In the vast world of Magic: The Gathering, Standard legal sets are obviously the bread and butter releases. Over the 31 long years of Magic’s existence, Wizards has released over 100 of these sets to varying degrees of success. In 2025, Wizards is leaning even harder into Standard with a staggering six sets comprising the release calendar.
Despite Standard legal premier sets being MTG’s core experience, these sets aren’t the best sellers. Time and time again, high-powered Modern-legal sets have proven to be the real winners. Between Modern Horizons and The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, there’s no denying that strength sells.
Even with this impressive sales history, the future of non-Standard legal sets appears to be in jeopardy. Not only is there little space on the MTG release calendar anymore, but players might not want them either.
Sticking to Standard
Looking ahead to the 2025 release calendar, Wizards doesn’t have any direct-to-Modern MTG sets planned. Instead, the six Standard legal sets, and Innistrad Remastered, are the only releases we’re getting that year. Given these sets go all over, and three are Universes Beyond crossovers, there should be plenty of variety, but not in power level.
While knowing what’s on the docket may be comforting to some, other MTG players are still worried about what’s next. Tumblr user Izzipurrito, for instance, recently took to Blogatog to ask Mark Rosewater for “Please no more direct-to-Modern sets.” Currently, Wizards hasn’t announced plans to make any more direct-to-modern sets, but the possibility is nonetheless scary.
Curiously, responding to this request, Mark Rosewater, MTG’s Head Designer, set up a poll to gauge player interest. As usual, MTG players have quickly flocked to this poll to share their opinions and potentially guide the game’s future. What’s more surprising, however, is the fact that MTG players apparently don’t want any more direct-to-Modern sets.
While the poll hasn’t concluded, the majority of players have voted “no” to wanting sets with a higher power level than Standard. Currently, around 45% of players have voted this way, while only 36% want more high-powered sets. So far, over 1,200 players have voted in this poll, which makes it a pretty sizable data set. That said, 1000 players are a minute fraction of the millions-strong worldwide player base of MTG.
Even with this in mind, it seems that MTG players know what they want. Despite the sales history of direct-to-Modern sets, this isn’t really that surprising. As much as they might sell well, these sets have been fraught with constant controversy. Subsequently, it might be in Wizards’ best interests to listen to players here.
Persistent Problems
Even if you only started following MTG in 2024, you’ll know the problems that direct-to-Modern MTG sets can cause. Despite Wizards claiming they learned their lesson, Modern Horizons 3 completely warped the Modern metagame. Not only did Nadu, Winged Wisdom take over the format, but Energy decks have run rampant since.
Frustratingly, this is not a new trend for Horizons sets as they’ve each pushed Modern in a new direction. While this breath of fresh air can be fun in theory, the cost of a Modern deck makes forced rotations inherently problematic. On top of this, players have to hope that the format is being warped for the better, which isn’t guaranteed.
Unfortunately, these problems aren’t just limited to being caused by Horizons sets. Commander Legends has caused similar problems with White Plume Adventurer and, of course, there’s no forgetting The One Ring. With these ban-worthy cards in mind, it’s no wonder that players aren’t keen for Wizards to create more potentially problematic sets.
On top of these issues, it’s also worth noting that direct-to-Modern MTG sets are only really for Modern and Legacy players. Sure, Modern Horizons 3 had Commander decks, but the namesake format was still the focus. Admittedly, some cards like Nadu were infamously designed with Commander in mind, although last-minute tweaks were the problem there.
While Horizons sets can somewhat serve Commander players, direct-to-Modern cards are obviously unplayable in Standard. Throughout recent years, this wasn’t a problem, but the times have changed. Standard is Wizards’ driving force currently, so printing non-Standard legal sets is somewhat dubious. After all, it’s simply sensible to ensure that each product is playable by the highest number of players possible.
Not All Bad News
While direct-to-Modern sets have had their problems, they’re not universally hated. Evidently, 36% of players quite like them for one reason or another. Once again, this isn’t actually all too surprising, as Modern Horizons sets have historically been great fun. Regardless of which format you play, high-powered bombs make the world go around, and direct-to-Modern sets provide plenty.
Even though they may be detrimental for Modern, Horizons sets can be fantastic for Commander. The same is obviously true for Commander Legends sets, which directly support multiplayer mechanics and play. In theory, preconstructed Commander decks can do the same thing, although Wizards doesn’t tend to push their power that far.
Given the power level of the Commander format overall, higher-powered sets are almost vital to keep things interesting. Sure, Wizards can make fun new cards like The Jolly Balloon Man to enable new strategies, but the staples are all the same. Sadly, new staples are difficult to print in Standard-legal sets as they risk dominating the format.
Since Standard is meant to be balanced and competitive, having another place to print high-powered cards is a godsend. Technically, preconstructed Commander decks do allow for this somewhat, but Modern gets left out. While Modern can occasionally be affected by new Standard-legal cards, Wizards has to be careful not to go too far.
Suspect Schedule
Regardless of whether or not direct-to-Modern sets are actually a good thing, none are currently planned. Instead, Wizards seems to be going all in on Standard for the foreseeable future. With six Standard legal sets being released yearly, there’s little room for anything else. Currently, January is the only free slot in the release calendar, and that’s typically reserved for remastered releases.
While the release calendar seems to have a set schedule, for now, Wizards can obviously change things up. Given how well Horizons sets have sold in the past, it would be foolish to think they wouldn’t do this eventually. Should this happen, we can only hope that we won’t get another format-warping bonanza that requires emergency bans.
Ultimately, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens when the future arrives. Players may have made their opinions heard right now, but it’s unclear how much weight this will have within Wizards.
