Wizards of the Coast presented players with plans for the next expansion, Jumpstart: Historic Horizons, coming exclusively to MTG Arena. The new cards, designed specifically for digital play, will land on the platform on August 12th.
For those who don’t know, Magic The Gathering: Arena is one of two digital platforms for playing MTG online. The other is Magic The Gathering: Online, which however has a cost for each card. On Arena it is not possible to buy single cards but only packages, then unlocking the single ones through the Wildcards system.
Arena, compared to MTGO (Magic The Gathering: Online) can be played as a free-to-play, earning in-game currency via victories and completing daily challenges. It is also available for smartphones and tablets in a mobile version. The developers have decided to release the Jumpstart: Historic Horizons expansion exclusively for the format Historic, playable only on MTG Arena.
Jumpstart: Historic Horizons mechanics designed for MTG Arena
They will be available 31 new cards designed to work not live, in paper challenges, but on the digital platform of Arena. The mechanics will therefore be out of the ordinary, and impossible to replicate live. Here is the detailed explanation of three new keywords, directly from the development team:
- “Search forPowerful guardians choose one card from your deck at random from those that meet a specific criterion. No time wasted finding cards and reshuffling… the game chooses a card at random and the game continues immediately “.
- “Perpetual: permanently modifies the characteristics of a card, in any zone it is in. Take advantage of one of the advantages offered by Arena: the ability to modify digital objects wherever they are moved during the game “.
- “Evoke: create cards from scratch, giving rise to digital objects with a functioning identical to that of normal cards. Spells and artifacts are capable of summoning famous, powerful or just plain useful cards… a Tropical Island, a Stormfront Pegasus, a Ponder and more ”.