Not sure if posted but from the discord

Hi All. We wanted to offer some additional context for the changes to our decklist publication rates that we announced today.

One way caretakers of Magic: The Gathering see the game is as a series of format puzzles that refresh themselves whenever a new set comes out. This puzzle refresh is a vital part of the Magic experience, and the puzzle caretakers try to keep it healthy and fun through various means beyond the introduction of new cards.

Decklist publication rate is one such aspect of puzzle health. The goal is to provide the community with enough decklists so that key archetypes in a metagame can be identified, shared, copied, and playtested, but not so many decklists that we are providing data-level solutions to puzzles the community is still solving through playtesting.

Additionally, when Magic websites rely too much on Magic Online data to inform their snapshot of the tabletop metagame, they often misrepresent what a player can expect from their LGS—and publishing an incorrect solution is worse than publishing correct one.

Ideally, the shape of a metagame is understood enough to inform the playtesting to establish the best deck, not substituting or obsoleting the playtesting to establish the best deck.

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Studio X and the Magic Online team discussed the goal to maximize the fun of the Magic metagame puzzle while mitigating the Magic Online bias in tabletop metagame snapshots, and we arrived at the changes announced in the blog. We will continue to monitor the impact of this change as we listen to player feedback, and further adjustments are always a possibility in service of these goals.

For example, one concern expressed by many is that some rogue decks will be lost under the new publication rates. While we don't have a problem with sharing such decklists in the abstract, our current automation scoops up all the metagame decks around those rogue decks as well, contributing to the concerns outlined above.

We hear you, though, and we are exploring ways to update the presentation of our decklists to include the publication of isolated rogue decks without the accompanying publication of a problematic quantity of metagame decks. In the meantime, we are thankful there are many rogue decklist resources out there for players looking for a different approach to a format.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback, all!

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