Guildmage's Forum Third Anniversary Operations Address

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

Introduction

Another year has whooshed by, and Guildmages’ Forum (hereafter “the Forum”) has entered its third year. This June, our Facebook page passed one thousand followers. It is not a number to be complacent about, but it does let us believe there are still players willing to read, discuss, and invest in preparing for competitive play.

In our third year, the team has moved from rapid expansion into a steadier phase, one that also needs us to find a new breakthrough. Along the way we have gotten clearer about which content deserves continued investment and how to allocate our limited manpower effectively. This address is not only a look back at what we did over the past year; we also want to explain the difficulties we see and where the Forum will focus next.

1. This Year’s Trade-Off: Standard Content Stays, but First Looks Are on Pause

In our first two years, the Forum put a great deal of effort into Standard first looks at every set release, trying to explore decks before the metagame settled. That kind of content is fun and shows off the charm of constructed, but it requires constant testing, discussion, and brainstorming, which is intense work that a part-time team of enthusiasts cannot sustain over the long term. On top of that, too many sets were released from 2025 to 2026, and the team could not keep up with that frequency and update steadily.

Rather than promise a full Standard first look for every set, we would rather put our content into things we believe are needed or that can really last. For example: limited set ratings, interesting and understandable constructed ideas, players’ hands-on experience and tournament reports, and articles that help readers build a basic framework, such as our translation of Reid Duke’s classic “Level One.” Special thanks to JerobaMTG for continuing to try out interesting decks. Exploring card interactions themselves is still the most fascinating part of Magic: The Gathering, and JerobaMTG’s articles always bring readers unexpected surprises.

Why Has Standard Become Harder to Follow?

After the three-year Standard rotation policy announced in 2023^{Note 1}, by the time HOB came out in August 2026, Standard already included 18 sets, with 2 more coming before the end of the year. More sets means more cards players need to understand and more complex interactions. For players who want to compete seriously, staying familiar has become a continuing expense. It is not simply that the card pool is more than twice as large as before; it is a triple burden of money, cognitive load, and time.

We should not oversimplify the problem as “the three-year rotation makes Standard harder to follow.” Three-year rotation extends the lifespan of decks and also gives sets with standalone mechanics a chance to get related support. The real pressure comes from the larger card pool, the densely packed new set releases, and the power creep in individual cards.

Before the ban list update on August 10, 2026^{Note 2}, the problem with the top decks was not just that they had many threats, but that their main plan, backup threats, and resource sustain often supported one another. Targeted sideboard cards can slow down one of those routes, but they cannot necessarily handle the other game plans at the same time; and the top decks can also shift their pace after swapping sideboard cards, making it even harder to turn a match around with a few targeted cards alone. Worse, if a player over-commits their sideboard to suppress one top deck, their win rate against the other top decks drops. With this give and take, the room for other strategies to hold a stable win rate has been visibly squeezed, and the competitive deck types in Standard have concentrated even more heavily on the top decks.

On the other hand, high-rarity individual cards are almost never reprinted in Standard sets. If a card is a core piece that many top decks cannot replace, its price easily stays high and can even keep rising. Of course, this doesn’t mean every strong card is necessarily expensive, and factors such as bans and new set releases letting new deck types rise can all change prices. But for players who want to get into Standard, the price risk of “what if I buy in and it gets banned next month?” is hard to ignore. Today’s hard-to-follow Standard is the result of these factors overlapping. The longer rotation window only makes the situation drag on for longer.

Badgermole Cub, Stormchaser's Talent, and Gran-Granwere banned on August 10, 2026, which helps ease the current concentration of Standard around Temur-colored (blue-green-red) decks. However, bans are a last resort after all, and nobody wants to spend a lot of money painstakingly collecting cards only to keep worrying that they might get hit. If the official side has to keep relying on bans to keep the Standard ecosystem balanced, it is hard for players not to question its card design and the effectiveness of its testing, and so harder to maintain players’ confidence in this format.

2. The Community Difficulty We See: Local Players Need Their Own Home Turf

The competitive Magic scene in Taiwan once had communities in different regions, based in card shops, with groups of players from all over testing themselves against each other. A card shop is not just a place to hold tournaments; it is also the entry point where new players learn, collect cards, find practice partners, and meet friends. Judging from reader feedback the Forum has received, our team members’ experiences at events, and our exchanges with some shops and players, competitive play in several parts of central and southern Taiwan is facing problems such as a lack of organizers, events that struggle to run consistently, and no way for new players to get involved. Only when local communities can survive steadily can local exchange accumulate, and only then is there a chance to grow the soil in which new players develop.

We bring up history not to be nostalgic, but to remind ourselves that communities do not form on their own. It takes people willing to round up others to play, shops willing to support events, and the drive to meet regularly. When these three things happen, players have a chance to slowly build trust in each other. Once community members build friendships through long-term interaction, the possibilities for sharing information and resources grow with them. If you are in central or southern Taiwan and want competitive Magic to have more possibilities, you might start small: schedule regular practice, run a draft, set up a group where new players can ask questions, or talk with a shop about a small-scale event that fits local players’ needs. There is a lot you can start trying.

The Forum does not plan to build one big discussion group dominated by players from northern Taiwan. We would rather see communities form around their own localities. If you want to start doing this, feel free to message our Facebook page. We are happy to share practical experience in event planning, format design, and community management. We hope everyone can develop better and have more fun playing.

Competition is not the opposite of community. Top players of course have no obligation to publish their preparation strategies, sideboard guides, or key game plans for free. Those results come from time, practice, and competitive pressure, and they deserve respect.

But success at world-class competitive events cannot be achieved by one person alone. Even the strongest player needs opponents of similar level and reliable testing partners to point out blind spots. Even seemingly indirect help, such as sharing event schedules, tournament experience, or a basic understanding of the current metagame, can greatly lower the preparation barrier for newly qualified Pro Tour players. It also gives more people a chance to become “opponents” who are really “partners.”

And in this area, SamuelChang of 鳥不喇基 is already doing exactly that. Whether it was the tournament coaching before MIT#11, the complete guide to Sultai Demons and his read on the metagame before leaving for Spotlight: Chiba in 2026, or the experience he shared with Taiwanese players at many Pro Tours this year. This help does not necessarily mean publishing all of one’s preparation work, but it makes it easier for newer players to do well at big events. We also want to give special thanks to SamuelChang for what he has put into Taiwan’s competitive Magic scene!

4. Website 1.0 Redesign and New Features

This August, the website got its first feature update, which we call “Website 1.0.” If you find any problems, readers are welcome to report them via Contact Us.

Tournament Calendar

The new “Tournament Calendar” (Calendar) is a feature the team members have long wanted, and we believe many competitive players need it too.

The information expected to appear on the tournament calendar:

MIT, MITQ, LCQ
Pro Tour, World Championship, Spotlight Events in the Asia-Pacific region, MagicCon, and so on
Mid-sized officially organized events such as Store Championships and APAC events
Mid-to-large events run by distributors, such as the 睿卡杯 and its qualifiers
Special non-weekly events run by local shops; shops are welcome to contact us proactively to let us know

We will not proactively list every shop’s prereleases, weekly events, and the like one by one. Prereleases for new sets will be flagged by event week, and players should check directly with nearby shops. Local events should still follow shop and local community announcements. This division of labor keeps the calendar readable, and it does not conflict with the importance of local communities running independently.

Reader Sponsorship Now Open

When you do something unpaid, beyond the initial burst of enthusiasm you also have to think about staying power after the passion burns out. Starting this year, we have opened a sponsorship page, Sponsor Us. If you agree with the Forum’s content and direction, you are welcome to support us, as long as it doesn’t affect your own life.

Sponsorship funds will be used in the following order:

Basic operations: covering the fixed hardware and software costs of the website server and domain, easing the team’s out-of-pocket burden.
Project fund: subsidizing featured interviews and attempts at other new topics.
Internal reward: after the first two needs are met, serving as an incentive for team members. The specific form will be decided internally.

If there is a topic you would like to see, feel free to leave a suggestion in the form, but we must state that the Forum remains a hobbyist group built around unpaid promotion, and sponsorship does not guarantee the production of any particular topic. If you want to thank a particular author, you can also note that on the form.

Guildmages’ Forum Sponsorship Page

5. Looking Ahead to 2027

2026 was a relatively difficult year for the Taiwanese Magic scene, and even more so for competitive players, but that doesn’t mean there are no signs of improvement.

1. Standard will rotate again

After the first set, Nauctis, releases on February 5, 2027, the 6 sets from WOE through DSK will rotate out^{Note 3}, leaving 17 sets in the format. There is no guarantee that the new metagame will welcome a blossoming of deck diversity, but rotation will at least break up the existing metagame and deck types and let players reassess how to approach the new Standard.

2. The number of Standard sets released in 2027 drops to 6

According to the information announced so far, 2027 will have 3 in-house Magic sets and 3 Universe Beyond (UB) crossover sets, 6 Standard sets in total. This is still a dense update pace, so we cannot expect the pressure on players to ease from the set count alone. But thanks to rotation, some existing card combinations and even deck types will be removed, and a new Standard environment will arrive.

3. 2027 will see the first MagicCon held in Japan!

MagicCon: Tokyo is confirmed for May 14 to 16, 2027. Besides the Pro Tour and various qualifying events, it will include stage events, community gatherings, and all kinds of play experiences. For Taiwanese players, this will be an important chance to experience international events and the international player community. As long as anything about Magic draws you in, you can always find your fellow enthusiasts at MagicCon! Reunite with friends from abroad, or even form new connections! MagicCon is the best occasion for this kind of experience.

Don’t forget, an event this much fun is surely twice the fun with friends! Put it on your calendar and plan your trip early!

Closing: Cards Are the Vessel, but the Magic Happens in the Community

A healthy community needs different groups to support it together. Without collectors willing to crack booster packs, limited players, shops, and ordinary players, the prices and difficulty of obtaining individual cards would rise sharply. And those individual cards also have to flow into the hands of players in every format for the game experience we take for granted to hold together.

Of course we know that cards have prices, card shops need operating profit, and products need to be sold. The problem has never been that commercial activity exists, but whether the pace of business, tournament support, card supply and demand, and the player community can keep a sufficient balance. When a player spends a lot of time and money wanting to take part in tournaments but can hardly find interesting matches or partners to improve with, and even has to worry about how bans will affect them, what they lose is the reason to keep participating in this format. For the Standard players the Forum has come into contact with, the product hype of 2026 did not automatically turn into a better tournament experience; on the contrary, metagame tracking, sideboard adjustments, and deck costs have made them feel that Standard is getting harder and harder to commit to over the long term.

At this difficult moment, players’ disappointment needs a local community to catch them: a place where they have someone to vent to, and after complaining can still sit down and play a few matches, spend some time discussing whether a certain opening hand should be kept or whether a certain match could have been played better, and still feel that Magic is really fun. And to keep some anticipation too: to see whether next year’s post-rotation environment brings new possibilities, and whether the first MagicCon in Tokyo turns out to be any fun…

Magic does not exist on pieces of cardboard. Magic exists in the interactions at the table, in the flash of inspiration while thinking, in the memories of discussing and exchanging ideas with other players, and in the bonds a group of friends form because of it. From start to finish, cards are only the vessel that carries these experiences.

Because all of you are willing to put your time into this community, the Forum’s third anniversary is not merely a commemoration of survival but a piece of magic that is still happening.

Happy third anniversary!

^{Note 1:See Revitalizing Standard. From then on, the Standard rotation cycle was extended from two years to three; the move aimed to revive in-person Standard play, increase the lifespan of decks and cards, and strengthen the event ecosystem of local game stores. However, the strategy announced afterward in 2025, in which UB crossover sets enter Standard and the number of releases increases, has made the barrier of the extended-rotation Standard format even higher.}
^{Note 2:See Banned and Restricted Announcement – August 10, 2026. Among Standard decks, three core cards were banned together: Stormchaser’s Talent from Izzet Prowess, Badgermole Cub from green landfall, and Gran-Gran from the Lessons deck. Standard was reset once again through bans.}
^{Note 3:See Aligning the Universes: Making All Our Sets Legal in All Our Formats. The article mentions that the 2027 Standard rotation will happen in sync with the release of the first set.}