(Opened for June 6, 2015)
Where I live, Modern Masters is a highly hyped set filled with very powerful rare and mythic cards that tempt players to drive the price up way high while hiding the fact that such choice bits are ridiculously difficult to acquire compared to the fluff that fills up the rest of the set.
Sure, some players say that it's a blast to draft (a game format that I have yet to appreciate), but the cost of each pack is so expensive that it hardly justifies the risk of being burned with with a dud rare. I'm quite happy how Modern Masters helps pull down the price of chase cards in the market, but I think if you want to acquire any of the good cards in the set, you'll be very much better off buying them as singles rather than gambling it on a randomized pack.
Okay, perhaps I'm just being bitter. I've never really had much luck with Modern Masters. When I bought a pack of the first edition of the set, all I got for my trouble was a really narrow rare called Angel's Grace. Apparently, my rotten luck with MM extends to Japan as well, where the total value of the cards that I got hardly equates to the standard retail price of the pack, and definitely much less than the inflated price tag that I had to pay just to catch the Modern Masters bandwagon.
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Pack #39: Magic 2015, featuring Soul of Zendikar
(Opened for June 6, 2015)
M15 had an interesting cycle of mythic creatures that embodied the "soul" of a particular plane. While there were designs that perfectly matched the flavor of the plane that they represented (Soul of Ravnica and Soul of Innistrad), there were a few misses as well, like this card.
Having no ties to any of the mechanical themes (landfall, allies, kicker, eldrazi) and aesthetic motifs (hedrons, traps, adventure, treasure) of the three expansions (thus far) that occurred in its plane, this card causes players to wonder what's so Zendikari about it.
One could argue that the way it churns out beast tokens is reflective of the primal nature of Zendikari wilderness. Then again, wouldn't that be typical of any plane? Besides, the fact that it spits out vanilla creatures make it appear more of like the Soul of Muraganda.
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Pack #38: Journey Into Nyx, featuring Banishing Light
(Opened for June 5, 2015)
Recent years have shown white to be the go-to color for temporarily removing things from the game, which was, interestingly enough, originally an effect that belonged to black. Banishing Light presents the latest incarnation of this effect, which specifically states that the object (in this case, a creature) goes away at least until the Banishing itself goes away.
White hasn't always done things this way, however - an older counterpart of this card, Oblivion Ring had separate clauses describing how the target goes away and how the target should return when the Oblivion itself leaves the battlefield. This allowed players to exploit a timing loophole where they removed the Oblivion immediately after it entered the battlefield, causing its exit clause to happen first before its entry clause. This meant that the Oblivion would first try to return the thing that it exiled (which, in the case when it has just entered the battlefield, is nothing), then it would then try to exile a permanent once it goes away. This caused the permanent to go away... well, permanently.
Interestingly enough, these effects nowadays do not allow you to exile your own permanents. I guess Wizards didn't like how the old version of these cards were used by enterprising players to exile "banishing permanents" like these cards to create nauseating infinite loops.
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Pack #37: Born of the Gods, (sort of) featuring Satyr Firedancer
(Opened for June 3, 2015)
What can one say about satyrs, other than them being the most misunderstood party people in the multiverse? I'm sure that the bacchanalias that these hedonistic creatures host include a lot of adult-material activities that can't possibly depicted in a Magic card. Matter of fact, the satyr parties are the only reason I would even dream of planeswalking to Theros. (The Slaughter Games of the Rakdos in Ravnica are equally interesting, but I'd have to pass on that, as I'm a bit averse of pain.)
(Continued from here)
For many years, I got involved with Magic solely for the gaming aspect of it. I never thought about collecting it: owning something just for the sake of putting it on display and not actually playing with it is a concept that was very strange to me. Because of that, my Magic-related purchases were limited to fat packs and a few single cards that struck my fancy.
Because of my work, I didn't have a big network of players to trade with. As a result, I tended to accumulate more and more cards that I didn't use in my decks: narrow combat tricks that were useful only in Limited formats, rare cards with high casting costs that were near useless in a competitive deck, even a few high-utility cards that fell out of favor for being in an expansion that was rotating out of Standard.
I thought about ways to use (most of) them by building mini-sets composed of bits and pieces in every block - sort of like making my own cube. As part Melvin, I have a high appreciation for card cycles, and for some reason, I felt an odd sense of accomplishment whenever I manage to possess a full five-card cycle of cards, regardless of rarity or utility.
The first time I attempted to create such mini-sets was during the Mirrodin block.
(To be continued)
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Pack #36: Theros, featuring Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
(Opened for June 3, 2015)
From where I come from, Magic is primarily available in English. Foreign-language cards are not readily available in my area, both in the primary and the secondary market. When it comes to trades, I don't think a lot of people find them desirable anyway.
There is just one time when I allowed myself to own a foreign card, simply out of desperation. The first foreign language card that I ever included in any of my decks was an old 4th Edition French Lightning Bolt card. I included it in my mono-Red casual goblin deck to complete the set. This was way, waaaaay back before the said card was reprinted in M10 and reprinted once again in the Premium Deck Series: Fire and Lightning. It was an era when Shock was considered the "fair" version of the Bolt, so Bolts were pretty scarce, even for casual players like me.
Through the years, I gained access to more cards and my need to resort to foreign cards to fill up holes in my decks eventually disappeared. The only other times when I ended up including some of such cards in any of my decks is during Prereleases, and I happened to be short on basic lands.
Other than basic lands, I thought I would never have a need for any non-English cards - until now. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx in any language spells good news for mono-colored decks, competitive or otherwise. While it would have little use in my aforementioned goblin deck (due to the fact that my goblins often die, and would not be sticking around for the required worshipping ceremonies to trigger a decent amount of devotion), Nykthos will definitely find a home in my old mono-white "parfait" enchantment deck.
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Pack #35: Conspiracy, (sort of) featuring Cogwork Librarian
(Opened for June 2, 2015)
While I was finalizing my travel plans to Japan, I made it a point to make sure that buying a Japanese Magic booster pack was part of my itinerary.
I was aiming for really old expansions (preferably pre-7th Edition) but since I didn't know exactly where I could buy cards in Japan, I ended up buying my packs in the toy section of the department stores instead, where the card selection would be predictably more limited. It turns out that card games are quite big in Japan - well, at least, it's bigger than from where I come from. Aside from Magic and the expected Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon titles, there are dozens of other collectible card games in stock - and again, that's just in the toy section, where card games are already competing for space with other toys.
Because of this, the amount of space that a store could devote to Magic is relatively limited, so the store usually just sells the latest expansion sets. As available titles are often only those that are legal in the current Standard format, there is not much room for anything else, except for a few rare exceptions like Conspiracy is the oldest booster pack that I found (which is probably because it's not selling well since not all of its cards are Standard legal?).
I would assume that this is not the recommended way to acquire Magic cards in Japan. This pack is one of those that I picked up in a mall in Kyoto. This is the first time I bought a Conspiracy pack. I didn't even get a conspiracy, and instead, I got this. Meh. I hoped to find what I'm looking for once I reach Akihabara.