Hello everyone! Streets of New Capenna release is upon us which is easily one of the most exciting times to be a Magic player, but on top of that, we get another gift early! A brand new supported format is coming to Arena called Explorer which will be Arena’s bridge to Pioneer. I’ll break down the article here, but if you want to read the announcement yourself, check out the link below.
Explorer is a “true-to-tabletop” format where every Pioneer legal card on Arena is usable here! That is, every Standard set from Return to Ravnica onwards without all the supplemental products. This will feature the same events and constructed (ranked and unranked) queues that other formats like Standard and Historic have.
The banned card list, at the beginning, will mirror Pioneer but it may diverge based on the metagame. Despite this currently being a digital format, cards will not be readjusted like in Alchemy or Historic, but banned like they would be in tabletop formats and players will be granted Wildcard compensations as per normal procedure.
Now, on to the ban list. We plan to adhere to the Pioneer ban list, though there may be a times where a card becomes problematic in Explorer because of the current differences in card pools. If that happens, we will not rebalance or suspend the card; we will ban it.
Rebalancing and suspending cards are tools we use for our digital-first formats like Historic and Alchemy. Explorer is meant to mirror a tabletop format, so a card will either be playable, or it will be banned. If a card is banned in Explorer, it will follow the same policy we have whenever we ban a card in Standard, Historic, or Alchemy: players will receive wildcards equivalent to the number of cards in their collection that they haven’t already received a wildcard reimbursement for (i.e., cards banned in multiple formats at different times).
Eventually, as we move closer to Pioneer, we anticipate cards banned specifically in Explorer will become playable again as we realign the ban list to match tabletop, however, this does not affect our wildcard reimbursement policy. With the launch of Explorer, we currently do not have any additional cards we plan to ban.
Cards will be slowly added starting with Historic Anthology 6 later this summer. Wizards wanted to stress that this transition is going to take a few years as they add “every card that matters”.
Similar to how Vintage was implemented on Magic Online, they aren’t looking to add in random commons from Pioneer legal sets, but rather every card that has an application in Pioneer.
There are also a lot of cards in Pioneer-legal sets that were intended for Limited or multiplayer formats that aren’t relevant to Constructed play or have become obsolete as better versions of the card have become available. Cards like that, as well as cards that have a high development cost with little or no play in the Pioneer format, are low on our priority list. Never say never, but our priority on card implementation will be driven by what we see in the Pioneer Constructed meta.
How Close is MTG Arena to Pioneer?
Currently, MTG Arena has 5,649/8,934 (63%) of the cards in Pioneer available. While many decks that exist in Pioneer are closely portable to Historic, some key cards are still missing for them to be competitive archetypes. Some cards missing in MTG Arena include:
Starting from the MTG Arena update on April 21, 2022, players can start building Explorer decks!
Players can start playing Explorer in their dedicated events and queues starting April 28, 2022 with the release of Streets of New Capenna (direct challenges work).
What Are the Best Explorer Decks to Play?
Check out our Explorer metagame section, where we will be updating you with the latest information as soon as the data is available.
Thankfully Wizards has been kind enough to prepare us for this format for the past month! The What Was Written Midweek Magic Event is literally Explorer so these decks can be immediately used for Explorer play! Let me break down the archetypes as no matter what you’re privy to play, we have something for you!
Robert "DoggertQBones" Lee is the content manager of MTGAZone and a high ranked Arena player. He has one GP Top 8 and pioneered popular archetypes like UB 8 Shark, UB Yorion, and GW Company in Historic. Beyond Magic, his passions are writing and coaching! Join our community on Twitch and Discord.
