This anthology was extremely underwhelming and it just shows to us that bringing Pioneer to Arena to cultivate the competitive Magic community is not something WOTC is interested in. This looks like a cash grab of 4 playable cards and more absolutely random inclusions. At the very least we deserve an article explaining every inclusion.

I won't be purchasing the anthology. Pls, make EA4 better

Shadow of a doubt this was a big swing and the miss and the bat landed in the second tier behind home plate. Even if delve is too hard to program, where is reckless bushwhacker/glavecover scout?? These plus others are just standard cards using already existing mechanics

Seems like a case of trying to please everyone and winding up not pleasing anyone. While there's probably no chance of increasing how often we get anthologies, or the power level at the choices, at least if there's a theme or an understanding of powerlevel it would help. Simply put if you're gonna drop jank in, make it quantity over quality. This thought of Accorder's Shield REPLACING a better pick is this idea that they are limited, but if for example you dropped a 50 card anthology including a bunch of Janky fun cards that casual players enjoy, and would fit well in cube you could include messaging that the theme is "Jank decks" or "We are focusing on this anthology to try to add diversity to the explorer metagame at the more casual levels. Many of these cards will not impact the higher level meta but will hopefully bolster some of the less powerful decks". When there was no expectation set players took it upon themselves to set the expectation based on the frequency of releases.

This anthology is missing many cards. Why state the intention to bring pioneer to mtga without following through?

Please add cards that are actually seeing play in pioneer, instead of a random assortment of garbage. This anthology has made me want to stop playing arena altogether

The objective of Pioneer in MTGA was clearly set and gven by WOTC. There have been no real actions towards this goal.
And it's unacceptable to keep waiting for something that will not happen.

Explorer Anthologies should have the singular goal of achieving the full pioneer experience on Arena. Until this is done there should not be cards that are unplayable in pioneer in these anthologies. Nobody wants explorer to be its own unique format; Explorer players just want Pioneer and we’re currently being forced to settle for less.

Releasing all the cards for Lotus Field Combo except for Hidden Strings is extremely frustrating to players such as myself who were hoping to finally be able to play the deck on Arena. I will most definitely not be purchasing this product as a result.

Extremely disappointed in this anthology. Arena is the primary way I play and was really looking forward to an anthology. This does not move the needle at all towards opening new decks for me. Will not be buying or supporting this product.

I still don't understand wizards aversion to digital products. We are in the year 2023, stay connected with your audience. How can you say you want to bring pioneer to the client with this kind of anthologies? At least you could explain these design decisions or implement a roadmap. Cheers

At this rate we will never get to the actual Pioneer meta game, which should be the goal in my opinion. Please consider adding cards that are actually played.

The cards in this anthology add almost nothing Pioneer-relevant to the format. I’ve lost so much interest in Arena lately, and this is a huge contributing factor. Please get it together, WOTC. We want to play pioneer on Arena and you’re doing nothing to make that happen.

I understand that the dev budget allocated towards the Anthology series is limited and is low on the priority ladder. I want to make it clear that this is not an issue to me, this is just how f2p games operate. However, the lack of communication and context behind the cards selected for these series has led to a frustrating level of tension with players who have been excited for Explorer's eventual merge to Pioneer. Releasing cards meant for other formats under the "Explorer" umbrella without any context as to why they are there and what Pioneer players can look forward to has extinguished my time waiting for that future. The quality of EA4 is so poor and confusing in the eyes of a player who wants to engage with the title format that I am no longer confident in the teams goal of building towards Pioneer. It's become clear over the last while that unfortunately, making Arena a viable platform to play Pioneer for competitive prep is not a product goal, and waiting to catch up is not sustainable or worth my energy and attention.

My main way of engaging with Magic Arena is Explorer, and lately I have been feeling discouraged from playing altogether. My favorite deck (Izzet Phoenix) is missing some critical cards in the blue Delve spells, and the staleness of the current meta makes me not want to play Explorer as much as I used to. I have been loking into other TCGs, but, if Pioneer was realized on Magic Arena, I would be much more interested in both digital play and potentially buying my Pioneer decks in paper.

I want to practice RCQ formats on Arena. I might be the minority but to me it’s important that arena matches tabletop as much as possible.

This is actively sabotaging your player's experience. The announced purpose of the anthologies is to bring cards from pioneer (paper) to explorer as a gradual merge of the two formats. While some of the EA3 cards do see play, many (most) do not. Even if we accept fringe playable cards, we're hard put to break even on this list. Get your head together and do better. Or, if you see explorer as it's own, non-pioneer tracking, format, then communicate that to your players.

Arena does so many things right. It’s slick, intuitive, engaging, and over all a slam dunk for online tcg gameplay. Players want the ability to play competitive formats online on Arena. The community is left scratching their heads, and wondering why they spend time and money on a platform that doesn’t seem to be placing the player’s first.

This actually blows my mind

You guys can put whatever cards you’d want, but i think the sooner we get Pioneer on Arena, at least the more engaged i’d be and many others to. I don’t want to play in MTGO but that’s where the formats are that i play