New League system coming, with a preview during Aether Revolt and the full version coming with Amonkhet. The article describes this as though it were an update to an existing system, but I've never heard of this. I'm not sure how this will all work, or if it will be any fun.
Latest Developments article about artifact destruction
* Just a tone thing, but the opening paragraph implies that they didn't expect Smuggler's Copter to be as ubiquitous as it is.
* In Mirrodin, they didn't like how you were basically required to have artifact destruction in your sideboard or even mainboard.
* They consider the amount of equipment present on Mirrodin to lead to unfun gameplay.
* The amount of artifact destruction in Mirrodin prevented decks based on combining artifacts from seeing much play, outside of super fast ones like
Krark-Clan Ironworks.
* Unlike the Mirrodin blocks, they haven't printed cards that push a powerful all-out artifacts deck, so there isn't a need for strong answers like
Creeping Corrosion (destroy all artifacts).
* Since people will be less inclined to have artifact destruction if the popular decks run a couple of vehicles and that's it, that leaves more room for artifact-based combo decks to work.
* That said, artifact hate will be coming in sets throughout the next year.
* In Limited, a benefit of not making artifacts hard to deal with is that colors like black and blue aren't left out in the cold in terms of removal.
* A solution is to have the artifacts promote strategies that involve creatures, instead of making it "get all the artifacts". That way, black can kill the creatures instead of worrying about the artifacts.
* A hidden benefit of infect in Scars of Mirrodin is that it forced them to make bad equipment, and thus black was stronger there than in Mirrodin.
* This leads to a Limited environment where the puzzle isn't what removal to use, but how to interact with strategies.
Also, random thought, but would a reprint of this be any good this Standard?
Given how so many players are willingly discarding cards.