Magic: Arena brings back Historic ranked queue, adds 27 new Historic cards

Historic Anthology 3 is live

Magic: Arena, as always, is in flux.

In a sort of give and take, the season (mastery) pass dropped in value for the Ikoria set, but Wizards of the Coast is bringing back the historic (old cards) ranked queue to compensate. According to Wizards it’s here to stay this time, which is great news for folks who prefer to play with cards they already bought, and cycled out of standard. Historic quests also contribute to dailies/quest progress “permanently going forward.” Good changes all-around for Historic.

As a celebration, the Historic Anthology 3 set is out this week as well, with 27 new cards in the mix (including two we spoiled!) that you can buy playsets (four copies) of for 25,000 gold or 4,000 gems. A reminder: you can also craft Historic cards with a 1:1 wildcard ratio, down from the original absurdity of 2:1 that the community revolted against late last year.

You can find the full patch notes below! Hopefully Brawl is opened up next: the “Brawler’s Guildhall” is only open until July 1.

Game Update Highlights [Magic]

May 21 – 1.08.00.00 Patch Notes

Historic Anthology 3

• 27 new cards for Historic play!
• You may purchase playsets (four copies) of every card in the Historic Anthology 3 bundle for either 25,000 gold or 4,000 gems
• You can also craft individual cards by redeeming Wildcards of the appropriate rarity (1:1).
• Historic Anthology 3 cards are legal in Historic formats, Bot Match, and Direct Challenge.

Historic Ranked

• Historic Ranked has returned, and will be permanently available going forward
• Historic Play now provides daily win/quest progress and will do so permanently going forward.
  • UPDATE: Historic Play (unranked) queues now reward daily wins..

Collection

• The deck builder now allows searching for Godzilla Series Monsters cards by either name.

Deck building

• Decks with uncollected cards now show a “Craftable” status using the Wildcard symbol.
• When a deck is flagged as ‘invalid’, the tooltip when hovering the deck with your mouse now provides more information (not enough cards, deck contains banned cards, etc.)
• Deck manager now has a context-sensitive “Craft All” button. This option will only show when you have enough Wildcards of the appropriate rarity to actually “craft all”.
• Decks that are invalid because of banned card are shown with a warning, and by default will sort higher than decks that are completely invalid (e.g. decks that don’t contain 60 cards).

Cards

• When using Lurrus of the Dream-Den, we now remove the near hand castables once their ability has been used for the turn.
• Mutate abilities that count the number of times that creature has mutated now show a count on the stack.
• Triggers that care about the “… number of times this creature has muted” now show the value on the mutate badge while the trigger is on the stack.
• Updated reminder text on First Strike and Double Strike to clarify that it doesn’t apply during “Fight” effects
  • 701.12d: Damage dealt while a creature fights isn’t combat damage.
  • … Let’s be honest, we’ve all made this mistake at some point.
• All Planeswalkers now show their current loyalty count when turned into Creatures, not just Gideion.
• Demigods now show a * for their devotion based stat when not in play; previously they were showing as 0.
• Adjusted the auto-targeting rules for abilities to make them more consistent.
  • They will no longer auto-target when there is only one valid option, but they will auto-submit once you have select all possible targets (this should reduce the clicks-per-cat metric).
• Creatures that must block or must be blocked now show appropriate reminder text.
• Cards that have a player choose a color now display a badge with the chosen color to their opponent.
• Double tapping the Quick Tap hokey (default: Q) will attempt to tap all non-creatures for mana.
  • Auto-tap will determine what is tapped for what colors.
• You can now “View Battlefield” when deciding whether to Mulligan.
  • Useful if you wish to review your opponent’s Commander or companion creature before deciding!
• Added the option to “View Battlefield” after a game has completed
• We now hold priority for the active player when they put a “Fight” trigger on the stack.
  • You can now be a proper friend to wolves!