[Update #2]: MTG Arena will be adding 40 new cards for the Historic and Explorer formats on July 28th. Both anthologies have now been revealed as well, and while they're a bit of a mixed bag, there's definitely some fun new cards in there as well.

[Update]: The Baldur's Gate set has now arrived alongside the big balance update.

Over the past few updates the MTG Arena team has mostly rebalanced cards for the newfound and digital-only Alchemy format. However, as a part of the update that arrives on July 7th, they'll be dishing out some nerfs to decks that have been at the very top of the Historic format's meta for many years now: Blue/Red Phoenix and Green/Black Food.

Cauldron Familiar will lose its ability to block while The Meathook Massacre will no longer gain life, which should make Food and Sacrifice decks a bit more vulnerable to early game aggression. Phoenix decks on the other hand will have to contend with Dragon's Rage Channeler only gaining +2/+0 (instead of +2/+2) and the all-powerful Unholy Heat only dealing 4 damage (instead of 6) after its Delirium effect is triggered.

As far as I'm concerned, these are pretty solid changes for the Historic format. They'll open up a bit more space for creature-heavy decks to thrive, but without actually destroying what makes either Phoenix or Food such powerful archetypes. It'll be interesting to see where the meta goes from here, but I have a feeling we'll see more Green or Red aggro decks, along with more control focused decks to counterbalance them.

Besides that, the update will also unban Winota, Joiner of Forces in Historic while nerfing her so she will only pull a single creature out of the deck. It's a massive nerf to a card that was mostly used as a turn 3 or 4 finisher, but hopefully she'll still see play given that the effect is quite strong even in its nerfed form.

When it comes to the Alchemy format, the update mostly brings a bunch of buffs to niche cards that have seen little play since their introduction, as well as a full-on ban of Grinning Ignus since the format simply couldn't handle that type of combo. You can check out the full list of changes, as well as the reasoning behind all of them, over at the MTG website.

Enjoy, and I'll make sure to let you know once the update arrives alongside the Baldur's Gate set.