Paper spoilers for Throne of Eldraine have started and we still have no information about M20 beyond it’s coming in 3.8.
Any chance we can get an update on this?
Does the M20 set contain any mechanics that is difficult to translate? Or is there anything else in M20 that would be an obvious cause for the delay?
I do not play paper so I haven’t seen that many spoilers, so I’m wondering what is the possible cause for M20 not having arrived yet.
Zero new keywords.
Any new unkeyworded mechanics?
Nothing that should be too difficult.
M20 brought back Leylines which may be a slight challenge to implement.
Cavaliers are not more challenging than Zacama and neither should the three color legendaries like Kaalia, Kethis, Yarok etc.
Field of the dead would likely be a land support that interacts with other land supports so make of that what you will.
My guess would be that they are focusing, at least in part, on the Chandra’s. Developing a planeswalker for the mythic and the vanguards for the other 2.
Is there any estimate for when 3.8 is released @Brigby ?
As of right now, I don’t have a solid time frame as to when 3.8 is supposed to be released. Although I did hear that we’re thinking of introducing 2 new mechanics in Core Set 2020, but that’s about as much solid info as I know.
I can only speak for myself here but it’s a Core set and it is already very delayed; no need for adding new mechanics that will probably further slow down the game. Rather have the cards.
This is also causing a delay in the crafting part of the game and more importantly even longer until Standard shifts.
New mechanics. Great. More lag.
Well, this lead me to speculate that it must be something else that is causing the delay of the M20 launch. I wonder if that is good or bad.
As far as I can recall, it has only happened once that MTGPQ is falling behind compared to the release schedule of MTG-paper. That was when Hibernium went belly up. I’m not starting any rumours! 
However, it could mean that the announced performance update is taking longer than expected and that is very disconcerting, at least when you consider the history of Oktagon in regards to performance. On the other hand, it might mean that a fundamental overhaul is in the making. Crossing fingers!
M20 has some cards that are partial color hosers and/or color protection.
Maybe they are making keywords or evergreen symbols for those. Also threshold…?
Either way clock moving fast for us to be 2 sets behind paper.
“Thinking of introducing?” Not trying to hang on every word @Brigby but does this mean the developers are still in the brainstorming stage for m20?
@FindingHeart8 - I read Brigby as “I have previously heard…” so he is referring to a design idea that was floated at some point, but I wonder if Brigby is so closely informed about the development progress that he knows for sure whether that idea is still in the current release.
@SolRing - what is a colour hoser? Can you post a link to a card with this functionality?
Color hoser is a card that hates on a specific color. For instance, Fry reads “deal 5 damage to target creature or planeswalker that is Blue or White”
There are also a few cards with protection from specific colors as well.
Maybe that’s what their coding, instead of the weird workaround we currently have (if a blue creature is out this creature gains hexproof)
Fair, but the whole concept of the sentence still sounds fairly…distant, from a time progression sense at least. Either they haven’t moved past the brainstorming stage yet, or Brigby has not received an update since and it has been a significant amount of time. Neither sounds good to me, as Brigby is pretty much our only source of information on upcoming updates, I would hope he is regularly informed of developer progress and not left in the dark until the last minute
M20 had nothing mechanically new to implement other than maybe Protection which is just a combination of hexproof + prevent damage vs certain colors.
Throne of Eldraine on the other hand will have new mechanics:
- Food tokens / subtype
- Adamant keyword (spells that have bonus effect if you use X amount of a specific color when casting)
- Creatures with an Adventure Sorcery: you can either cast the creature directly, or cast the sorcery and exile the card and later cast the creature from exile.
The last two are all much more complex than anything in M20.
Here’s an example of a Creature with an Adventure Sorcery:
Is that how the new Adventure thing is going to work? I assumed you could only cast the creature if it was exiled from the sorcery. Haven’t seen any explainer articles yet though.
Here you go:
There’s a quote from Gavin Verhey in the article about it.
@FindingHeart8 - totally agree that the development team should be so far that Brigby statement should be more solid.