In-store play is one of the best ways to foster community among Magic players, to meet new friends, and to experience everything the game has to offer. Over the past year we've been ramping up play offerings, from the introduction of Leagues to the competition offered by Standard Showdown. Our play programs are constantly evolving, and our next round of changes takes effect with the launch of Ixalan. These changes are the results of feedback from players and stores across the globe, and we're excited to bring them to you. Let's jump in!

Introducing the Store Championship

Game Day has long served as our de facto store championship, so we're going to give it the spotlight it deserves. As such, we're moving Game Day to the end of a set's season, renaming it the Store Championship, and improving rewards with previews of the next set.

What does this look like, exactly? Each week, stores run Standard Showdown events to help you hone your skills and experiment with the metagame. Once you've put your deck through the crucible of regular weekly play, you'll feel ready to compete for the title of store champion. The Store Championship at the end of the season awaits you, offering foil full-art promo cards that look at the next set just for participating!

In addition to promo cards for everyone, store champion playmats and program-exclusive deck boxes await those who emerge victorious.

Store Championships begin with Ixalan and will be held on December 30–31, with promo items showcasing Rivals of Ixalan!

Evolving Friday Night Magic

FNM has been and continues to be the foundation our weekly in-store play. It is one of our longest-running and most successful play programs in our 25 years, so we're not looking to mess with the formula too much.

We are making two changes that are related—FNM "seasons" now align with set releases, and promos, which have previously been foil cards, will now be foil double-sided tokens.

The first change is easy—monthly FNM packages were mostly arbitrary and didn't always align with the latest and the greatest of what Magic had going on. By aligning seasons (which, to players, mostly indicated what promos you could receive) with the sets, we can better give players experiences that are relevant.

The second is a move to foil double-sided tokens from the then-current set rather than foil cards from recent Standard-legal sets. We're hoping foil double-sided tokens offer something different and exciting. The player response has been very positive toward the recent foil Zombie tokens and the Thopter/Servo tokens, and they keep asking us for more venues in which we can give these out. We think players will find these rewards interesting and a fun reward for playing.

The first series of three tokens are all from Ixalan, and you'll be able to start getting them at FNMs starting October 6, after the release of the set. Those tokens will be given out prior to January 19, when Rivals of Ixalan releases.

Standard Showdown

Here we're making a small change, again, to diversify our promo cards. In this case, we've heard that players want more ways to get promo lands through play, so starting with Ixalan, the Standard Showdown booster prizes now come with a foil promo land in each booster! Those lands will feature new or highly desirable art from Magic's history, including, in the first batch, these gorgeous Rebecca Guay lands, never before available in foil!




Magic Open House

At Magic Open House, you'll now be able to take home a foil full-art promo card from the upcoming set! For Ixalan, that means you'll get an Ixalan card a week prior to the Prerelease, on September 16–17.

League

League—the format where you start with three boosters and a 30-card deck—has been rolled out and amped up over the past year as it continues to gain traction. So, to continue improvements to the program, we're adding a promo card just for participating! You'll start receiving a promo card when participating in Ixalan Leagues (while supplies last at local, participating stores).

The More Things Change . . .

That's it for now! We're constantly looking to innovate on our in-store play programs, so we're happy to take feedback through local stores or by contacting us at @wizards_magic on Twitter!

Happy gaming!

Clearly we have to start here, and today's Update is going to be a touch longer than normal because of this.

First, for the uninitiated, on Sunday (we'll get back to that day) we published an article about in-store play changes. Most of the changes were well-received, but the one that stuck out was the change to Friday Night Magic promos from foil cards to foil tokens. While some people did like the change, the reaction against it was loud and visceral.

Admittedly, we didn't do a great job of explaining why we were making the change—and that is 100% on us—so I'm going to shed some additional light on our reasoning today.

Before I do that, I want to direct you to an article we published in February by Elaine Chase on in-store play. Particularly two lines:

With that in mind, 2017 is going to be a year of trying new things for our in-store play—a year of innovating, of experimenting, and of pushing the envelope for in-store offerings.

And

Our goal this year is to refine and reimagine our in-store play programs to create greater accessibility and appeal for players of all skill levels.

To the first point, this is what we're doing; we're trying something new. That doesn't mean we won't re-evaluate in the future—we're always evaluating what we're doing. Everything is on the table for in-store play this year. We're always willing to try something new.

The second point is the more relevant one, particularly "to create greater accessibility and appeal for players of all skill levels."

A year ago, many of the programs in the article we're talking about didn't even exist. Standard Showdown was just a twinkle in Chris Tulach's eye, Magic Open House didn't exist, Leagues were just a thing we did around the office, and the Store Championship was—well, that one was basically Game Day.

Each of those is meant to serve a different audience within the community. Open House is for very new players—the newest of the new. Leagues are for those just looking to play a little Magic in a fun, casual environment. Standard Showdown is for the competitive-minded, but somewhere before we start getting to the PTQ crowd. Store Championship plays in that same area.

But we're missing a portion—we're missing the players who just built their first deck. Players who just built a Cat deck (because Cat decks are awesome) and want to play against other players in a store setting. Players who got trounced at their first tournament, but learned a lot, had a blast, and want to come back for their second, armed with a newly tuned deck. Players who just want to hang out with their friends and play with that sweet Zombie they just opened. Or Cat. Because Cats.

That's the audience we'd like FNM to serve, though not to the exclusion of any other audience. FNM remains the centerpiece of our in-store play offerings, but we do want to try to carve out some space for that kind of player as well. Which brings us to Sunday's announcement.

Let's take one of the comments I heard and the general sentiment among those who didn't like the change: "We just want relevant, playable FNM promos." The implication is that the player community as a whole will attend more FNMs if the promos are better. Except it's not true.

The data just doesn't bear that out. While I can't give you the exact numbers, I can tell you this—in June, when Aether Hub was the FNM promo, attendance was not noticeably different than January, when Noose Constrictor was the promo. What's more, we've found this pattern repeated for years. FNM attendance is generally not noticeably tied to the community's online response, positive or negative, to the specific promo card. A few people recognize this, but it's understandably difficult to see that when your frame of view is your local store or stores. We know that individual store attendance levels can ebb and flow for any number of reasons, but on a macro level, there's just not a discernable difference.

Ultimately, we don't want players showing up just because they want the promo—we hope they're there because they enjoy playing Magic, hanging out with their friends, and having a good time. And if they get something cool out of it, well—bonus.

Basically, this. We haven't done a great job of articulating that, which is definitely on us. Hopefully my semi-coherent ramblings help explain some of it.

As for publishing on a Sunday, there was nothing nefarious there, no trying to hide the news—it was simply a function of when the article was ready versus when the sanctioning window for events opened in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region. They opened yesterday, so we needed to get the new information out by then, and the article wasn't ready in time to do it earlier. Anyone saying we placed it on a weekend to hide it seriously underestimates our community's ability to read the internet on days that begin with S.

That said, we're always open to feedback, and rest-assured we've heard all the feedback so far. Keep the feedback coming and we'll keep trying to make Magic in-store play as awesome as possible.

Let's take one of the comments I heard and the general sentiment among those who didn't like the change: "We just want relevant, playable FNM promos." The implication is that the player community as a whole will attend more FNMs if the promos are better. Except it's not true.

The data just doesn't bear that out. While I can't give you the exact numbers, I can tell you this—in June, when Aether Hub was the FNM promo, attendance was not noticeably different than January, when Noose Constrictor was the promo. What's more, we've found this pattern repeated for years. FNM attendance is generally not noticeably tied to the community's online response, positive or negative, to the specific promo card. A few people recognize this, but it's understandably difficult to see that when your frame of view is your local store or stores. We know that individual store attendance levels can ebb and flow for any number of reasons, but on a macro level, there's just not a discernable difference.

Horsecrap. Summer months would naturally have much lower attendance all on their own, and winter months would have greater. This is WHY they put the sought after promos (Aether Hub, Serum Visions, Path to Exile) in the summer - to draw out players in what would be otherwise dry months. Now they're saying that attendance wasn't noticeably different in June vs January? The attendance was only close BECAUSE of Hub being in demand, offsetting what would have been a season/cycle lull. If it had been Hub in January and Noose in June, January attendance would have blown June out of the water.

Horsecrap. Summer months would naturally have much lower attendance all on their own, and winter months would have greater. This is WHY they put the sought after promos (Aether Hub, Serum Visions, Path to Exile) in the summer - to draw out players in what would be otherwise dry months. Now they're saying that attendance wasn't noticeably different in June vs January? The attendance was only close BECAUSE of Hub being in demand, offsetting what would have been a season/cycle lull. If it had been Hub in January and Noose in June, January attendance would have blown June out of the water.

Wizards only sees what they want to see.

I'm not terribly fussed because my FLGS (though not quite as L as it once was, I suppose, it's still where I go) in-store play lives on Legacy and some Vintage. I guess what I'm most fussed about is that I've been hearing more doomsayers than usual lately and the increasing rate of big structure changes is... troubling. I hope they do something that works out for them.

Between replacing promos with goddanged tokens and concealing metagame information WotC has been making some real pisspoor decisions lately

I don't. I hope Wizards destroys itself in the most entertainingly humiliating way possible.

Can you provide context for the part about concealing metagame information? I tried to search it up myself and failed.

Magic is in the final stage of the media life cycle, but that does not imply imminent expiration.