I find mill decks to be an abomination of the game. The entire strategy around them is based on avoiding to actually battle other players and instead force their game to end because they run out of cards. It's a very anti-magic style of play which I want nothing to do with. As a result, the massive resurgence of this format has made the game unbearable for me to play. For over 20 years I've always appreciated the strategy component of magic that allowed me to go head to head against other players in a chess match like a battle and now I can't log in and play more than 2 games without running into these decks that are a complete circumvention of everything I loved about the game. My hope Wizards of the Coast never intended for the game to be played this way and the ability to put together such a dominant deck based on this format was a simple oversight that will be rectified in the very near future.

Core thought: As a new player, Historic is really hard/expensive to get into, to the point is looks impossible, as you’re behind so many cards. This will get worse in the future, thus at some point something has to be done to improve the accessibility. Wotc is also losing potential customers who just give up on getting into Historic because of that. This thread contains a proposed solution, but that's just an idea, not the core topic.

Since I joined Arena in September, I have only played Standard. Logical, as new players receive only standard-legal cards when they join. That other mode, Historic, is something nearly unattainable. About the only way to get some sort of Historic collection, is by buying a massive amount of packs. Getting good collections in Standard is already quite a struggle, let alone doing this for Historic as well. Therefore, I want to post this thread where I ask all those behind Arena to think about the (future) accessibility of Historic.

Let’s start with an obvious question from their side: Why should wotc care?
- The vast amount of catch-up to do dissuades people to even start getting into Historic. And thus, they won’t buy anything Historic related.
- Consequently, since Historic is harder to get into, “Remastered” sets aim at a much smaller audience. In my case, I didn’t even bother buying the Kaladesh packs when they were a daily deal.
- In the future, this issue will get worse for new players, they will have to do more and more catch-up.
- This situation of Historic also has consequences on Standard. There are fewer incentives to invest money into Standard sets, as they’ll rotate out soon anyway, and when they do, the only way to use them again is to play a game mode you don’t have the collection for anyway.

I am aware it will be a challenge to make a fair system for everyone, including new players, whales and wotc. Point is, there will be/is already a need for a change here! There are many ways to make Historic more accessible, each with their own important disadvantages. I had brainstormed a bit about several ideas (like Historic-specific wildcard generation from doing stuff with the Standard sets), I’m sure there are many other good ideas as well, but eventually I thought that this is would be the best compromise:

Add a new tab to the store “Historic Bundles”. Here, people can buy for each historic set a one-time large bundles of packs at discount prices (for example, 30 packs at 20K gold). This system could also easily adapt when Historic gets larger and larger: just change the prices.
Several advantages in my eyes:
- Nothing for free. Which is fair to those awesome whales keeping the game alive. Last thing they would want, is people getting a big number of cards for free when they had to give good money to get those.
- Still gives a feeling of progression for F2P players. Yes, IMO Arena would be boring if everyone had all the cards. Progressing a collection is part of the fun.
- Gives incentives to pay money. People like deals. And if you want to get into Historic, giving a bit of money would make life much easier. F2P-players would still need to grind a considerable amount.
- Available for everyone, no special treatment because you’re new.
- Easily adjustable in the future, for when Historic gets larger for example.
- Affects everyone about evenly. If for example a rework of the vault system were to be used to Historic more accessible, then those with already large collections would benefit more than new players, as those people have more chances to get 5th copies, which is the inverse of the goal.

Again, this post is mainly about the idea to make Historic more accessible to new players. The proposed solution is just an idea, not a serious suggestion. And please, consider voting, as it may be the only way to draw attention to this topic. Thank you for reading this.

Ban Genesis Ultimatum and The Great Henge.
Un-ban Uro.

Gruul and Dimir Rogues are toxic to play against.

Uro was only banned because of Omnath. Uro and Genesis Ultimatum really shouldn't be legal at the same time because it makes it too easy to ramp to Genesis and mana-cheat your whole deck out. It's already too easy to do this as it is.

With Gruul being able to play Embercleave or The Great Henge by turn four, along with so many excellent cheap creatures (Edgewall Inkeeper, Brushfire Elemental, Kazandu Mammoth, Questing Beast, Bonecrusher Giant, Lovestruck Beast) makes every threat a must-answer the same turn. Keeping Embercleave in keeps this deck fair but still solidly T1.

Dimir Rougues doesn't need any cards banned, but they should have to worry about main-decking answers to something in the format. Every other deck has to think of including answers to Dimir Rogues in their main-deck so it seems reasonable that Dimir Rogues should have to do the same.

Uro is a powerful card, but not moreso than the other top-tier cards currently legal in standard. There are plenty of answers to it in every color. Having it legal would allow more decks to be competitive while toning down the power of some of the other top-tier decks.