Alchemy as an "alternate Standard" is a fun idea that I don't mind -- while I like Standard, being able to switch back and forth between Standard and Alchemy without too much hassle (and getting to play a new format with most of the same cards if Standard is stale) is great. But I am super unhappy about the rebalanced cards being the versions legal in Historic and Historic Brawl. This deeply harms the point of a non-rotating format and from a consumer perspective feels like a way to give out fewer wildcards from bans. I don't see any good reason to tie Historic and Historic Brawl to Alchemy, and will not be buying any Alchemy cards unless you revert this change.

Add Alchemy as a separate gamemode entirely, and let historic become the eternal format for MTGA.

Take the opportunity to move the digital only cards out of historic and into historic alchemy instead.

There is only two reasons for why you wouldn't do this; Either you intentionally do this because you believe you can get more money, or you simply haven't understood why an eternal format is needed.

I'm choosing to believe the latter for now. Revert this absolute travesty of a decision, and everyone will be happy, or keep your current course and at least I will no longer spend any money on your game.

If those changes happen I will uninstall the game, I love mtg and have played for more than 15 years now, I have my Arena account since the closed beta and have convinced multiple of my friends to ditch other tcg's for Arena. I play exclusively historic, as I prefer non rotating formats, a long time ago you promised to implement Pioneer onto the client, but you lied about it, now you plan to terminate the only eternal format available without ant consideration to your player-base. If Alchemy affect historic without any news about pioneer, in the 8th I will log off after completing my dailies, something that I have done everyday for the past two years, to never login again.

WOTC, if you guys want a quick cash grab, it's simple: Just. Give. Us. Pioneer. One set every few months is bound to sell well, and the player base will be satisfied.

WOTC would make more money and please players much more with just this simple measure.

Instead we get a format no one asked for, with rules nobody asked for. Stop trying to be Steve "costumers don't know what they want" Jobs. This is good of you are innovating and bringing new things to the table, but terrible if you are not listening to your costumers MOST BASIC DEMANDS AND NEEDS!

If the game was top notch, fully developed, and already had all the "default" MTG stuff on it, I think this format would be well accepted and it could even be fun.

However, right now we can't even choose our default basic lands. We don't have formats that are loved and appreciated in paper Magic. The client is a buggy mess on every new launch. But somehow, a whole new format arises... It has got to be a joke in poor taste.

Alchemy makes me not want to play MTGA at all I see this issue that you are trying to address but this not the right way to do so. I want to play magic not hearthstone, this just feels bad it feels like a betrayal of magic at its core and it make me concern about investing in arena at all if this is the direction your going in.

Standard get stale fast its a real issue. Instead of corrupting the integrity of the game with digital only mechanics and buffs and nerfs truing the game into magic light may i suggest a "flux" game mode.

In "flux" ever 6 weeks or so a number of the most popular meta cards would be rotated out giving other cards time to shine. Additionally old MAGIC cards would be rotated in or maybe preview cards from a new set. you could craft them or buy them in a pack like historic anthology or packs i guess. Some of the cards could be limited time classics like Counter spell or lighting bolt that turn into wild cards at the next flux rotation.

This would give you a fresh format while not fundamental dismantling what magic is. I want to play the game i grew up if i wanted to play a digital card game id go back to hearthstone.

Nothing exist in a vacuum it's existence will have an effect on standard and not to mention destroying historic. I real hope you change chorus if not i wont be playing any longer witch make me sad.

I'm sure you're getting a lot of complaints about how one-sided your algorithm is not being impartial and often times screwing over players with land draws that should not be happening in a purely random sample - so my complaint can be added to that pile.

But, an idea for changing the algorithm to improve randomization would be having the program assign a number to each card remaining in a deck and pile shuffling the cards into X amount of piles (let's say 6). It can repeat this process Y amount of times then take the middle of the pile and put those cards on top. A better template would be from the card shuffler for poker sets from stores.

To whom it may concern,

I'll try to be as brief as I can, but a little about me for context: I've wanted to compete in the top levels of Magic for over a decade and have worked hard to reach the point I'm at. I used to take the bus out of town to attend PTQs and spend the night on the street because I couldn't afford a hotel, just to play my latest deck with the best competition I could find. Today, with the help of Arena, I can now work toward my aspirations from the comfort of home. I've only just joined Arena the last few months, and playing Historic (the closest option to Modern available to me) I've already earned a Mythic qualifier badge twice. Since the next qualifier event will be draft, last night I decided to put a full $100 in so I could get practice drafting and have my best shot at reaching the Pro Tour. Today, I learned about Alchemy, and the effect it will have on my preferred format, historic. Not only will this change hurt the deck I've invested heavily in, but the further divergence from paper magic will be a determent to the entire reason I chose to play on Arena in the first place; To reach the Pro Tour and play with the actual, unaltered versions of cards available. Had I been aware that such alterations would be made to existing cards on Arena, not only would I not have invested into them, I wouldn't have invested into Arena's economy at all. I'm already heavily invested though, and there's still an avenue for me to reach the Pro Tour using Arena, so I'll make the best of things, but I urge you to reconsider this flippant attitude of altering cards that are already part of people's collections and the formats we enjoy. If you were somehow able to do this with physical cards, I wouldn't even play Magic. As it stands, all I can do is protest with my wallet and hope someone at Wizards is interested in retaining players/customers. The $100 I spent last night will be the last I'll put into Arena, regardless of what that means for the potential of my dreams.

Best Regards