Hey MTGO players!

You may have noticed a few cards in Treasure Chests that seem a little out of place. Cemetery Gate? Flood? Skittering Crustacean? Those aren’t in C17! But they haven’t been in Magic Online before either! What gives?

Some of you might remember a Twitter question I asked back in March:

At that SurveyMonkey link, I asked people to tell me what they want, and more importantly: why.

When I went through the results, there were lots of answers. Hundreds, even. I tabulated the results and dropped those with only a couple requests, but there were still more cards than I had expected. So, I set out to investigate this sizable list.

There are many reasons why cards aren’t (or can’t be) brought into Magic Online, and I really can’t talk about those. But with the help of the Magic Online Cardset team, the team responsible for coding new cards (all of whom went above and beyond for this effort), we could get most of the cards you wanted out the door and into Treasure Chests.

Salvage



Stream of Acid



Brainwash



Cruel Tutor



Huang Zhong, Shu General



Lady Sun



Lady Zhurong, Warrior Queen



Lu Su, Wu Advisor



Ma Chao, Western Warrior



Pang Tong, “Young Phoenix”



Sima Yi, Wei Field Marshal



Xun Yu, Wei Advisor



Zuo Ci, the Mocking Sage



Aspect of Wolf



Cao Ren, Wei Commander



Game of Chaos



Pit Scorpion



Plant Elemental



I’ll admit, I don’t know why some of you want Plant Elemental, but it got enough requests that it made the list. Our goal was to identify the cards that players wanted, and where we could, deliver on them. While I doubt that Aspect of Wolf is going to show up in any 5-0 league decks anytime soon, it might show up in a fun mono-green Commander deck. (Probably not with Plant Elemental, though.)

Borderland Explorer



Custodi Squire



Sinuous Vermin



Skittering Crustacean



Treasonous Ogre



The top tier of requests was made up of just these five. The first four are for Pauper, and we’d been hearing requests for them [MA1] for a long time before the March survey. Borderland Explorer in particular was the single-most-requested card from the whole survey. Treasonous Ogre also has a lot of fans as it turns out. People have enjoyed trading life for mana since Limited Edition Alpha, and in Commander, you’ve got a lot of life to spend, so bringing Treasonous Ogre to MTGO made a good deal of sense.

Conqueror’s Flail



Entourage of Trest



Expropriate



Selvala’s Stampede

The next tier down was made up of these Commander 2016 and Conspiracy: Take the Crown cards. They’re fun Commander cards, and I think Entourage of Trest could do some interesting things for Pauper as well, giving green access to the Monarch mechanic.

Drafna’s Restoration



Flood



Field of Dreams



Burnt Offering



Cemetery Gate



Energy Tap



Metamorphosis



I think this is the most exciting handful of cards, though. Each of these cards was chosen to get new art, and I don’t mean new to MTGO, I mean completely new to the public. Like a number of the cards above, many of these requests were for Pauper, but Field of Dreams was requested for a Legacy deck. They’re all available in Treasure Chests, of course. But in case you don’t see them in the game anytime soon, I want to share a few of my favorite new pieces of art at full size.

Mike Bierek’s Energy Tap is set on Innistrad, and that dude is cackling like he just pulled off the biggest-ever mana ritual. Maybe this is just the thing Scornful Egotist needs to break out in Pauper. I’m kidding (mostly), but if someone can make that work then I’ve retroactively been excited this whole time.

Here’s Flood themed for Ixalan. Jonas De Ro captured the feeling of the rushing waters rolling in to tap those nonflying creatures.

This is Field of Dreams from Sam Burley, and it’s just breathtaking.

I hope you guys enjoy all the new-to-MTGO cards that we’ve put into Treasure Chests. You can open them from Treasure Chests starting with the Iconic Masters release tomorrow. IMA itself isn’t available until Friday, but your Treasure Chests are updated as soon as we’re up from downtime! Can’t wait to see all the sweet new brews you’re going to make with these cards!

Alli Medwin

Magic Online Design

Magic R&D