Magic The Gathering: Arena Dev Tracker

Definitely an interesting idea. There are lots of fun ways to play Magic, and we want that to be the case in Arena as well. As with many things, we’re going to experiment and see what works. Expect to see variations on this theme as we go forward.

You start with 0 timeouts. Ending your turn without hitting the rope 3 times earns you a timeout (little hourglass on the side). You can build them up gradually as long as you’re playing quickly. If the rope expires you’ll consume your timeouts for an additional 30s until you run out of them, then the game passes to your opponent for you. If you don’t act for about 2 min, the game concedes for you when your current turn ends.

There’s a lot of other fiddly bits to the timers, but those are the basics.

Thanks for the write up. To nuance one point that I may have fumbled in the video: on making Singleton or other event types permanent, we’re interested in offering more ways to play that stick around longer, but there are factors we need to weigh to do that properly. We’ll keep watching the key numbers here for opportunities to do more like that, we just need to be careful to keep the whole experience playing well for everyone.

Here you go: M20 Preorder Card Sleeve

Also, we updated the FAQ to add some clarification on the content outside of the booster packs:

• The Chandra, Awakened Inferno card will be available in Core Set 2020 packs and can be crafted using Mythic Rare wildcards. (This... might go without saying, but our law mages wanted it in writing).
• The Chandra, Awakened Inferno card style will be available for purchase separately using Gems.
• There are currently no plans to make the preorder card sleeve available for purchase outside of the preorder bundle.

<3

The fix is in the release that just went live. (0.15.01.00)

In the War of the Spark Chronicles Singleton event, Persistent Petitioners is under 2% of the metagame, and has does not have a positive win rate. It's not a problem from a balance perspective.

Certainly some people will find the deck annoying, but we like that it makes the event more accessible for people starting off in it without disrupting the format.

Hi BobChops, do you recall whether you pressed the Cancel button when prompted to choose which half of Discovery // Dispersal to cast?

If so, the good news is that we are aware of the issue and are working on a fix; split cards present a challenge to the God-Eternal Kefnet reveal sequence, notably when pressing Cancel to go back one step.

I just made a reply elsewhere here, hope it's a fun read. #wotc_staff

Thanks for the report, I've got a fix! The issue is mildly complicated, so bear with me for the explanation.

OrCosts check the individual options to see if the ActionCosts are payable. For example, for for Spark Harvest, it checks whether you are capable of sacrificing any creatures or planeswalkers. If you can't, it doesn't offer that option - and if there's only one option left, it auto-picks it.

Well, it turns out we weren't cleaning up those "we're determining whether this cost is payable" facts for the mana costs. And cost adjustment rules like that of Kasmina specifically check that we're not determining cost payability for them to apply.

So the fix is to clean up the DetermineCostPayability facts when checking whether an OrCost is payable. Hope that makes sense! Fix will go live with the next engine patch. #wotc_staff

I’m pretty obsessively reading the posts about London Mulligan. Can’t promise this will be fixed for the initial launch of London Mulligan with M20, but it’s definitely on our list.

We hear ya, we've got a fix that will be going out in the next release.

You can get exactly the functionality you mention by setting a stop on the phase where you want to act (click phase icon) and hitting shift+enter. That will pass to anything the opponent does until you get to the phase you put a stop in.

Everything will download properly if you change your Windows region to English. You should be able to change it back after the download as well. This will be fixed in our next update, but for now this workaround has worked for everyone we’ve spoken with.

(This is about a bug that only happens for users with Turkish versions of Windows.)

Our Pauper is based off standard, where Lighting Strike has only appeared at uncommon.

When Magic 2020 releases, all of the stained glass planeswalker styles available from the events or the store will now be available for purchase through the collection, at 300 gems for uncommons, 500 gems for rares, and 600 gems for mythics. We aren't putting the ones available through a code in the store, but you can still use the code to receive them.

Format legality in Arena will follow the same rules as in tabletop: if a card’s in standard you can use any printing of it.

We're aware of it and working on a fix!

In s case where you’ve got an experienced player using a deck they’re familiar with, yes turn 1 can & should be quick. But there are lots of cases where that shifts: new players need to read the cards in their hand turn 1, just to see what they do. So might an experienced player drafting an unfamiliar set, or running a new deck that they copied off a list. The other day I took 10-15s to think on turn 1 when my opponent dropped a Mobilized District as their first land (Are they really on a Colorless deck? What’s that list likely to be? What’s my plan against that? etc). And the risks of shortening the time here are harsh; getting auto-passed through turn one and missing your land drop (or getting flustered and playing the wrong land) is a huge setback for the player.

I get that players that tank forever to decide to drop a Mountain are annoying, and I’m not giving up on finding a way to help that, but there’s a lot of splash damage to consider here.