Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast revealed a new cycle of Magic: The Gathering land cards that will be featured in Jumpstart. Each of these common lands lets you choose a color of mana it can produce (other than their default color) and they come into play tap. The land cycle includes Thriving Heath, Thriving Isle, Thriving Moor, Thriving Bluff, and Thriving Grove. These cards are unique, and they provide mana-fixing efficiently, but why are they not used in Limited formats for Standard-legal sets?
When a fan asked how likely it is that the Thriving lands could become the new common fixing over the Gain lands, Magic Senior Designer Gavin Verhey responded on Twitter, explaining why they work with Jumpstart but not in a normal Limited format.
"A popular question! While the Thriving lands are great design, they work well in Jumpstart because those decks are often two colors and they adapt to fix your mana. In a normal Limited format, they would easily lead to five-color mishmash *and* a ton of memory issues."
Drafts or Sealed games would probably be more chaotic with these Thriving lands around; it would be so easy to splash colors or run a deck with three or more colors, so the format would probably be less balanced with them. Like most of the Jumpstart cards (20 cards will be replaced on MTG Arena), these five lands will be legal on MTG Arena's Historic format, so they will likely see play in Constructed eternal formats.
Core Set 2021 is set to release on July 3 with Prerelease events scheduled from June 26 to July 2. Jumpstart is set to launch on July 17.
Related: Core Set 2021 Buy-a-Box Promo Comes With A Jumpstart Bonus
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