Original Post — Direct link
14 days ago - /u/WotC_Jay - Direct link

Originally posted by Sir--Kappa

Question, why does this set need to be draftable? Is there no merit on releasing a set purely for opening. Making the set draftable and balanced just to bring over missing Pioneer staples sounds like a tall order, especially since we know the Arena team is always struggling to keep up.

The core audience for Pioneer Masters was, unsurprisingly, fans of Pioneer in tabletop. That's who we built the set for, but as you can see from our formats article, that's not a huge chunk of players. Many of our players really love drafting, so making the set draftable gives a big increase in the number of players excited for the set.

It does take a good bit of work to make the set draftable, but that work was done by the Magic R&D and Play Design teams, not the Arena team directly. I worked with Ben and other designers over there on the goals and structure for the set, but they chose the cards, the rarity shifts, did the playtesting, etc.