The fact that MTG Foundations is intended to stay in Standard for five years is a pretty major deal. We haven’t seen a single set stick it out for so long in the format since its inception. The potential to create a solid bedrock for Standard here is high. On the other side of the coin, if Foundations is too powerful or too weak those problems will ripple out and magnify over time. As if the stakes weren’t high enough, a new podcast has revealed that while five years is the minimum stay for Foundations, it’s not necessarily the maximum. That’s right: this sucker could be sticking around for good.
Foundations Forever?
This revelation came via the latest episode of Mark Rosewater’s Drive to Work podcast. The episode featured Bryan Hawley, Magic’s Game Design Director, and focused on the design of the Foundations product suite as a whole. It covers a lot of interesting topics, but the standout for most players will undoubtedly be the fact that Foundations may end up in Standard for more than five years.
“The kind of positioning that we landed on for it is it’ll be legal through at least 2029, but if it continues to do its job it could be much longer.”
Bryan Hawley
This is a pretty major bit of news to sneakily drop on a podcast. Foundations having a five-year lifespan was already controversial among players. Potentially stretching that out even further is, naturally, even more so. At this point, nothing is decided or guaranteed, but Hawley did lay down some criteria Foundations will need to meet if it wants its Standard lifespan extended.
“If it continues to be fun, if it continues providing a really good, welcoming place for players to enter Magic, then yeah we could extend that,” Hawley noted on the podcast. This makes a lot of sense. Essentially, if Foundations does its job well then it’ll get to stick around for longer.
In a way, this addresses the potential issues I raised about Foundations in the introduction nicely. If the set is too powerful or too weak, Wizards can let it rotate as normal. If not, they can keep it around and players will get more use out of their Foundations cards. It’s a win-win.
The lack of a set rotation date does introduce the possibility of nasty surprises, but Hawley was quick to reassure players on that front. “We will definitely give the public at least two years heads up before the set rotates, so stay tuned!”
Pros And Cons
This is big news, so naturally the MTG community has some thoughts. We’ve never had to consider the implications of a permanent new set in Standard before, so it’s fascinating to see players wrestle with this issue in real-time.
“The idea of a “forever standard” set full of staples has been something I felt the game needed ever since core sets were just selling poorly. You need something like a core set to be able to put safety valve and meat and potato cards […] Foundations feels like the logical middle ground of maintaining those staples while tying it to a product that doesn’t need an annual update.”
rccrisp
This is a great point and one of the big advantages of Foundations as a product. If Standard is always going to need answers for specific playstyles and threats, then it makes sense to print those in a non-rotating core set. This frees up precious design space in other sets, letting them lean harder into their unique identities.
“Hearthstone tried the nonrotating staple set, and went away from that model for a reason. If Foundations has exciting cards, some of them will become format pillars that no longer seem as fun when you’re losing to it for the sixth year in a row. If it doesn’t have exciting cards, it’s a bad product.”
nagCopaleen
Of course, there’s another side to that coin. Having the same answers available at all times can make a format feel stale. Standard is notable mostly for its dynamic nature, so keeping Foundations around forever will have a significant negative impact on that. There’s also the chance that the set includes staple powerful enough for consistent Standard play, which will have a similar stagnating effect.
“I give it 50/50 if we even make it until 2029 before they decide to do a revision of Foundations. WotC (read Hasbro) need to keep the sales machine humming, and I just don’t see them passing up the chance to print yet another new set before too long.”
ItsuNani
Among the supporters and detractors are those viewing the issue through the cynical lens of finance. This is an area where extending MTG Foundations beyond five years is almost certainly a bad move. While the set will still sell packs to new players later in its life, it will perform less well among enfranchised players as time goes on.
This is a multifaceted issue and one with no clear ‘best’ outcome. Perhaps we’ll all be able to form a stronger opinion once we get a proper taste of Foundations at Prerelease this weekend.
