Although there are digital offshoots of Magic: The Gathering, primarily, however, it is a physical card game. The upcoming set JumpStart: Historic Horizons, however, introduces some digital cards that could never be printed. The fans react split on the supposed taboo breakage.
Hearthstone and Magic The Gathering distinguishes an important feature. Hearthstone is only digital, so the game also sets on all sorts of mechanics that would be impossible with physical cards. So the text can change some cards in the gameplay, new cards can be brought out of the air into the game and random effects are also on the agenda.
Magic: The Gathering, on the other hand, exists primarily as a physical card game, making the described effects extremely complicated or even impossible. Although the game with MTG Arena has been a digital platform for years, exclusively digital maps were practically taboo. Until now.
Jumpstart: Historic Horizons introduces digital-only cards
On August 12, Jumpstart appears: Historic Horizons exclusively for MTG Arena. Of the total of 767 cards are 372 new arrivals for MTG Arena , which are primarily from Modern Horizons and Modern Horizons 2. Both sets appeared in paper form in recent years and quickly became fan favorites. So that these cards are finally arriving in MTG Arena, fans wish for a long time.
However, among the 372 cards are also 31 digital-only new additions and exactly these are now for heavy discussions . The maps contain three new mechanics that are only possible in the digital game environment:
- Seek
- Mighty teachers: Inside, choose a random card from your deck that meets specific criteria. No mix, no time wasted with searches - snatches a random card and plays on.
- Immerfig
- Permanently changes the properties of a card, no matter in which zone it is located. With this mechanics the advantage of arena is used to change digital objects during the game, no matter where they are.
- Summon
- Thus, cards are created from nothing. These digital objects are treated like normal cards. Mighty spells and artifacts can convince well-known, powerful or simply useful cards - from the Tropical Island and the Storm Front Pegasus to "consider" to "consider".
Since these effects can never appear in printed form, critical voices see the bridge between digital and physical magic lots finally destroyed. However, it must be emphasized that will be legal only in Historic format , which was a so far arena-exclusive, digital format anyway. Although it was so far theoretically possible to rebuild Historic decks with real cards, but never official, physical tournaments in the format were offered.
On the other side of the spectrum is welcomed the decision to use the digital peculiarities and benefits within the Historic format, instead of making the game dogmatically . In conversation with IGN, designer Aaron Forsythe also emphasized that it is a und and no oder. While the Historic format is thus out of digital limits, formats like standard or limited draft remain unaffected by the changes. An overview of the currently best standard decks, you can find in our guide by the way.
So if you can do nothing with the digital cards, you will continue to have the opportunity to play traditional magic in the proven formats. Nonetheless, the timing is anything but advantageous, since just two months ago the end of the Magic Pro League was proclaimed. So how the future for Magic tournaments looks at all and whether traditional games relied on compared to digital offers is still still open and explains the growing concern over the new digital mechanics.
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