What Moxfield Needs to Do to Make Their Magic: the Gathering Social Media Website a Success

Thumbnail image illustrated by Andre Garcia, courtesy of Moxfield


In November 2022, Moxfield announced that they are developing a Magic: the Gathering-focused social media website. They released this mockup image in the announcement:

Image of official Moxfield Social Media mockup.

Moxfield is one of the most popular deckbuilding websites in the Magic community. It has seen explosive growth over the last 2-3 years, and by focusing on Magic, Moxfield has already carved out a unique niche for a social media site. 

Discussion around Magic on other sites has some inherent issues, such as difficulty linking cards or displaying decklists. In Moxfield’s case, these tools are already built into the website, which makes it the perfect platform for a Magic-centered social media site.

Now, all it needs to do is execute the development well in order to make itself the best place to discuss Magic. In no particular order, here are a few changes they’ll need to make to achieve that, and a few samples of what that might look like.

Redesign the profile page

Currently, Moxfield’s profile pages are one of its weakest points. A few changes that would make a big difference for their current design is the ability to make the user’s deck folders publicly visible on this page instead of only showing the most recently edited decks.

Here’s a quick mockup image of how social media could be integrated into Moxfield’s profile pages that I put together.

Image of a Moxfield profile, redesigned to add sections for recent posts, recent decks, photos and videos, and recent articles.

Disclaimer: these are not actual images of what Moxfield is developing. These are only layout ideas that I edited together specifically for this article.

The biggest change here is that the profile is split into multiple sections. Posts, decks, photos and videos, and articles (more on that below) by the user will be easily accessible in different tabs within the page. 

Instead of having to scroll through dozens of old posts to find a specific article, I can quickly check through just articles by switching to that tab. If I want to check their decks but not their other posts, I can easily look through them while avoiding any pesky articles and photos.

This might sound like a small change, but it would go a long way towards making Moxfield something more than just a deckbuilding website. 

Writing and publishing full length articles on Moxfield

Social media is often used to share articles with the Magic community, and every time I see an article written as a Reddit post, it makes me wish there was a more convenient way to self-publish articles.

When making a Reddit article, you don’t have the ability to embed decklists onto the website or to hyperlink cards (like this: Celestial Kirin). Moxfield has the ability to make that happen. Here’s what a current embedded Moxfield decklist looks like:

The embed would be even more seamless if the decklist was native to Moxfield rather than embedded onto another website. 

Moving into content creation isn’t that crazy for Moxfield. They already have a mild history of article creation. Last year, they published their own article for their spoiler card from Dominaria United. I’m confident that anything the public would be using to publish articles would look very different, so this won’t be new territory for Moxfield.

Additionally, many users have added primers to their decklists which are very similar to articles in their own way. Here’s a primer template by Eisenherz I found on Moxfield which shows off some of its capabilities.

All-in-all, I believe that making it easier to create high-quality written content would make a huge difference in the Magic community.

Replace the comments section on decks

One of the biggest reasons people stay with TappedOut instead of moving to Moxfield that I’ve heard is that there’s more discussion on the site. Becoming a social media website would make discussion the first thing you run into on Moxfield.

When they make the jump, I want to see the comments section replaced with a “Recent Discussion” and “Recent Comments” section. This would show any recent posts about the deck or that include a link to it as well as any recent comments that link to the deck. 

Here’s a quick mockup of what that might look like, right below where the decklist would be. 

Image of a replacement for the comments section

Because of the greater emphasis on the social media portion of the website, this wouldn’t need to be front and center like comments are on TappedOut. Discussion is meant to occur on the rest of the site, and this is a way to get back into the conversation.

Clicking “View full discussion” could either take you to the post where the decklist would also be included or perhaps expand the post within the deck’s page instead as a pop-up of some sort..

This one might be a bit more controversial than some of my other ideas, so let me know if you think that the comments section on deck pages needs to remain intact. Would it be better for comments on decks to show up in the feed, like replies to tweets on Twitter?

Follow specific deck categories

I imagine that the social media feed for Moxfield will consist of posts, decks, photos and videos, and articles. Their current “feed” for decks is made up of decks posted by people you follow, sorted by most recently edited or created. 

I’d like to see this expanded so that you can follow very specific categories of decks which include even those from people you don’t follow. Here’s an example of what that might look like. 

Image of what the control page for following multiple hubs might look like.

This would let me follow Abzan Commander decks with a +1/+1 counters theme and really curate the decks that I find on Moxfield. I think this is really important because one of the parts I disliked the most about TappedOut was how the front page rarely had any decks I was interested in. 

I’d love to be able to focus on types of decks that I really enjoy and want to see other people’s takes on them. This includes being able to follow specific decks so I can keep up with them as they get updated so each time they update, it gets put into my feed.

As a minor detail on the feed itself, decks are going to need to be collapsed with a “See More” or “Expand” button. A large commander decklist would take up too much space on the feed otherwise. I’m largely ignoring these types of details in this article because I strongly believe Harry and John from Moxfield would catch any small issues like this.

Moderation and allowed content

There are a lot of very strong opinions out there on what moderation levels should be allowed on a social media platform. Current Magic: the Gathering social media is about Magic, and the people who play it. 

That’s a very diverse set of people. There are adult content creators, politically involved people, younger folks, and many other types of people, and the resulting discussions will inevitably have some folks in a fit about it. 

I don’t know what the answer is to this. Does every post need to be focused around Magic? Obviously due to native features, the community would congregate around Magic, but what would be allowed or not to post? A real life update from a Magic pro as they take a selfie at a restaurant sounds like an acceptable post to me, but maybe not everyone.

Personally, I figure there shouldn’t be any 18+ adult posts. Magic is listed as a 13+ game, and I think posts should be appropriate for that age group. That would be very similar to the restrictions on Facebook and Instagram. 

Beyond that, I don’t know what the solution to moderation is, except that it’s going to be integral to the success of Moxfield as it grows. I hope a lot of time and thought goes into developing these moderation and content guidelines, as well as how it will be enforced and by whom.

I genuinely think the team at Moxfield has the ability to make an incredible product that we’re all excited to use, and that it has the potential to reshape conversation around Magic. 

There are a million details involved with setting up a social media website, and I’ve only covered a few. Let me know what you think Moxfield really needs to be successful! There are many different directions one could take with something as big as a social media website, so I’m excited to hear your thoughts.

Author: Arsteel

Micah Dilts, probably better known as Arsteel, is a Magic: the Gathering player and owner of this site. Micah has been playing Magic since the release of Avacyn Restored. Check out Untap Open League's various social media platforms on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.