Wilds of Eldraine is out, and now's the time to build your skills with the new set as we approach Arena Open: Wilds of Eldraine, happening this weekend, September 16–17. You won't even need a well-stocked collection to be competitive, because this tournament features Limited formats: Sealed Best-of-One and Best-of-Three on Day 1,
The last Limited Arena Open shows that they have the capability to run Draft on Day 1, but they choose to go Sealed for...rea$on$.
When we run D1 as sealed, more players play in the Open than when D1 is draft. Our assumption is that more players prefer sealed here, or at least they find it more welcoming or approachable. We've also talked with the people that run big tabletop events, and they found sealed to be more approachable and net better for day 1. In any case, we like to do the thing that gets more players involved in playing the cool Magic event. That's why it's usually sealed for day 1.
Cube is different. Synergy-based collations tend to need the flexibility of draft for players to assemble interesting decks, so we ran cube as draft-draft. But, in general, the data shows more players prefer sealed-draft, so that's what we generally run
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