In an announcement over on Twitter today, Wizards of the Coast R&D Designer and former Professional Magic: the Gathering player, Melissa DeTora tweeted that she will be leading a new division of the Research and Development team for Magic. This new team is called the MTG Casual Play Design team.
The primary focus of this team is to take a deep dive into Commander and other casual formats, like 2-Headed Giant, to ensure that they are fun and balanced. The things that her team will be looking at are cards that are specifically designed for commander and are not likely to effect a competitive tournament setting, such as FNM, Magic Arena ladder, or the World Championships, as well as non standard sets. Some examples of this would be Commander Legends, Commander Preconstructed decks, Universes Beyond and others.
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There’s a lot of great insight that Melissa provides to the community over in the Q&A in the Official Magic Discord server, so if you have some time to read through it, head over there to check it out! I’m very excited to see this move from Wizards and I’m excited to see what kind of awesome commander focused cards and products come from this team! Do you like this addition to the R&D team? Let us know in the comments!
