This doesn't really deserve a topic, but there doesn't look to be a Random Topic thread...


Ever since the printing of Coldsnap, Standard has always maxed out at eight sets (as opposed to the former norm of seven). This first eight-set Standard had 1,741 cards in it. Two years later, the largest card pool (in Modern set time frame) Standard occurred with 2,146 cards. Partially due to player complaints, WotC changed sets sizes to reduce the number of cards in Standard starting with Shards of Alara (Small sets would actually remain about the same size as the beginning of Modern, just the rarities were redistributed). This led to the small Standard with 1,477 cards. Over time, the size of large sets remained relatively stable, with the only long-term change being adding 20 uncommons starting with Khans of Tarkir. Small sets, however, have been slowing increasing, having formally abandoned the original Alara distribution during Theros block and now are about 40 cards larger than during the start of the Mythic era.

Now, Standard has 1701 cards (not including banned cards), and that's with only seven of the eight possible sets in Standard. It looks like it will have a larger card pool than CHK/RAV standard by at least 100 cards and closer to TSP/LRW size than ALA/ZEN size.

This really isn't a complaint against WotC or anything; it's more of an observation.

It will be interesting to see how the rebiggening effected the development of the next few sets. I'm sure Maro will write a column on it..

It's interesting to me that the two-set block model really increased the card pool in two ways: 1) we always have two large sets every year now and 2) small sets are bigger in order to support 2/2/1 drafting.

Clearly, R&D's original solution to this was the 18-month Standard, but I guess Standard players dislike frequent rotations more than they dislike large card pools. To be fair, this all only affects the second half of the rotation schedule anyway.