magic and fantasy. New Capenna is a city created by angels, but it was taken over by demons of three colors, who now fight each other for domination of the city. This is an important location for the planeswalker

Elspeth Tirel

and where we will also find the planeswalker

Ob-Nixilis

. Obviously, I assume we'll have Planeswalkers cards from both and Streets of New Capenna could be next year's multicolored set, probably in the Shard Colors (Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund and Naya) and it wouldn't surprise me if we see the cycle of Triomes to be completed in this set, as it seems to me the perfect opportunity to close a cycle that was so important in Standard and will continue to be important in eternal formats. As a private note, I've long wanted to see a plane that's a little closer to the industrial age or the modern age. Streets of Capenna seems to bring some of this setting if it is, in fact, based on 20th century mafias, and it will be fascinating to see a more “contemporary” world than we are used to seeing, with a dose of the unique elements that will make it a plane of the Magic universe.

Dominaria Reunited

will be our third return to Dominaria, and we'll likely see what happened in the plane after our last visit in 2017. Dominaria is a place with many stories and a lot of potential for where we can go, what characters we can see and what unfolds we can expect in the story, and particularly the name “Dominaria Reunited” makes me believe that we will see much more of the 'habitat' of plane, of how their people are living and their cultures than necessarily a plot like the ones we used to see in previous sets. Obviously, there will be Planeswalkers, and I believe one of them will be Teferi, as his family is on the plane, but it's possible he went with Karn to resolve the Phyrexian threat in the plane formerly known as Mirrodin (we'll talk more about this later). Likely, just like in Kamigawa, we will see characters that are iconic or have some connection with characters from the Dominarian story appearing in the lore or on cards. This will definitely be the most anticipated set by fans of the Magic: The Gathering's lore for next year! The Brothers War will be a retelling of the period of Dominaria history known as The Brothers War, a conflict that lasted 36 years and ended up taking Dominaria into a long period of Ice Age after Urza used the Sylex, which caused a massive explosion that destroyed Argoth and killed tens of thousands of the plane's inhabitants, creating the Shards of the Twelve Worlds and impacting the entire Multiverse. According to the announcement, The Brothers War will tell this story through the perspective of the Dominarians at that time, which means that we will likely not see such a focus on the brothers Urza and Mishra themselves, but rather on the consequences of their actions across Dominaria. This doesn't mean that I believe we can't have new versions of Urza and Mishra in the set, Wizards would hardly miss the opportunity to bring two of the most important characters from Dominaria in new versions. Especially Mishra, who has been deserving a new version for over a decade, as his portrayal in Time Spiral was not worthy of the character's importance. I can't say if we will have a direct link between Dominaria United and The Brothers War, especially considering that this set is a retelling of the past without a direct reason to the current Magic lore, but an important point to mention is that exists a theory that the “Cylex” that Karn sought out in Dominaria to take to New Phyrexia is the same artifact that Urza used to nearly destroy all of Dominaria, which could be indicative of returning to the Phyrexia arc next year, with this return to Dominaria and the Brothers War, serving to contextualize the importance and danger that Phyrexia represents for the Multiverse. But it's just my wish for Wizards to set aside the individual stories of each set and re-emphasize the most threatening antagonist in the entire multiverse. By the way, if you want to know a little more about Phyrexia, I made a article telling its whole story. I've felt for a few years that the new direction Wizards has taken with the story of Magic is to turn each set into an individual Planeswalkers adventure, without necessarily any connection between them other than characters who return between sets (such as the Kenrith brothers in Eldraine and Strixhaven or Elspeth in Theros and Cadennia), but who end up adding very little to a "plot" or whose individual plot turns out to be too weak or even contradictory (as in Kaldheim), and this makes me miss a more linear and more oriented story of things happening around a factor in common or interconnected with other stories, as seen with the Eldrazis or Nicol Bolas. The feeling I have is that the current stories, despite being interesting and fun (but not so much in the sets released in 2021, I admit), don't bring the same feeling of excitement and desire to know what will happen in the next sets. Current stories lack a connection that makes the player who cares to follow the story anxious to know what happens next. I would very much like Wizards to change the course of Magic's story a bit and bring back a storyline that makes players feel intrigued and interested in knowing how the next chapter unfolds, mainly because this is positive in so many ways for the company, and for the community, just remember the huge hype that War of the Spark brought about just because it promised to be the grand finale of an arc. Unfortunately, it looks like 2022 will suffer partly from the same problem, and in this sense The Brothers War will at least be a great way to revisit an essential point of the story that can bring connections both for the future and for us to revisit other great moments in the history of Magic in sets dedicated exclusively to them (which is, in my view, the experiment Wizards intends to do with this set). Un-Sets are fun, but impractical for most players who aren't focused on playing with weird rules and confusing cards, though they always feature some of the funniest draft and sealed events for players who just want to have fun. There's not much to comment on the set, but we already had four un-sets with cool-borders basic lands, it seems to have become clear to Wizards that these basic lands are no longer attractive enough for players to feel motivated to buy boosters, since technically, there is no possibility of cards from an Un-Set to bring good financial return. So, the decision to include

Shocklands

with a special border in the set seems like a way to try to revitalize players' interest in a new Un-Set, in addition to making it more profitable to buy and more interesting to draft. There is not much to say about reprint sets, they are always welcome, always essential for the game's economy and always brings downshifts for Pauper. Double Masters was a great idea on the part of Wizards, and it's good that they're doing it again, as it's one of the most “rewarding” sets to open up in recent years. JumpStart was a good way to encourage players to experiment with a new style of sealed events in a simple, objective and well-constructed way, and the set brought important new cards to eternal formats like Muxus, Goblin Grandee. Two good points for Wizards, and I'm eagerly awaiting some good downshifts on these sets for Pauper. Speaking of downshifts, the “non-Standard” set that excited me the most for next year is a new Commander Legends, as the first set's downshifts impacted and still impact Pauper significantly to this day. That said, it seems to me a wise decision on the part of Wizards to dedicate Commander's next great product to the Dungeons & Dragons universe for one particular reason: Many of the legendary cards in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms aren't that good Commanders, mainly because they came out in a Standard set and needed to follow rules naturally geared towards Standard, which somewhat limits the impact these cards could have as Commanders. With a product dedicated exclusively to Commander, Wizards does not have this restriction and can make cards worthy of the recognition their respective characters deserve, as well as exciting for Dungeons & Dragons players to enter Commander, the main way to start or return to Magic currently. The Universes Beyond is already a highly controversial point in my personal conception because it reveals, along with Secret Lair, the highly commercial bias that Magic has been moving towards since last year, and the controversy with

Secret Lair: The Walking Dead

presented more downsides rather than upsides in bringing, if misapplied, other universes into the world of Magic: The Gathering. That said, dear Wizards, could you bring the

Final Fantasy

universe into a non-Secret Lair Universes Beyond product? I would really love to use my Cloud commander against my opponent's Sephiroth, or maybe cast Grand Cross to destroy all creatures, or equip a creature with the Ring of the Lucii? Or maybe a reprint set of Fire // Ice portraying magics that has been in the series since the first game (Fire/Blizzard)? There is plenty of potential for where we could go with Final Fantasy, and it would definitely hit a very significant fanbase in the gaming world. With this request made, let's evaluate the distinct directions Universes Beyond project will take for the coming year. Secret Lair: Street Fighter will basically follow the same pattern used by Wizards in the controversial

Secret Lair: The Walking Dead

. The product that will be made to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Street Fighter franchise will have exclusive cards for some characters of the game, with new mechanics that will only exist on these cards. Wizards had already mentioned that this possibility existed and that, to increase the availability of these cards later, mechanically identical versions of them (that is, with the same cost, abilities, color, power and toughness, but in another name) can be found in “The List” of a Set Booster after the product's launch. Although the inclusion of mechanically equal cards is a plausible solution to the “limited product exclusivity” issue, it is not the ideal solution because at first, you will have a temporary gap between players who can buy the Secret Lair and those who cannot, and despite this being a recurrent reality in the Magic universe (think about who can play Legacy and who can't because of the Reserved List's price tag, for example), this action should not be promoted by Wizards itself because it is a highly negative aspect for the community. The second point is that The List only exists in Set Boosters, a specific product, with a vast list of cards and that only one card in the list appears in an average of 1 in 4 Boosters, in a list of 300 different cards that can appear in this same slot, and will likely come in high rarities like Rare or Mythic-Rare, which further decreases the odds' ratio of opening them. And even with Wizards committing to increase the percentage that the card can be in The List slot, we're still talking about needing to open a card that has a specific chance out of 300 cards to pop in 25% of the Set Boosters you open, is a very specific combination for a unique card. The ideal option would be for Wizards not to commit this atrocity to the community, or to use these "exclusive cards" as previews of cards that we will see in a set within six months after the Secret Lair's release, as has been done several times in the past with products like Duel Decks and From the Vault. Having these cards as “previews” without context of near-future sets would make the product much more tangible and less negative for the community, mainly because it would create a lot of debate and speculation of what we can expect, and Magic players love to speculate on previews and rumors. And looking from the commercial side, this would in no way hurt sales of a Secret Lair product because the player who wants “Chun-Li” as his Commander will still want Chun-Li as his commander. The collector will continue to want a piece of a historic Magic product that promises to retain its full value with or without a reprint of a card mechanically equal as it in a future set because it remains a great collectible product for Magic fans and Street Fighter fans, and Secret Lair is a product aimed at collectors. In summary, it's an awful decision to repeat the dose of Secret Lair: The Walking Dead, and even worse decision to try to fix this error inside a system that looks more like a Gacha than opening packs. This could work if applied in a way that makes the alternate version of the card easier to find and more accessible, and turning these “exclusive cards” into previews of a future set would be the best way to make the receipt of this product become much more positive for the community. Ironically, I've seen much more negative repercussions from partnering with Fortnite than partnering with Street Fighter, with the product that will be released with Street Fighter being much more damaging to the game than the product planned for Fortnite. Secret Lair: Fortnite is a good representation of a healthy method of making these partnerships: the product will feature reprints of already existing cards in the Magic universe with illustrations and themes from the world-famous Fortnite. Plain and simple. If you don't like Fortnite, that's fine, just don't buy the product. It will make no difference if you are using any other set of the cards that will be released in this drop or if you are using the Secret Lair: Fortnite version, the practical applications for the game are the same and this makes this product fit the same parameter as just about every other Secret Lair, but again, broadening the reach of collectors who might be interested in the product by blending two very famous franchises into one. I truly believe that we should care a lot more about how the product is executed (Secret Lair: Street Fighter was much better received by the community despite its horrendous execution) than what franchise it's based on. It doesn't matter to me whether Wizards will partner with Assassin's Creed, The Powerpuff Girls, or Brooklyn 99, as long as in the end they are collectibles, cosmetics and with a target audience that isn't necessarily only the Magic audience. But when we talk about mechanically exclusive print cards that will only exist in the product and a low percentage of appearing in a slot of a specific booster, the story changes because it can directly affect the game and create situations that can accumulate, which might become so harmful to the community's financial factor as the Reserved List product spikes. In short, the ideal would be to have less indignation about partnerships, and direct criticisms towards the way in which these partnerships are applied, when they are harmful to the game. In the case of Secret Lair: Fortnite, it's pretty simple: If you don't like it, don't buy it. There are hundreds of thousands of copies available of the same cards that will be released in the product, without the cosmetic factor of Fortnite, available to you all over the world. Another way to apply the Universes Beyond project very well is to create unique cards, but make them available to all players simultaneously through an easily accessible product that is widely distributed to stores. This is the case of Warhammer 40k, where the partnership will be made through

four Commander Decks

that will be sent to stores in the same proportion as any other Commander deck and following the same scheme of a mixture of reprints and exclusive cards. It is not difficult to understand why this is an infinitely better and more viable option: the product is a partnership, it has a collectible value for that reason, but it does not prevent any player from having the products in their hands, in addition to having no impediment that could negatively affect availability. It has everything that a standard Magic product (in this case, Commander decks that are released together with each set) has, without any detriment that makes it only available to a few players for a limited time, which means your cards will have the same availability as any other from a Commander Deck. And should a non-legendary card become highly sought after within this product, you can always reprint it in another Commander Deck with an artwork that doesn't necessarily portray the Warhammer 40k franchise if the partnership ends later, or it would even be possible to create a closure in the exclusive card reprint policy that includes that functional reprints of Commander Deck cards are the same card, as will be done in the case of Secret Lair: Street Fighter.

Finally, the last product I will talk about in this article is the partnership with The Lord of the Rings, which will be a draftable Booster Set with cards that

will be Modern legal

, and the product will also be released in Magic Arena, making it legal in Historic. We've noticed a trend at Wizards to release a set geared towards Modern every two years (Modern Horizons in 2019, Modern Horizons II in 2021 and possibly Lord of the Rings in 2023), and despite Wizards mentioning that this set will not necessarily be designed exclusively for Modern, I believe that the need to turn it into a non-Standard set comes from the fact that they intend to raise the power level of its cards and, in this way, make the product attractive to more players of more formats, without necessarily harming development or the planned release window for Standard (it's worth remembering that Standard sets are usually planned two years in advance). The article in which Wizards explain the motivations for making these cards legal in Modern and Historic makes some sense: Gandalf is indeed a wizard, Sauron is indeed the great evil, and Fellowship of the Ring is, indeed, a team of adventurers that could be portrayed in Magic's universe. Middle-Earth has many elements that we commonly see in Magic: The Gathering, so the cultural “gap” from one franchise to the other is not shocking to either party, I think about it and accept it in the same way and in the same nature which I accepted Forgotten Realms: it's confusing, it's going to bring up tricky questions for those who get to the game later (much more so than Forgotten Realms, as The Lord of the Rings is a much better known franchise), may attract many Middle Earth fans to the game or back into the game, while also serving as wonderful marketing for Magic: The Gathering in the "mainstream world". Of course, casting your Aragorn and having it countered by a Counterspell may sound as weird as blocking a Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer with your Hobbit, or casting a "You Shall Not Pass", but we're living a Standard where Power Word Kill is widely used; we'll definitely know how to handle it, and particularly I think it will be a lot of fun for both the casual and Commander tables to be able to play their favorite characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's universe. Have so many crossovers? No. Apply them in such a way as to widen the discrepancy in card availability among players? It's a disrespect to players and shouldn't be done. But Crossovers definitely don't make any difference to the Magic: The Gathering franchise negatively, it's the most nostalgic players who tend to dislike changes, especially expressive changes like the inclusion of other franchises in game products which, I admit, sounds a little strange. However, there is a logical explanation for this problem: The human brain has an automatic tendency to dislike significant changes and repeat patterns to spend less energy. Therefore, people are very likely to embrace their traditions or their pre-programmed beliefs before society, our brain's natural tendency is to embrace our comfort zone. It's one of the reasons we see so much resistance to any significant change in social patterns or deliberate complaints about anything new. That's why every year there's a wave of people saying “Magic will die if this happens” with every significant change that takes place in the game. It's difficult to embrace change openly because it's not our natural propensity, and it's obvious that it's common for some or many players to like or dislike crossovers according to their personal opinions and beliefs about what Magic should be. However, sometimes we can only accept things as they are, as there are factors beyond the players' control that we cannot change when a significant portion of the community supports these changes. So, crossovers with other series, it seems, are an element that we will see and learn to accept in the coming years. This is not to imply that Wizards is making all the right decisions: MPL was a disaster, the ascension system in the competitive landscape was too confusing for people to understand, Wizards invested badly in explaining it, invested badly to publicize its events and created so many sub-events that players in general lost interest in following professional Magic events, and later this year we had the announcement of the end of the Magic Pro League and the professional Magic circuit as we knew it. So, one of the expectations that a portion of the community had is that Magic Showcase would reveal at least a preview of what we can expect from Wizards for the game's competitive landscape in the future, what the future structure of events would be, how it would be done and the “ladder” for professional tournaments, among other topics related to the future of Competitive Play or Professional Magic. And particularly, it was a

huge disappointment

to watch the entire Showcase without seeing even a mention of the game's competitive future, let alone the tiniest preview of what we could expect. The Showcase was entirely commercial, it was made under the same logic that we have seen Wizards use over and over again in the last two years to keep the hype about the products while neglecting other points that make up a card game, such as improvements in the digital platform and in the local and global competitive landscape. It was only mentioned at the event that the Store Championships, seasonal events that took place between 2017 and 2018, will return with promos for the participants, for the Top 8 and for the winner, a sign that they are at least investing in the competitive landscape in stores, which is a great first step, and it would be interesting to see the Store Championships become the basis for a strong competitive scene, passing through regionals and nationals, as it used to be before... Well, before, it was this weird package that came with Magic Arena. That said, there is an important point to ponder about the absence of an Organized Play announcement: we are still in a pandemic, and even with a significant portion of the world starting to reopen and in-store games being allowed in most countries, the Delta variant continues to be a challenge for the world and its impact is being felt in different regions of different countries. Promoting the return of Magic Fest, Pro Tours and other similar events in a time when the pandemic is still too risky even in countries where vaccination is at an advanced stage, and it would be very harmful for the company to promise to return certain events and then need to postpone or cancel them due to the pandemic. That was my analysis of the future of Magic for 2022 and Universes Beyond, announced by Wizards at Magic Showcase 2021. If you have any opinion, feel free to leave it in the comments! Thanks for reading!