5 Standard Sets?
Standard forum
Posted on Aug. 31, 2022, 9:05 a.m. by Delphen7
So I was under the impression Wizards releases 4 sets a year into standard.
Yet somehow we have Kaldheim, Strixhaven, AFR, Midnight Hunt, and Crimson Vow all released in 2021. How did that happen?
TypicalTimmy says... #3
They use to do block structures, where you stayed on a Plane for nearly a full year. Think things like Ravnica-Gatecrash-Maze's End.
It wasn't always 3-set blocks, either. But those became a big theme for a long time.
It shifted to 2-set blocks because, mechanically, Standard and Draft became formats that rotated essentially the same decks, and mirror matches became a problem.
After some time, I believe it was after Amonkhet / Hour of Devastation, we had a "3-set" block again, which was really 2+1. That being Ravnica Allegiance and I believe it was Guilds of Ravnica. Then, it was War of the Spark, which took place on Ravnica but was more of its own storyline.
Since then, we have only had 1-set blocks, which I largely hate because you don't get enough cards mechanically to really explore the set. You get 85% filler garbage and 15% good cards. When you only have 7 cards printed with a mechanic, you only get 1 or 2 that are worth even using.
So, WOTC supplemented this with Commander Precons that are released in intermediate sets, replacing the preconstructed Standard decks that we use to get released with each set. And for the time, Brawl decks when that was a thing.
With Innistrad 3, they wanted to really step into Halloween. The past two times, players have complained that Werewolves aren't explored enough. So they made a Werewolf set and a Vampire set.
Except, the Werewolves were shit and I believe if I recall, there were as many Vampires in the Werewolf set, as Werewolves.
So it was a colossal set, broken in half, to try and appease the fan base. And they failed, miserably. Almost a year later and I still see untouched Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow packs at my Target, Walmart and LGS.
August 31, 2022 11:14 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #5
2022 also skipped the summer set (july) in favor of Commander Legends 2 and Double Masters 2. We went from Streets of New Capenna in april to Dominaria United next week with no Standard set in between, still leaving just 4 sets to rotate next year for this standard season.
September 1, 2022 12:47 a.m.
Well, 4 sets per year is correct when you place the year end in september/October where mtg has it's standard rotation.
This year they experimented with a slightly different release structure; basically moving all the set releases up a bit to make room for the commander set they released over summer.
Set releases always used to be; september/October, January/February, april/May, July. But of course by scrunching everything up, the February release got moved up & landed on the wrong side of Xmas; giving the impression of a 5 set year.
Ironically they have actually done 5 set years before. Coldsnap in 2006 released just before the time spiral block & kinda piggybacked on that block. Then the very next year they released an actual 4 set block (lorwyn/morningtide/shadowmoor/eventide) Which created (for a brief time) a standard with 10 legal sets in it.
Massacar says... #2
Crimson Vow and Midnight Hunt were essentially 2 halves of one super set.
August 31, 2022 10:23 a.m.