Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne looks at the challenges facing Magic: The Gathering Standard format.
Stores have reported on social media channels some difficulty in getting Magic: The Gathering Standard format events to fire recently, with most saying that Commander play has swamped their in-store OP, with Draft in second place and Standard format a distant third, often tying with Pioneer and even Legacy. Stores that have fired weekly Standard tournaments with 8 to 12 players a couple of years ago are having problems drawing enough players to make it worthwhile.
At our store, we usually have 2 to 6 players show up for our Standard Showdown tournaments with half a dozen or so of our regular players preferring to go to another store that opts to run Pauper in lieu of Standard. In general, the OP pulling the most players is Commander, then Draft and then something else. And, despite Wizards of the Coast’s continued attempts to push it, that something else is usually not Standard.
As I mentioned last week, part of the problem is simply the sheer glut of Standard format product saturating the market (see “A Flood of Sets Hitting Standard“). By my count, at the end of 2025, there will be 12 Standard legal sets and since no sets are rotating out of Standard in 2026, that means 19 Standard legal sets at the end of 2026. This is a big problem, and Wizards of the Coast does not appear to have planned for this very well.
Standard was originally pitched as the format most welcoming to new players, as cards legal in that set would be readily available, or at least packs with those cards would be available. Edge of Eternities and Final Fantasy have both vanished from distribution after their initial print run with vague indications of reprints arriving sometime in Q4, maybe November. It is really hard to encourage players to get into Standard play when the two most popular sets this year are nowhere to be found, at least not without paying significantly above retail.
Speaking of which, price is another problem with Standard. Three of the sets releasing in Standard format for 2025 are Universes Beyond. Four of the sets releasing in 2026 are Universes Beyond. If stores keystone the pricing, Universes Beyond Play boosters cost about $2 more, or about a third more, than regular Play boosters do. That’s a premium price for a player just entering the game.
Starter sets are a great tool to get new players into the game. I loved the $9.99 starter set, but can understand why it is no longer financially feasible. Still, by making Final Fantasy the new starter set and then not having it available, it makes it even harder to recruit new players into the game. We have promoted the Foundations Beginner Box to new players, but a $35 price point is just not as welcoming as a $20 one. We could, of course, promote Jumpstart packs, but Jumpstart, as a pack format, never caught on (at least not so far as I could tell).
In order to promote Standard, which WotC wants to do because that is where the company makes its money, it needs Standard decks, which we will fortunately see return with Loywyn Eclipsed (see “Magic: The Gathering Lorywn Eclipsed Hits Preorder“).
Comments? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICv2
