Video

My worry is that with these cards remaining in Standard for at least 5 years, it can potentially limit card design going forward. Anything that breaks Standard power level with a Foundations card can't be reasonably printed, and while that's true with Standard sets amongst each other, generally, that's traditionally a 2, now 3, year moratorium of printing that effect, but now it's 5 years or longer. I do like the concept, but it does worry me a little.

Dev keeps saying five years like Llanowar Elves and WoG weren't in standard for like 15 years straight.

The 5 year standard is literally the main thing I was telling all the people I play with.

Didn't they put 8-mana Ugin a standard set? That card was oppressive and dominating and should have been banned. When it was no longer standard-legal, non-douchebags rejoiced. Now they want to make a set that basically won't rotate? I'm not sure I trust them to select cards for that kind of set. They might choose another terribly oppressive card...like Omniscience or something. That would absolutely suck!

Editor Dev always holding things together! 💚

This timeline is so dumb -- Modern is the rotating format that I hate now and Standard is going to be the one where players play and hone their favorite archetype with their favorite cards in it for years XD

Fuck rotation, this is wonderful news. I might actually play standard now and just run my favorite flavor of foundation with a few pick ups from each set.

oh great, core sets are back.

4:53 Excellent. Now I want premade Magic decks in every roadside gas station just like packs of Bicycles playing cards. And just as worthless. Do it.

Too many board wipes already

if its cool enough i might build a standard deck

i like the idea. i really really hope WOTC pulls it off cause it could be great. knowing them its probably just going to be a highly profitable flop.

"and releasing in January, 2025 is the new Foundations 2, where we print the power 9 back into standard. it shouldn't be a big problem since in the same set, where power creeping them!"

I've always felt that WotC should make a set of Standard cards that are "bread and butter" like Disenchant and such, and that the set doesn't rotate. That way, they can focus all their energy on making cards that will provide a fresh MtG experience in each individual set. Also, I DON'T think Lightning Bolt in Standard is too much to ask. Bolt makes MtG a WAY better game. It makes 4 toughness critters more relevant and would lessen the need to design cheap and annoying cards to push mono red aggro. Plus, pure burn would be a viable archetype.

I had similar concerns I shared in Reddit and got flailed for it. Wondering where I missed the types of products. Sounded like one would have all the basic cards vs. boosters. Have a link?

I'm tentatively interested in it looking st it from the game designer point of view. I think it could potentially help the designers keep things balanced by having that stability in the format.

I'm super fine with the concept. I hope there will be a ton of reprints of those pretty simple but still sometimes effective or even helping cards. I can't see any of this cards shaping an entire standard. Though as an eternal Sac aficionado and animal lover, I have to say that I love this cat though. 'Isn't she the cutest thing you've almost seen?" could say my best cauldron pal. Come on you can't pass a turn 4 Wrath? No flashback, escape, Heroic Intervention, Angel of Restoration or even undying or Reanimate like effect or whatever Bruh? Let's face it you should rethink your decks 'cause they suck and you should be aware of it. Same thing for the blue Omniscience Timmy who get eviscerated by mono Red or fail the Disdainful Stroke pass and quickly gets the lesson. And so on and so forth. I trust Gavin on this one. Such an antidote to the neverending torrent of reveals I've been experimented this past two-three years. Simply exhausting. A FOMO card, really? What about a Simulacre and Simulacrum one WotC?

Does it Côme to arena ?

I was reading Nine-Lives Familiar while driving when you said “don’t read it if you’re driving” 🤣 love your content! Thank for the info, the set seems a cool idea.

I love the design of 9 lives familiar, its also a card I was shocked hadn't existed before. More broadly on the set, I think its a good idea, I think it might help make standard exist in paper again, but as a thing that balances standard around nice solid simple staples I really respect the design philosophy, I want cards which just read simple again and I don't have to track 18 things so this might be really good for that.

I am all in on Foundations. A core standard-legal card pool. A cheap and easy onboarding experience. Multiple game modes built-in. Commander decks are cumbersome and confusing. Traditional draft is daunting. Theme decks lack power to compete at FNM. Buying into standard whole-hog is a car payment. This is a solution to a lot of peoblems store owners and enfranchised players face when bringing someone into the hobby. The pros far outweigh the cons here.

i really like this from a long-term design view. in theory, it could free up set designers to make more experimental, niche, and flavorful cards. It could also lead to great complexity in competitive standard play with more set-specific mechanics. Hard to say what this means for things like booster pack size, variance, and variant art availability, but the idea of having a more durable framework for standard seems like a good one overall.

It will be nice that not EVERY standard set will need a white wrath now. There’s currently 12 sets in standard and all of them have a white wrath in them. That’s up to 48 wrath’s in a deck!

Magic is the first to have a non-rotating core set as part of a rotating format. It was called type 2. It used to be the current edition set was standard legal until it was replaced. They could be years apart

Less functional reprints, less down years in standard with a new median (though may change what a down year is with enough time), and a one time buy to have standard staples isn't too bad on paper. But still feels more like we had to fill a slot on the calendar than something players need

The problem has never ever been the speed of rotation it's been the COST. It doesn't matter to a new player (or a lot of old ones frankly) if or when a card will rotate if it costs $100 and you need 4 of them. Shotgun blasting new product into every orifice does nothing to fix that problem and frankly I find it hard to be excited for any new sets right now because there's just been way too fucking many of them and they are all way to expensive. This is all great if you have infinite money but if they want standard to thrive competitive decks need to cost less than $100 to build like Pokemon and Yugioh and the old magic grognards need to just deal with that.

Something that I haven't seen talked about yet is the biggest boon this set could have, which is for onboarding on Arena. Right now, the Color Challenge starter decks contain cards that are only legal in Alchemy for rotating formats, and as they want paper-digital parity in shared formats, they use Alchemy for onboarding new players. If this toolbox allows Arena to use Standard for onboarding, it will improve the popularity of the format. I see this as a huge leap in the revitalization of the format.

Well if it’s just simple cards and not the extra boosters that go along. Like if they keep shifting the extra boosters but keep the core base constructed decks. I think it’ll be fine like the arena preconstructed decks. Like keep the commons and maybe uncommons but keep the rares of the set changing.

I really don't mind the idea of a perpetually legal set for magic. The hardest part of rotation for me has always been mana bases. If there's a set of duals or fetch (fabled passage crossed fingers) that I will always know will be there for me that would be awesome. My only fear is that it could change the draft environment of future sets dramatically if they aren't putting as much ho hum draft Commons to fill out decks. Not freaking out though, kind of like the idea.

if they do a decent job of making the cards playable in standard as a baseline I'd be happy to collect a full playset of this entire set to have a baseline for standard for 5 years. I think it would make standard feel a lot cheaper as you can use this set as a baseline then supplement your decks with the "real" sets while their legal.

Your'e right that this is the biggest change to standard we've seen. And every card they previewed is very playable. This kinda scares me. I already thought 3 year standard was too big. If they really wanted to do something like this, should of just stuck to low powered cards for new players.

as always it depends on the execution, but I'm not opposed to it on principle One thing I dislike though is that it's weirdly wedged into the release schedule, reducing the time for Bloomburrow and Duskmourne in the limelight. Also I doubt it will even survive the full 5 years, even if it works out well. All it needs is some new people in management in 2 or 3 years who have different priorities.

I bet it will be mostly watered down versions of old cards!

Well, you said you wanted Garruk, right?

Tyvar the Bellicose about to pop-off

I'm not a Standard player, but I can understand your apprehension. Bloomburrow seems pretty introductory as well with all the reminder text that I've seen. Looks like we're in a noob renaissance.

Imagine a Fable of the Mirror Breaker for 5 years... Thalia for 5 years. Sheoldred for 5 years.

Yes, lightning bolt is too much lol 😅

I don’t know what to think. I’m amenable to the idea of one large core-like set that gets updated every 5 years or so that forms the baseline of standard, but I’m already concerned about the standards (pun intended) they’ve set just with these previews. For example: One-mana dorks like llanowar elves (or elvish mystic, or whatever) historically tend to accelerate green pretty quickly. Given the pushed low-mana cards standard has been getting over the past few years, imagine being on the draw and your opponent getting down a powerful green-based 3-drop on turn two when you had a tapland or just no one-mana play or removal spell of your own. M15’s elvish mystic and Dominaria’s llanowar elves were already strong at their respective times in standard, and the value you can get in the early turns has only increased since then. They moved away from one-mana dorks historically for very valid reasons, and yet they’ve decided that at least one will be legal for another five years. Will they design with that in mind, limiting the power of 3-4 drops for that time? Will we be getting very strong and cheap removal to counteract it? If they do that, will we continue to see higher-mana creatures even more reliant on immediate (and thus less-interactive) value upon play? Or will we continue to get pushed cheap value creatures while they just ignore the acceleration? Either way, I think they’re going to have to be very careful. The same goes for unconditional four-mana wraths. We’ll see. As an aside, they should have it rotate in 2028 and have a new set for the 35th anniversary. Just make the 5-year anniversary sets the standard “core”. Seems like a thematic slam dunk to me.

If you want to rotating. Go to modern 😂

Came back from MagicCon to my hotel, now watching Dev to tell me what Wizards said at the same place I was just at (in my defense there was Commander to play)

I think it’s a great idea. Let’s see how it’s executed.

Standard isn't really the flagship anymore. And haven't been for a while. Commander is the way forward ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ But a set focused for newbies is always welcome!

Generally excited, hoping that it's a fairly low-powered set with basic spells that help support generic color flavor and deck types. Definitely feels like they're trying to make Standard less of a rotating format though, but maybe it helps allow for more flavorful design space in other sets

When I first heard a bit of news about this set I assumed it was just an arena thing. Now that I know everything about it and thought about it I think it mostly an arena thing. I‘ve already invested in timeless and historic so I’m not going back to start standard. But I think a ton of new players will stay longer on the client because their cards didn’t rotate. And without that feel bad experience they might eventually move onto formats like explorer and become entrenched. I think this is a great business idea to retain players online. I don’t think it’ll do anything to make paper standard less dead. As a new paper player experience product my thoughts aren’t fully formed.

I am just getting into Magic the Gathering, this makes me feel so much better about getting into it. Trying to get a deck that can work feels so tough, with what they cost and how complex the cards are.

no it wont. - power storm (its not a creep anymore) is still a problem - first turn power is still a problem - mana flood/screw is still a problem - wotc slaughtering the cow instead of milking it is still a problem - lack of tournaments and coverage is still a problem - massive price hikes are still a problem etc. mtg foundations does NOTHING

Interesting. I don't play much standard but you're right, this is a huge change. I will say there are cards like Negate and Wind Drake that are basically always in standard anyway since they get reprinted so much. But this seems to be a lot more than just those

I really like the idea of having classic/core cards in Magic forever legal in Standard (thinking Llanowar Elves, Disenchant, Shock, Negate, etc.), but I think these should be limited to commons and uncommons. I worry about new cards being introduced in this set. One thing I'm unclear about is if you buy the larger set (350 cards) is that a randomized product or a predetermined set of cards? If it's the latter then that's basically a cube (-10 cards). And if Wizards is going to offer a block of 350 curated cards then that could be a great starter cube to play with non-magic friends.

This is a bad idea, these are bad ideas. "Foundations" is a terrible name. I just can't :( Excuse me, I must go, I have some Hasbro stock I need to get rid of right now.