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Reverting Standard Rotation

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I was pinged about this about one-hundred different ways, but in case you missed it there was a huge announcement on The Mothership yesterday. The long and short of it, is that Standard is reverting from the new 18 month rotation back to the two year rotation.

This announcement will apply to the current Standard legal sets, meaning that Amonkhet will not cause Battle for Zendikar to rotate out of Standard. In other words, get used to this guy.


I was personally enjoying the new rotation system, though many players felt like it made Standard rotate too much, and made the format feel less accessible to less enfranchised players. It certainly made it more expensive to have a deck on week one or two of every new Standard format.

This will impact investment strategies with regard to the current sets, and you can expect this to be expanded upon on the Insider side. Shadows Over Innistrad positions certainly have gotten more interesting.

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Ryan Overturf

Ryan has been playing Magic since Legions and playing competitively since Lorwyn. While he fancies himself a Legacy specialist, you'll always find him with strong opinions on every constructed format.

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One thought on “Reverting Standard Rotation

  1. The most important thing is that Amonkhet will not have fetchlands. Under the previous rotation, the BFZ dual lands would have rotated with the arrival of Ammonkhet, which would have been the earliest possibility for enemy Fetchlands to be safely reprinted in standard (the next opportunity would have been 2 blocks later, with the rotation of Kaladesh).

    Now, with the “new” schedule, Ammonkhet will arrive with a full 2 cycles of Enemy and Allied dual lands still in standard. When rotation hits BFZ and SOI, we lose the 2 Allied Cycles and 1 Enemy Cycle. We probably either get an Allied Cycle in Ammonkhet, or none at all.

    The nice thing about the 2 rotations a year setup was the ability for WotC to keep the dual land situation stable (always 2 full cycles of lands), which meant no color combination was overly favored on dual lands.

    That said, since Standard was suffering and attendance was getting lower, I’m quite satisfied with the return to the previous system.

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