When you say "sanctioned play is a teeny tiny percentage of Magic play" does that include officially supported digital formats on Arena and MTGO? What counts as "sanctioned play" digitally? Just tournaments with entry fees? Does the ladder count?

I was more focused on tabletop play. All digital play is sort of sanctioned.

I definitely have a feel good MTG story. I was a military brat growing up and so was always on the move. I was taught to play MTG while in high school in Germany with original Innistrad and in turn taught all my friends there. The friend group drifted apart as we moved and got older, but then Covid hit and playing magic online became the norm. Me and these old friends from high school all started playing magic together online in that time, and it managed to bring the entire friend group back together. People that hadn't played since high school started joining in, and it's now a weekly tradition to hop online and play commander together despite being spread out all over the country, and brought the friend group back together together even though many of us haven't seen each other in person in 12 years.
Thank you so much for giving us this wonderful game that has kept our group together, and have a happy birthday! You deserve it!

Thanks for sharing your story.

Are there any plans to make a Universes Within set for mtgo. Filled with magic versions of cards from Universes Beyond sets?

Not currently. The current market research says there isn’t a large enough audience for it. We’ll keep checking in though to see if the sentiment changes.

Most of my issue with UB, particularly the commander decks, is their lack of availability on MtGO, as well as their lack of cohesion at some points. Individually, the cards are absolutely flavor wins, but as part of a precon they really don't work cohesively. Take the Timey Wimey precon for example. That deck was absolutely pulling itself in different directions by trying to be time counters and investigate, and then several cards that had nothing to do with either strategy. I would have been more satisfied had the deck been all in on the time counters, rather than trying to split the deck's strategy.Another example is the Ruinous Powers 40K precon. It had a very heavy demon theme, but it was split between demons-matter/aggro and cascade/spellslinger. Flavorfully each card is an absolute banger. But the decks as a whole really lack a real focus on one or the other. An example of UB doing well is the LotR set as a whole. It allowed for flavor wins while still keeping themes appropriate for its strategy, with blue/black/red being heavy on amassing orc armies and buffing orcs, while green/blue was focused on scrying and payoffs for scrying. Flavor wins, while still keeping a clear focus for deckbuilding.

You’re comparing apples and oranges. A preconstructed deck has different limitations than a randomized product.

There are many reserved list cards that got new illustrations in Magic Arena, Magic Online or promotional stuff (like the giant cards given in Vintage and Legacy Championships). Is it possible we get art cards of those illustrations in paper?

It’s hard to do as we’re not allowed to print Reserved List cards in paper, regardless of what art it uses.

I just wanted to praise the people responsible for the changes to MTGO Commander draft format (1 game instead of 3, shorter clock) as well as the people responsible for the Commander Masters set design. This felt like a real game of Commander. I was able to ramp into Maelstrom Wanderer on turn 4, but the rest of the table was able to adjust, and there were enough powerful plays to keep it compelling and enough evasion and card draw to prevent it from dragging. Excellent job!

I’ll pass along the kind words.

There was a time when Arena looked like the future of Magic. I am personally thankful that is no longer the case. Has the focus on making fewer options for cards (such as draw a card vs target player draws a card) been re-evaluated yet to prioritize gameplay for paper Magic again, yet?

While digital doesn’t look like it’s going to eclipse tabletop anytime soon, there are still many millions of games played on Arena (and Magic Online). We still have to keep digital concerns in mind when deciding on rules text.

Rather than solely focusing on Blogatog, how about an Un-set about meta Magic discourse? Content creators, DailyMTG, Spoiler season, Blogatog, customer support, Scryfall and other online resources, MTGO and Arena bugs, etc. It's been 25 years since Unglued, there's a lot more to talk about.

All Un-sets can have some in-jokes, but a set aimed at in-jokes probably cuts off too much potential audience.

With preliminary data coming out of recent MTGO leagues looking healthy for the adoption of Unfinity cards into Eternal play, does that bolster the chances of reviewing past silver-border cards for future 'eternalization'?

Could you give me more info on this?

Will anything from unfinity be on arena?

Some things will be on Magic Online, but nothing is currently planned for Arena. Arena does have access to the art/frames for all the full-art lands, but I don’t know if they have plans for them.