wotc_Cromulous

Soft. If you don't find an opponent immediately, the matchmaker will slowly expand its range to look for someone "good enough." And the rest of your deck still matters; a high-tier commander with a much weaker deck can still find a "good" match against a normal commander loaded up with premium cards.

We're keeping an eye on him.

That said, we instituted commander weighting for Brawl specifically so that more powerful commanders could keep existing without stomping all over everyone else - and we would like to see if it can handle Baral before locking him out. (As others have noted, Omnath is still kicking around, as well, and it's for the same reason.)

Deck weight is absolutely not a factor in Ranked matchmaking. It is used in the Play queue and in Brawl, but never in competitive game modes.

It is "unfortunate," but really just a fact of human behavior, that only people who have hit these strange, random streaks bother to come to reddit and wonder about them. I have no doubt that these experiences are real, they are just very unlikely - but when there are enough players playing, they still happen to someone.

Maybe this year. :)

It will!

The chances of winning the Day 2 entry token aren't the same in both modes, so the gem prizes are also different to make sure the overall value is the same.

We definitely discussed Vortex, but let it slide because 1) it affects both players equally and 2) it doesn't turn the mode entirely off, it just imposes an extra cost (albeit it a heavy one). There's a tricky line to draw between cards that get a surprising, temporary turn in the spotlight and cards that do too much, and we try to be permissive when it's close, but it's possible that we'll end up cutting it in the future.

Standard with 100-card-minimum decks.

The fix for this went out in the patch this morning!

Omniscience Draft is definitely not obsolete; which one we use for a given event just depends on the set and how well its mechanics work. I'll tell you that ZNR is much more likely to get a Turbo version than Omniscience, though. Decks with no lands make Landfall a lot less exciting...

The Relics of Yesteryear is the only deck that is Historic, because:

• It's thematic for a deck about old things!
• I wanted to include Hedron Archive because it's on Zendikar!
• Nobody can stop me!

Thank you, qwertyuiop999999991!

TBH, it was the same when we were testing the event. The Relics deck was, uh, quite bad at one point - it had no Ugins, it could barely compete, much less win - and people still couldn't stop jamming it. People just love mono-brown, even when it's bad.

A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one...

Apparently we forgot to tell the tour company, so I guess you all get to enjoy the sights a bit early. :)

We're gonna find out.

As mentioned in the other response, you may craft the new cards if you choose, or use something else from your collection and keep the wildcard refunds for other purposes.

Players who receive these decks after the ban will get a modified version. If you already had the deck on your account, unfortunately you will have to make changes yourself.

I like reanimating Gray Merchants, myself, since they bring all the Silversmote Ghouls out with them, and also load me up with Deathless Knights.

I'll take a look at the numbers on Curious Obsession on Monday, though. Mono-blue tempo decks usually take a meaningful hit losing Brazen Borrower, but never hurts to check.

I'm sorry to hear that, and we never want to put players in a situation that is purely unpleasant. Frankly, if we had known when we were scheduling this (which was before ZNR even came out!) what we know now about how people feel about the current format, we would have probably done something different.

I believe there will be a link to the event coverage in the rotating gallery that you see on the home page (like 80% confidence).