This Week in Magic - Friday, May 15th

Posted on May 15, 2026

Arena Championship 12 Next Week

In just one week we're live with the next Arena Championship!

Meet your broadcast team and learn all about #AC12 on magic.gg: www.magic.gg/news/arena-c...

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— Play Magic (@playmagic.com) May 14, 2026 at 4:09 PM

The next major MTG Arena event - the Arena Championship 12 - kicks off next week. You'll have the chance of seeing 110 qualified players duking it out for a shot at the Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour as well as the World Championship.

This time, the format will be Historic Constructed, playing into what makes the digital-only formats of the client so much fun. With the addition of several new cards from Alchemy: Secrets of Strixhaven and the latest Mystical Archive release, there's bound to be all kinds of zany new things happening in the format.

Check it out starting next Saturday on the official Magic Twitch page and take in a metagame like you perhaps have never seen before.

Two Scoops Of Secret Lairs

The Chaos Vault is open, and Two Scoops is here, serving up Back in My Day and Inked in foil and non-foil, all bundled into mix-and-match pairs.. Pick your flavors, pick your finishes, and grab the combo that feels most like you.

secretlair.wizards.com

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— Secret Lair (@mtgsecretlair.com) May 11, 2026 at 12:03 PM

Over the weekend, Magic players everywhere found an unexpected email in their inbox. The Secret Lair Chaos Vault was opening up once again and doing something called "Two Scoops."

This system would allow you to buy two Secret Lairs in any combination you wanted. These lairs were "Back in My Day" and "Inked," and they came in non-foil or foil. Maybe you wanted to double up on one lair in foil or non-foil or you wanted to mix and match them. They provided you with plenty of ways to do things as you saw fit.

The first of the two, Back in My Day, plays up the idea of classic-style cards. This lair takes cards from the Modern era and gives them retro frames, art by classic Magic artists, and wording reminiscent of Beta templating. This can be seen most clearly in the four obsoleted card types between them: Mana Source, Enchant Creature, Interrupt, and Mono Artifact.

The second, Inked, acts as a sort of spiritual successor to the Full Sleeves: The Tattoo Pack lair. Each of the five cards is made to look like a sweet tattoo design and features a host of fan favorites.

All of the configurations for these Secret Lairs sold out that same day, so unfortunately you can't get them any longer. However, they're really sweet cards and a good example of why you should try to stay on top of these if they interest you.

Also, I forgot to mention it last week, but the next Secret Lair Commander precon, titled Goblin Storm, was revealed as well.

Information on this deck has been trickling out onto the internet for a while and we finally got our confirmation of it on May 6th. The deck boasts 20 new full art card arts by beloved artist Wizard of Barge, three additional new art versions of cards, and several Mystery Booster-style reprints.

The deck goes on sale Monday, May 18th. The official Secret Lair page noted as well that to provide the best accessibility to people wanting copies, it will be limited to one per customer. Get ready and take your shot at this sweet new deck on Monday morning.

Rebell Unveils The Commander Template Open Beta

Welcome to the Open Beta! Commander Template is currently live with already 647 users and 517 decks on the hub!

Experience the EASIEST brewing Commander session you'll have with commandertemplate.com

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— Rbbl (@rebell.bsky.social) May 11, 2026 at 2:02 PM

Beloved Commander content creator and Commander Format Panel member Rebell Lily has been working on a really cool project for several weeks. Now, her Commander Template website is up and running in an open beta capacity.

This project is meant to provide Commander players with ways to analyze and improve their decks, as well as compare against others. It can even help you build something new and fun.

This has been a labor of love for Rebell and I encourage you to check it out today.

Decklist of the Week

Believe it or not, there are two Decklists of the Week this time around! There were two major events this past weekend in Japan and in London, both featuring high level Standard play. Each was won by a fairly novel deck as well, and I figured it would be best to highlight both.

?Congratulations to Keiichiro Matsumoto, the winner of the Champions Cup Final in Tokyo, Japan!?
Keiichiro came 2nd in the Swiss with Four-Color Control before cruising through the Top 8 to claim the trophy. GGWP!

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— Play Magic (@playmagic.com) May 10, 2026 at 6:35 AM

Four-Color Control | SOS Standard | Keiichiro Matsumoto, 1st Place Champions Cup Final

Artifacts (4)
4 Tablet of Discovery

Buy This Deck Export text Export Arena

First up was the Champions Cup Final in Tokyo, Japan. This was the Japanese Regional Championship event and was won by Keiichiro Matsumoto on Four Color Control. This Control variant has been popping up a decent amount lately and has been putting up some decent results into the Landfall and Prowess-heavy meta.

Congratulations to Koen de Vos, champion of Magic Spotlight: Secrets! ?

Defeating every Izzet deck in his path to the title, he emerged victorious over a 603-player field and demonstrated just how strong Azorius Momo can be in Standard.

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— Play Magic (@playmagic.com) May 10, 2026 at 3:13 PM

Azorius Momo | SOS Standard | Koen de Vos, 1st Place Magic Spotlight: Secrets (London)

Instants (2)
2 Erode

Sorceries (6)
2 Practiced Offense
4 Daydream

Enchantments (2)
2 Seam Rip

Artifacts (4)
4 Springleaf Drum

Buy This Deck Export text Export Arena

The other event was the first of two Magic Spotlight: Secrets events held in London, UK. This event was won by Koen de Vos piloting another recent innovation of a list in the form of Azorius Momo. This sweet list takes advantage of Momo, Friendly Flier to spit out lots of cheap Creatures, use Daydream to scam them in, and decimate your opponents with serious tempo swings.

With more big tournaments this weekend, including the US Regional Championship in Cincinnati, it's a great time to be jamming Standard. Will things shake up further or will it be Izzet and Landfall all the way down? We'll just have to wait and see this weekend.

Congratulations Keiichiro and Koen on your victories!

Paige Smith

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