i guess not putting any cards that matter in is one way to not risk explorer overtaking the alchemy players who play the game for a day not knowing any better for your little graphs.

I don't see how this anthology contributes to the effort of bringing explorer closer to pioneer at all. My main format is pioneer and therefor explorer in Arena and I have no incentive to buy this anthology.

Once again I feel tricked and disrespected by WOTC with the upcoming anthology set. 25k gold or 4k gems to get playset of Xenagos, Wurm and Thespian Stage while nobody actually needs playsets of these is nothing more or less than a robbery. Is this your actual business model? To force players to harvest recources and spend them in game in that way? Are you serious? Are you guys that desperate with finding way to make money because some players will buy gems in store with real money. This is such a disgrace.

I play tons of pioneer in real life and when Wotc said they wanted to implement pioneer thanks to explorer i was soooo happy. Also because i play Arena since the beta so i have a lot of cards in my collection and it's easy for me to play formats other than standard. With the introduction of alchemy and the historic change, that it would get the digital cards too, i was a bit sad coz historic was the format i was playing mostly.
Than I started to play a lot of explorer and there are some decks i really wanted to play on arena from IRL.
Seeing this Explorer Anthology made me lose hope in wotc to bring pioneer on arena... by a lot.
The majority of cards in the anthology are rarely played in pioneer and this means that reaching the "pioneer level" is gonna be a really long road, really really long.

I don't see how this anthology advances the goal of moving Explorer toward Pioneer. With very few top tier cards, I just don't see the value of this product at all. Many if the cards seem aimed at Brawl; if that's the intention, it would be better if that were a separate product. As it stands, I don't know who this product is for. As an Explorer player, I certainly won't be buying this.

As an active Pioneer player and enjoyer of Explorer, I'd really like to see the most widely-played staples made a priority. Whilst during the early days of Explorer it was enjoyable to play with archetypes that don't see play in Pioneer, due to the limited card pool, we've now reached the point where the top 2 decks (Mono G, Rakdos Mid/Sac) have enough cards to dominate, and the decks below that don't have enough of their pieces to keep up as well. I'm not a huge fan of the digital-only formats (alchemy/historic) and would spend more money and time on the game if I was able to collect a wider competitive card pool for paper formats, such as Pioneer, and - perhaps one day - a Modern-lite format, resembling Explorer.

Besides the main issues that y'all already know about the Explorer melting into Pioneer gonna take several years, I don't see adding 10-20 cards every new set will get us there. It around 2.000+ cards to get there.
Why can't you guys take care of your public? I mean, the customer its whom give you money in exchange for a good product.
I've already stoped playing the physical MTG because there is not a single incentive for players participate in championships. Y'all missing that, besides this cardboard, there us, players, who want have fun and reward for studying and playing your game. The only "chance" is for qualifiers, and still, is hard.
The greedy part problably won't fix Arena economy, or even adding things up for the community itself. Take care guys, I hope the others cardgames that listen to his audience won't take your spot. Especialy the online versions.

Please, fix Arena economy. Get the REAL cards that is playing in Pioneer and support your community.

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.