MTG Arena Announcements – June 3, 2024

In this edition:

• Modern Horizons 3 Streamer Event June 5
• Modern Horizons 3 Historic and Brawl Pre-Bans
• MTG Arena Matchmaking and You
• Card Styles Button Returns
• Explorer Best-of-One Play-In This Weekend
• Currency Update for Players in Japan
• Event Schedule

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Modern Horizons 3 Streamer Event June 5

Watch your favorite creators get their hands on the latest set before release, starting this Wednesday, June 5, at 6 a.m. PT. To see some of the highlights, check out this hype video from MTG Malone!

Learn the mechanics from some of the best and prepare to play Modern Horizons 3 on MTG Arena beginning June 11 and at a Prerelease event at your local WPN store June 7–13!

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Modern Horizons 3 Historic and Brawl Pre-Bans

Historic

• Harbinger of the Seas
• Winter Moon
• Endurance
• Fury
• Grief
• Subtlety
• Solitude
• Flare of Fortitude
• Flare of Denial
• Flare of Malice
• Flare of Duplication
• Flare of Cultivation
• Enemy fetch lands

Modern Horizons 3 introduces the largest change to Historic to date when it comes to card power. We want to take as many cards as possible in the format while keeping true to our typical banning strategy. We have been cautious of cards that can be cast for free with alternative payments as we believe they are too fast for this format. So, it should not be surprising that we are banning the Evoke Elementals and Flare cycle for Modern Horizons 3, but they will be playable in Timeless.

We believe the other two cards, Winter Moon and Harbinger of the Seas, are above the power level threshold for Historic. Both cards affect the opponent's lands in a way we are cautious of in this format and will likely slow the game down.

Brawl

• Disruptor Flute

Finally, we want to prevent cards in Brawl that can shut down a player's commander completely, so Disruptor Flute is banned in Brawl.

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MTG Arena Matchmaking and You

A couple of weeks ago we shipped a bug on MTG Arena that allowed players to reverse engineer some of the logic behind our matchmaking. While there is no security risk in this bug, it did create some conversation on the topic, so we wanted to take a minute to discuss what our goals are with matchmaking and what players can expect moving forward.

Our vision for MTG Arena is "Fast, fun Magic for everyone, anywhere." Applying this to matchmaking in unranked modes, our goal is to let players build whatever decks that interest them and then provide as fair a match as possible. This means we're looking to pair high-power decks against each other so those players can have the epic battles they're looking for. Meanwhile, players who are building for fun, thematic matches are more likely to pair against others who are doing the same.

With a game as complex as Magic, however, no system will perfectly account for all the strategies, variables, and deck-building options available to players, let alone the myriad motivations those players have. In addition, we must make compromises between matchmaking precision and how long it takes players to find a match.

So, let's discuss how we manage this (after a couple of caveats) …

First, the matchmaking we're discussing today only applies to the Best-of-One play queues (and occasional pass events, like Midweek Magic, where you get to play for a timed duration instead of a set number of matches), and does not apply to Ranked play, Best-of-Three play, premier events, or events that have win/loss targets.

Second, we're not going to share specific matchmaking details. While we know some players won't like this choice, it helps us achieve our goal of fair matchmaking. When players have full transparency on how the system works, it is easier for certain players to exploit this information to create imbalanced match-ups. When this happens, predictably, more players adopt this strategy over time for fear of being disadvantaged, which means that not only are they creating even more imbalanced matches, they may not even be playing decks that they think are fun or interesting.

Now on to the discussion.

For Brawl (and Standard Brawl), the system looks at both your Commander and your deck, roughly evaluates the combined power level, with an emphasis on the Commander, and then tries to match you against decks of similar power level. If it is taking too long to find a good match, the system periodically increases the acceptable power level discrepancies until you are paired. As a rule of thumb, we're hoping players are never waiting more than a minute or two for a match. For non-Brawl matches, the process is the same, but without the commander.

There are two key things to point out here. First, new cards will need play data before they are integrated into the power calculation, so they are the most likely to change between evaluations. Second, when making changes, we're going to prioritize statistical outliers or the most popular cards for adjustment. Granularly managing thousands of cards is unlikely to be the best use of our team resources, so we're going to focus on the most important areas first.

Beyond the relative power of the commander and the cards in a player's deck, we incorporate player skill as part of our matchmaking in further service to finding fun and compelling matches for players. While it can be fun to win convincingly, we don't want to regularly pit newer players who are learning the ropes against seasoned veterans with advanced skillsets and create situations where these outcomes are much more likely. Combining deck power and skill helps prevent that, while still allowing for these players to occasionally battle.

Moving forward, you can expect a few things. First, we're going to fix the issue that gave players too much information. This will happen soon. Alongside that change, or shortly thereafter, we'll make changes to our power ratings based on play patterns over the past few weeks. Again, our goal is for players to have fun, engaging matches that appropriately test their skill level.

Beyond this, we'll continue to explore how we manage the power level portion of matchmaking in a sustainably responsive manner, where changes are regularly accounting for shifts in the metagame but don't impact our ability to run other parts of the game. We're not going to provide explicit timelines or windows in which this will happen, because doing so creates windows of opportunity for players to try and circumvent the system.

We've seen strong growth in Brawl over the last year, and we're excited to find ways to better support Brawl players. While we know it is imperfect, using deck power matchmaking has been a cornerstone of supporting engaging games of Magic, and we'll continue explore ways to make it even better.

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Card Styles Button Returns

Coming with the Modern Horizons 3 release is the return of the card styles button:

By toggling on the card styles button located in the upper-right corner of the deck builder, you will be able to see all the card styles available for your deck at once, and even card styles you don't yet have in your collection!

This should make personalizing your decks to your style even easier!

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Explorer Best-of-One Play-In This Weekend

This weekend, get on the expressway to Magic competitive stardom! No matter your ranking or expertise, you can compete in the Explorer format this Saturday, June 8, in the Best-of-One Play-In event to claim an invitation to June's Qualifier Weekend.

Why do you want an invitation to the Qualifier Weekend? Because that's your springboard into the stratosphere where some of the best Magic players will face off to claim an invitation to the Arena Championship! And if you come out on top there? There's the Pro Tour, and ultimately the pinnacle of play, Magic: The Gathering World Championship!

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Currency Update for Players in Japan

With the release of Modern Horizons 3, currency for players in Japan will be updated to JPY in the MTG Arena Store with prices adjusted similarly to EU currency. Other players will not notice a change.

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Event Schedule

Events open at 8 a.m. PT on their starting dates (excluding Midweek Magic) and close to entries at 8 a.m. PT (UTC-07:00) on the ending date shown unless otherwise noted.

Midweek Magic

Midweek Magic events open on Tuesdays at 2 p.m. PT and close to new entries on Thursdays at 2 p.m. PT (UTC-07:00).

• June 4–6: Outlaws of Thunder Junction Phantom Sealed
• June 11–13: Brawl
• June 18–20: Modern Horizons 3 Constructed
• June 25–27: Historic Artisan

Quick Draft

• June 4–21: Wilds of Eldraine
• June 21–July 2: Modern Horizons 3

Other Events

• May 28–June 4: Guilds of Ravnica Premier Draft
• May 28–June 10: Chromatic Cube Draft and Traditional Draft
• May 31–June 3: Standard Metagame Challenge

June Qualifier Events – Explorer

• June 8: Best-of-One Play-In
• June 14: Best-of-Three Play-In
• June 15–16: Qualifier Weekend

Competitive Play Schedule

All times listed are Pacific time (UTC-07:00).

Premier Play

Qualifier Play-In events are single-day tournaments in which players compete to earn invitations to that month's Qualifier Weekend events.

Qualifier Weekend events are two-day events in which eligible players compete for invitations to upcoming Arena Championship events.

Qualifier tokens are delivered to your MTG Arena inbox. Remember to claim them before the event starts!

June

• Qualifier Play-In (Best-of-One)
  June 8, 6 a.m. PT–June 9, 6 a.m. PT
  • Format: Explorer
• Qualifier Play-In (Best-of-Three)
  June 14, 6 a.m. PT–May 15, 3 a.m. PT
  • Format: Explorer
• Qualifier Weekend
  June 15, 6 a.m. PT–June 16, 4 p.m. PT
• Format: Explorer

Arena Open

The Arena Open Day One entry window begins at 6 a.m. PT and closes to new entries the following day at 3 a.m. PT (UTC-07:00). The Day Two entry window is 2 hours only, from 6 a.m. PT until 8 a.m. PT (UTC-07:00).

• Arena Open: Modern Horizons 3
  • June 22: Day One, Modern Horizons 3 Sealed (Best-of-One and Best-of-Three)
  • JUne 23: Day Two, Modern Horizons 3 Draft (Best-of-Three)

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