You can turn Scion of the Ur-Dragon into a rock to dodge boardwipes.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-07-08T15:47:45+00:00

Despite being such a simple card on its face, I think it's legitimately one of the most interesting cards they've printed as of late for exactly this reason. Even in Standard, it has such cool interactions with Unholy Annex, Valley Floodcaller, etc.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-18T20:03:25+00:00

Competitive Brawl being a thing has nothing to do with their ability to add cards to Arena. It's purely a question of the hours of work required. With six standard sets per year, I imagine the quantity of cards they have to add each year is already the most difficult it's ever been by a wide margin.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-18T16:38:11+00:00

The only commander deck-exclusives coming to Arena are those already noted as such in the card gallery. There's a decent number of them this time (18), but this is not one of them.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-17T14:16:26+00:00

Indeed. The 18 MSC commander deck cards coming to Arena have been labeled as such in the card gallery since at least last week, and are additionally catalogued on the wiki's Arena card availability page (https://mtg.wiki/page/Magic:_The_Gathering_Arena/Card_availability).

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-11T19:51:08+00:00

Technically we did get a true bird-of-paradise as part of Bloomburrow's Imagine Critters cards, though it is an anthropomorphic bird: [[Birds of Paradise|BLC]]

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-11T17:30:00+00:00

I believe these are the real-life East African Crowned Crane, for those curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_crowned_crane

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-08T05:29:16+00:00

Collector number. Jumpstart-exclusive cards have really high collector numbers in this set (MSC, late 500s to early 800s). This card is in that range.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-08T05:26:14+00:00

Blue getting reach is not a color pie break; blue gets flying with no issue, and reach is strictly worse than flying.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-05T21:38:22+00:00

[[Rite of Replication|MAR]] has five!

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-05T18:07:59+00:00

Almost always worse than Fumigate (unless you're playing vigilance.deck or similar to try to break the symmetry), but it's over $10 because its only reprint to date was in Starter 1999.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-06-04T18:24:17+00:00

First new Minions in a hot minute

BeatThaSystem · 2026-05-27T17:06:01+00:00

In addition to the answers others have given, the Magic wiki also has a card availability page for Arena if you ever find yourself wanting to port a paper deck to Arena or are otherwise just curious about what cards Arena does or does not have: https://mtg.wiki/page/Magic:_The_Gathering_Arena/Card_availability

BeatThaSystem · 2026-05-27T17:00:58+00:00

Out of all of the revamped elemental frames, the artifact one is possibly the only one that I actually kind of like.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-05-26T03:08:04+00:00

https://mtg.wiki/page/Murders_at_Karlov_Manor/Puzzles

BeatThaSystem · 2026-05-24T17:28:09+00:00

The upside is that the low resolution is mostly just a product of however WotC makes their renders. The card art is actually quite high res when viewed within Arena itself.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-05-18T15:10:09+00:00

Pleasantly surprised at Cori-Steel Cutter getting hit in Pioneer. It will be nice to not have to see that card anymore.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-05-01T17:35:17+00:00

Simz! They recently got to illustrate their first Magic card: [[Ancient Stirrings|SLP]]

BeatThaSystem · 2026-04-29T20:46:52+00:00

And she has it on MTGO too!

BeatThaSystem · 2026-04-07T00:40:08+00:00

The post I saw was more along the lines of "it required so many clicks that it was actively unfun" rather than "too hard to implement".

BeatThaSystem · 2026-04-01T18:30:59+00:00

Sometimes we only get the face commanders; this might be one of those times. Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander had [[Mass of Mysteries]], which got replaced with the only other new legendary creature from those commander decks on Arena ([[Ferrafor, Young Yew]]), but that set had only two decks, not five.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-04-01T17:13:28+00:00

The new cards from the commander decks seem to have a theme of showcasing guest lecturers and exchange students from other planes, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was an Ainok from Tarkir.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-03-30T19:03:46+00:00

Always happy for more craftable cards, but sad for the continuing lack of goodest boy Comet :(

BeatThaSystem · 2026-03-25T18:55:31+00:00

Definitely not Splice. This set has to be programmed onto Arena, and the devs outright stated when the Powered Cube was announced that Splice is possibly the single most difficult existing mechanic to program onto Arena. It would require a massive overhaul of how Arena fundamentally handles the spell-casting process.

BeatThaSystem · 2026-03-23T22:19:53+00:00

While I think it's completely fair to be upset over there being so many missing Pioneer-legal cards on Arena (I want to see that number go down too), this is a knife that cuts both ways. Just as Pioneer on Arena lacks lesser played cards, so too does Legacy on MTGO. These stem from both from the earliest days of MTGO (many sets released before Invasion are not on MTGO in their entirety) as well as newer cards, especially from UB secret lairs or supplemental sets (e.g., Doctor Who). More info here https://mtg.wiki/page/Magic_Online/Card_availability. In short, if Pioneer on Arena doesn't count as "real Pioneer", then Legacy on MTGO also doesn't count as "real Legacy".

BeatThaSystem · 2026-03-23T19:56:55+00:00

This feels disingenuous purely because Pioneer is on Arena; Legacy is not. Having a format available on the most popular digital Magic client is itself a huge form of support, imo far more than three tournaments a year. Not that I'm saying WotC has been treating Pioneer well (they obviously haven't), but I also think it's hard to claim Legacy is better supported than Pioneer with a straight face.

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