The Standard's Challenges & Obstacles in 2025

The second point is intertwined with this article: Standard will change. Now, there will be no more than four or five expansions per year, but six. The distance between releases will now be between 45 and 60 days - there will be more consumption, more investment, more need to buy new cards to keep your deck updated for the RCQs, which will be in the Standard format for most of 2025.

Magic Arena also changes with this decision for similar reasons, but the problem goes a little further: free to play has been made more difficult. Standard is the gateway to MTGArena and now players will need to have more cards and update their deck more often to have good results in ranked games and even play in some tournaments on the platform, or independent events.

Investing in Standard now means running the risk of your deck expiring after 60 days. If the ideal hate comes along, a broken card, an expansion that completely changes the competitive Metagame or even an instant staple that, by chance, responds well to your game plan, your deck has been ruined, and it will be necessary to invest more to transform it into something else.

All of these moves seem orchestrated to revitalize Standard in 2025, to make it the format that matters most on the competitive scale, the gateway to the world of Magic tournaments for fans of Marvel, Final Fantasy, and whatever other crossovers WotC has planned for one of its core products, and there are many questions about how this will affect the future.

On the one hand, Wizards is on the right track in dedicating more time to the format. Magic needs a strong Standard to remain stable on many fronts, and the legality change for Universes Beyond certainly helps in that sense, but at the same time, expanding the release window to six sets to make it more dynamic hinders the player experience and their ability to enjoy the product with each new set.

In practice, what will happen is the same as what we witnessed with the period between Duskmourn and Foundations: everything seems faster and a little harder to follow, we have less time to absorb information and enjoy the new cards. But let's explore a little more about the benefits and risks that these decisions present for Standard and, consequently, for Magic.

For decades, Standard was the premier play of Magic. If you wanted to participate in an event, go to a local store, play a tournament, you consequently had to start in the rotating format. This did not invalidate the existence of other environments: Extended had its own season, as did Legacy, and both nurtured a passionate community for the game.

Eventually, Extended was replaced by Modern and this also gained a solid fan base. Then came Commander, which became the most played format in Magic, and later Pioneer. Today, there are so many ways to play Magic that some goes way beyond Wizards: from community formats embraced by the company like Pauper to initiatives aimed at taking WotC out of the equation like Premodern, alternative ways to play formats without complementary expansions and the talk of a so-called “Voyager” - Pioneer without Universes Beyond - is already starting to stir.

But the format that needs to be the most important in the game is Standard. The ecosystem of Magic's business model depends on its success: most expansions are made with Standard and Limited in mind, and the idea of ​​events like the Pro Tour or large-scale tournaments is always to promote the product.

A classic example of this dynamic can be seen when we take Foundations and go back a decade, when cards easily went up and down in price during the week of the Pro Tour as they appeared at the event. This effect still occurs in all countries, but prices now move much faster because social media, combined with Early Access events and the regionalization of markets through marketplaces, create or another pattern of speculation that starts from day one when streamers have access to the material.

If we took Standard out of the release equation and/or reduced its participation with more sets from other formats to promote, more power spike occasions would occur in Magic to the point of turning it into a card game focused on the new set always being stronger than the previous one.

As exemplified by Mark Rosewater in his blog, it is easier to balance a rotating format than to insert direct cards into an eternal format. Sets like Modern Horizons always make some mistakes because of this challenge - for a set to be successful by inserting cards into Modern or Legacy, they need to be more daring with the design, try riskier things and these can implode the Metagame easily, just look at some recent examples:

It is not necessary to mention the damage that Nadu, Winged Wisdom did to Modern, but besides that, The One Ring is still the most played card in the format, with over 50% representation, and Boros Energy has almost 30% presence in competitive tournaments. All three cases came from a supplemental set designed for Modern, and The One Ring would have been rethought more often and played more often during the production of Lord of the Rings if this set had come out for Standard.

Standard is more careful in this regard, but it’s not immune to mistakes: Oko, Thief of Crowns, Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, Field of the Dead and the Companions came from rotating expansions and wreaked havoc in every format. Valki, God of Lies caused a rules change to the Cascade mechanic and a dozen cards released in Standard sets became broken in Pioneer, and while some were gross design mistakes, others simply had interactions with other cards from other formats - and it’s not Standard’s design role to manage those interactions.

When an expansion is made for Standard, situations like Treasure Cruise or Valki, God of Lies are side effects that need to be remedied through bans, while Oko, Thief of Crowns or Companions are very apparent design errors. The last intervention in the format occurred in May 2023, we have been a year and a half without bans in Standard. Yes, we had Geological Appraiser and Amalia Benavides Aguirre in Pioneer, we also had Up the Beanstalk in Modern, but the environment where the expansions have been planned is in the most stable scenario in its history since 2019.

Creating a stable environment means establishing security to invest. Players can buy cards without fear, train for big tournaments without worrying about losing their deck in the middle of the process, or having to change their entire sideboard due to a ban, and in this sense, I couldn't agree more with the inclusion of Universes Beyond as part of the Standard's ecosystem.

Let's forget the power level of some cards and imagine that Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth had come out for Standard. Not much different from today, people would still complain that another IP is legal in the rotating format, but the set would have launched with all the same product category presented for LotR - which will probably be the same for Final Fantasy and Marvel - and players would use their respective cards in decks.

In an ideal world, Lord of the Rings fans would be familiar with Magic: The Gathering, just as you or I have been familiar with it in some way in the past, and would be interested in the game. At this point, this fan has two options:

The same rule applies to players who were introduced to Magic or approached the game through LotR in 2023. The difference is in the format approach because Modern's power level doesn't allow LotR cards to have that much room. Yes, The One Ring has 52% of the Metagame, Orcish Bowmasters changed the way we play cantrips, and yes, Samwise Gamgee has a combo with Cauldron Familiar, Delighted Halfling is the best mana dork in the format, and Flame of Anor has become a staple with Tishana's Tidebinder, but those are six or seven cards out of almost 300.

Can you win games or even compete with an Aragorn, the Uniter deck in a Modern FNM? How does Gandalf the White compare to the power level of a Solitude? Lord of the Rings has a Standard philosophy in many cards and some occasional Legacy power level stuff, not unlike War of the Spark. Even the interactions of cards like Lorien Revealed or Troll of Khazad-dûm are side effects of their respective formats' environments, rather than a consequence of the expansion's natural power level!

So how would this LotR fan feel when they go to a Modern tournament with a White Weenie deck with Flowering of the White Tree only to find out that they're losing on turn 3 or 4 to some Yawgmoth, Thran Physician or a combo with Primeval Titan that they didn't understand half of what the opponent did even after it was explained?

So, putting Universes Beyond in Standard is a great move if the plan is to introduce fans to Magic: The Gathering as a game and move them to the competitive scale that, again, Standard needs.

Flowering of the White Tree would play with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Skrelv, Defector Mite, which would play alongside Frodo, Sauron’s Bane and Samwise the Stouthearted in their White Weenie deck, which would feature Reprieve as an interaction and complemented by Werefox Bodyguard. Add Minas Tirith, and they have a deck that works at FNM levels and even RCQs, creating a harmonious union between the Magic: The Gathering and Lord of the Rings universes!

LotR fans would be much happier playing a deck like the one above, and there's a bit more to it than just card synergy: except for Skrelv, Defector Mite, all the creatures on the list fit the Lord of the Rings aesthetic, and these were not intentional choices.

The focus was to show an example of a functional deck that operates between the universes of Magic and external IPs, as this is Wizards' goal when the company decided to include the Universes Beyond sets in Standard, and Standard needs this support to be relevant again - and by having it relevant once more, the entire Magic ecosystem benefits: from Commander players who will receive more balanced legends to Modern enthusiasts who don't have to worry about a forced rotation all the time.

But Wizards made another decision, and one that may be its biggest mistake in its attempts to revitalize the format: including three Universes Beyond products in the same semester.

Consider the example above: the Lord of the Rings player is happy with their Mono White Legends in Standard, enjoying the tournaments at a local store, considering participating in the RCQ season, and suddenly, they discover that the next Magic expansion has brought a perfect card for their list: , 2/3, a Legendary Creature that gives Flash to his other legendary creatures and does not allow them to be countered. It can be sacrificed to phase out creatures - the creature they have dreamed of for the Control matchups - and they finally get to read the name of the card: Barry Allen, also known as The Flash from DC Comics.

They keep looking through the set and discovers that it has a new land which adds and comes into play untapped, perfect for increasing the consistency with which Frodo, Sauron’s Bane turns into a game-winning threat, but when looking at the card art, they only see a giant Central City building with no meaning to them.

The Innistrad lore that initially made them add Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and the Phyrexia arc that convinced players to purchase Skrelv, Defector Mite have now been replaced by a product that has little appeal to the medieval fantasy fan. These keep seeing the cards: Captain Cold, Abra Kadabra, a dozen characters and places that not only they don't care about, but feels don't belong in the same world as their deck of Lord of the Rings cards - and the same DC fan, super excited about The Flash expansion, feels the same way about Tolkien's books. These two worlds, for some people, don't communicate.

There's a reason why all Universes Beyond Commander decks come with 100% of the artwork from that IP: fans have an immeasurable fondness for their favorite brands. If you add a Llanowar Elves, you've already broken the fan's sense of immersion, the product is already worth less in their eyes, so when you introduce them to the Magic: The Gathering product and want them to keep following the TCG and participate in Standard events, you already have the challenge of immersing them in the MTG universe and making them accept participating in that world.

One great thing about 30 years of world building is that Magic is very diverse, so it’s relatively easy to find a part of its lore that appeals to a certain demographic: Lord of the Rings fans will gravitate toward medieval fantasy worlds and/or magical worlds with warriors and sorcerers. Marvel or DC Comics fans will find in Planeswalkers and perhaps Oath of the Gatewatch and the larger story arcs the narrative link that somehow matches what they like about the comics. For the Final Fantasy fan, there’s no shortage of inherent MTG elements that can connect in some way with their favorite game in the franchise.

Now try convincing a Final Fantasy fan that, to win games, Dr. Octopus deserves a spot in their deck with Cloud Strife and Noctis Lucis Caelum? Try convincing a Spider-Man fan they need Sephiroth to win a Magic tournament? If it's already difficult to convince a portion of MTG players that the new reality will involve needing Lightning and Peter Parker in their deck to compete in a tournament, imagine doing that to someone who hasn't spent years playing Magic?

Before, Wizards of the Coast would need to convince fans of each of these brands about the Magic universe. Now, it no longer needs to just sell the Magic universe to fans of one IP (and it risks failing when everything seems like a reference or a stereotype, like in Murders at Karlov Manor or Duskmourn), it needs to sell other IPs in the process.

If the proposal is to introduce these players to Standard and the competitive scene, the company needs to sell Magic and Final Fantasy to Marvel fans and Marvel to Final Fantasy fans. These two products sell well on their own, but they don't speak to all fans of either brand.

Every set is designed to sell. Foundations makes it clear that the next Standard will be faster, more dynamic, and perhaps with a higher power level. I have no doubt that both Final Fantasy and Spider-Man will be expansions as strong as Bloomburrow or Duskmourn, if not stronger than them, and players will need Universes Beyond cards to compete in tournaments; the person who enters the game with Cloud Strife will need Venom; the person who got interested in competitive MTG with a powerful Miles Morales card will have to consider not only inserting the entire Magic structure into their deck but also adding a giant bird called a Chocobo.

There is no other option when you want to compete. And that's one of the reasons why Universes Beyond in booster pack expansions should be an annual product: it pulls fans of a brand into Magic, the past and future expansions of the year introduce the player to the universe of the card game, the characters, the lore, the mechanics, maybe they're interested in the interplanar travel of Edge of Eternities, maybe they like the concept of clans in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, maybe they're enchanted by Wilds of Eldraine and moved by the lore as it unfolds, before you know it, that Marvel or Final Fantasy fan is now also a Magic fan because they've had enough time to learn and process the information about the vast TCG universe.

When the next Universes Beyond comes out, it will be a way to attract a new crop of players, while being a nice and exciting change of pace for both long-time Magic fans and that person who got into it because of FF or Marvel, the cycle repeats itself. Magic grows, crossovers continue to be special collaborations and don't get saturated. On the contrary, speculation and desires for the next crossovers in Standard expansions are a thing now.

A new type of Magic: The Gathering is being born without having to explore and extract the most from everything at the same time, one that works harmoniously between developing its own brand while bringing in more audiences from other franchises with an annual product, celebrated by the majority and without exploiting as much as possible in the short term of a novelty in a product with long-term growth potential. Want a second mass-produced crossover product? Great, get a brand and make four Commander decks! Everyone wins!

Three crossover set in one year will saturate Universes Beyond and worsen the public image of Standard for those who should be interested in it. How, in 2026, can we convince anyone from outside the format to play the format when decklists include Cloud Strife alongside Peter Parker and playing with whatever the third set of the segment is for next year? How can I expect them to take Magic: The Gathering as a competitive game and not a “wannabe Fortnite” in colorful cardboard form?

What sense of identity is Magic giving me to tell my friends who have never heard of the TCG that “this game is awesome!”? I know this game is awesome, despite J. Jonah Jameson being in a decklist with Kefka and some creature called Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, but how can I convince other people to take MTG seriously when the game itself doesn’t seem to take itself seriously? How can I explain that the story of our little furry friend Loot is wonderful when there’s a random character from every other brand thrown in?

If Wizards doesn’t show that Standard is amazing alongside—and, for some, despite—its mix of crossovers, how will the format grow? And how does the company plan to demonstrate that constantly investing, often hundreds of dollars, in cardboard pieces is a good deal for people who spend $60 every few years on a new Final Fantasy game? For that, we need another solution.

Foundations is a great gateway to Magic: a collection of cards that will be legal in the main competitive format for 5 years is exactly the kind of investment consumers want to make, but it’s not perfect.

Their biggest mistake was not including Check Lands as their dual lands: this cycle - born in the Core Sets - is universally good without unbalancing certain metrics, as would be the case with Shock Lands, Triomes or Fetch Lands. They are only as good as the available mana base, where if we have a lot of untapped lands that have no type, they are not necessary, but if we have more conservative mana and/or with more typing, they are the perfect manafixing - all this while rewarding players with lands that come into play untapped on many occasions.

Another reason this cycle deserved to be reprinted is because they are universally cheap, it's easy for a player to pick up a few of them for their list even when there are better options, and this matters because a vast range of players will be getting into Magic with Universes Beyond, and the first barrier they'll face when thinking about playing Standard and competing in the TCG is financial.

It may not seem like it, but spending between $150 and $450 on a bunch of colorful cardboard is a lot of money to the outside world. A subscription to Final Fantasy XIV is $15 for a person to play for the whole month, a recent Spider-Man figure, in a quick search, can cost anywhere from $80 to $400 - Magic will be asking these people to invest more money in another hobby, or to stop consuming one product in favor of another, and this one with even greater volatility than the ones they're used to.

So how do you convince someone that it's worth spending $300 on a Sheoldred, the Apocalypse set? Or worse, tell someone that they need to invest $300 in four pieces of colored cardboard if they want to compete in tournaments? How can they see that a Faerie Mastermind set is worth the same price as a newly released Triple A game? Why would a Spider-Man fan invest that money in a bunch of cards that might lose value in 45 or 60 days instead of another figure that will sit on the shelf in their apartment for eternity and only increase in value over the years? Or in that rare and collectible version of the comics they've always wanted?

For these people to stay, Standard needs to maintain a low price point for its bases and create an inviting entry point, and they need easy access to the product - Challenger Decks solve both problems and also make it easier to add new players to the format.

One of the elements that has always helped Standard's popularity at weekly events in local stores is Pick and Play. Nothing is more attractive to someone new to a format than having a product that you can find in any store, buy, open, sit at a table and play. There are even stores that offer ready-made competitive decks for sale for this reason.

Challenger Decks are this product and with the added bonus that the more of them are opened, the more the market is flooded with some essential staples.

You don’t even have to go as far as reprinting Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, just give players access to the format’s basic staples and they’ll get the rest! Give them good dual lands and cards that are essential to the setting the product is intended for! Make cheap removals stay cheap, make the next Fable of the Mirror-Breaker affordable, make them easy to find in boxes, flood the market with copies to meet a possible growing demand, and show that Standard is worth playing!

Challenger Decks help lay the foundation for the format and address the future challenges it will face in 2025 and perhaps in the years to come, including when we think about Standard's other major change for 2025.

A recurring problem in Magic in recent years is the overload of products and the burnout they have caused in a portion of consumers. There used to be a phrase to answer this question: “Maybe this product is not for you.” Perhaps it made sense when it was first uttered, since it was about expansions like Commander Legends and Modern Horizons, product categories targeted at a specific audience and that not every Magic player needs to follow.

The 2025 release window, however, throws this concept out the window by making all sets of the year legal in Standard, and consequently, in Pioneer. It is worth remembering that they never come alone as Booster sets: we will have Commander decks for each of them, Collector Boosters, Starter Kits will certainly be part of the Universes Beyond sets and whatever other products Wizards has in mind in this segment - now, every product is, in some way, for everyone.

For the Standard player, this means needing to keep track of everything and consume the products in a shorter space of time:

The release dates for Spider-Man and the third Universes Beyond set have not been announced, but the average release time is now less than two months. It's closer to the distance between Duskmourn and Foundations (49 days) or Bloomburrow and Duskmourn (56 days) than it is between Outlaws of Thunder Junction and Bloomburrow (105 days) or Murders at Karlov Manor and Outlaws (70 days).

In theory, this means little to the larger picture of Standard because Metagames are being solved much faster today than they were in the pre-social media era, but it does have a direct impact on the consumer enjoyment of their product, which is essential to maintaining a healthy relationship between player and game.

Standard is much more responsive to changes from one expansion to the next. A new duals cycle is already changing the entire structure and enabling three-color decks more easily, a new card in Duskmourn has transformed Archfiend of the Dross from a variant of Abyssal Persecutor into one of the most powerful cards in the format, and the release of Authority of the Consuls could jeopardize Gruul Prowess' position as the best deck - now, the pattern will be for this to happen at the same rate as it did in Duskmourn, only more frequently because there are six expansions per year.

Wizards is not only asking for faster investment in the format, but also for more investment. If someone spends, on average, $300 per edition of Standard, they will now end the year having spent $1,800 on Magic instead of $1,200 or $1,500, and those who previously prepared for this cost with $100 per month now need to prepare with $150, maybe $200 if they speculate that the set will be good.

As if that weren't enough, due to the volatility with which the format changes, the chances of your deck being invalidated with the next expansion increase. If your deck is Dimir and the next expansion releases a massive support for three colors, playing with means having an inferior version of something that an Esper or Grixis are doing better. If you start playing Elves in Foundations, and they reprint Plague Engineer in the next expansion, your matchup against all black decks in the Metagame becomes much worse and ends up, again, intertwining with the problem above with Universes Beyond: how do you convince new players to keep up?

Magic is an expensive hobby. Current Standard is relatively healthy in terms of price because we have a few viable archetypes at $100/$200 that are doing well, and for each of those, there is a $500 deck that is also doing well. If the power creep grows, we'll have the next Sheoldred, the Apocalypse costing $400 in the playset. With any bad luck, we'll have the next The One Ring, costing $150 per copy.

Even if this worst-case scenario doesn't happen, it's necessary to think of ways to make the beginner's $100 investment worthwhile and make them invest another $100 in the next expansions. In the MTG universe, this is done with new mechanics and exciting cards that fit into certain strategies, like a White Weenie fan who likes the idea of ​​playing Soldiers because it fits their favorite theme while having the inherent synergies of the creature type.

For Universes Beyond fans, the challenge is even greater because these are products from outside the IP, some involving a third brand besides their favorite and a card game called Magic. If there is already a problem convincing fans to put another brand in their deck, it will be even harder to convince them when that card from the brand costs $50.

This last topic is not so directly related to Standard in 2025, RCQ seasons and Universes Beyond, but Magic Arena is greatly affected by the changes proposed by Wizards for next year.

Whenever I read a post and/or watched a video about the project to revitalize Standard, I noticed the absence of any mention of the main factor that prevents players from getting interested in the format in local stores: Magic Arena. I'm sure that MTGA is very beneficial to the game and has actively contributed to the growth and its recognition as we know it today, but because of the pandemic, it's just not good for in-person Standard.

After all, what would make an MTGArena player think about playing Standard in person? The main reason for playing the format has always been because it is the premier competitive of Magic. Today, the dream of participating in a Pro Tour is only attractive to a portion of players and the idea of ​​playing Standard at your local store is certainly less attractive as a social game than a Commander table in the same store. If they are not fond of the concept of in-person games and prefer the convenience of being able to start a game of Magic anywhere and at any time, there is no reason for them to trade the screen of their cell phone or PC for tables and playmats.

Even if that person is training for an RCQ, MTGArena ends up being a bit more efficient because you can play whenever you want, anywhere you want, and grants a greater sample size of both matchups and practice.

Wizards, in part, seems to have understood that there is a communication problem in having MTGArena as a free platform - and even saying so in the advertisements inside the booster - for Standard games while trying to promote the format at the tabletop, and since it is not possible to simply cut the free to play aspect of the platform - the overwhelming majority of MTGArena users are free to play players - nor to abolish the Limited formats or reduce their number of rewards, they chose to make farming harder by releasing more expansions in a year.

Let's use my example, which is far from being the complete free-to-play experience: as a content creator whose Standard material is entirely produced on Magic Arena and with an average of between two and three hours of games per day, I can say that this change affects some factors in my process. Some involve, for example, the temporality of the articles, but the part that really matters in this matter is the consumption of the products.

Magic Arena has a good structure for those who want to play for free based on the consumption of their time in two factors: daily rewards and playing Limited. In theory, the system is intertwined so that you can earn your daily rewards and use the coins to play Draft and “farm” the expansion by investing several hours playing Draft to get more gems and boosters until you finish the entire set of everything you want. In this sense, Magic Arena wins by how long its users stay on the platform.

But I, for example, am a person who values ​​my time a lot and I use my hours of play to practice with decks, study them and prepare guides, so I invest my coins in Boosters in the store whenever a new set comes out: I do the daily rewards at the beginning of a season, collect the coins and use them at the beginning of the next season.

For a content creator, this is not enough to guarantee an extensive pool of cards from the new set to test and experiment, so I always buy the preorder bundle. Depending on the set, it's necessary to invest some gems to get everything I need: if the rares and mythic cards overlap with the rest of the format, if a cycle of ten dual lands was released, if they released a parallel set similar to Mystical Archives, which are legal in formats like Historic or Timeless, or if the set has more rares than expected for any other reason - it's worth it for me for my priorities, but it's not a practice I recommend for the regular player.

The practical effect of changing to six expansions will be to have fewer days to collect daily rewards and the devaluation of the Mastery Pass as we know it today (if there are no changes to it next year), consequently, having fewer resources to invest in the next expansion, which means fewer rare and mythic wildcards, which leads to the purchase of bundles or gems to acquire boosters and/or Limited games.

Magic Arena will become more expensive to play, even if you don't invest a penny in it. And, just like in-person, Wizards asks that its players not only consume more, but also consume in fewer time. In the case of MTGArena, game time therefore becomes less relevant for the company and more precious for the player: there are fewer daily rewards per season and less time to farm Limited, thus the need to spend more hours of your day on the platform to maintain efficient "farming".

It's funny that the most constructive criticism that existed in most remarks about the Alchemy format was about the need to invest more resources in it than in Standard because it had its own range of sets, totaling around eight per year. Now, Standard will have a release window with six, 50% more than it had and 50% less than Alchemy, but with potentially larger proportions since each product is a full set with 250 or more cards.

What options are left for free-to-play?

As someone who lives in Brazil and in a moment where the dollar has been quite steep, my best advice, today, to maintain the “free to play” style in MTGArena, and it can also be migrated to players who do not want to invest all their time in the draft and don't want to need to change their Standard deck every 50/60 days in 2025 is to focus on one strategy and stick with it until the rotation.

Let's say you started this season with Gruul Prowess. In Bloomburrow, you invested in Heartfire Hero, Emberheart Challenger, and later may have invested in Manifold Mouse and Innkeeper's Talent. Duskmourn gave you the following cards: Thornspire Verge, Leyline of Resonance, and Turn Inside Out, perhaps with Ghost Vacuum in your sideboard.

In total, you invested somewhere between 4 and 10 rares and 4 commons with Duskmourn. If you were already playing some version of Prowess before the rotation, you invested up to 12 rares and about 12 to 16 uncommons between the maindeck and the sideboard of your deck in Bloomburrow. Keeping this distribution every 50 days is a challenge, but it is possible to maintain your list and update it as it seems relevant.

Gone are the days when, as a free-to-play, it was possible to invest rare Wildcards in something that seemed cool, but without results: each of them, in 2025, will be worth 50% more than it was worth most of this year for Standard. You will need to use them with caution, and this naturally comes with needing to follow more details and content before deciding that the next red Leyline is worth your investment.

Mark Rosewater confirmed on his official blog that the current plan for Standard is six expansions per year. Could these plans change? Yes, just as the perception of Universes Beyond changed in three years. Will it happen soon? No. Especially if 2025 sales are a success.

The same goes for the number of releases of other IPs in a year. This is the plan for 2025, it could be the same in 2026, they could decide that one or two expansions per year are enough, or in 2029 they could decide that Universes Beyond is the future of Magic to the point of producing five or more expansions in a year.

In fact, it is impossible not to see Universes Beyond as the short-term future of the game: Marvel's Secret Lair crashed the pre-order website, it became news on portals that are not even in the TCG universe, it created repercussions and demonstrated how crossovers are a success despite the negativity of a part of the public on social media. These bundles proved that, just like in other aspects of life, the world of social media does not consistently reflect the real world.

Regardless of what the future holds, Standard will be the most affected format now that all sets of a year are legal for it. It's hard to imagine where and how it will be in 2026, when such a drastic change will affect its ecosystem. I can only hope that, thanks to - or despite - them, the format will once again be the center of Magic: The Gathering as a competitive game because Magic is healthier when it is the main focus on design.