I was unaware that this info was apparently datamined in mid-May and I have seen zero discussion on these boards so I wanted to start a discussion. If things here are not solid enough or rely on too much speculation, feel free to move this to the rumor mill. Was uncertain where this belonged.
Information from a recent tweet that was since deleted suggests that an upcoming historic event on Arena will have "nerfed" versions of banned cards available to play with. Highlights include Omnath that Scries 1 instead of drawing a card on ETB, a legendary field of the dead, Fires of Invention for an extra , Winota that only looks at the top 4 cards, Uro that doesn't Ramp you, and so forth. All of the cards are apparently specifically marked with the Arena "A" symbol next to their name (in the similar way that UB cards have a unqiue holograph at the bottom). There is no official news of these changes lasting longer than a single weekend event, though there seems to be reasonable concern about these changes becoming back and becoming permanent or being repeated.
Potential Benefits:
Most digital games have the ability to roll out nerfs rather than just dealing bans/suspensions like we have seen in Arena. If Wizards has worries that the card design in Arena looks "less polished" than similar online games because they keep having to ban and outlaw cards, that's something I can sort of understand.
I can likewise appreciate wizards not wanting to have cards that "technically" exist in Arena but that can't be played anywhere (like Oko). A change to the system that allows players to keep playing with all of their cards instead of saying "we goofed, have some wildcards" may be positive in some ways.
As far as balancing tools go, the ability to "nerf" cards is a lot faster and more nuanced than the traditional answers of printing counters or banning cards. It lets you "fine tune" the power of a dominant deck to maintain meta diversity without totally shutting down the deck or waiting a few months in the hopes that there is a good answer coming.
If nerfs are successful, we may also see buffs to some tier 2 cards and archetypes in historic to increase meta diversity without needing to wait for a major shake-up in the Historic pool.
Potential Downsides
This is the definition of functional errata, which has long been against MTG's philosophy. I know a few people who freaked out when Ajani's Pridemate was changed to force you to put on counters. Some people have recently been sad that a plague engineer can now shut down infect decks due to the creation of the phyrexian subtype. We are talking about much bigger changes here.
If the physical cards are not changed to match the errata, gameplay in arena wanders ever-further from the physical card game experience. Further, this errata would cause the meta of physical and digital magic decks in standard to look different if nerfed cards from recent sets are ever unbanned in digital standard.
If the physicai cares ARE changed to match the errata, that risks pissing off the commander players. Making Winota decks less playable or making Agent of Treachery (which now needs to be cast from hand to ETB) unusable in blink decks, for example, would earn Wizards a lot of ire.
Some of the cards being discussed above have been nerfed nearly to the point of being practically unusable. There is an argument to be made that it's better to just ban a card rather than making it so weak that it's technically legal but unusable.
As this is currently a "hotfix" to an arena only problem I don't see any of those negatives as valid. If this works it creates a great online solution to problem cards without affecting anything else. Unless of course, you put together Historic Paper Events which would happen if it gets popular enough but I still prefer them to take these actions as opposed to letting cards essentially cease to exist.
For any further speculation on the potential impact on paper cards, we would have to wait and see both player and Wizard's reaction to this event. If both are positive then we can start looking down that slope and worry about "Format Specific Text" on cards. Though considering people have offered up banning pairings of cards, this might not be a ridiculous solution.
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Information from a recent tweet that was since deleted suggests that an upcoming historic event on Arena will have "nerfed" versions of banned cards available to play with. Highlights include Omnath that Scries 1 instead of drawing a card on ETB, a legendary field of the dead, Fires of Invention for an extra , Winota that only looks at the top 4 cards, Uro that doesn't Ramp you, and so forth. All of the cards are apparently specifically marked with the Arena "A" symbol next to their name (in the similar way that UB cards have a unqiue holograph at the bottom). There is no official news of these changes lasting longer than a single weekend event, though there seems to be reasonable concern about these changes becoming back and becoming permanent or being repeated.
Potential Benefits:
Potential Downsides
What thoughts do all of you have on this matter?
For any further speculation on the potential impact on paper cards, we would have to wait and see both player and Wizard's reaction to this event. If both are positive then we can start looking down that slope and worry about "Format Specific Text" on cards. Though considering people have offered up banning pairings of cards, this might not be a ridiculous solution.