MTG Arena artwork for the powerful card Time Warp in the Mystical Archives treatment

[Update]: The Gladiator format has now arrived alongside a sizable rebalance of the Baldur's Gate draft!

In order to help pass the time until the next premier set releases in September, MTG Arena will be launching a spotlight event for the community-made format called Gladiator. The event will run from August 11th to August 15th and will give you a chance to play around with either your own creations or ten pre-made competitive decks.

The rules of the Gladiator format are fairly simple: decks must contain no fewer than 100 cards and no sideboards, with a maximum of one copy of each card other than basic lands. Matches are then played in the best-of-three format, though without any sort of sideboarding between games.

Where things get really interesting is the banlist. Unlike the similarly singleton Historic Brawl that bans many of the overpowered cards, in Gladiator everything besides Field of the Dead, Natural Order, Nexus of Fate, Oko, Thief of Crowns and Teferi, Time Raveler is legal. So if you ever wanted to play with immensely powerful cards like Channel or Demonic Tutor, this would be the place to do so.

It's also worth mentioning that Gladiator uses only the original versions of cards so the rebalanced ones, regardless if they're buffed or nerfed, are not legal. This, combined with the drastically different banlist, should give Gladiator a noticeably different feel than Historic Brawl.

You can read a little bit more about the Gladiator event, as well as keep up with any updates, over at the MTG website.

In slightly unrelated news, you might also be interested to hear that MTG Arena will be launching a Summer sale tomorrow (August 4th). The sale will last until August 17th and will bring with it an assortment of new and old cosmetics, so if there's a particularly fancy piece you regret missing, this might be your chance.

Either way, have fun with the new stuff!