Guildmage's Forum Second Anniversary Operations Address

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Introduction

A year has flown by in a flash, and Guildmages’ Forum (hereafter “the Forum”) has entered its second year. Compared with the first year, when we were just starting out, devoted to recruiting partners willing to share and establishing the site’s core activities, in the second year, after more new partners joined, we tried new areas such as personal interviews, statistical analysis, and Cube, and we keep seeking more challenges and opportunities, hoping readers continue to find different joys and discoveries as they follow our site.

Next, in this operations address, we will walk you through the key operations of the past year and the outlook for the new year. Let’s take a look!

Reviewing the Key Operations of 2024-2025

The following key points were all written in the Guildmage’s Forum First Anniversary Operations Address, and it is time to review them!

More Beginner-Oriented Tutorial Articles

This goal needs to be substantially rewritten, for roughly the following reasons:

1. The Forum’s articles are still too difficult for new players who have just finished the beginner tutorial

I came to realize this deeply while taking part in a beginner tutorial event hosted by CardMaster: even the Forum’s simplest, most beginner-oriented articles are too difficult for these “super beginners” who have just gone through the tutorial. Too many keywords and ever-longer card text… all of this makes the already complicated rules of the game even more intimidating, and the lack of a Traditional Chinese version makes the problem even worse.

2. It’s an old refrain, but the lack of a Chinese version is an absolute obstacle to promotion

Not every player who likes Magic: The Gathering can play matches with English cards fluently and without trouble. I have seen many players who love this game repeatedly looking up Chinese translations in Limited, and I have even seen a player who, to keep the play experience from being interrupted, made Chinese cards of their own and put them in the sleeves (that’s right, for every single card that isn’t a basic land in their league deck) so that repeated lookups wouldn’t break their experience.

In that moment, I saw that while this game is fun, the barrier to entry is quite high for some people.

3. Having no Chinese version is a given limitation, so what can we do for beginners to lower their barrier?

The solution is simple, but not easy to carry out: veterans should go down and play together with beginners.

Only by playing this game together can the gap between veterans and beginners be observed, and then, depending on how much effort both sides put in, the gap can be narrowed. It is like two people walking toward each other in a dark tunnel: only when we sit down and play a game of Magic together do the lights in the tunnel come on, so that veterans know how far they should proactively walk toward beginners, and beginners can see the veterans and work hard to move closer to them.

Rather than trying to chase after taillights that cannot be seen.

4. So league play is actually super important

By league play, I don’t mean the kind of “league” that ends once the packs are opened, but a league where people really sit down and play, with veterans and beginners playing together. Through real interaction, supplemented by articles or other information, beginners can gradually appreciate the beauty of this game and become willing to invest and try more. A league lasting several weeks to a month lets everyone keep interacting within a limited card pool. And a limited card pool is very important: by learning to read a limited set of cards, beginners can make the most of matches to understand more situations in which cards are used, becoming proficient with and deepening the basic game rules from the beginner tutorial. Only then do players who have finished the tutorial have a chance to become willing to invest in other formats.

I hope readers will support the leagues held by local stores through actual participation, and cherish the chance to interact with the beginners who join. After all, looking back to when we first got into the game, there must have been such players who caught us and carried us along, which is why we are still here today.

More “People”-Oriented Articles

Over the past year, we not only interviewed the MIT Round 1 through Round 6 champions, but also interviewed players 郭子敬 and 黃永銘, seeking advice from these seniors who actively strive to win at tournaments and, previously, at world-level events. Not only for the upcoming MIT Rounds 7 through 9, but for later MIT events too, we will keep interviewing these players.

In addition, besides players on the competitive stage, we are also actively seeking out the profiles of other people who shape this community. Related interviews will meet readers at the right time, so please stay tuned!

Outlook for 2026

Standard Officially Enters the “Guildmages’ Forum” Era

Since Edge of Eternities (EOE) was released on August 1, 2025, the sets from DMU through MAT, all tied to the New Phyrexia war, have rotated out of Standard together. And WOE, which leads the new Standard, happens to be the first set the Forum took part in since its founding. Over this stretch, while we dare not say that every article has reached perfection in practicality, accuracy, or fun, we can at least say we have achieved some modest success. Especially since WOE, besides serving as a database of beginner and advanced Traditional Chinese Magic: The Gathering articles, the Forum has also offered humanistic interviews and some accessible personal reflections. This is the result of the joint efforts of all the partners involved in the site, not the work of one or a few people. We will keep working hard from here, and our goal is not perfection, but to keep improving together with our readers.

Mid-Term Goal: Deepen Interaction with Players in Central and Southern Taiwan

Since most of our team members are currently from northern Taiwan, we have found that players in central and southern Taiwan still know quite little about the Forum. Although many enthusiastic readers keep sharing our articles, to reach the goal of making every player who may need this information aware of the Forum and part of its audience, we still have considerable room to work.

If you are a player in central or southern Taiwan, feel free to contact us through our fan page with any questions. If you are passionate about promoting Magic: The Gathering yourself but have no clue where to start or need some advice, you are also very welcome to get in touch. Let’s put local promotion into practice together, and solve the difficulties along the way together.

Long-Term Vision: Deepen the Relationship of Competition and Cooperation Among Players

Let me first say that this is not a problem the Forum team has the resources to solve; but it is a vision that, if realized, would bring more players committed to competitive formats into deeper involvement.

In Taiwan, the most direct way to go abroad to play a Pro Tour or the World Championship is to take part in an MITQ held by 遊戲平方, qualify, and then place in the top three at the MIT (Magic in Taiwan, whose tournament level is equivalent to a Regional Championship, RC, in other regions) a few months later.

However, I believe that for players who take part in the MIT in Taiwan, competing against each other is not our only option. Competing against each other is certainly very important. Matches are won and lost, and these experiences make players who keep competing stronger. But after each season’s MIT finals decide the players who get to go to the Pro Tour and even the World Championship, do we have enough energy to help these players perform better on the world stage?

As far as I understand, not yet. Or perhaps that energy has been interrupted for more than ten years. I have asked many seniors and players who have gone abroad in recent years, and this still relies heavily on the local community or the help of a few friends. Basically everyone is on their own, each showing their own abilities.

However, after going abroad a few times in the past two years to play non-Pro Tour events, I feel Taiwanese players are not weaker than the players around the world who go to GPs and Spotlight Events (I’ve never played a Pro Tour so I wouldn’t know; seniors who have are welcome to contribute and share XD). But we lack a systematic preparation plan, logistical support, and an effective mechanism to remove the barriers to going abroad for players. Since MIT#4, the number of Pro Tour spots per season has increased from 2 to 3, but not every season do 3 people go. There are many reasons for not going. In short, even after qualifying, competing abroad is still a rather luxurious dream for many Taiwanese players.

After saying all this, what I really want to say is only this: players should strive for their own honor in the MITQ and MIT, but for the Pro Tour and World Championship that follow, they still need a larger-scale community connection, information sharing, guidance from veteran seniors who have been to world-level events, and even research and discussion on constructed and drafting. All of this needs a team that is strong enough and clearly divided in its roles, to have the energy to let the players who can set foot on the world stage perform better.

We are both opponents and can also be partners, and selfless sharing of experience is surely one of the key factors that allows this kind of relationship to happen.

Conclusion: Like a Snowball, but Every Snowflake Along the Path Matters

In running a website, wear and tear arises for all sorts of reasons. How to keep up enthusiasm and constantly remember the value and original intention of promotion is often the core of the struggle in this work. And sometimes, slowing down a little and taking a detour isn’t so bad in terms of the result.

I want to further extend this to what the Forum is doing: making the Magic community experience better, making it easier for beginners to join, and making players more diverse and respectful of one another. I have found that no matter how many articles we write, what actually enters players’ lives and has an effect is still the process of interacting with players over physical cards. So we also do our best to create such experiences together with the friends around us and the players we meet once or a few times. However, just a few of us doing this is still far from enough. I hope readers can also pass on what they have read in the articles to the friends around them, and further to the new players walking into card shops.

“Success need not be mine, but we are part of what leads to success.” As long as we believe this and keep at it, we can naturally overcome the maximum static friction of change, and let things move in the direction we want (rather than toward a result).

The purpose is only to keep this snowball rolling. As for where it will roll, how big it will grow, or how many people’s imaginations it will overturn, that is not within what we expect from doing these things, yet in it, there is you and there is me. Thank you to the readers who have accompanied the Forum all along. Because of you, the second anniversary is a happy one!