This anthology set is unacceptable. No one needs a playset of Xenagos and Worldspine Wurm, only one each.

Aside from those, Thespian Stage? Give us the staples.

I, for one, will only be using wild cards for the singles I want. I usually buy these anthologies but this is not okay and should not be normalized.

Who at Wizards picked these cards? Heads need to roll, either support Arena or not don't keep making this some live service game. You have a 30 year history and are the blueprint for card games since then, start acting like it.

Very frustrated with this decision. Pioneer is so close and this roll out feels entirely motivated by greed. At this rate it's all but expected that wizards will sell us Tarkir remastered to force us into the set for delve spells, likely upshifted to mythic.

Grow the community and reception of the format, rather than nickel and dime us for extremely mediocre anthologies like this supposedly poised for explorer

A lot of the card choices in this seem like the anthology directed at people who want to play Historic Brawl or Arena Cube and not at people who want to play Explorer/Pioneer. There's nothing wrong with wanting to add cards to Arena for people who want to play these formats, but if that's what you want to do, you could put them in a separate anthology. Leave the Explorer Anthologies focused on getting Explorer closer to Pioneer.

Super disappointed in the direction of this explorer anthology. It does nothing towards bringing Explorer closer to Pioneer. I will not be spending any more money on MtG Arena for some time.

This anthology is completely unplayable, I've spent thousands on arena and this is a complete slap in the face and won't continue supporting the product as of now

been wasting money in decks in explorer, and these anthologies are huge dissapointment

Yeah just really upset by this, especially given that we've seen how many resources have been devoted to Alchemy, which appears to be a very unpopular format. It's just crazy to realize that Arena has been out for about 5 years and standard remains the only true-to-paper format. We've seen historic horizons 2 years ago add almost 400 unique cards to arena all at once, and I do not understand why it's taking so long to add the maybe 30 necessary cards to move explorer to pioneer. Even the important cards that were added like sylvan scrying and thespian stage don't actually impact the format at all without hidden strings, so the most impactful card added was what, voice of resurgence? Very disappointed, especially so given that I actually thought historic anthology 7 was done marvelously.

It is very disheartening seeing something called "Explorer Anthologies" have so little to do with the pioneer format.

If one of the problems is the work involved adding one off mechanics like Cipher then you could at least make an alchemy version of Hidden Strings without cipher and add it to Explorer.

All I want from Arena is to play Pioneer.

Explorer will be my primary format once it resembles Pioneer. This anthology made zero progress on that goal, so I will not purchase it. Instead I will continue to shell out on MTGO card rental services. This cash could be spent on the (far superior) Arena client.

So stop messing around and take my money!

I’ve put a lot of time and money into MTG over the years. I love the game. I’ve been patiently waiting for Pioneer on Arena for years, and still supporting the game with my own money.

I don’t like to speak for others, but I think most people can agree that the pace and execution in which Pioneer cards are being added to Arena is abysmal. I would also say that it is downright disrespectful to the community who supports this game time and time again when unplayable cards that nobody wants are being added to Anthologies. I think we’ve accepted the fact that WoTC prioritizes non-paper cards on the client, which is frustrating. The amount of Alchemy cards programmed could have brought us extremely close to full Pioneer already, yet they refuse to do it.

WoTC, if you’re listening, we will consistently give you money to keep adding GOOD Pioneer cards to the client. It’s that simple. People want Pioneer on Arena. Trust us. It’s a win win for everyone. Please.

This screams of being half-assed. There are hundreds if not THOUSANDS of sources where you can see what decks are being played in paper. You have the ability to create the Explorer format and yet you release craptastic anthologies. Why not release smaller groups that include the meta cards for the decks? It's like selling the Challenger decks.

Better yet....split Alchemy and Historic, add all the cards needed to create the current top 25 Pioneer decks, and start working on turning Historic into Modern.

I'm a huge fan of both Arena (as a client the economy is brutal though) and of the pioneer format. I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of my favorite deck on pioneer (Lotus Combo) and seeing the addition of Thespian Stage and Sylvan Scrying and not hidden strings makes me feel a range of feelings from disappointed to disrespected. I'm not sure if it's greed to sell more anthologies or what, but this does almost nothing to bring explorer closer to pioneer. This anthology has made me lose a lot of faith in WotC and MtgArena and I plan on stepping away from Arena until the lack of quality in this anthology is addressed. Most of my investments in Arena were made under the promise of pioneer coming to arena, and this has made me feel like my time and money on Arena have been wasted. I'll come back when wizards decides to actually progress the format, but until then I'm sticking to paper magic.

Very happy to see some crucial pieces of popular decks (e.g. the Creativity combo creatures), but agree with everyone here that many slots are being wasted on cards that don't see play competitively.

Yes, it's important that powerful cards from outside the top tier of decks make their way into the format *eventually* so people can brew with them, but there's no logic to adding these cards over those that are commonly played in Pioneer already. Please prioritize catching up with the current meta first.

I appreciate your effort but you can do better. We as devoted fans want to play pioneer in mtg arena not explorer anymore. Please try meet our expectations faster.

Some decks are still unplayable... If you want to make more money release all these cards as a super expensive bundle/in a special "pioneer masters set", just get them on the client

Calling this a Anthology is disrespectful.

Now we can all agree that you don't really want to bring Pioneer to MTGA.

Make up your mind WotC: either MTGA Explorer is supposed to converge towards Pioneer or it's not. Don't tell us it is, then act the other way...

I know you're doing your best under financial constraints but it's hard to make sense of the cards being added to Arena in Anthologies when they feel so random and do not help Arena come closer to being like paper magic with formats like Pioneer.