Explorer Is Exactly What MTG Arena Needed To Pull Me Back In
As I've mentioned before, I fell off of Magic: The Gathering Arena last year. After completely devouring both Zendikar Rising and Kaldheim, around the launch of Strixhaven: School of Mages I found myself playing less and less. Tabletop became more appealing, and my newfound love for the Commander format (which isn’t available in Arena) made me log in less often. Though I still checked out each new set and drafted a few times, it felt like me and Arena kept drifting further apart.
The final death knell then came in December with the introduction of Alchemy, the digital format full of ‘digitally-exclusive’ mechanics that drew a line between Arena and the rest of Magic, with the added 'treat' of having cards you own be 'rebalanced' at the drop of a hat. I thought that was it for my Arena career but, fortunately, with the launch of the game's newest format, Explorer, it really feels like life is returning to the game.
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Despite how heavily people pushed Alchemy when it launched, the players hated it. They hate how it diverges Arena from tabletop play, how Wizards gives no compensation to people who have their cards errata'd, and how they use it to justify a second full set release to buy between major expansions. Most of all, they hate the impact it has had on one of Arena's most-loved formats, Historic.
Historic was originally the nonrotating format that allowed you to play with any cards printed in Arena. Once a set left Standard, you were safe in the knowledge that Historic was still there accepting your decks with open arms. It had its own, vibrant metagame distinct from anything else Magic offered, and then it received Historic Horizons, a huge shakeup full of new,
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