Return to Dominaria!

Ixalan, dinosaurs and pirates and cities of gold

(Why are dinosaurs naturally south-american? Is it just "things that go in a jungle", or there was an idea that didn't quite work out in Murganda that became Ixalan, like Akhos and Theros)

Beginner focused core sets! (I like core sets, although I'm not sure why)

Third un set Unstable!

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/25th-anniversary-announcement-day-2017-06-14?/

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/metamorphosis-2-0-2017-06-12

There's just too many announcements. I can't care about anything because I'm overloaded, and the ones I don't like ruin potential enjoyment of those I do.

I was delighted to hear about Un3, fairly excited about Ixalan being pirates + cities-of-gold (don't care about dinosaurs), moderately interested to see what they do on Dominaria, and very intrigued by the board-game-style Explorers of Ixalan: as well as 4 decks it comes with "20 double-sided tokens, 50 game tiles, and 40 counter pieces" ?!

Oh, they're doing one of those tie-in games like they did for DnD. Those were actually reasonably well received, iirc? Never tried one though.

There was already an MtG arena miniatures game, that seemed to be not my kind of thing. "Arena of the Planeswalkers", that's it - a variant on Heroscape.

Explorers of Ixalan seems like it might be more like that Planechase variant where you have a 2D grid of planes? It sounds intriguing, anyway.

I forgot some people don't care about dinosaurs :)

Arena was disappointing. I loved Heroscape, but Arena had none of the draw that the complex battlefield and slightly larger armies had. Didn't play enough to explore how the decks affected it.

I like dinosaurs, but almost exclusively in prehistoric settings and Ixalan doesn't appear prehistoric at all. As someone who really wanted a Mesoamerican world, I'm worried the pirate aspects will overpower the Mesoamerican ones.

I'm actually interested that the core sets will focus around a character's past and have diminished importance in comparison to the other sets. I understand why core sets were needed, but they were never something I ever looked forward to.

Well, I usually didn't look forward to Core Cets, but I was disappointed when the "Core Set Plus" that was Magic Origins was announced to be the last, because it showed what a Core Set could do to be relevant.

I very much hope future Core Sets follow the footsteps of Magic Orgins rather than falling back to the "uninteresting" versions we had before. From the announcement my hope gets somewhat supported in that they are themed around character's past etc. just like the aforementioned better example.

I'm also looking forward to Explorers of Ixalan. I like alternate game modes and this could be something new - maybe Frontiers style (not the latest iteration of Legacy/Extended/Modern).