Magic: The Gathering Arena’s Historic format is intended to give fans an opportunity to play games of constructed with cards that have already rotated out of Standard MTG. However, the options and incentives for playing Historic on Arena have, thus far, been less than exciting, and this has left some fans wondering exactly how committed Wizards of the Coast is to supporting the format. That said, WotC has recently detailed its upcoming plans for Historic, and they may be enough to assuage some of the concerns surrounding it.
To start, a Historic launch event is now set to begin on Magic: The Gathering Arena next Thursday, November 21, and it will run through November 25. This MTGA Historic launch event will cost 200 gems or 1,000 gold to enter, and it will allow fans to play an unlimited number of Historic Best-of-One games and win some brand new MTG Arena card styles in the process.
These card styles are relevant to the second part of WotC’s plans for Historic support, as they are for “new” cards that the developer is adding to Arena specifically to be played in the format. Indeed, Wizards announced back in August that it would start adding cards from “across Magic history” to Historic, and the developer has now revealed the first batch of them. Dubbed “Historic Anthology 1,” this first batch features 20 cards, including Burning-Tree Emissary, Hidetsugu’s Second Rite, and Captain Sisay, and it will be available on November 21 as well.
Furthermore, a Best-of-Three Ranked Historic queue will also be launched next Thursday, and it will be available until January 15, 2020. This Magic: The Gathering Arena Historic queue will allow players to raise their Constructed rank, qualify for MCQs, and earn daily win progression, which are all things that fans have been asking Wizards of the Coast to apply to Historic for quite some time.
Finally, WotC has announced that a major Historic tournament will take place on Arena just before the release of Theros: Beyond Death, a set that will be fully available on January 24, 2020. This tournament will give players a chance to win “epic prizes,” and it will put a cap on the preliminary Historic push detailed here. At that point, players can continue to participate in an evergreen Historic Best-of-Three event and look forward to Historic Anthology 2, which is scheduled for a March 2020 release.
With all of this outlined, it certainly seems that Wizards is attempting to make Historic feel at least comparable to Standard on Arena, and that is something that many fans will definitely appreciate. However, it has also been recently revealed that Magic: The Gathering Arena is adding Pioneer, and time will tell if Historic can maintain a foothold when competing against this popular new non-rotating format.
Magic: The Gathering Arena is available on PC.
Source: Wizards of the Coast
