MTG Salvation

Here's the Arcana link:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1443

Seems like Event decks and Duel decks had a baby?

Uhhh... "Clash Packs are not replacing Event Decks" - Mothership.

Its replacing *some* event decks. Which is good, at least for replacing the Core Set event deck, as those ones aren't fully legal for very long at all.

I think its an interesting intermediate step between battle packs and event decks, but I'll have to see one to have any further opinion.

This is really awesome, honestly, I'm pretty happy to see this, and I'll probably pick up a copy of the 2015 one if it's any good.

Did they rule out legendary creatures from future core sets? I hope they come back with a new color cycle.

M14 was okay, I don't think they can do worse than slivers.

In fact, they also replace Booster Battle Packs

Quote from Marquisd

Also have to figure they are Mono colour or at most both decks use the same colours.

It's clearly blue and green

To be honest, I'd probably pick these up solely for the alternate art cards.

It depends how much LGS will charge, as well as the foil cards.

People want value.

Quote from Bolas, the Mindsculptor

It depends how much LGS will charge, as well as the foil cards.

People want value.

Odds are these will be available at your brick and mortar stores so I doubt an LGS will charge over MSRP on them. Not that they're likely to have all that much value anyways.

there are a few things to note:
- the premium cards are considered promotional cards and not part of M15 (or any other set) as they bear the "shooting star" set symbol as other recent promo cards.
- if this product is standard legal, it means it has cards from Theros/ Ravnica blocks as well, so I wonder if cards from those sets will be printed in the new card frame (most likely so).
- maybe this product will bear its own set symbol as Duel Decks. unlikely though as it is tied to M15 and as noted, the foil cards bear the promo symbol.
very interesting!

Quote from matrix_lord

there are a few things to note:
- the premium cards are considered promotional cards and not part of M15 (or any other set) as they bear the "shooting star" set symbol as other recent promo cards.

This one.

I do believe it's part of M15 or at least in standard. That said, if those 6 cards are outside of standard, it may mean that Wizards wishes to provide some avenues for card availability. Namely cards that are:
-hard to acquire
-eternal playable
-casual favorite in need of reprint
-planted cards for future/supplementary sets (like conspiracy)

The last one is possibly the least likely.

For now all we can do is guess. An educated guess would be M15 cards in premium form. They're given a premium treatment, and with alternate arts (like they did with Holiday sets) to promote or market M15 new frames. That is all.

Quote from Bolas, the Mindsculptor

Quote from matrix_lord

there are a few things to note:
- the premium cards are considered promotional cards and not part of M15 (or any other set) as they bear the "shooting star" set symbol as other recent promo cards.

This one.

I do believe it's part of M15 or at least in standard. That said, if those 6 cards are outside of standard, it may mean that Wizards wishes to provide some avenues for card availability. Namely cards that are:
-hard to acquire
-eternal playable
-casual favorite in need of reprint
-planted cards for future/supplementary sets (like conspiracy)

The last one is possibly the least likely.

For now all we can do is guess. An educated guess would be M15 cards in premium form. They're given a premium treatment, and with alternate arts (like they did with Holiday sets) to promote or market M15 new frames. That is all.

I agree that these promo cards could possibly be cards from M15, but they will not be considered part of the set whatsoever. bear in mind that holiday box promos have alternate art but retain the original set symbol and collector number, which makes them part of the set (just like prerelease cards). this is *probably* not the case here. I think this is the first time WOTC is putting actual promos into a sealed product.

"the Clash Pack comes with instructions that show you how to combine cards from each of its decks to create a new deck designed to be equal in power to what you would expect from an Event Deck"

Sounds to me like they build a dual colored event deck, broke it in half, and made each half a 60 card mono color deck. Considering Star City is charging 30 for the born of the gods event deck, and i will be able to get the clash pack at target... i'm down with an event deck split in 2 for $25

I might buy it depends if the cards have the same symbol or not.

I like having decks where all the cards have the same symbol

Mmm, alternate art promos. This piques my interest more than any event deck has so far.

"It's a great way to introduce new players to Magic. And it also comes with six premium foil cards with alternative art."

Read... we really want to be sure to indoctrinate New Players to get them Chasing Foils!

Snapcaster for blue and goyf for green Seriously though I do like how we get to see the blue and green in the new borders.

Quote from Funk Pirate

So these Clash packs are gonna have 6 premium cards, however saying that they are going to be promotional cards may be a bit of a jump, sure the image clearly shows that the set symbol is the promo symbol, however this may be due to them not wanting to show the set symbol yet.

However if we assume (which is never a good thing) that these will indeed be promo cards, then we could speculate that as these will be about 6 months apart from each other that these could be the FNM promos for the last 6 months? Which could mean the decks are 3 coloured (hinting at wedge theme again?) or a balance therein?

although you might be right, I can't recall a case where WOTC used the shooting star symbol as a placeholder. we know how M15 set symbol looks from the announcement so they could have used it IF these cards were actually from M15, which as it seems, are not. having said that, at this point we can only speculate

The 6 promo foil cards should be nice

Quote from nicholasvd

The 6 promo foil cards should be nice

But for every promo card there will be at least 3 storm crow

MSRP you say? Commander decks at MSRP they tried. LGS jacked them up double the price yet "brick and mortar" stores still sold them at MSRP. Hmmm. I can definitely see this as a price gouging situation with LGS's especially if they have multiple versions of the Clash Pack. Doesn't matter I'll still pick them up anyhow.

I like this idea. It's a Duel Deck and Event Deck and Intro Pack in one product! So John and Jane Doe can pick one of these up from Target, play at home, then mash em together and head over to FNM (and get their butts kicked, but that's beside the point).

So it's a duel deck that's standard legal, includes 4 extra alt-art foils, and cost $5 more than actual duel decks. As a big fan of the duel decks, that sounds interesting.
Or you could see it as the new event deck, now w/ 6 alt art foils and a few extra cards at the same MSRP (if I recall), which sounds pretty sweet.

Either way you look at it it sounds like a nice product, and I'm looking forward to picking one up this summer. (If I haven't blown my whole card budget on Conspiracy before then.)

Considering we already have Duel Decks, I'm surprised they would put this into production. Although I doubt they will do this, it might mean they're interested in phasing out Duel Decks and replacing them with a product that offers the same functionality and then more.

On a side note, is the first clash pack being released with M15 or a little while after the initial release like they do with Event Decks?