today kicks off announcement week. MaRo just put up an article today that goes over the goods and bads of the 2-set model and then talks about how Wizards plans on abolishing it all together in favor of three large blocks and a Core-set-like block for summer.

A summary of the new structure:

• 3 large sets per year, plus 1 core set.
• No more small sets.
• Core sets will be even more focused on new players.
• Masterpieces will appear in fewer sets.
• The Gatewatch will appear less often.
• Large sets may have small mechanical overlap, but will mostly be mechanically distinct.
• We'll stay on a plane for as many sets as it makes sense for the story. We could leave after one set or stay for two or three.
• Changes begin after Eggs (the small set after Ixalan).

I like the changes. Funnily enough, other CCGs have been doing the all-large-set thing long before Magic.

+core sets are back !
+story no longer dictated by schedule
+no more mechanics appearing on like 6 cards like Provoke or Battlecry
+more big sets -> more cards -> more decks and deck options -> more diverse meta
+less Gatewatch means less boring character stuff and (finally, finally) maybe global, non character-orientated plots truly fitting for a game like MTG

Yeah, I was wondering when they were going to realize this. Actually, what I really wondered was WHY they did small sets ever? My only conclusion is that they must be cheaper to develop. (Few cards = less dev time, less art time, cheaper print costs). And that seems to coincide with them going from 2/2 to 3/1. Assuming they can crank our core sets cheaply.

What was the last "good" small set, or mixed small/large draft format? I think even RTR-block was better just as pure RTR or pure GTC. Dragon's Maze (probably the first set where I was seriously starting to draft was BAaaad).

They must have had a rough (or perhaps "below growth expectations") couple years financially to yo-yo this so much.

I think core sets are good not just for new players, but as a way to reprint cards outside of story theme. Also they can print common/uncommon constructed staples that don't fit in a particular draft format.

The last irony is that I had high hopes for Hour of Devastation rescuing the Amonkhet draft format. Although probably I am just getting jaded.

Small sets made sense when they had a 3 set block structure. First set introduces story and mechanics, second set explores them and third finishes the story and fulfill the players final expectations like combining multiple keywords on a card or printing things in colors they didnt yet, or printing a character on flavor text.

I like the idea but I am a little worried people would end up feeling disappointed if they stuck to the same plane for multiple sets. Like two is fine but maybe three is a little much. I can't imagine they would go to three except under very unusual circumstances.

I don't see them hitting three sets on the same plane unless we go somewhere that can support it, like Ravnica or Dominaria.

Try sealed. It's ever so much better, since you can realistically build a deck to win with, say, Cruel Reality. I used to draft a lot, but in this set, it's been seled leagues all the way. The gameplay is just so good and varied. I mean, Enigma Drake is a legit threat.

And for the article, it did not disappoint. In particular, it made me realize that yes, I'm not the only one who loves drafting triple big set (present set excluded), and is a bit underwhelmed by the small-small-big draft formats.

I guess this makes it easier to return to popular themes which aren't deep enough for a full, even two-set block. Return to Alara in 2018, I'm guessing.

Nah, the big return in 2018 is definitely going to be Dominaria.

2019 then, whatever.

The first set under this model was probably planned as a two-set block initially, so it'll be interesting to hear about how that changed things.

I wonder what the core set names will be. If they go back to the old model, we'll get Magic 2019 next summer, but maybe they'll ditch the weird "one year ahead" thing and do Magic 2018 instead. Or maybe they'll pick a new naming scheme so we don't have a weird gap where M16 and M17 should be.

Yeah, I've been wishing the death of small sets for a while.

Ideally, a draft format should be 2-large-1-small. The large set is the foundation for a block and all the core cards of its draft environment should be there. When you're drafting a block, the majority of cards should come from the foundation, and then get tweaked by the expansion.

However, after 3 months drafting a big set and then a new set comes out, players already own all the cards they want from the main set and they're thirsty to play with and own cards from the new set. So when they were drafting 1-newsmall-2-oldlarge draft interest was low because people didn't want to pay for three packs and only get one of the new set. So they deferred to the wonky "2 newsmall, 1 oldlarge" way to appease players who wanted more of the new cards, but the result is that the small new set dominates the block draft environment and the fundamental core becomes an afterthought.

The best way to draft Amonkhet-block should be AKH-AKH-HOU. But card ownership and variety make people demand the tweaks that get them more new cards and the draft format suffers.

Good riddance, I say.

Yeah, getting an entirely new draft format every three months will be neat. Hopefully the core set drafting isn't too boring. It'd be awkward if stores had to be like, "Well no one wants to draft the core set, so I guess we'll draft the spring set for 6 months instead?"

Actually, now I'm curious about Pro Tours. MaRo himself said that core set drafting won't hold experienced players' attention for as long as other sets. Will they draft the core set at the pro tour anyway? I can't think of a great alternative other than removing the limited portion from that Pro Tour altogether. Maybe we'll find out with the organized play announcements on Thursday.

I loved the old block format. The one we see in Tempest, (Not so much but still kinda Urza's), Masques, Invasion, Odyssey, and Onslaught, as well as some later sets like Time Spiral and Scars. The large set would introduce a theme and mechanics, and then the small sets would evolve the dominant themes while adding twists that gave them their own identity. There's a definite progress in how the Rath Cycle uses its assets, with Buyback morphing gradually until you finally got nonmana executions in Exodus. All the while Slivers, Spikes, and Shadow rose, fell, and morphed to get a picture that FELT complete by the end of the third act. At the same time, sets also had identity: Stronghold had a strong "walls" theme and "Discard a card" costs were everywhere in Exodus. In Masques the rebels and mercenaries were very formulaic, but they shifted a little out of their roles for Nemesis (Which also had its own gimmick, Fading) and fully busted free with things like Rebel Informer in Prophecy (personal Gimmick: Rhystic).

As much I hate Onslaught, even it had a decent progression of "Tribal" -- Legion was an "Extreme" gimmick (being the All-creature set) but Scourge was, at least mechanically, a good capstone to what they had been building. Mirrodin 1.0 though was the first time the theme never really evolved. It did artifacts and... yeah the second set had Indestructible and the third set did Sunburst, but they didn't have much to do with each other and didn't really have the feeling of progression that most blocks up until then did. Time Spiral, I think, is probably the block that really knocked out of the park what was great about the old three-set block format: It had a solid identity for each set, unified by a natural progression through a common theme, and during which the mechanics that would be used throughout were used in new ways in each set. The last time I feel it was really nailed was Scars of Mirrodin, in which the growth of the Phyrexian faction provided direction to the block.

I will mourn the passing of blocks, but in a way they'd been dead or dying since Lorwyn/Shadowmoor lost a lot of what had been good about them. When two-set blocks set in, we already weren't getting evolution, but rather a setup-and-swerve, and while sometimes the ability to have a lead in rather than just skipping to the payoff was used well (SoI, for all its flaws. Probably Amonkhet, really, but we'll see how that goes) other times it feels like you could have started with the second set shift and just been self-contained. How cool would it have been to get one big set where the Eldrazi are back and now they aren't just all colorless, they actually require you to generate colorless mana rather than generic. Kaladesh was... well, I didn't much care for it or its story, but it easily could have been compressed to make the story of Aether Revolt the crux of the whole thing, there didn't really feel like there had to be a second set to move the timeline forward all those... days I think?... that it moved forward.

So, I'm cautiously optimistic about the change. I feel like they can do things without blocks that they couldn't do with it. And I really like that the Gatewatch is going to get de-emphasized, pretty hard by the sound of it. But at the same time, the key word is cautious. I'm actually kind of scared for magic in a way I've never been before, not because of this change and what this change entails, but because meta-structure has changed repeatedly in a rather short time. It feels kind of like Wizards of the Coast is flailing, and that does not instill me with joy nor confidence.

Well remember when they said no more core sets ever? Yeah dont count small sets out yet.

I mean, at this point "We'll never do X again" is really just WotC code for "We'll return to doing X again when we've figured out how to do it right."

Which means Tribal will eventually return.