The digital only Magic: The Gathering format Alchemy is going to be cut from MTG Arena. Digitally-rebalanced cards will revert to their original wordings across all formats on September 22, while events and queues for Alchemy games will shut down on February 22 2027. Whether you're happy, sad, or - more likely - utterly ambivalent to see Alchemy go the way of the dodo, this could be a brilliant opportunity for the Arena team to bring other Magic formats to the platform to fill the void.
The final Alchemy set will be Alchemy: Reality Fracture, released on October 13. I hope that the game designers working on Alchemy-only cards have been rehomed into the teams who bring the ever-expanding range of paper MTG sets into Arena - but it would be excellent if they were trying one of these more ambitious projects instead!
Pauper
Pauper rules. This sixty card format's peculiar card pool - any and all cards that have ever been printed at common rarity, minus a banned list - gives the format surprising power yet also a feeling of being very fair. There are no real bombs, just great card combinations that span the entire history of the game. The result is that paper Pauper has the healthiest, most diverse metagame of any constructed format.
Getting parity with paper Pauper on Arena will take way longer than it did to import Pioneer. But a dedicated mode approximating Pauper would still be great. Arena already runs Midweek Magic events for common-only decks: give us a queue, events, incorporate the Pauper banlist and the cards that have been printed at common in paper and at higher rarirites on Arena, and we're off to the races.
Gladiator
Gladiator also rules - check out the Prof's video at the Tolarian Community College for a very quick rundown. This fan-supported Arena-only format uses 100 card singleton decks drawn from almost the entire Timeless pool, minus a banlist. Critically, there are no Commanders.
So while decks can play with broken powerful cards, but without the lynchpin Commander or the redundancy of running multiple copies of a card, players have to pull from far more of their card pool to support their strategies.
Gladiator has had very occasional Midweek Magic events, but it deserves its own queue. It also doesn't use rebalanced cards, so it's going to adapt to the loss of Alchemy very easily! As it stands, the best way to get involved is to join the Gladiator Discord community.
DanDȃn
DanDȃn rules so much. Rhystic Studies video 'Forgetful Fish', above, gives a great overview of how this fan format works and its history, but here's the basics. Both players play from a single deck, a blue pile of mischief cards - since there's only one library, manipulating it becomes a game within a game. The only source of damage is copies of DanDȃn, a 4/1 blue fish that can only attack an opponent who controls an island, and is sacrificed the moment you don't control one.
DanDȃn doesn't warrant its own queue, but it would make for a great recurring Midweek Magic event. Many variants to the original deck list exist that have surprisingly nuanced effects over the game, stopping it from getting old. And if nothing else, it's a hell of an education in how to play blue decks.
But what do you want to see? More effort to get true parity with paper Pioneer? Oathbreaker? Commander? Everyone says they want Commander, but a player roping out is going to waste three other players' time instead of one… Let us know your thoughts in the Wargamer Discord community!