WotC Hints at Power 9 Coming to Arena

Last updated on April 9, 2025

Time Walk – Illus. Chris Rahn

Some of MTG Arena‘s eternal formats – and especially Timeless and Brawl – may get a power boost soon-ish, as Conjure-only cards get added to the regular card pool.

Yesterday's WeeklyMTG stream went over MTG Arena's MTG Arena State of the Game 2025 – Spring Edition, also published on Tuesday. And in the stream the MTGA devs dropped an interesting hint that was absent from the article:

By around the 38 minute mark, the devs strongly hinted that some of the cards in the conjure-only pool, that's to say cards that can be created by other cards but are not part of the pool you can brew with, may be added some time this year to MTG Arena as part of their next Anthology.

Conjure: Multiplying Magic Cards in Arena

Ancestral Recall – Illus. Ryan Pancoast

If you only play tabletop Magic, you may be wondering, what the heck is a conjure-only card? Is it like some kind of digital tokens?

MTG Arena has a bunch of digital-only mechanics, which all appear on designs made for Arena's Alchemy format These digitally exclusive mechanics would be downright impossible to do on paper, or be too cumbersome to manage.

One of those mechanics is conjure: You basically create, out of thin air, an MTG card and add it to the game.

The poster child for that effect is the infamous Oracle of the Alpha:

Oracle of the Alpha conjures the Power Nine into your deck even though those cards are not available for MTGA players to brew with. It's not that Ancestral Recall or Black Lotus are banned in Brawl (like they are in Commander) – the cards simply do not exist as part of the card pool you can craft with wildcards.

MTGA Players have been asking for a while for some these cards to be actually added to the MTGA “real” card pool – and, according what the devs hinted yesterday, we may soon get our wish, probably as part of an Anthology that, from what they said, “would be surprised if it didn't come out this year.”

Brawl is Due For a Power-up

What MTGA formats could get a power boost, then?

Timeless is a very safe bet. According to yesterday's Arena State of the Game article, Timeless is the least popular digital format…

source: MTG Arena State of the Game

… but on the WeeklyMTG stream the devs were clear that the Timeless players are a really devoted bunch, and very into their favorite format. And Timeless is the one format in all of Magic (digital and tabletop!) with the shortest ban list: literally zero cards. So if there's one Arena format that gets to play high-octane Magic, then Timeless would be it.

Historic is less likely of a possibility, given that the devs specifically want it to be a more curated experience, and with a lower power level than Timeless. Fetch Lands, for example, are unplayable in Historic, while legal in Timeless.

But the other digital-only format that may welcome a big boost is Brawl. It already has access to the majority of Arena's card pool, and according to the graph it's become Arena's second most-popular format, behind only Standard (at quick glance, about 45% of the Arena playerbase plays Standard, and 22% plays Brawl, making up around 2/3 of the number of games between the two formats).

(WotC_Jay clarified on reddit that, “Brawl on the chart includes both. It's ~90% (Historic) Brawl and about 10% Standard Brawl.”)

And it's clear the devs are going a long way to cater to Arena's singleton format. For example, “In a few short weeks, the dragonstorms will intensify with the release of Alchemy: Tarkir. We've conjured up something very special alongside this Alchemy drop: the ten Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander face cards to power your Brawl decks.”

Tron Lands, Ponder, and the Power Nine?

There are several super-powerful Magic cards that as of now can only be conjured, but could be added in a Timeless or Brawl Anthology.

The beauty here is that, as far as coding is concerned, these cards all already exist on Arena. They are simply not available as part of the card pool you can craft and add to your deck, but they have already been coded in and work as part of another conjure card.

Tron Lands

Urza's Construction Drone, an Alchemy card from The Brothers War, conjures Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant and Urza's Tower into your library.

As Modern and Legacy staples, the Tron lands are surely solid additions to Timeless, and probably even Historic.

Power Nine

The infamous Oracle of the Alpha puts Ancestral RecallBlack Lotus and the rest of the Power Nine into your deck. Letting the Power Nine loose on Arena may prove too powerful, but perhaps Timeless could handle them?

And if allowed in Brawl it would certainly give the format its own flair. Digital cards are not included into the Reserved List, so Brawl players could have toys that Commander players can only dream of!

Ponder, Preordain, Serum Visions

Ponder, Preordain, and Serum Visions can all be conjured with Tome of Gadwick.

Banned in Modern, Ponder may be too strong for Historic, but seems okay for Timeless or Brawl. And the other two seem like cards that all of Arena's eternal formats can handle.

Wrapping Up

Black Lotus – Illustrated by Chris Rahn

To wrap up, let's make sure what's Fact or Fiction:

• Both the MTG Arena State of the Game article and the stream confirmed that they are thinking about the next antology. The article doesn't include a deadline, but they said on the stream that it's very likely “before the end of the year,”
• The article doesn't say a word about adding conjured-only cards to the regular card pool, but in the stream they hinted strongly that it's on the table.

This is something players have been asking for a long time, and these are cards that are already coded in, so a lot of the work is already done. No hard promises were made, but seems like something we're likely get on Arena fairly soon!