Magic Arena: Why I Quit Standard and Started Playing Historic

I was first introduced to Magic the Gathering by a friend in 2013. He’d been involved with the game for years, and suggested the Duels of the Planeswalkers franchise on Steam as something we could play together since we lived in different cities. In my first game, he utterly crushed me; never had I been so completely outplayed in a video game before - but I was hooked. Nobody else I knew wanted to play, so for the most part I played alone against the DotP AI. When Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014 released, I bought it immediately, and again for the 2015 game. I convinced other friends of mine to play, and got good enough most of the time I’d win.

When Magic Duels released in place of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2016 as a free to play game, I gave it a shot but wasn’t sold, still enraptured by previous games and at the same time breaking into a short but costly stint on Magic the Gathering Online. Not once have I ever played paper MTG, because I enjoyed being able to play in short bursts at absurd hours between work projects, but the virtual card game has been a constant presence in my life since 2013, even if I still stuck to the familiar old DotP games.

I was, then, excited but trepidatious when Magic Arena was announced by Wizards of the Coast. I joined the beta, and played a bit, but couldn’t convert my friends over to the game so returned to the DotP franchise once more. Eventually, those friends moved away from MTG, and I returned to Arena to give it another shot with Theros: Beyond Death. Once more, I was hooked. The limit on rewards was infuriating, but for the first time I was enjoying going against other players online with my off meta Black and White life gain deck. The animations were flashy, the mechanics were relatively smooth, and using cards I’d never seen before, especially planeswalker cards, was incredible fun.

Since the start of the British national lockdown in March I have been playing Arena every day. Initially I wasn’t winning a lot, but I was learning and having fun. I’d browse the subreddit or read articles between games on how things I’d never dealt with before, like drafting, worked. Eventually I branched out from my life gain deck into all different colour combinations and deck archetypes, enjoying them all for the different experiences of MTG they brought me. When the Core 2021 set released, I invested in decks built around the card Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Everyone online was saying he would be vital to the new meta, and I was looking to get wins more consistently to build my collection up.

It worked. I would win the majority of my games, at the cost of somewhat repetitive gameplay, and slowly I branched into variations of the deck which saw less consistent wins but were a lot more fun to play.

At the end of September, Zendikar Rising released and the majority of previous sets rotated out of the Standard format to become unplayable. My favourite deck became unplayable, and I like everyone else was forced to build new decks from a vastly restricted pool of cards.

With the restricted card pool the opportunities for the playerbase to build interesting, noncompetitive decks was substantially diminished. There were far fewer archetypes to build decks around, which led to a lot of repetitiveness in games and a renewed emphasis on building the most competitive, rather than the most interesting, decks.

Until this point, I had never played a game of Historic. The format was intimidating, with a huge card pool I was locked out of due to having not already invested in it and a reputation for an incredibly high power level. Winning games in Arena only rewards cards and packs from the Standard format, so the majority of cards are inaccessible to players unless they dedicate to a draft or to buying packs from Historic sets. 

After a month of post-rotation Standard, however, I was ready to jump into Historic. Standard seemed to have stagnated, with the high power cards like Omnath from Zendikar Rising banned and the meta settled into the same three or four deck archetypes. But more so, I was nostalgic for my old pre-rotation deck, a three colour Sultai (Green, Black, and Blue) deck I affectionately named YOLO. So without having bought a single pack or drafted a single card from pre-Core 2020 (the earliest Standard set from the last rotation), I launched into Historic. It’s the best decision I have made in my MTG journey.

Suddenly I was back to where I had been when I first rejoined Arena. My deck, which had previously been reasonably good, was losing to a huge variety of decks and cards I’d never seen before. The overpowered deck archetypes I’d so feared rarely appeared, and players were primarily running strange decks with obscure win conditions rather than highly competitive top tier cards. The whole experience was educational, and exhilarating. I spent all my in-game currency on packs for some of the older sets, used my Wildcards to fill in the gaps on a couple of fully Historic decks I wanted to try out, and went from there. 

I haven’t gone back to Standard, and have converted my Standard-playing friends into switching over to Historic too. The sheer variety of options in Historic makes for an endlessly rewarding and infinitely replayable experience. You’re unlikely to go against the same deck often, and very likely to pick up any number of new tricks and combos you never even considered just by facing opponents using them.

Despite all my loving praise for Historic, as well as my encouragement for anyone who feels tempted to try it out, Wizards of the Coast should be offering improvements to make the format more accessible. In the long run, it’s profitable for them. 

First, it should be clearer to players that you can play Historic casually, and not just the Historic Ranked option which is listed separately. Often people criticise that changing modes isn’t easy, which is rather infuriating as all you need to do is launch the Play queue with a Historic deck selected. Any kind of alert, even a loading screen tip like is used for many other basic aspects of the game, would solve this problem.

Second, the apprehension I felt about playing Historic is one shared by many Standard players. Wizards of the Coast could easily resolve this by offering a number of one time deals on Historic packs, similar to the bundles they release associated with each set, or to the Welcome Bundle they offer on the store. This would give players a starting pool of Historic cards, encouraging them to try the format and stay playing it.

Ultimately, Wizards of the Coast makes most of its money from MTG selling packs for the Standard format, so it isn’t surprising Historic has taken a backseat in its priorities. It is strange, however, for them to minimise such a potentially lucrative and enjoyable format. Wizards of the Coast have released Historic content in the form of the Amonkhet Remastered and Kaladesh Remastered sets, and the Historic Anthologies available for a limited time in the store, however these primarily appeal to existing players rather than attracting new players or Standard players to the format. Hopefully, the future will see the company look to utilising Historic in its business model more, which would translate into an even better experience for players.

Chris Jackson is a postgraduate historian from the United Kingdom and lifelong video game lover. He went to university to do two degrees in History not because it was a viable career path but because he was inspired by Civilization III as a child to conquer the world (at least virtually). His favourite games at the moment are Magic Arena and Crusader Kings III, and while his CV describes him as a bartender, his current job title is really Dungeon Master for his five ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.