Magic Announcements: LotR, Commander Masters, ArenaFrom magic.wizards.com
Running hot on the heels of the first look at the Spring set(s), multiple announcements from Wizards on non-Standard-legal sets coming this Summer & Fall:
- Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth is a “Horizons” set (a set of new cards that goes directly into a format other than Standard — specifically, this time, Modern and Alchemy/Historic) that will take up the summer slot;
- Newly announced Commander Masters, also in the summer, seems geared to entrenched Commander players, offering Commander Draft, new higher-level precons, and reprints. The precons have a handful of new cards, but the rest is reprints, as befits a Masters set.
- Arena gets release dates for the Alchemy add-on to ONE, and for Shadows over Innistrad: Remastered.
The amount of product year over year in Magic has not changed, but the announcements have been concentrated so as to leave more time to digest them. If one was feeling product fatigue for whatever reason, it is only likely to be less noticed, not less present.