MTG Foundations is the latest Magic: The Gathering set releasing in 2024. A beginner-friendly collection of cards designed to remain in Standard for the next five years, minimum, it’s quite the interesting product. Here we’ll fill you in on the Magic Foundations release date, show you the latest card spoilers, and share everything we now know about this upcoming set.
Foundations comes out just a couple of months after MTG Duskmourn. New sets keep showing up, so be sure to follow our MTG release schedule for all the latest information.
MTG Foundations release date
Magic: The Gathering Foundations is releasing on November 15, 2024. That’s the confirmed global release date, revealed at MagicCon Amsterdam in late June.
We don’t yet have confirmation of other dates surrounding the set, but if Wizards of the Coast sticks to its usual schedule – and we don’t see why it wouldn’t – we can surmise that the set will have its prerelease on the weekend of November 8, and that it will come to MTG Arena around November 12. As we say, these are not confirmed, so don’t go writing them in your calendar with an indelible marker.
When will Foundations rotate?
The really interesting thing about MTG Foundations is that this set won’t rotate after three years like other Standard-legal releases. Instead, it’s planned to stick around in Standard until at least 2029, and Magic’s head designer has already discussed the possibility of extending its stay yet further.
In other words, all the Foundations cards are going to be a part of the format for the foreseeable future. It’s an intriguing prospect – a set of cards that is always available for players looking to build a MTG deck. Whatever Wizards adds to the set will be a near-permanent part of Standard Magic.
We’re particularly interested to see what MTG planeswalker cards and legendary characters get immortalized in this manner. Wizards has promised five mythic-rare planeswalkers, one for each color. Based on the official artwork it has shared, we can expect an Ajani and Liliana card, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for any more clues.
MTG Foundations spoilers
Foundations will have a combination of new cards and reprints, and we’ve already seen a handful of each. Far from containing just weak cards to provide a baseline, it seems this MTG set will have quite a few powerful inclusions. It seems to be mainly focused on classic, well-known cards and cards with quite simple effects.
Wizards has shown us just a couple of new cards for the time being. There’s Nine-Lives Familiar, a great aristocrats card with badass flavor text, this poor mog seems destined to be fed into Witch’s Ovens and fitted with Skull Clamps.
Then there’s Anthem of Champions, an extremely basic, but very cheap Anthem effect that makes all creatures stronger.
The reprints we’ve seen so far include Omniscience, Llanowar Elves, and Day of Judgement. All three will likely have a major impact on Standard going forwards.
Llanowar Elves makes ramp-based green decks much more viable; if there are good cards that can reanimate enchantments then some kind of Omniscience combo deck is a no brainer; and Day of Judgement is a very cheap board wipe that will benefit control decks.
MTG Foundations news and details
Like most Standard sets, Foundations will be a Draft set. To support this it will have 20 gold uncommon cards (two for each MTG color combination). Each color pair will get one card that’s intended as an enabler for a particular strategy, and one that’s designed as a pay-off, rewarding you for following a particular archetype.
Foundations will be sold in the usual Play and Collector boosters, but it will also have a couple of new products, a Beginner Box and Starter Collection. The Beginner Box has 200 cards total (10 packs of 20, with two for each color).
The idea is that players can mix and match cards Jumpstart-style to instantly form new decks. We don’t know as much about the Starter Collection, except that it’s described as the next step, and has 350 cards total.
We don’t currently know whether there will be Commander decks released alongside Foundations.
For more content, check out our guide to the best MTG Arena decks, or take a look at other upcoming sets, like Bloomburrow.
Source: Wargamer
