Nothing about the article indicates that the product comes with sleeves, just that the container is large enough to account for sleeves if you buy them.Quote from Ryperior74 »75 sleeved cards (you heard me sleeved)
- Univited Ghost
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Crypt Rat posted a message on Goodbye duel decks hello challenger decksPosted in: The Rumor Mill -
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Shuikkanen posted a message on Relentless DeadThis is an oddly befitting necro...Posted in: The Rumor Mill -
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LouCypher posted a message on New Big Box Store MultiPackThe real mystery is why I hadn't locked this yet.Posted in: The Rumor Mill -
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jeremage12 posted a message on Modern Masters 2017 March 17Posted in: The Rumor MillQuote from Oddjob9 »I should have probably getting it, for reals. Instead I'm sitting on a ton of what I knew for certain wouldn't be reprinted, Hierarchs and Karns and Vials and Explosives, all moving in the correct direction.
Mishra's Bauble was my only miss so of course I'm salty about not having a perfect record on calling these sets. If you maintained my level of excellence, any little mistake would gnaw at you, too. I got in on a set of Bauble's yesterday early morning after the Signets were spoiled but frankly I'm not sure it will be shipped to me, it hasn't yet.
So back to the original intent of my post, the majority of this set's value has all been printed in much cheaper standard sets just the last few years. If you're so new that you don't have that then I suppose it's more understandable to get excited over opening the same cards from $10 packs.
Man, you are one hell of an arrogant prick. -
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enollava posted a message on First direct mention of Serra in a long timeDear Wizards of the Coast, please spare the lives of innocent goats. If you print a Serra PW card, do it for other reasons. Don't do it to murder small peaceful goats.Posted in: Speculation -
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willpell posted a message on List of Published Planes as of Magic: OriginsThis is a list of MTG planes in order of introduction. It excludes planes which have never appeared on cards, but includes cards such as Planechase's Plane cards, with whatever information is known about them. Feel free to add any information I have missed.Posted in: Magic Storyline
* Dominaria - Primary setting of the game for nearly all sets until 2004. Retroactively the setting of Alpha, Antiquities, The Dark, Fallen Empires, and most of Legends; explicitly identified for the first time in Ice Age, IIRC. A planet substantially larger than Earth, despite having similar gravity (unlike with other planes, we actually know it to be a spherical planet, since it is depicted as a globe on the Stronghold card "Invasion Plans"), Dominaria is subdivided into numerous continents and regions; the core set and Legends (as well as the set "Weatherlight", which came later and was the first intentional portrayal of this as a particular area) primarily revolved around the island-dotted region known as the Domains, which included such locales as Bogardan, Urborg, the Llanowar Forest and the island of Benalia. Antiquities and the Ice Age block mostly took place on the continent of Terisiare, while the Fallen Empires set introduced another called Sarpadia; the Mirage block (and later the Prophecy set) revolved around the Jamuuran continent, and both the Odyssey and Onslaught blocks took place on yet another by the name of Otaria. The "Urza's" block visited numerous areas of Dominaria which may or may not be part of these other regions, including Benalia again, Keld, the island of Tolaria, the continent of Shiv, and the forests of Argoth (a continent of its own, but near Terisiare) and Yavimaya (on Terisiare proper). Yet another specific region of Dominaria is depicted in Magic Origins; the home of Liliana Vess, who was born as a well-respected noble's overly privileged heir, this unnamed fiefdom features some highly unusual and specific setting details, such as a mention of "skin-witches", a clerical legion known as the Forward Order, and the involvement of an enigmatic being known as the Raven Man.
* Rabiah - Retroactively the setting of Arabian Nights, which predated a clear notion of the game's setting being specific to various planes. Subsequent lore dictated that "Rabiah the Infinite" is actually 1001 different planes, split from a single original due to the actions of the planeswalker Taysir.
* Phyrexia - Though initially alluded to on just two Antiquities cards, Phyrexia would grow to become the second-most significant plane in Magic's early storyline. Being almost exclusively black-aligned, it was never a suitable setting for an entire expansion despite its prominence; it is explored extensively in Urza's Saga, but receives its most thorough investigation in the Invasion block (mostly through exported warriors, but also via a visit by a strike force of planeswalkers which ends with its destruction). An artificial plane created by the Dominarian artificer and plague-doctor Yawgmoth, Phyrexia is named for the process of "phyresis" which the then-human madman regarded as the ultimate process of all life - a twisted view of evolution which mandates ultra-Darwinism and ends with the piecemeal transformation of organic lifeforms into mechanical ones, requiring extensive torture, necromancy, and industrial cannibalization along the way. That Yawgmoth was insane and then some is indisputable, yet his demented genius is equally visible in the success he achieved, which particularly included his own ascension to the status of "the Ineffable", a vast and decentralized consciousness which not only controlled but inhabited virtually the entire plane. Very little of this information appeared on cards.
* Segovia - Mentioned only on a single card in the Legends expansion, and only later explained as being a unique plane; due to the aforementioned card's unusually small size for its creature type, Segovia was concepted as being a "miniature plane", a notion which is alluded to by its sole subsequent appearance in Planechase, but has never been clearly explained.
* Ulgrotha - First explicitly distinct plane created as a Magic setting for an entire expansion, rather than just a handful of cards that vaguely imply an alternate world - giving the otherwise unremarkable Homelands expansion an important place in Magic history. (The use of a world-globe as the expansion symbol is thus more fitting than the designers probably realized.) Ulgrotha is a rather sleepy little plane, long isolated from planeswalker interference by the aforementioned Taysir; with the exception of a single very dangerous vampire warlord, its denizens were largely innocuous and engaged in only trivial conflict. This had the side effect of making them fairly undesireable as combat minions when planeswalkers again began to visit the plane and summon its creatures; few of them are of remarkable quality for the purpose of wizardly duels, and they are likely happier beings as a result.
* Wildfire - Another single-card plane, this time from the Mirage block. As its name suggests, Wildfire is a plane of elemental fire, whose efreet denizens build palaces on tiny islands surrounded by an ocean of lava.
* Rath - The first really robust new extraplanar setting invented for Magic, Rath was host to the first fully unified three-set block (its prequel set "Weatherlight" having a rather loose connection to the rest of the Mirage block, to which it theoretically belonged). Created by Phyrexia to serve first as a staging area for its invasion of Dominaria, and then to physically merge with the other plane in order to transport the requisite mass of troops, Rath was an unstable and nightmarish world composed largely of the magical substance "flowstone", a volcanically-derived material actually made out of nannite-sized artifact creatures, enabling it to shift shape on command. The flowstone was manufactured from volcanic energy sources, and this influx of matter caused the mass of the plane to increase, which was somehow essential to causing the dimensions of Rath and Dominaria to merge. Ruled in draconian fasion by a totalitarian warlord known as an evincar, Rath was nonetheless home to considerable diversity of life, only some of which was part of the plane's intended purpose; in particular it is the original home plane of the Slivers, hive-minded organisms which would prove to be among the multiverse's most enduring and pernicious creatures. Due to Rath's artificial nature, it also possessed a semi-connected parallel plane known informally as the "shadow realm", which was home to three races of insubstantial ex-humanoids locked in a constant war.
* Serra's Realm - For all the planeswalking that Urza did in the course of his Saga, this was the only new Plane invented for the purpose; Serra had been alluded to in the flavor text of Homelands, and an Angel bore her name all the way back in the base set, but it was only now that we found out what she was really all about. Her nameless artificial world was designed as a paradise, according to her own conception; nonetheless, Urza found it only slightly more palatable than Phyrexia, and predicted that both of these artificial planes would eventually disintegrate. A physics-defying world where slabs of earth float in an infinte sky of golden clouds, with spatial distortions making each chunk of land seem boundless to any being on its surface, so that only its winged angels may truly encompass its vastness. (Despite this statement in the novels, card art routinely showed the edges of the floating land-plates in scenes with a ground-level viewpoint - a typical example of the inconsistency between different portrayals of early Magic's creative side.)
* Mercadia - First plane (and only one to date) to exist exclusively in a single large set (or "standalone expansion" as it was called at the time), Mercadia played a significant role in the saga of the Dominia-Rath-Phyrexia conflict, but was never really acknowledged again thereafter. Somewhat sloppily concepted, and widely denigrated for its lack of any keyword mechanics (even what would later be called "ability words" are nigh-impossible to construct for its cards), Mercadia was perhaps the least-respected "mainstream" set since Homelands, and since its conceptual framework was largely reproduced by Fiora, the setting of the Conspiracy set, it is unlikely we'll ever see Mercadia again, aside from occasional callbacks in sets such as Planechase that go out of their way to give a nod to Magic's long and storied past.
* Mirrodin - At the time of its creation, this appeared to be a completely new plane, connected to the game's past only by a single character; only hints were dropped at the way it would later prove to be just a further continuation of the Phyrexian saga, an event that became obvious only when the setting was revisited many years later. Revisiting the "artifacts" theme on a far grander scale than its predecessor Antiquities, Mirrodin was indeed a sort of revised Phyrexia in that it was a holistic, five-color (well, four really, as its green cards never really cooperated with the artifact theme of the rest of the set, save for a little bit in the final expansion) vision of how to combine life with artifice. Its creator Karn had been created as part of *his* creator Urza's thousand-year war against Yawgmoth and Phyrexia, and with the war seemingly over, Karn had created a world intended to be what Phyrexia should have been, not a nightmare-realm of industry gone mad, but a shiningly perfect artifical realm which was initially inhabited only by Karn's fellow golems. In Karn's absence, his "vizier" Memnarch went mad and began importing organic lifeforms to the plane in order to study them; this sowed the seeds for the plane's eventual transformation into New Phyrexia, a more polychromatic and varied vision of phyresis, but still a plane of extraordinary nightmarishness, as far as possible from its designer's originally polished plan. Sucks to be Karn.
* Kamigawa - After over a full decade, Magic finally introduced its first plane which had NOTHING at all to do with the epic of Dominaria; even after another near-dozen years, it remains a self-contained story with no apparent links to any other part of the storyline (aside from a single planeswalker who originated there, and a few references in books or online stories which are never mentioned in actual card text). Like Rath only even more so, Kamigawa is really two planes - a physical universe much like any other, known to its inhabitants as the *kakuriyo*, and a conjoined metaphysical dimension which they call the *utsushiyo*, inhabited by incomprehensibly alien beings whom the Kamigawan people regard as spirits, worshipping them as the incarnate forces of nature. Or so it was prior to the events of the block, in which the spirits declare war on the humanoids after the loss of one of their own; projecting their essence into the material world in a legion of bizarrely misshapen forms, and frequently refusing to stay dead, these beings are originally all part of a single incredibly vast entity which incarnates the entire spirit world, all lesser spirits being truly only aspects of itself. While Kamigawa had somewhat disappointing sales for the company, it had a far more enduring legacy than other "failed" sets such as Mercadian Masques; its highly insular design meant that it plays poorly with the rest of Magic, and its power level was savagely curtailed after the excesses of its immediate predecessor, but its extremely strong emphasis on highly detailed fantasy storytelling has ensured that it retains a cult following.
* Ravnica - The tenth major plane in Magic history (if Shandalar is excluded, along with the two single-card planes mentioned above and any others I've forgotten, but with Phyrexia and Serra's Realm included despite them having only partial sets to their credit), Ravnica is the crown jewel of the game's entire history, widely accoladed as the best design and most memorable setting which MTG has ever had. "Gold" multicolored cards have always been beloved by the players, and this block embraced them like no other expansion before or since (other than the plane's direct sequel eight years later). The factionalization of the ten "Guilds" was popular enough that Wizards has endlessly revisited the concept, and the plane's wide acclaim was doubtlessly the reason for its eventual close association with Jace Beleren, the de facto "face" of modern Magic as a whole.
* Lorwyn - The introduction of the Planeswalker type would prove to be this set's most important contribution to Magic lore, but it is fondly remembered for many other reasons. It is a plane of dreams made real, which shifted from whimsical storybook escapades to the nightmarish realm of Shadowmoor - and will presumably eventually shift back, although the fact that it's possible to play with cards from either or both still contradicts Magic's general creative metaphor, given that time-travel is explicitly not part of the "planeswalker package" according to lore that was JUST established and reconfirmed in the previous year's "Time Spiral" block.
* Alara - A somewhat mishandled but still fairly robust effort at revisiting the Gold theme, in a slightly different version, just three years after Ravnica. The Shards of Alara block presented what were originally five distinct planes, then merged them into one, while also re-introducing a formerly minor character with the intent of making him THE archvillain of MTG, belatedly replacing the fallen Yawgmoth after more than five years. How well this effort has worked is open to some debate, but regardless it is clearly the primary legacy of the Alara block in creative terms (in less creative ones, the reduction of set sizes has probably cast a longer shadow over the game than Bolas ever could).
* Zendikar - A conceptual homage to Wizards' other cash-cow fantasy brand, Dungeons and Dragons, Zendikar somewhat awkwardly tipped the hat to the notion of braving trap-filled ruins and rugged landscapes in search of fabled rewards, but failed to explain how anyone can eke out even a basic living in such an environment, let alone get a thirst for adventure and go off on a treasure hunt. Yet another new recurring threat to the Multiverse was introduced in the block's final set, which was unprecedentedly a second "standalone" large set within the same year. This threat, a race of beings called the Eldrazi, would be expanded upon extensively in the "Battle for Zendikar" block, which largely ditched the D&D influence in order to focus more upon Zendikar's "land matters" theme and the threat of its annihilation.
* Innistrad - By now, the notion of Magic as a game of plane-hopping, rather than constant reiteration of a single universe's story, had been firmly established. Managing to perform a new take on "dark" fantasy which was adequately different from that of Shadowmoor before it, the setting remains a fan favorite.
* Theros - Another plane designed for conceptual purposes (Gothic Horror in Innistrad's case, Greek Mythology here), and thus somewhat more sensible than the likes of Mirrodin or Zendikar, which start out with "let's make Card Type X matter" and somehow attempt to build a coherent setting from that basis. Like Kamigawa, Theros is a two-for-one special on the world menu; its mortal inhabitants are watched over by gods from an adjacent reality, but in their case it is *physically* adjacent, appearing to form the night sky overhead, although this is partially poetic license.
* Tarkhir - The most recently introduced full-block setting - the twentieth plane if we include all those listed above plus Shandalar and Fiora, elsewise the sixteenth major plane overall, or the fourteenth to have entire sets devoted to it, or the twelfth to have an entire block. Like Lorwyn, it actually has two contradictory versions due to time-travel shenanigans, plus a past era which governs the transition between them; likewise, nothing prevents you from playing cards that hail from all three of these mutually irreconcileable versions of the plane together, and no explanation of how the Jeskai and the Ojutai can coexist has been offered.
* Shandalar - Second only to Dominaria for having the most overcomplected and revisionist history in the game, Shandalar started out as the setting for the well-beloved Microprose computer game, which revolved around the Fourth Edition of MTG's Core Set, with a few additions. Later, somewhere over the course of the short-lived "Magic Twenty-Xteen" series (abandoned halfway through the relevant decade), it was reimagined to justify lumping these "archetypal" designs together into a single setting. (I had the privilege of working on the Magic 2012 set's creative side, and nobody *ever* told me that it was set in Shandalar; as far as I can tell this was a later retcon, but I could well be missing information which indicates that this was the plan all along.) Originally described only as "mana-rich", and otherwise being almost entirely conventional, Shandalar 2.0 received very specific (if somewhat cliche) detailing later on, loading it with details entirely unconnected to the original PC-MTG version (which had its own lore, and we've never received any acknowledgement of that beyond the reuse of the name).
* Fiora - Setting of the miscellaneous Conspiracy set, whose place somewhere outside the mainstream of normal Magic is second only to the two "Un" sets (which might have something vaguely resembling a setting unto themselves, but certainly don't fall within the creative canon of the normal game), Fiora is essentially a Take Two on the general concept of Mercadia, with a cloak-and-dagger cityscape built on a huge round platform that towers over various loosely-described wilderlands. The first booster-pack expansion specifically designed for multiplayer games, and not considered part of any block, Conspiracy nonetheless was designed with the overall Magic creative direction in mind, unlike the "Un" sets and various other oddments, and so its setting belongs on a list of official Magic planes, while the backdrop of "Portal 2" (which I learned after writing this is actually not a separate plane, just yet another part of Dominaria), or the speculative settings hinted at in Planar Chaos and Future Sight, do not.
* Vrym - A setting with "mage-rings", which have a quasi-technological look. That was all Planechase 2 told us about it; was then established in Magic Origins as the birthplace of Jace Beleren, incessantly-referenced blue-aligned emo telepath and darling of the Magic brand team. This set revealed a few more details of the setting, though it remains sparsely fleshed-out; the "mage-rings" are artifacts designed to collect and focus mana from across an entire continent, concentrating it in a small area where a high standard of living can be maintained by a faction of privileged groups. Two such factions exist, and fight constantly over control of the mage-rings and their focal point, with one holding the prize and being free to denigrate the other as "separatists"; evenly matched, the rivals hate each other enough that, according to one of the several arbiters who negotiate a fragile peace between them, either one would destroy the mage-rings if they were certain they could never again seize them. Thus, the war needs to be kept from escalating - or ending - by a series of constant covert adjustments, often conducted by these arbiters in order to keep themselves in business.
* Kaladesh - This plane of bustling city life and elegant artifice was entirely invented in Magic Origins, with only two visible objectives - being the home plane of Chandra Nalaar, and being pretty. The lack of effort at holism shows, as green appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with this setting (one green card exists, but gives no indication that the plane so much as has a single forest upon it), and its red component seemingly exists for little other than Chandra herself. Bearing distinct similarities to Esper, minus the disfiguring of its native humans by replacing much of their bodies with a mystical metal which is half phased out of reality, this plane seems to be a better attempt at the same general concept - hidebound leadership obsessed with tradition and control, where progress and innovation are valued but kept on an extremely short leash, and neither nature nor individuality is highly respected or allowed to play much of a role in city life. (Of all Magic settings, the totally-built-over Ravnica is the only one where we seem to see cities that have trees in them, as nearly all of the ones we have here on Earth do; apparently Dominians don't appreciate having green spaces to break up their urban blight.) Given that both this plane and Vrym seem as though they consist almost entirely of white, black, and blue, the fact that Origins was artificially required to position Jace and Chandra as coming from different planes is probably all that kept there from being a single setting (named Vrym, since that name had been used first) which incorporated both of these concepts - the filligree city of Ghirapur, with its ruling Consuls and their Foundry, seems like exactly what you would expect to find at the nexus of Vrym's mage-ring network. Instead, we get two rather less-than-complete plane designs, one of which has an entirely new name, which naturally had to contribute to the already-burgeoning excess of three-syllable plane names that begin with K.
* Regatha - Appears on a card in Planechase 2, and plays a central role in the second of the three "planeswalker novels", "The Purifying Fire", leading to it finally being featured in Magic Origins. The least well-rounded plane to be depicted in Magic since Homelands, with the possible exception of the M-series version of Shandalar, Regatha seems to consist of little more than expanses of volcanic rock with a single monastery among them, and only cards explicitly referencing Chandra can be confirmed to originate there (a few of the set's red Elementals and such may be from this world, but could just as easily be from Dominaria or from the Jund shard of Alara).
That's every plane that has a confirmed presence in the main game (albeit that we probably wouldn't know anything about where the Wildfire Emissary comes from, if we only had one Mirage card to go on). These other planes are mentioned on the typelines of Planechase cards, and some were also hinted at by Future Sight cards or other miscellanea, but we know little if anything about them to date.
* Muraganda - Probably a primordial setting with dinosaurs; it is unclear how colors other than red and green play any role there. Explicitly named on a Future Sight card, so it arguably belongs on the above list.
* Iquatana - Seemingly a bizarrely quasi-benthic world that suggests only Blue alignment; probably home to the Iquati mentioned in a piece of Future Sight flavor text.
* Arkhos - A gloomy but starkly beautiful setting whose representative Plane card is named "Lethe Lake"; I have a sneaking suspicion that this might have been originally meant to be a Greek-inspired plane, before the design went in a thoroughly different direction and became Theros, although it is possible I am far off base. As with other settings we know only from a single picture, it has little suggestion of possessing more than one or two colors of mana.
* Pyrulea - Appears on a Future sight land and a promotional Planechase plane, as well as being referenced in the novel "The Thran". Features gigantic plant life and a horizon that curves in the wrong direction, suggesting that it may be the interior surface of a Dyson sphere or similar megastructure.
* Equilor - Mentioned in an MTG novel as an extremely ancient, worn-out plane where very little happens anymore, it has unsurprisingly failed to appear in the main Magic game (although it was one of the few of these single-mention planes from the first Planechase which was reintroduced in the second).
* Bolas's Meditation Realm - Another plane mentioned in novels but not displayed on cards, and again the reason is fairly obvious. They couldn't even be bothered to name this one properly, as with Serra's Realm, though at least we get one extra word of detail. It remains unknown whether this is similarly an artificial plane, created by Nicol Bolas, or if he simply discovered and "adopted" it; either way there is no particular reason to think it has any other inhabitants except on the rare occasions he "entertains visitors", as he did in the book in question.
* Moag - I loosely recall a mention of this plane in some novel, probably the second book of the Urza tetralogy (which is the book which specifically claims the word "Planeswalker" as its entire title, something the creative department is probably still kicking themselves about), but I recall no details.
* Kephalai - First mentioned in a webcomic featuring Chandra Nalaar; looked similar to Azorius districts in Ravnica, but was confirmed as a different plane by a card in Planechase 2012. What makes it unique remains unclear.
* Valla - Seemingly Viking-inspired. I have a pet theory that it is a twinned setting with Kaldheim (see below), though there is no evidence of this at all, beyond the fact that both have names suggestive of a Nordic-Mythology setting (which is just what we friggin' need).
* Kaldheim - Intensely cold. I have a pet theory that it is a material realm with Valla as its "afterlife", the two planes being conjoined as in Theros or Kamigawa; I have no idea whether what Wotco has in mind for these two planes is anywhere near as cool as that idea.
* Ir - A setting about which we know almost nothing, although it may share a setting with the Giant creature card "Fomori Nomad", a "futureshifted" vanilla from Future Sight. This link is suggested simply by the fact that they share an artist and similar color schemes; if true, it implies that Ir is a plane based on Scottish or Irish mythology, although both have already heavily influenced Lorwyn and thus it's likely we won't see Ir for quite a few years.
* Luvion - A promo-only Plane.
* Kinshala - The last promo Plane from 2009. Not to be confused with the real-world city of Kinshasa. I once asked someone, probably Brady Dommermuth, whether this location was really distinct from Jamuura and he insisted it was, much as he did that Kephalai was not Ravnica; I continue to await evidence.
* Karsus - Another promo-only Plane, although this one seems familiar to me somehow.
* Belenon - Seemingly a very bizarre plane, shown on two highly different Planes in Planechase 2012, but about which nothing else is apparent.
* Fabacin - Home of the "Dreampods", their "Grove" and presumably also their "Druids".
* Ergamon - A setting which appears to contain numerous mushrooms. The name may be a reference to Ergot, a dangerously hallucinogenic mold.
* Kolbahan - Site of an "Astral Arena".
* Mongseng - A plane which *might* be different from what would end up becoming Tarkhir. I could even believe it's a retcon setting which incorporates "Portal Three Kingdoms", the only Magic set ever to be entirely based on real-world history, into the Multiverse. The alternative is that it's another distinct Asian-flavored plane in a multiverse containing at least two of them already (which is fine, of course, Asia being a big place - but also one which we ignorant Westerners tend to get confused on the details of, so if Wizards were to make one setting based on Laos and another on Korea, they would need to take considerable care to make the two distinctive enough to appeal to even the most impatient and vaguely racist members of their largely-American audience, who can barely manage to distinguish between China and Japan).
* Kyneth - Contains a "Zephyr Maze".
* Xerex - Where there are "Stairs to Infinity". Sadly this appears to have been the absolute last plane card.
I couldn't find a decent archive of planes to study in any timely fashion, so for now this list of 44, many of them little more than names, must suffice.
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It’s zombies, so it should be allowed.
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But the effect is Dragon creature card OR Ugin. So most of the effect can still be used without Ugin in your deck, if it's in a Dragon deck.
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I strongly dislike it when someone from WotC says they can't do something, when they mean they are choosing not to do something.
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What about for things that aren't popular?