[Update #2]: All of MTG Arena's upcoming Shadow Over Innistrad Remastered cards have now been revealed.

[Update]: MTG Arena is getting a sizable Lord of The Rings themed expansion on June 20th.

A fair few months have gone by since Shadow Over Innistrad Remastered was first announced, but I'm happy to say that the long wait will soon be over. According to the latest developer steam, Shadows Over Innistrad Remastered will be launching onto MTG Arena on March 21st with 302 'new' cards to mess around with, as well as an extra 81 cards that include some classics from the original Innistrad!

All of the cards from the Shadows Over Innistrad block will be legal in both Historic and Explorer formats, while the legality of the extra 81 cards will depend on which set they're from. Personally, I think Wizards of the Coast will be taking this opportunity to flesh out some of the currently underdeveloped Explorer decks, so I'm expecting a good chunk of these bonus cards to be either Pioneer staples or just fan-favorite jank.

Either way, I'll make sure to let you know once we get the full list of cards. So far the only ones that have been confirmed are Thing In The Ice, Sigarda's Aid and Relentless Dead which, needless to say, are all quite solid cards.

The good news doesn't end there, however, as the MTG Arena team has also announced that the Alchemy mini-expansion will be arriving next week, on February 28th! The Alchemy: Phyrexia set will bring with it 30 brand new cards to explore, some of which are already looking quite spicy!

For example, the freshly revealed Spawning Pod (pictured above) is essentially the same card as Birthing Pod, where instead of being able to search for a specific creature you instead seek a random one of the appropriate mana cost. In other words, if you carefully construct your deck to only have one creature at each mana cost, you can have a slightly better version of Birthing Pod to combo off with!

Much like Shadow Over Innistrad Remastered, the full list of cards for Alchemy: Phyrexia has sadly not been revealed just yet. Once that changes, or Wizards of the Coast releases a few more juicy details, I'll make sure to let you know.

The final thing worth mentioning are the long-requested improvements coming with the Alchemy: Phyrexia update. These include the ability to not only select your favorite land so your decks automatically fill up with them, but also the ability to select your favorite card style!

It took quite a while for us to get here, but this is definitely a welcome change, and hopefully just the start of a whole series of quality-of-life improvements for MTG Arena.