Alternately, they'll keep making higher-powered Universes Beyond cards which will then "infect" Standard.
It won't need to 'infect' Standard. UB is going to just BE standard.
There are now going to be 6 standard sets a year (Up from the previous 4) and half of them will be UB. In a year the format defining decks will be things like "Miles Morales Mid-range" or "Chocobo Combo".
I'm torn on this. I go to my LGS and play standard weekly. The format is struggling. I'm relatively new to the game(I've been playing since '21) and the whole time I've been playing, there's been a joke in the community that "No One Plays Standard". They have put out some pretty great sets lately and there's a renewed interest in what is supposed to be the "Main" format of the game.
In a way, this could be a good thing. Supposedly UB draws in a lot of new players, and generally those players get funneled towards Commander. WOTC is now trying to aim that funnel at the 60 card formats like Standard and Pioneer. Players in the formats have long bemoaned Commander, and talked about how much they wish these new players would give their formats a chance. Now it seems like we're getting a Monkey's Paw kind of granted wish here.
I'm not particularly heart-broken about the whole "There's peanut butter(Other IP) in my chocolate(MTG)" situation. Like I said, I'm newer, and not
that invested in the story. The set I was onboarded with, and a large reason I got into the game in general was the Forgotten Realms set. I have enjoyed learning about Magic's story, but it's not the key selling point to me. The game is. Sure, it's going to be a little silly to get blown out by someone tapping Cloud to crew the Green Goblin Glider.. But if the game continues to be fun to play, I think I'll get over it pretty quickly, especially if it means our standard scene grows because of it. Last time I went to play Standard it was only me and one other person.. So the event didn't even fire.
What scares me is the 6 sets a year thing. There was already too much product to keep up with, and now they increased it by 50%. This is beginning to compound with other changes they've made. With the new rotation schedule, we're looking at something like 18/19 sets being standard legal at any given time.. And the sets are coming out every other month.. So good luck keeping up on that. On top of that, with the new "Play Boosters" events like draft or Pre-Release have gotten more expensive. It's $30 to play pre-release at my LGS.. When we had 4 sets a year, I could manage that. I'd usually go to 3 of them. But now that we're getting 50% more sets.. there's no way I could afford to attend all of them if I wanted to.
I don't know. I'm rambling here, but this is something that I'm trying not to feel super pessimistic about, but my gut feeling is that this is going to be bad.
