Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast released their May State of the Beta article for Magic: The Gathering Arena. From Chronicles to new features, the article had a lot of cool news to cover. We wanted to highlight some of the most important pieces.
War of the Spark Chronicles
The first major update is an event series called War of the Spark Chronicles. Chronicles are weekly events that begin on May 23 with Act 1: Ravnica at War – Momir. From the picture in the article, it appears that in the first Chronicle the game will provide you with an MTG Arena deck of all 36 planeswalkers and basic lands. Each week, the Chronicle showcases the story of Ravnica through War of the Spark with different formats.
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This event series intends to be more rewarding. As you win more games you earn better rewards. On top of this, players will not be eliminated based on losses. The final benefit of Chronicles is that there is no entry fee for the events.
Stained-Glass Rewards
In the embedded video on the article, Wizards announced that they will soon make all of the stained-glass art for the Planeswalkers available. While some of the stained-glass styles will be rewards for completing Chronicles, players can purchase others through the store or redeemed with codes.
On top of the Stained-Glass styles, more card sleeves, avatars, and other cosmetics will be available in the shop for you to show your Magic fashion.
Mythic Qualifier
Another upcoming event to MTG Arena is the Mythic Championship Qualifier Weekend. This event is for the top 1,000 Mythic Ranked players in Seasons 1 or 2 of Ravnica Allegiance. You can achieve this rank in either Limited or Constructed formats for the Season. If you are one of those who are able to participate, you will receive an in-game notification that congratulates you on the achievement. A Mythic Qualifier badge should also appear on your profile page. You must have this badge to play in the weekend event. Those players participating in the event will play for one of 16 spots in the Mythic Championship.
Wizards of the Coast asks that, if you believe you did qualify but did not receive the notification or the badge, you contact customer support immediately.
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The event follows a best-of-three Standard format including an optional 15-card sideboard. Sign-up starts a 6 a.m. PT on May 25 and closes at 7:00 a.m. PT. Wizards encourages participants to begin playing as soon as the event starts at 7:00 to play all matches.
Visit the Mythic Championship Qualifier Weekend: Day 1 Guide for more information about the event.
Match Timers and Basic Lands
The last two pieces of information included in the May update were the introduction of Match Timers and a basic land filter.
The Match Timer is a clock that Wizards is implementing into all of their Best-of-Three formats. This clock gives each player a 30-minute timer in addition to turn timers. This timer does not include sideboarding time, which will carry a separate timer. A big point of the match timer is that if a player uses all 30-minutes of their allotted time before the match finishes, they will automatically lose the match regardless of their win/loss record.
This timer was implemented to relate the MTGA experience to that of the tabletop version. There is one issue that we can foresee, namely that when a round ends, a game goes to turns before being completed.
The basic land filter is a long-awaited feature. Many players asked for the ability to choose the basic land art that their deck uses. Wizard of the Coast has now listened and obliged. In the deck building filter menu, a new “Basic Land” option will be available. Players will be able to view all available art for basic lands through this filter. This feature is also available during Draft and Sealed events. A very important note about this feature is that now basic lands can only be found through the basic land filter.
That concludes all the new information and updates for MTG Arena. The patch goes live next week on May 23. We will keep you updated as more information comes forth.
