In this edition:
- Arena Open: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™ Limited, July 1–2
- Best-of-One Qualifier Play-In, July 8
- Quick Draft: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- The Two (Command) Towers Brawl July 7–14
- July 7–9 Celebrate Magic at Your Local WPN Store
- Correction: June Ranked Season Pack Rewards
- Two New Anthologies Are Coming July 18!
- August Qualifier Weekend Format Change
- Event Schedule
I guess this isn’t new but I was surprised to see the “Explorer Anthology 3” announcement. I thought the point of Explorer was supposed to be “cards that have been in Standard on Arena in the past”. If they’re releasing cards straight to Explorer, how is it not just “Second Historic”?
Keeping up with all the different Magic formats and what’s legal in them is practically a full-time job. I’ll bet there’s someone at Scryfall who’d say that’s not too far from the truth. I play Magic and read Magic news almost every day and apparently I still don’t know.
(I went and looked it up: Explorer is different from Historic because it doesn’t have Alchemy cards – which is good – and it’s eventually supposed to sync up with Pioneer. I’d much rather see them advance that goal by releasing the old sets that are missing, and letting us draft them.)
No the point of explorer is to be a true to tabletop eternal format on Arena with an eventual roadmap of getting to Pioneer.