Mystery Booster 2 Unveiled At GenCon

Back before the pandemic, Mystery Booster was revealed to be something cool to do for conventions. This would allow Wizards of the Coast to host an epic Chaos Draft-style event without needing to rely on difficult to acquire booster packs for maximum fun. At the same time, it allowed them to do all kinds of weird and wacky things thanks to play-test cards, as well as get much needed reprints into the hands of players.

Teased for years online, Gavin Verhey finally revealed the follow-up release at GenCon with the announcement of Mystery Booster 2! Many Magic personalities were given booster packs to open up and show off, with news quickly spreading of the wild things this set contains. The play-test cards are back once again, but so too are reprints using both white borders - not seen since 9th Edition in 2005 - and the Future Sight frame. Even wilder, the set is also going to be home to several cards that were previously digital only, such as Velukan Dragon, Oracle of the Alpha, and even cards from MTGO releases like Masters Edition and Tempest Remastered.

The set releases more widely at MagicCon Las Vegas, with non-attendees able to get in on the action themselves with the event's Festival-in-a-Box release. You can check out the full announcement here (including a deeper video announcement from Gavin himself), the full Card Image Gallery showing off the new cards, as well as an article detailing the contents of these boosters - including the full list of reprints!

Three Cards Rebalanced For Historic on MTG Arena

During the Arena Championship 6 event held a few weeks ago, it was clear that the Boros Energy deck was utterly dominant. The format was essentially just Boros Energy and one or two other decks trying to beat it out. Given this, the MTG Arena team announced this week that three cards were being rebalanced for the client's digital only formats of Historic and Timeless. The cards affected include Galvanic Discharge, Guide of Souls, and Ocelot Pride. Will it be enough to stabilize the Historic metagame? We'll have to wait and see!

For full details of the announcement - as well as other info on current MTG Arena news - check out the weekly announcements article here.

StarCityGames Announces Coverage for Regional Championship DC

Here's something exciting that many of you have been waiting for! Watch this ??#MTG #SCGDC #MTGRC

Official announcement: https://t.co/Xb2UPha3SV pic.twitter.com/5QQrn4fgRT

— Star City Games (@StarCityGames) August 5, 2024

This week saw a major surprise announcement for many competitive players: StarCityGames is bringing back coverage for the Regional Championship in Washington DC! This event will be held in early October and features beloved faces like Cedric Phillips, Patrick Sullivan, Eilidh Lonie, and Corey Baumeister. Many players have lamented the lack of coverage at SCGCon events following the return to play following the pandemic given how beloved it was during the SCG Tour previously. The excitement was thick on social media over this announcement and it will no doubt be a delight to see these excellent teams back in the booth once again.

Drama At The GenCon Secret Lair Showdown

Mystery Boosters weren't the only bit of news to come out of GenCon, and unfortunately the other bit of news wasn't so pleasant. Magic grinder Julian Jakobovits (better known by his MTGO handle of JUJUBEAN__2004) noted that he'd been disqualified from the Secret Lair Showdown Championship event after reaching the top 4. This was then followed up with a more detailed account of what happened soon after. The events of what happened caused a lot of discourse throughout Magic social media and unfortunately led to some harassment as well, causing Pastimes - the event organizer - and TO for Pastimes Meg Baum to release further statements of their sides of the story. You can find Pastimes' statement here and Meg Baum's here. This unfortunate event has led to a lot of consternation about the event, prizing, prize splits, wagering and bribery, judges, and more over the past few days with no clear winners amongst the debates.

Decklist of the Week

Azorius Artifacts | BLB Standard | Ignotus97, MTGO Standard Challenge 1st Place

• Creatures (6)
• 1 Cityscape Leveler
• 1 Urza, Lord Protector
• 4 Thran Spider

• Instants (2)
• 2 Get Lost

• Artifacts (27)
• 1 The Irencrag
• 1 Thousand Moons Smithy
• 2 Glass Casket
• 3 Spring-Loaded Sawblades // Bladewheel Chariot
• 4 Braided Net // Braided Quipu
• 4 Fabrication Foundry
• 4 Simulacrum Synthesizer
• 4 The Mightstone and Weakstone
• 4 Unstable Glyphbridge // Sandswirl Wanderglyph

• Lands (25)
• 3 Island
• 5 Plains
• 1 Mirrex
• 2 Meticulous Archive
• 2 Seachrome Coast
• 4 Adarkar Wastes
• 4 Demolition Field
• 4 Restless Anchorage

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Beza, the Bounding Spring
• 1 Boon-Bringer Valkyrie
• 1 Cityscape Leveler
• 1 Glass Casket
• 1 Spring-Loaded Sawblades // Bladewheel Chariot
• 2 Chrome Host Seedshark
• 2 Disdainful Stroke
• 2 Market Gnome
• 2 Negate
• 2 Rest in Peace

Buy This Deck Export text Export Arena

With Bloomburrow fully releasing last week, we were able to get our first taste of serious competitive play with events starting up everywhere. Few places are a better showcase of this than Magic Online, which hosts multiple events per week where others may post one, if any. This gives a great look at all kinds of lists to help show off what the meta might bring to the table in the coming weeks. Case in point, this Azorius Artifacts list that won a Standard Challenge this Sunday! This deck controls the board until you can stick a Simulacrum Synthesizer and start spitting out tons of tokens. You can even manage to pull off the mighty Urza, Planeswalker if your draws are decent enough! Give it a shot at your next event!