Magic 2010

Finally, some news on the next Core Set that comes out this summer. How many of you expected 11th Edition? Wrong. The new Core Set will be called Magic 2010, as this article on the WotC site is saying. Wonder how they came up with that idea?

One realization we came to as we examined our core sets was that our naming convention itself was probably more than a little scary to newer players. "Tenth Edition? I'm already nine editions behind? Do I need to start with the first edition?" Showing our age on the front of the box is not a great tactic for enticing people to try out a "new" game. To solve this problem, we took a page from car makers and the aforementioned Madden NFL video game franchise and are naming core sets after years—specifically the year after the product is released. That means this July's release will be called the Magic: The Gathering 2010 Core Set, or Magic 2010 for short. Heck, you can go even shorter than that if you like, calling it by what appears in the expansion symbol: "M10."

So, we'll have a new Core Set every summer. Also, there will be 50% reprints (Lorwyn Plainswalkers will be back as Mythic rares) and 50% new cards. It's sounds interesting. We'll see how would it turn out.

And, you wonder how this will rotate in and out?

To accommodate this much more rapid core set turnover, we are changing our format rotation policy beginning in the summer of 2010 with the release of the Magic 2011 core set. Magic 2011 will not knock Magic 2010 out of Standard; instead there will be only one rotation date per year, when the large Fall set is released. When the set codenamed "Lights" is released late in 2010, it will knock the Shards of Alara block and Magic 2010 out of Standard at the same time. Core sets will rotate as if they were part of the block preceding them. For approximately three months per year starting in 2010, there will be two core sets legal at a time, which is also a first.

Note that when Magic 2010 is released this summer, Tenth Edition will rotate out as per our normal existing policy.