They love to cite how great these sets are for attracting new players but do they really become players? This is rhetorical at this point as we’ll never see the data but what is the actual player retention rate from these sets? If they knew this and it was good they would show it.

I realize the goal is to now convert them to a more accessible format like Standard but my gut says most of these buyers are one time buyers and are not actually growing the game long term. As long as they keep cranking out sets then this will be fine financially for a while but I can’t understand the long term thinking here, particularly as this pretty much forces enfranchised players to now cross the Rubicon. This is a fundamental shift/fork in the game.

So unbelievably cool that Kai Budde is in the top 8! Not only for the insane career and being back 25 years since he won Worlds in ‘99, but particularly given his very advanced cancer diagnosis not long ago. So happy for him and will definitely be rooting for him today.

Wow I never would have expected this change, or that this was even something WotC was discussing. This feels like a massive change and really hurts defending players.

Their justification is essentially:

[Blocking order is] somewhat unintuitive, adds a fair bit of rules baggage, and losing it means more interesting decisions and less double-dipping if you know the tricks.

Not sure how it’s any more or less intuitive or how it adds any more rules baggage than the new rule creates, they just hand wave these things and gloss over the reasoning. Curious how it develops but off the cuff not really happy about this change.

For a second I thought Phyrexian Dreadnought was a Phyrexian Construct before I remembered it's on the reserved list. Plus there's 0 chance they'd reprint that anyway!

My vote too is for Walker. Really cool classic card and another 0cmc for the bigger formats.

This is awesome! Love how ambitious it is.

I didn’t click through the discord server yet but how many players are the current teams looking for?

Hilarious that Nadu, designed for Commander but released in a Modern set, is now banned in Commander too (after it's collateral damage in Modern).

Kinda do not agree with the fast mana bans :-/ I understand their reasoning but I haven't thought they were banworthy at all.

This is so cool, thanks for sharing!

Do you have any more details on it? Was it just printed by another attendee (presumably Brothers Wilmot 😜) or is this an official wotc reprint?

You’re absolutely right and Mark’s straw man arguments like that are pretty frustrating. I have the same meaning as you when I say stop designing for Commander as I’m sure the vast majority of others do. I don’t know if he’s being intentionally dishonest or if he just doesn’t get it still but it is 100% stop printing overstatted Commander cards that warp eternal formats and these ability soup engines-and-payoffs.

Re: playtesting I wish they would come out and say what their playtesting process is. How many people are in each group, how long do cards get active testing, etc. Barring those details I kind of disagree that they can’t do more and while they definitely cannot catch everything, their process should be sufficient to not let a Nadu get by.

Yeah that's a good point, I guess since it was admittedly for Commander they were find letting it leave the 60 card formats.

Exactly, the fact that "interacts with 0-mana abilities" isn't on a list of mandatory checks is just crazy to me. It just signals that they don't have any kind of process/infrastructure in place to help them see these things.

Great updates all around, kudos to Wizards for doing what needed to be done. Good changes to timing too.

I'm shocked they banned Nadu instead of some bad half-measure like Shuko though.

I appreciate them writing this and taking it on the chin here but honestly there is so much in here that's pretty damning about their design process. Nadu was a massive mistake but one that seems negligibly correctable.

Mistake 1: not enough playtesting!

Majors describes the testing they did. He cites no actual numbers or anything but I think that makes it pretty clear how deficient it is/was:

For both Modern Horizons 2 and Modern Horizons 3, we brought in a small group of contractors and worked on the set in a dedicated sprint as a collaboration between that group and a small number of play designers. The playtesting time is more dense, as the group is singularly focused on the set without other responsibilities, but shorter in terms of weeks.

Emphasis mine. I would wager that this is probably 2-3 contractors who played for probably a few weeks with the people who designed the set, a group who is obviously stuck in groupthink and can't see differently. There's no wonder they miss issues like this.

Mistake 2: changing cards again without testing

Again we have a card that was changed at the last minute and shipped as-is.

I missed the interaction with zero-mana abilities that are so problematic. The last round of folks who were shown the card in the building missed it too. We didn't playtest with Nadu's final iteration, as we were too far along in the process, and it shipped as-is.

How many times does this need to bite them before they just actually playtest every single text change? It's crazy to me.

Mistake 3: no automatic flags for certain high-risk abilities

They all missed the interaction with 0-mana abilities, OK fine. But why is there no automatic flag for high risk abilities? Off the top of my head:

• unbounded triggers
• triggers that draw you cards
• triggers that put cards directly into play
• triggers that occur whenever the permanent is targeted
• triggers that give things to all of your creatures

Original Nadu had every one of these, and there are no doubt many many more things that should automatically create a higher scrutiny/testing regimen. They added the 2-times-per-turn cap at the last minute but removed the by-an-opponent limiter!

Software can easily flag cards that should be tested more fully, or recommend problematic interactions. They don't seem to be doing this at all, instead just accepting a certain % of failure/risk. This is so preventable.

Mistake 4: putting Commander cards in Modern sets

This one is a personal pet peeve of mine and really irritates me more than everything else. This card was designed specifically for Commander yet it went into a set ostensibly for Modern/Legacy.

In one of these meetings, there was a great deal of concern raised by Nadu's flash-granting ability for Commander play. After removing the ability, it wasn't clear that the card would have an audience or a home, something that is important for every card we make. Ultimately, my intention was to create a build-around aimed at Commander play, which resulted in the final text.

If the card is for Commander, put it into a Commander set! This is also extremely damning from a design perspective--they removed the flash ability and then didn't think the card would be played at all!

So much of this seems to be preventable with better processes or using technology in even basic ways, ways they are no doubt not even close to taking advantage of. It's a shame because these sets could be better and the playerbase wouldn't have months of crap like this, or a Pro Tour absolutely ruined by a preventable card.

Love the optimism! I for sure will hit my classic 1-3 drop but I'll definitely be playing in this. I wish that card was for everyone on entry, though I'll also never not use the DiTerlizzi original.

Hopefully Grief and/or Psychic Frog eat a ban before November.

Oh cool, I’m glad they did for all the people who like playing with him. Good job by the RC.

tl;dr Neheb the Eternal is nerfed. Anything that just says “postcombat main phase” now only refers to the “second main phase” so if you have something creating more then it won’t keep triggering.

This is so interesting, thinking about it now I’ve never associated the wedges or shards with themes or qualities, just individual representative cards or decks I guess.

Bant is Noble Hierarch for me, and Abzan/Junk is Seige Rhino. Esper is Raffine, Jeskai is Narset, RUG/Temur I think of RUG Delver. Grixis is Mishra or Nicol Bolas.

Sultai I still always call BUG and will forever. I always think of Shardless BUG from Legacy a while ago, and I guess this one is the exception because I think of actual bugs too.

The destroy target creature one is interesting. My regex isn’t good enough to get this in one nice query but it looks like there are 3 cards that have just this rules text:

• Eviscerate - 3B
• Impale - 2BB
• Murder - 1BB

If it’s a black card I can’t imagine they go BB on it, but maybe BBB for some kind of lore reason. Maybe it’s 4B for limited?

My other thought is that it’s in a new color or color combo. Maybe a new 1BW murder?

Yeah good question, this is definitely one of the highest of all time. Demonic Tutor sold for $168k which I think was the previous record until Force of Will sold for $350k a short while ago.

That one is so far and above anything else that I can’t imagine anything other than maybe Black Lotus or some combo of iconic art + special interest from the buyer will ever crack that but who knows.

Psychic Frog, Kozilek’s Command, and Springheart Nantuko… womp womp.

I believe the buyer's name is hidden, which makes this all the more suspicious. I mean this is like 6x the price of the most recent highly graded alpha Lotus, which was only a year ago.