(Opened for July 18, 2015)
I just got my Magic Origins booster box and fat pack yesterday and I'm really trying my best to stop myself from tearing through all of the booster packs in one go. I still have a few Dragons of Tarkir and Fate Reforged packs to talk about though, and in light of the recent retirement of my Zurgo Helmsmasher Commander deck, I'll talk about the poor ol' Bellringer for now.
It must have been hard for Sarkhan to find out that the old khan that he wished to enact his vengeance upon no longer existed in the alternate time line that he traveled to after saving Ugin's life. Sure, Zurgo is still there in body and name, but not only isn't there any left in Zurgo's spirit for Sarkhan to chew on, but the poor ol' orc doesn't even know Sarkhan's name. Or maybe Zurgo does, since Sarkhan is known throughout Tarkir now as the "great dragon man" of ages past, but this Zurgo would sure have no idea what he did to that "dragon man" to earn so much of his hatred to begin with.
If Sarkhan still had a hint of black in him like when he was a bit mad, he probably would have tortured and killed this lowly Zurgo just to sate his bitterness towards the latter. But now that Sarkhan is a little bit aligned with blue, he's probably rational enough to realize that such hateful violence would no longer have a point.
Good for you, Sarkhan. Good for you.
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Pack #33: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Misthoof Kirin
(Opened for May 31, 2015)
Once upon a time, there was a plane called Kamigawa. It was a mythical place which, while utterly devoid of mythics, was stupendously steeped in legends. And spirits. Spirits in all shapes and sizes filled Kamigawa, spirits that were worshipped and revered by the rest of Kamigawa's denizens (well, at least until the Kami War broke out).
There were many kinds of spirits in Kamigawa, but most of them belonged to the typical "kami" class that was made up of entities that embodied aspects of mundane mortal life. There were a couple of spirit classes, however, that were a little bit more special compared to the rest. There were the demon spirits, called oni, which were practically manifestations of every bit of evil that the plane had to offer.
And also, there were the kirin.
The kirin were neither benevolent nor malevolent - they were simply spirits whose coming heralded a major event: the wrath of a god, the collapse of the spirit realm, an all-out war, the end of the world... okay, so they usually bring nothing but bad news, but they're really just nothing but glorified messengers. People looked up to these horse-like beasts in awe and terror, as they were rare creatures - they held a presence that commanded attention.
Fast forward a few years, and we now have this in contrast, a specie from Tarkir: lamb-like, unimpressive, and nothing like their regal, Kamigawa cousins. They heralded the coming (or is it return?) of Sarkhan, an event that only a few - if any - really noticed or understood. Perhaps if the Misthoof Kirin were more remarkable and less common, people would actually look up to them and notice. Instead, they ended up being largely ignored, both by players and flavor-fanatics alike.
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Pack #32: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Dragon Whisperer
(Opened for May 30, 2015)
Formidable is the newest member of a group of keywords that are roughly classified as threshold mechanics. Magic has developed numerous threshold mechanics through the years; they even covered all numbers from 1 to 8 quite nicely:
1 or more (damage dealt to opponent) - Bloodthirst from Guildpact and M12
2 or more (spells cast last turn) - Unnamed werewolf mechanic from Innistrad and Dark Ascension
3 or more (artifacts) - Metalcraft from Scars of Mirrodin block
4 or greater (power of a creature you control) - Ferocious from Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged
5 or greater (power of a creature you control) - Unnamed Naya mechanic from Alara block
6 or greater (casting cost) - Unnamed dragon mechanic from Scourge
7 or more (cards in graveyard) - Threshold from Odyssey block
8 or greater (power among creatures you control) - Formidable from Dragons of Tarkir
(Okay, some of them were a bit of a stretch, but nevertheless...)
Dragon Whisperer is reminiscent of an earlier shaman named Dragonmaster Outcast, which also employs a threshold mechanic. This just proves that the design space for threshold mechanics is so deep that it can be source of new material for Magic cards for years to come.
What else could the makers of the game be making us count in the future? Well, as of this writing, Battle for Zendikar is due to come out in a few months - an expansion happening on a plane that has always been associated with a strong land theme. Also, as of this writing, Temple of the False God as just been reprinted in a supplementary product.
Coincidence?
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Pack #31: Dragons of Tarkir, (sort of) featuring Damnable Pact
(Opened May 29, 2015)
Ah, Damnable Pact: a bargain that would make my Nekusar, the Mindrazer flash its maliciously fleshless grin. I kind of wished it hit all players alike akin to a tainted Prosperity spell, but I guess deals with Dragonlord Silumgar are meant to be executed one client at a time.
(Continued from here)
I bought packs from different expansions through the years, but I tended to buy packs only sporadically. I mostly traded or bought singles from the secondary market - back then, I thought buying even a single pack was wasteful since you're likely to get more of the cards that you don't want than those that you do want. I loved Magic, but I didn't love it enough to have the time to research the Internet for card prices. I played the game better than I traded my cards, and continue to do so until now.
The game changed for me, however, when I met a collector for the first time. Back then, I thought anyone involved with Magic bought cards so they could play with them. Apparently, there's a small minority out there who buy it solely for owning them. The collector that I had some business with had a weird choice for a collecting: the entire set of Judgment. It was not a particularly spectacular set, but he said that he wanted to complete the set because of the art. I had the one copy of Soulcatcher's Aerie that he needed to finally make his dream come true.
I traded him that card and saw that he definitely derived some sense of accomplishment for completing his first-ever Magic set. I wondered if I'd ever experience that joy for myself as well.
(To be continued)
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Pack #29: Fate Reforged, featuring Atarka, World Render
(Opened May 27, 2015)
Tarkir is a special plane where dragons abound yet there are no dragon eggs to be found: all dragons in the plane emerge fully formed from a phenomenon called "dragon tempests", which in turn is mainly due to the presence of Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.
The absence of baby dragons - and for that matter, the existence of spirit dragons - is not unique to Tarkir, however. Older planeswalkers will recall that such concepts also exist in a plane called Kamigawa, where five spirit dragons ruled the heavens after breaching through from the plane's spirit world; one can assume that they didn't come from eggs either.
Without dragon eggs, the dragons themselves would have no need for mating, and the dragon tempests probably ensured that the dragons in Tarkir are effectively asexual. So why is it then that some dragonlords are referred to as male while some are female? If the English language is inherently limited (due to its lack of genderless pronouns), why not just refer to all of the dragons as male, or all of the dragons as female, especially when there's practically no physical differences between them anyway?
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Pack #28: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Marang River Skeleton
(Opened May 26, 2015)
This card obviously references the Marang River Prowler from Fate Reforged, who seems to have endured rising from its (watery) grave so many times for more than 1000 years that it has continued to do so as a skeleton. It appears that the Marang has not only washed away tracks, blood, footsteps, and screams, but also bits of its remaining flesh as well.
This almost made me wonder why the clan-that-was-formerly-known-as-Sultai-but-is-now-known-simply-as-Silumgar keeps on accumulating sibsigs (zombie servants) through its years of conquest. How can such corpses retain their corpulence when flesh is so notorious for sloughing off the bones after retaining so much water? How come we never see more of such "flesh-naked" zombies in Tarkir? Does naga-flavored necromancy use meat preservatives to keep their sibsigs nice and tender and prevent them from becoming hard and bony?
Perhaps once sibsigs expire into skeletons, the Silumgar use them for tasks away from the battlefield. At the very least, the Minister of Pain would have some use for that skull.
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Pack #26: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Silumgar Assassin
(Opened May 24, 2015)
This card is part of a very tight cycle of rare megamorph creatures in Dragons of Tarkir that is composed of cards have a lot of things in common: they all have a converted mana cost of 2, they all have the same power and toughness, they all do something when turned face-up, and they all have some flavor of evasion - except for one, which would have given the cycle a high Melvin score if it had some conditional unblockability for white. (Couldn't it have Daxos' ability instead?)
It would have been more elegant if the Wizards just settled for an evergreen type of evasion like swampwalk or intimidate (which are both accessible to black) but I guess this card deserves some designer brownie points for being the first of its kind. Additionally, it creates a perfect mirror against its green counterpart (but then again, this makes the white member of the cycle more of a miss, since it could have gotten the Amrou Kithkin ability instead of lifelink).
I think this format of evasion is very flavorful for rogues and assassins, but I'm not sure if Wizards is open to creating a keyword for this since blue and black (which are the primary colors for the aforementioned creature types) already have a lot of evergreen dodge abilities under their roster (including non-evergreen evasion like shadow). If they do make a keyword out of this, what would be great word to describe it? I think "cunning" sounds nice enough.
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Pack #25: Fate Reforged, featuring Flamewake Phoenix
(Opened May 23, 2015)
I believe Dragons of Tarkir, being the second Magic expansion to ever feature dragons, has endangered dragons' status as red's iconic creatures. It's not because of the sudden glut of dragon creature cards available in the set, but the excess of non-red dragons that pushes the envelope towards draconic fatigue.
This hasn't happened before when Scourge followed a minor dragon theme and limited all (except for one) dragon creatures to black and (mostly) red cards. This didn't happen either during Avacyn Restored since all of the angel cards had at least a hint of white in them. Ojutai's brood in Dragons of Tarkir, however, broke the novelty of red dragons when lots of dragon and dragon-themed cards showed up in the least draconic colors: blue and white.
The phoenix is now at a slightly higher position to replace the dragon in its red iconic position: it is also evocative of fantasy settings, it has never appeared in a common or uncommon card, and has yet to be summoned using anything other than red mana.
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Pack #24: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Ojutai's Command
(Opened May 22, 2015)
I once read someone ask Mark Rosewater if they ever thought about three-color commands, that is, modal spells that allowed its caster to choose two effects among a list of four. Mark answered by saying something along the lines of: the two/four-fold symmetry of the commands makes it clunky to implement using a 3-color combination. I followed that up by asking whether a 2-color command is more possible. Little did I know that he couldn't have possibly answered that question without giving away a hint about the commands in Dragons of Tarkir. Of course, he declined to post a reply to that one, probably knowing that I'd get my answer anyway a few months later.
Indeed, Magic sure has gone a long way, from the cute and narrow cards like Ivory Charm to versatile powerhouses like Ojutai's Command when it comes to "choice" cards.
And what does the future have in store for us in terms of modal spells? I see a few of low-hanging fruit left on the idea tree that Wizards can pick from:- "Choose one or all" from a list of three or more effects
- "Do all except one" from a list of three or more effects
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Pack #23: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Djinn Monk Token
(Opened May 21, 2015)
One of the things that got me really excited when Khans of Tarkir came out was the return of the Djinn and Efreet creature types, mythical figures that I'm sure a lot of people didn't expect to see outside a Middle Eastern setting except on rare cameos such as the Ernham Djinn in Otaria or the Djinn Illuminatus in Ravnica.
I'm not sure if there was anyone like me out there who wondered if the Tarkir block would finally give us our first legendary djinn creature. I didn't expect any djinn to be Commander-worthy in Dragons of Tarkir as its legendary slots would have been taken up by dragons and the updated status of the khans (none of which were djinns), but a Djinn khan in Fate Reforged would have been awesome at least.
Alas, such a dream was not meant to be, but at least Dragons of Tarkir has given us a couple of ways to churn out djinn tokens. I hope this is a push towards making djinns easier to summon for planeswalkers in the future.
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Pack #21: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Surrak, the Hunt Caller
(Opened May 19, 2015)
The "feeder" mentality of the previously-known-as-Temur-in-a-different-timeline-but-now-known-as-Atarka people baffle me. Dragonlord Atarka must have done some major psychological damage to these formerly-ferocious-but-now-simply-formidable nation by making them think that their roles as glorified hunters/chefs is anything remotely honorable.
I suppose that there is some honor to be had in supporting a leader that not only has the qualities that you admire, but that is something that I can only see among the Ojutai, the Kolaghan, and the Dromoka. However, I see nothing admirable in a gluttonous predator who subdues everyone around her. Her "people" do not hunt for her for the benefit of the tribe as how worker bees would support a queen bee, nor do they seek to feed her to ask for her protection or aid as how lioness(es) hunt for the alpha male.
Atarka's people feed her mainly out of fear of being eaten.
I can't help but suspect that Atarka's hunt callers are buying this warped sense of honor to cope with their abject fate. I think that there's no dignity to be had in feeding a host of tyrants just so they'd let you live. In the remote possibility that we would visit Tarkir again, I feel that a revolution is in order.
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Pack #20: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Shorecrasher Elemental
(Opened May 18, 2015)
What else can be said about Shorecrasher Elemental other than the fact that it's posed as an updated version of Aetherling (which is why they're sitting right next to each other in my trading binder)?
The thing is, while megamorph provides players an additional incentive to cast their creatures face-down aside from the typical "when this creature is turned face up" triggers that they've tacked onto utility morph creatures, the designers (or perhaps the developers) seemed to have missed the fact that this incentive could have been cumulative. Wouldn't it have been interesting if there was at least one megamorph creature in Dragons of Tarkir that could repeatedly turn itself face down so it could pile up its +1/+1 counters?
Shorecrasher Elemental could have been that card... if it were not for its exile clause that resets the number of counters it has whenever it (mega)morphs.
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Pack #19: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Dragonlord Atarka
(Opened May 17, 2015)
Magic's updated Bogardan Hellkite is now more Commander-friendly both due its new legendary status and its inability to damage players directly. "Deals damage to creatures and/or planeswalkers" started with Fated Conflagration and seems to be a growing trend among red spells and effects to make the game more interactive, with the main kill of choice still being creature combat.
It's probably best not to think about the flavor of this card, though. Magic is a game where the players themselves play the role of planeswalkers, so how can a spell (or in this case, a creature) distinguish the difference between a planeswalker in flesh form and a planeswalker in card form? It's like that age-old question of how can a spell or effect distinguish between a creature card and a creature token, when they're really supposed to be just one and the same.
I have a few ideas, but yeah, let's talk about that some other time.
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Pack #18: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Hand of Silumgar
(Opened May 16, 2015)
Through the years I've collected Magic cards, I've set aside a few simple creature cards that I thought I'd use someday in a personalized deck that I could use to teach Magic to new players.
One of the components of my custom Portal deck (named as such in reference to the beginner's product that Wizards produced long, long time ago) are "french vanilla" creatures that have only one keyword in it. I wanted to have an evergreen keyword unique to every color pair to further flesh out their identities, and in the recent years, Wizards have been cooperating really well:
White/Blue - Flying
Blue/Black - ???
Black/Red - Intimidate
Red/Green - Trample
Green/White - Vigilance
White/Black - Lifelink
Black/Green - Deathtouch
Green/Blue - Hexproof
Blue/Red - ???
Red/White - First strike
I really don't have a candidate for Blue/Black, and the ones for Blue/Red are still not cutting it: prowess and dethrone have very little chance of becoming evergreen to be featured in future sets.
Okay, so it's not yet complete, but I'm optimistic that Wizards will eventually stumble upon the abilites that I need to complete the set.
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Pack #17: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Tail Slash
(Opened May 15, 2015)
When building a Commander deck, it's really tempting to just stuff your 99 with all the mythic/rare good stuff that you have in your binder that also happens to be in your commander's color identity. I, however, try to resist the temptation whenever I can. I believe that every Commander has a unique personality that should dictate the cards of at least half a deck, especially with cards that are have little to no use in other Commander decks.
Take this card for example. This card is just begging to be included in a deck that's filled to the brim with vampires that mimic Sengir Vampire's ability. Don't be misled: this card is not exactly a combo with Olivia Voldaren, but it's a perfect addition to a deck that has Zurgo Helmsmasher at its helm. This, teamed with cards like Fall of the Hammer and Arcbond can just make a laughing stock such as Zurgo rise to prominence equal to that of Kaalia of the Vast.
(Okay, not that high, but pretty close.)
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Pack #16: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Kolaghan Monument
(Opened May 14, 2015)
I debuted my Zurgo Helmsmasher deck to a play group that, much to my chagrin, casually advocates the use of a very unfun Magic component in the game: land destruction. I suppose there's a small amount of fun to be had in it if you are the one who's inflicting it upon your opponents especially in a very competitive setting, but when you're the one on the receiving end, it's really tempting to just concede. Getting cut off from your mana sources prevents you from doing almost anything to interact with anyone, and how different would that be from simply playing by yourself?
I may sound bitter about this issue, but I don't advocate bullying people into following the 75% Philosophy in Commander either. Asking players to not to use certain cards for the sake of other people's happiness might just hurt and offend players who tend to get attached to the cards that they own. Magic is a game with a lot of problems, and a lot of solutions to those problems. There's no need to complicate that with a ban list.
So what's the solution to the problem of land destruction? Well, aside from using player politics to simply beat the crap out of a player who uses unfun spells, an elegant solution would be non-land mana sources. Three mana may seem expensive for a mana rock, but the fact that it can also turn into a beat stick makes this solution an acceptable bargain.
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Pack #15: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Deadly Wanderings
(Opened May 13, 2015)
I like dreaming of decks that use cards that a lot of people tend to dismiss. Take this one, for example.
Enchantment cards that give abilities to your creatures without targeting them appeal to me like equipment cards with "Equip: 0": a creature arrives at the battlefield and immediately, it has haste from Fervor pretty much like how you would equip it with Lightning Greaves. A "loner" card like this (first seen in Avacyn Restored as Homicidal Seclusion ) captures this equipment-esque flavor even more because it can only affect one creature at a time.
But what makes a card like this really hard to use is that it forces you to build a deck that walks a very thin line between having no creatures to use it with and having one too many creatures for it to be of any help. What kind of deck would that be? I imagine it to be a Commander deck (where you have access to at least one creature any time, as long as the mana to cast it from the command zone) filled with non-creature permanents that can be turned to creatures temporarily as needed. Hmmm. I just might have room for this in my Zurgo Helmsmasher deck.
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Pack #14: Dragons of Tarkir, (sort of) featuring Harbinger of the Hunt
(Opened May 12, 2015)
I made a (rather embarrassing) mistake on my earlier comment regarding foil cards. It turns out that they ARE included in the 15-cards-as-advertised count in each booster pack, and simply replaced one of the commons. This means that there is little to no value at all in getting a foil version of a common card. (frowny face). However, there is still plenty of value of cracking open a foil version of a rare (or mythic) card, and the Harbinger of the Hunt that I got - while not exactly top rare material - definitely made me smile a bit.
(Continued from here)
When I opened my first-ever Magic booster pack, there were skulls and fire symbols and some snippets of a tragic history of a fallen empire or two: it was a depressing, frightening, and intimidating first foray into Magic. However, I was intrigued by the gritty art of Scott Krischner's Hymn to Tourach and all the other cards that came with that pack: Delif's Cone, Goblin Grenade, Combat Medic, Thallid, and a few other cards that are already lost to memory.
I'm just glad that my curiosity got the better of me and I didn't throw away those cards out of fright. (I'm inclined to believe that my stinginess also has something to do with it too: I was a high school student back then, and I already paid for that pack with my lunch money, and the HELL am I just going to just throw that away.)
(To be continued)
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Pack #13: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Herald of Dromoka
(Opened May 11, 2015)
There are plenty of cards between Khans of Tarkir and Dragons of Tarkir that reference one another because both expansion sets are supposed to depict alternate timelines of the same world. Two of those cards are Herald of Anafenza (from Khans) and Herald of Dromoka (from Dragons), which are sibling cards not just by name, but also by art (as shown by the sounding horn that each herald is blowing).
I kind of wished, however, that both cards tied with each other mechanically as well. Could Herald of Anafenza have granted some other abilities to other Warriors as well? Could Herald of Dromoka somehow spitted out Warrior tokens, or had some Bolster action to mirror the other herald's Outlast ability? It's tempting to assume that both had either one time during design and just got changed for developmental reasons, but I suppose we'll never know: Tarkir as it existed during the times of the Khans no longer exists.
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Pack #12: Dragons of Tarkir, featuring Savage Ventmaw
(Opened May 10, 2015)
I thought about High Stakes Magic during a time when I'm in the middle of move between two homes, and about 90% of my Magic collection are in boxes and are therefore inaccessible. What I do have in hand, however, are the cards that I got from fat packs and booster boxes of Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir, which is why I ended up designing an auction block exclusively containing cards from either expansion.
High Stakes Magic allows players to cast cards from their hands without paying mana costs, but this proved to be a small advantage in light of the one thing I wanted to include from Fate Reforged: manifest. I didn't want to cut cards that contained this because they add a unknown state that I think would introduce some tension into each game, but the problem with it is it's so mana-intensive, especially in an auction deck that has a high concentration of dragons.
I'm happy that I have cards like this to add to the auction block, which should lessen the players' gold expenditures when it comes to flipping cards face up.