It’s the end of the road for the Alchemy format as Wizards of the Coast focuses on Brawl
While we’re excited for Jace to become the bad guy in Magic: The Gathering’s Reality Fracture set, we’ve also got the news that’ll be the final release for the online Alchemy format on MTG Arena. Dave Finseth broke the news on the official Wizards of the Coast/Magic: The Gathering website, under the heading, “Saying Goodbye to Alchemy.” Game Designer Ian Adams also addressed the issue on a press call: “We are here to talk today a little bit about some pretty big format updates that are coming to Magic Arena later this month. To get right to it, we are sunsetting Alchemy. The last Alchemy set will be the Reality Fracture Alchemy set that comes out next month. February 2027, when we do the next Standard rotation, will be when the format rotates out.”
“The main thing here is that the niche that Alchemy was created to fill is being filled more effectively by other formats,” Ian continues. “The intention was that [Alchemy] be a place that changed more rapidly. Players who were digital first found four sets a year a little slow. Very few people are currently complaining that the sets are a little slow. It was a place to take a break from Standard. There are a lot of places to take a break from Standard now. It was a place to make changes a little more rapidly. Again, that’s not so much a concern.
“And as we have developed formats, there’s some things that are happening organically. Brawl is a big one that has done a lot of what we were hoping Alchemy would do. We want to let those things that players have gravitated toward take the focus.
“Alchemy did a great job of doing what it was intended to do for a long time. There’s a lot of people who play alchemy – there’s 10s of 1,000s of people playing alchemy every day. And we want to make sure that this goes out as a celebration of a format that doesn’t fit anymore, rather than something to be mourned.
“The most clear [format serving the niche that Alchemy was filling previously] as the one that people use to take a break from Standard, is Brawl. I can’t give exact numbers, but I’ve seen the graphs, and you can see as Brawl’s popularity takes off, people definitely moved from Alchemy over there.
“It really is about focus and priority. It’s worth understanding. Alchemy is not the lowest play rate of all of our formats. It is about the niche that Alchemy was supposed to fill not making sense anymore.”
Dave added further context in his online post, harking back to 2021 when Alchemy was being designed for MTG Arena. The Alchemy format was created to help solve the following problems MTG Arena was facing at that time:
“In 2021, we were looking ahead at a schedule that included several sets that wouldn’t be legal in Standard that we still wanted to bring to MTG Arena, similar to how we added The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth to the game. We had Historic as a home for these cards, but the power level of that format meant only the strongest of those cards would see play. Brawl was not as popular as it is today, so we wanted to create a format that was a good fit for these cards that weren’t legal in Standard but weren’t up to Historic’s power level.
“In 2021, players asked us to release more cards on MTG Arena. This was during a time when we only had four or so releases per year. Internally, we also wanted more content, and an additional 30-card, digital-only release alongside each Magic Multiverse set fit our schedule perfectly. These cards could also be used in a limited-time, Limited format following the main set’s release. For example, cards from Alchemy: New Capenna could be drafted as part of Streets of New Capenna.
“Metagames evolve quickly in the digital space, so we wanted to experiment with a format that could match that speed. This meant regularly rebalancing cards, a different banned card list, and a shorter rotation interval of two years.
After five more years of development, the issues Alchemy was created to address are simply not as much of a factor anymore. MTG Arena has various nonrotating formats for cards outside of Standard. We release more sets per year than in 2021, and our growing number of formats offers significant variety for Constructed players. With these problems no longer pressing, Alchemy’s role has become less clear. So, we want to focus our attention on delivering new sets and our growing formats like Brawl.”
“All Alchemy cards remain,” Ian assures players. “Nobody gets anything that they ever opened or crafted taken away. They continue to be legal in all the formats that they’re legal in. Cards that have been rebalanced, anything that has that little Arena ‘A’ at the front, and then the name, those are all going to revert later this month.
“Your alchemy cards will still be around. Your ability to continue to use those cards is there, but the alchemy format as a rotating card format with digital cards is something that we’re wrapping up.”
“Those cards continue to be legal in all the formats other than Alchemy that they’re already legal in, so Timeless, Historic, Brawl. There is a long history of legendary creatures created in Alchemy being popular commanders in Brawl. Several of them have been printed in paper at this point, and we didn’t want to pull the rug out from people on that.”
“We may choose to ban or rebalance digital-only Alchemy cards in the future as we manage the formats they are a part of. We have found this to be an effective tool for these digital sets,” Dave adds.