Major Changes in Magic: The Gathering Announced: The Return of Core Sets, New System of Sets & More

Dissenter's Deliverance| Art by Bastien L. Deharme (Wizards of the Coast)

Big changes are coming in Magic: The Gathering again. Three years ago, Wizards introduced the two-block model for the sets released each year, and now, head designer Mark Rosewater has announced what they're doing to improve the game, and that means the return of core sets, no more small sets, less exposure of the Gatewatch, and the Masterpiece series will revert to being in fewer sets.

The new model will begin in Spring 2018 after Ixalan block, and Rosewater calls it the Three-and-One Model. "There will no longer be small sets. All main Standard-legal expansions will be large, and all of them will be drafted alone," Rosewater writes. "From a design standpoint, each will have its own mechanical identity, although there's potential for a small amount of overlap." This is a great decision. I'm one of the many players who's more excited when a new set comes. The major sets will be drafted alone, so I'm not sure if that will improve the overall draft experience.

Rosewater went on to explain that the big sets in the same year may be set in the same world: "The reason for that is because from a creative standpoint, we plan to stay on worlds for as many sets as makes sense for the story. Some worlds will be a single set while others might be two or three sets. If we stay on a world for more than one set, something about how the world is structured will let us have a delineation between the sets. Sometimes, but not all the times, we will have mechanical carryover between sets that share a world."

In addition to the three major sets in a year, there will be a "revamped core set" that will be released every summer (in the U.S.), and according to Rosewater, it will The set will be roughly half new cards and half reprints."

Rosewater also addressed the overexposure of the Gatewatch, and mentions the three fixes they're making starting with Hour of Devastation:

Finally, we learned that Ixalan won't have any Masterpiece series as Rosewater explained that they're only bringing them when they can do "something amazing". It looks like they realized that the Amonkhet Invocation cards weren't well-received, and players took them more for granted because of how often they've released Masterpiece cards in recent years. To read more about the changes, check out Rosewater's column Metamorphosis 2.0.

What do you think about these big changes? Do you like them or hate them?

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Read more: Mark Rosewater Reveals What The Extra 15 Hour of Devastation Cards Are