MTG Foundations is the latest Magic: The Gathering set released in 2024 – a unique, beginner-friendly collection with cards designed to remain in Standard for the next five years, minimum. With Foundations now out in the wild, this guide records the key release dates, the most exciting pre-release spoilers, and news as it happened.
After you’re done here, be sure to follow our MTG release schedule for all the latest information – and, for a deep dive into Magic’s grand history, read our complete list of all MTG sets.
MTG Foundations release date
Magic: The Gathering Foundations was released on November 15, 2024. That global release date was confirmed at MagicCon Amsterdam in late June. The full release followed a worldwide pre-release event at game stores on the weekend of November 8.
Before that, Wizards of the Coast ran its customary ‘spoiler season’ of card reveals from October 25 until October 31 – read on for a taste of the cards Wizards dropped to get fans hyped for Foundations to launch!
What is MTG Foundations?
There are four different components to Foundations: the main set, the beginner box, the starter collection, and Jumpstart.
The Foundations Beginner Box is intended to be the first product a Magic: The Gathering fan buys. It contains a full tutorial booklet that eases you into the ruleset. It also has 200 cards.
The box holds ten basic ‘Jumpstart’ style packs, two for each color, which newbies can slam together to form a complete 40 card deck. These have common themes like Elves, Wizards, Healing, Cats, etc.
The Foundations Starter Collection is described as the next step in the beginner’s journey, and has 350+ cards total, plus three play boosters. It’s a hand-curated set of cards, intended to be a new player’s “first shoebox” of cards, full of concepts that will help a beginner get to grips with Magic, as well as some interesting cards to inspire deckbuilding.
The Foundations Main Set is where things begin to get exciting for enfranchised players. Intended for players old and new, this is a Standard set designed to stick around forever, and provide a classic-feeling MTG experience.
This set is 50% new cards and 50% reprints. There are cards from Alpha, new takes on old characters, classic planeswalkers, and well-known staples. Instead of containing just weak cards to provide a baseline, it seems this set will have quite a few powerful inclusions – though nothing that’s likely to attract a ban.
It’s worth noting that all the new cards in the starter set and beginner box are also found in the main set.
The only part of Foundations that is not Standard-legal, The Foundations Jumpstart set is a proper core Jumpstart set with 46 different themes.
If you’re unfamiliar, here’s how it works. Each Jumpstart pack has 20 cards (including lands) with a different ‘topic’, like burn, unicorns, or planeswalkers. You rip open two packs, shuffle the cards together, and have an instant deck to play with.
It’s super fun, but also super beginner friendly, which is why Wizards has borrowed this mechanic for the Beginner Box (see above).
It’s important to note that the Foundations Jumpstart cards are not a part of the Standard-legal Foundations set, and their new cards do not appear in the other products. Instead, they’re playable in eternal formats like Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Pauper.
MTG Foundations spoilers
Prior to release, Wizards of the Coast revealed loads of new cards from this set, and the associated Jumpstart release. Take a look!
MTG Foundations Jumpstart cards
Looking at this selection, the standouts are Scythecat Cub, probably from a landfall theme, which weirdly has bigger stats than its parent, Territorial Scythecat.
Filling the obligatory dose of cute, we have Generous Pup, which can buff up your whole team if you give him a +1/+1 counter. And Frontline Heroism looks really cool for a deck themed around combat tricks.
Foundations Jumpstart packs also feature anime cards, just like the Jumpstart 2022 release. Apparently every pack will have one anime legendary card, like the ones shown abvove. The Vilis reprint is cool, and Taeko looks really strong in ninja decks, but we can’t look away from the glory that is Shroofus Sproutsire, the first ever card with the Saproling creature type!
MTG Foundations Standard cards
The Standard set is possibly the more exciting part, because these cards are going to be kicking about in (arguably) Magic’s main format, perhaps until the end of time. Get ready to get very familiar with the best of them.
Above, you can see there’s a fair few cards from Alpha, but not all the reprints are so simple. There’s some superlative stuff, like Progenitus and Darksteel Colossus, two cards I personally wasn’t expecting to see in Standard any time soon.
Wizards has understandably chosen to focus on the most popular MTG creature types like dragons, angels, vampires, and cats. You can see a couple new examples below.
Both these cards have really cool, simple effects. We’ve seen cards like them before, but that doesn’t mean they’re not sweet. Bloodthirsty Conqueror is Exquisite Blood on a massive flying vampire, while Twinflame Tyrant is a damage doubler on a dragon. The respective typal players are going to love these.
Here are a couple more new cards. 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.
When will Foundations rotate?
The really interesting thing about this set is that MTG Foundations 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 (except Jumpstart) 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.
For more content, check out our guide to the best MTG Arena decks, or take a look at other upcoming sets, in our MTG release schedule guide.