Quick service post for my fellow Arena players, because this week is unusually stacked and one item is genuinely urgent. Set your coffee down; there’s a deadline in the first paragraph.
Last Call: The Summer Sale Ends Today
The Arena Store’s villain-themed summer sale wraps up today, July 28. If you’ve been eyeing cosmetics, bundles, or anything else in the store, this is the annual discount window and it closes tonight. I gave you the heads-up to wait for this sale two weeks ago; now I’m giving you the matching heads-up that waiting is over. Check the store, buy what you already wanted, and — traditional dad reminder — only what you already wanted. A discount on something you didn’t need is not savings, it’s marketing with extra steps.
The Cube That Planeswalks: Now Entering Innistrad
The coolest thing on Arena right now is the Planar Cube, and it levels up today. Quick primer if you missed it: it’s a draft cube with a fixed 200-card core, but the majority of the cube rotates to a new plane every Tuesday — pulling cards from all of Magic’s history to match that world’s themes. Week one was adventure-world Zendikar. Starting today, week two takes us to Innistrad, Magic’s gothic-horror plane — graveyards, werewolves, the whole spooky buffet — and week three heads to Kamigawa after that. The event runs through August 8.
As a returning player, I love this format concept more than almost anything Arena has done: it’s a guided tour of Magic’s greatest worlds, one draft at a time, and the weekly rotation means it never goes stale. If you’ve never drafted before, a cube like this is a delightfully low-stakes place to learn.
This Weekend: Avatar Boxes on the Line
And for the competitive-curious: the next Arena Direct runs July 31 through August 2, this time in Avatar: The Last Airbender Sealed, best-of-one. The reward structure follows the usual shape — a few wins earns gems and packs, while running up six or more wins can score you actual physical Avatar Play Booster boxes, while supplies last.
My standing Arena Direct advice applies unchanged: treat the entry fee as the price of a fun evening of Sealed, not as an investment with a box on the other end. The players who win boxes are very good and very numerous. But if you love the Avatar set — and its fans are devoted — this is a fun weekend to sling some bending.
That’s the week, friends: spend carefully today, draft spookily tomorrow, bend elements this weekend. Between this and Hobbit spoilers finishing up, August is arriving fast — and Dad’s calendar is already flinching.