Magic Arena Reveals Amonkhet Remastered Release Date, Pioneer Masters, and More

On Wednesday, Magic: The Gathering Arena revealed plans for new Historic and Pioneer format releases for the rest of 2020. This information comes ahead of tomorrow's game update, which brings Jumpstart to the game with 300 new Historic-legal cards. The previously announced Amonkhet Remastered set now has a release date of August 13th. That set will add another 300 cards to the Historic format, curated from the Amonkket block sets -- Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation -- that were available on Magic: The Gathering Arena during its closed beta. The return fo Amonkhet cards to the game is a move that fans have been requesting since the Historic format debuted last year.

The Magic: The Gathering Arena team announced that its next remastered release would not focus on a single set or block. Instead, it curates a selection of cards curated from the Pioneer format, similar to last year's Modern Masters tabletop release. Wizards of the Coast established Pioneer as the newest Magic: The Gathering tournament format in 2019. All sets dating back to 2012's Return to Ravnica format are legal in Pioneer.

The Magic: The Gathering Arena team also confirmed that they are working on Historic Anthology 4. Historic Anthology sets choose cards from Magic: The Gathering's entire history to add to Arena for Historic format play. The Arena team uses Historic Anthology sets to keep Historic a distinct format rather than "Standard plus." On Monday, Wizards of the Coast banned one Historic Anthology card, Burning-Tree Emissary, as well as Nexus of Fate in Historic play. That ban comes ahead of the Historic-format Arena Open tournament taking place on August 1st, where players can win up to $2000.

Other news from Wednesday's State of the Game update includes some Historic-format special events taking place ahead of the Arena Open. On July 24th, Magic Arena will host the Historic All Access Friday Night Magic Event. The event offers players access to every card in Historic for deckbuilding, presenting a prime opportunity to playtest theory-crafted decks ahead of the Arena Open. The Dominaria set will also be featured in Premier Draft from July 31st through August 14th.

To celebrate Core Set 2021, Magic: The Gathering Arena will launch the Festival of Time series of events. The festival beings on August 8th with a Historic Singleton format event. Lastly, Arena is retiring Workshop events, which used preconstructed decks, for the time being.

The new update to Magic: The Gathering Arena goes live on Thursday for PC and Mac.