The May update has arrived for MTG Arena and its packed with goodies like Historic Anthology III, Historic Ranked, events, and fixes.
With many Magic players waiting on local game stores to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, May in MTG Arena provides a number of events for players along with several quality-of-life updates to deck building. There are also over 20 events taking place and Histioric Ranked is back for good.
Deck building
A number of quality-of-life changes were revealed today during the May 21 MTG Arena 1.08 update, which includes a craftable status on uncollected cards using the wildcard symbol, along with an updated “Craft All” button in the deck manager. The deck builder also lets players search for Godzilla Series Monster cards by either name now.
- Decks with uncollected cards now show a “Craftable” status using the wildcard symbol.
- A deck that’s flagged as invalid will have a tooltip appear when hovering over the deck with the mouse. It’ll provide information such as not enough cards, banned cards, and more.
- There is a context-sensitive “Craft All” button now in the Deck Manager. This option will only show when you have enough wildcards of the appropriate rarity to actually “craft all.”
- Decks that are invalid because of a banned card are shown with a warning, and by default will sort higher than decks that are completely invalid.
Historic
Historic Anthology III is now available in MTG Arena, featuring 27 cards that can be purchased with 25,000 gold or 4,000 gems. All Anthology cards can also get unlocked via wildcards.
The release of Historic Anthology III means Historic Ranked has also returned to Arena—and this time, it’s here to stay.
- Historic Play now provides daily win/quest progress and will do so permanently going forward.
- There will be a small window of time before Historic Play (unranked) queues reward daily wins. Quest progression and Ranked Play is unimpacted.
- WotC will update players once this specific transitionary period has ended.
Gameplay fixes
- When using Lurrus of the Dream-Den, WotC has now removed the near hand castables once their ability has been used for the turn.
- Mutate abilities that count the number of times that creature has mutated now show a count on the stack.
- Triggers that care about the “number of times this creature has muted” now show the value on the mutate badge while the trigger is on the stack.
- Updated reminder text on First Strike and Double Strike to clarify that it doesn’t apply during “Fight” effects
- All Planeswalkers now show their current loyalty count when turned into Creatures, not just Gideon.
- Demigods now show a * for their devotion based stat when not in play; previously they were showing as zero.
- Adjusted the auto-targeting rules for abilities to make them more consistent.
- They will no longer auto-target when there is only one valid option, but they will auto-submit once you have select all possible targets (this should reduce the clicks-per-cat metric).
- Creatures that must block or must be blocked now show appropriate reminder text.
- Cards that have a player choose a color now display a badge with the chosen color to their opponent.
- Double tapping the Quick Tap hokey (default: Q) will attempt to tap all non-creatures for mana.
- Auto-tap will determine what is tapped for what colors.
- You can now “View Battlefield” when deciding whether to Mulligan.
- Added the option to “View Battlefield” after a game has completed.
- We now hold priority for the active player when they put a “Fight” trigger on the stack.
General notes
The Historic Tournament Challenge is now supported in the Direct Challenge mode and contains matches fought in a best-of-three format, along with timers, a match clock, and banned or suspended cards. An update was also made for new players who have unlocked Tutorial and Color Challenge decks in that all copies of cards are received regardless of what’s already been collected.
Player Draft has received an update in that it does a better job of detecting when a player has abandoned the Draft. Improvements were also made to how cards display on the battlefield in all MTG Arena modes.
Events
A number of events have been added to MTG Arena for the month of May and the early parts of June. These include regularly-scheduled events, like Player Draft and Friday Night Magic, as well as special ones, such as Historic and Cube Draft. A full breakdown of all MTG Arena events in the month of May and June can be found here.
Bug fixes
- Certain tutorial specific cards are legal for Standard constructed play again.
- Mystical Dispute should no longer show a cost reduction in hand if the criteria are no longer met.
- You can target yourself with Loaming Shaman even when you have zero cards in your graveyard.
- Proud Wildbonders put into play by Winoata are now able to assign their own damage as if it was not blocked.
- Multiple Lavabrink Ventureres with different odd/even choices no longer visually stack while on the battlefield.
- Copies of Crackling Drake revealed in your opponent’s hand now accurately update their power/toughness based on the number of Instants/Sorceries in your opponent’s graveyard.
- It should now be functionally impossible to concede an entire best-of-three match by conceding as you take lethal damage in one game.
- Players who disconnect during a best-of-three while using a companion will no longer be prevented from sideboard when they reconnect.
- Typeless permanents with tap abilities are now visually tapping when the ability is used.
- Inspecting a card and using “View Mutations” no longer shows the battlefield version of some cards.
- Mutating a face-down card should no longer cause visual issues.
- Companion names no longer overlap with the timer display when your opponent has both a Commander and a companion.
- Bouncing a muted token creature no longer shows the token as being in your opponent’s hand.
- Planewalker’s loyalty abilities no longer appear greyed out if something allows them to be used a second time (e.g. Oath of Teferi).
- Pauper deck validation now allows for the use of Uncommon versions of a card if a Common version exists within MTG Arena.
