Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast held the stream to talk more about Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate (CLB). While that stream was mostly about the paper set, a little announcement was snuck in, and at the time, it flew a little under the radar. This announcement is about the Companion product coming to Magic Arena with Baldur’s Gate, and it will change the digital landscape of Arena.
Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate
So let’s talk about the announcement. Blake stated yesterday during the stream, that there will be a companion set to release on Magic Arena along side CLB. It’s called Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate (HBG). It’s a set that is going to have cards that are in CLB directly, cards that will get rebalanced to suite 1v1 play, and some digital only cards.
It will be a draftable set, which is a deviation from other Alchemy releases, and will be legal in Alchemy and Historic formats. Now this was the only info given during the stream, and for a little while, that was all they wrote.
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Change is Coming
Now with the announcement of this set, and it’s legality, it raised some concerns in the community about Alchemy as a format.
Saffron Olive brings up a good point. Alchemy was supposed to be a more balance fluid, digital version of Standard as stated by the Alchemy reveal stream. With the injection of HBG, the format now breaks that mold, since CLB isn’t going to be legal in Standard.
We reached out to Wizards for comment on this, and they stated that Alchemy is still so new that they are going to be trying some new and interesting things with the format, Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate being one of them. They still plan on following the Standard set and rotation cadence, and more info will come out closer towards the beginnings of Previews for the set.
Some more info was published on the mothership about it as well.
This info is actually gives us a bit more, with July 16th being the official date given during the stream. This will also be a full fledged set, with a Mastery Pass, and more. With “hundreds” of cards being added in the set, it’s good that we’ll be able to draft the set to acquire the cards.
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Is It That Bad?
My thoughts on all of this is one of a little bit of confusion. I’m generally one for experimentation, and I’m ok with it here. As someone who was a fan of Alchemy and Historic, I think that the addition of these cards will be cool, but I’m confused as to why this isn’t just legal in Historic only.
If the reception of Alchemy wasn’t the best, changing it up has the potential to be a positive thing. But it could also backfire and turn people away from the format who were originally fans. Historic obviously feels appropriate for this set, but Alchemy feels a bit off base and confusing. I’m sure that Wizards will be tracking the reception of this in Alchemy and act accordingly.
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What are your thoughts on this? Would you be interested in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate cards making their way to Alchemy and Historic? Does it change your opinions of the format at all? Let us know!
