Jetmir, Nexus of Revels official artwork for MTG Arena

[Update #2]: Wizards of the Coast has now unveiled all of July's Baldur's Gate cards that are coming for Historic, Historic Brawl and Alchemy formats.

[Update]: MTG Arena has banned the surprisingly effective Expressive Iteration card from the Explorer format.

In order to help everyone pass the time until the Baldur's Gate set arrives on July 7th, MTG Arena has now unleashed a sizable new update. It brings with it 30 digital-only cards as a part of the Alchemy: New Capenna set, as well as a couple of long-awaited quality-of-life tweaks and improvements.

Unlike the previous sets, Alchemy: New Capenna has a slightly better distribution of card rarities (10 Uncommons, 15 Rares, 5 Mythics) which should make it a little bit easier to collect. And just to make things even more straightforward, Wizards of the Coast has also launched a week-long Alchemy Premier Draft event where one common card in each pack is replaced by a random Streets of New Capenna Alchemy card. In my experience it's not even close to being a balanced format, but it's still a nice little distraction from the usual onslaught of blue-white-green decks in the standard draft mode.

As for what exactly the new cards are all about, that you can check out over at the official card gallery.

Besides all of the new Alchemy stuff, the update has also made it so decks automatically switch cards between Alchemy and non-Alchemy versions depending on format, added a 'back' button to events that does exactly what you might think it does, as well as unbanned all cards with 'Perpetual' from Historic Brawl. Don't worry, however, as the newly added rules allow you to remove all perpetual effects from your commander when you're moving them to the command zone, so you can't end up in a situation where your commander is literally useless.

The final thing worth mentioning is that the update has separated your decks into two folders: Starter Decks that contain unmodified beginner decks, and My Decks that holds all of the decks you've created or modified. Right now the system is incredibly basic, but hopefully it's the first step towards giving us actual deck boxes so we can sort our collection in any way we wish.

Once Wizards of the Coast announces anything new for MTG Arena, I'll make sure to let you know. Until then you can check out the full patch notes over at the MTG website, and don't forget to use the "PlayAlchemyNewCapenna" code to get three free packs.