MTG Salvation

Returning writer DarkRitual explores the deckbuilding opportunities M15 brings to Standard in the first installment of a new monthly series

The returning champion of the Arena, Blue Slivers, will have to test its mettle against a new challenger: Trading Post!

DarkRitual returns to the pen to bring us a new series in Casual Magic, and kicks things off with Slivers against Slivers!

What does basketball have to do with Magic: the Gathering? 99.9 percent of the time the games go somewhat normally. But it's that .1% of the time that I would argue is why we play Magic. That one time the unexpected happens and it gives you a story to tell for years and years to your friends.

For those that don't remember, last block I made a hypothesis about how R&D goes about doing their interblock design. I noticed that Timespiral, a "flavor designed" block as I called it, was sandwiched in between two "mechanics designed" blocks in Ravnica and Lorwyn, and that if you looked closely, some aspects of Lorwyn had "leaked back" a block. The theory was that each block would switch between mechanics and flavor design and the mechanics designed blocks would bleed into the flavor design blocks, and that’s how you would have interblock design between two blocks. New block, new theme, does the theory hold true?

Lorwyn is a mechanically designed set. What do I mean by that? Well, you can probably already figure it out from the name, but mechanic design deals with cards that were designed based on the mechanics.

I believe that one of the best things about the game of Magic is the fact that everyone who has been playing Magic for a while has a story they enjoy telling the people they meet. The following are a few stories straight from the writing staff of MTGS. Enjoy!

Time Spiral Block is a great block for the casual Magic player, especially if you are one of those casual magic players like me that has been playing for a long time. Planar Chaos continues the tradition of bringing back old ideas, old abilities, and old mechanics - but this time with the twist of shifting certain abilities, mechanics and cards into different colors.

Six sliver decks enter, one sliver deck leaves! DarkRitual and LightSpecter pit the decks against one another in a battle for supremacy among one of Magic's most loved creature types.

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far away... Dominaria was under an attack, and all the slivers we loved from the Rath cycle would be sure to die in the Invasion. Flash forward a little, and we learn that these lovable creatures not only survived, but mutated and evolved! Things were looking up for them once more. Then soon after Legions we're thrown into a metal world, never to see slivers again... Until now.

It's finally here! Time Spiral has finally arrived and it looks like it has lived up to the hype. The set itself has much to offer: a record nine keyword abilities used in this set (technically eight because Flash is "can be played as an instant"), cards that remind us of the old school days (like Magus of the Disk), and who can forget the 121 “timeshifted” cards that come along with the set? So much to talk about, but you have to start somewhere.

Around the time the third set in the block comes out, Block Constructed starts becoming really popular. That's not the case this year. Sadly, the one year they dont have an individual block constructed event is the same year that probably one of the best block constructed formats in a while occurs.

DarkRitual: So, is there anything I can break in Coldsnap?

Spike: I dunno

I'm really excited about what Coldsnap is offering the casual player. There are a couple of pretty good constructed cards in the set. But for the most part, this is a casual set. I'm not going to talk about every card that will effect casual, but I will talk about the best ones.

Welcome to today's episode of Casual Magic with yours truly, DarkRitual, as the host. Today we will be talking about a very sensitive subject: Unwanted rares that have been rejected from society to live a life in the dark corners of the everyday player's rare binder. Tonight we have three guests that have a dream of being in a deck, and we will try to make their dreams come true.