NEW MTG PRODUCTS

As it comes close to the time for Kaladesh to be released, there will be a few changes to the products that are usually associated with release time, i.e. the Fat Pack and the Intro decks.

The first change will be that the Fat Pack won't be called the Fat Pack anymore, it will be called the Bundle. The only difference will be that it will have 10 booster packs instead of the usual 9. It will have the deck boxes, life counters, encyclopedia booklet of every card in the set, and a deck box to store the cards in. It will also have an 80 land card pack as well. The MSRP price will be $42.99 for the Bundle.

The second change will be that the Intro decks will not be made anymore. Instead they will be coming out as a Planeswalkers deck that will be Standard legal, but the cards and Planeswalkers won't the same as the cards in the set. The example above features Chandra. The whole idea behind the Planeswalker deck is that Wizards of the Coast want to come out with something to appeal to new players and help them learn how to play, synergize, etc. The Planeswalkers decks will also have two of the current set booster packs as well. The MSRP pricing for the Planeswalker decks will be $14.99.

How are your feeling about this change in their products? Let me know in the comments.

As always, thanks for reading my blog.

Eldritch Moon release date

As we all know, all of the cards for the new set of Eldritch Moon have now been revealed. Pre-release for this set is the weekend of July 16th-17th, 2016, while the Magic online players get theirs at a later date on, the weekend of July 29th - August 1st, 2016. The official launch date for the paper players is on the weekend of July 22nd-24th, 2016. Magic online players will get their official release date of August 1, 2016.

Eldritch Moon is the second set in the Shadows Over Innistrad block. The new set will have 205 cards available for you to play your heart out. The pro-tour, which is in Sydney (Australia) on August 5-7, 2016, will be playing cards from both sets of the Shadows Over Innistrad block, using the draft format.


Good luck to all you players.

As always, thanks for reading my blog. 

ELDRITCH MOON SPOILERS!

June 20, 2016. First day of summer, longest day of the year (according to some scientist somewhere), school has ended or is going to end soon, beach-going season, amusement parks to visit and vacation plans with the family.

What else can make this day better?

How about a spoiler from the newest set: Eldritch Moon!

Around 8am PST, the Magic the Gathering Facebook page aired an episode detailing what's happening in Innistrad and where the storyline will go from here. It also showed a trailer for Eldritch Moon, which in my opinion is one of the best trailers I’ve seen Wizard of the Coast put out for MtG, click here to see the episode. It also reveals a card that will be in the new set. I think the card (pictured below) will be self explanatory. All I can say is: we found out what’s causing the madness in Innistrad.

For the next 3 weeks there will be new cards spoiled every day, except for the weekends; this might be the only time of the year you don't like the weekends. I know we all usually love the weekends (well... the people who don't have to work do, anyway). You can check the MYTHIC SPOILER WEBPAGE for the new and hopefully awesome cards being revealed.


As always thanks for reading my blog!

Grand Prix Costa Rica

The latest Grand Prix event took place in the beautiful Costa Rica. The winner? It is Seth Manfield once again, less than a month after he won the Grand Prix New York. He had a similar, yet somewhat different, type of deck this time around, focused on green-white tokens. He took the win with a 2-1 match.

His opponent was Brendon Fischer with his Naya tokens deck. Brendon Fischer has yet to win a Grand Prix trophy, but has been to multiple Grand Prix. His Naya tokens deck is the same as the one that he had used in the Grand Prix New York. It includes a Planeswalker that has not seen much use by other players at these types of events, Arlinn Kord.

The next event is on June 10-12, at two different places. One event will be at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus Ohio. The other event, taking place on the same dates, is at Výstaviště PVA Expo Praha in the Czech Republic. Both of these events will follow the Legacy format.

Good luck to all the players and, as always, thanks for reading my blog!

Eternal Masters

The spoilers have started for Eternal Masters, which will be released on June 10, 2016. While it may not include cards from the reserve list, it will have many great modern staples.

Eternal Masters was designed to be a unique and fun drafting experience, with cards throughout the history of MtG to enhance your Cube, Legacy, and Vintage decks. Yes, there will be Planeswalkers too: Jace the Mind Sculptor and Dack Fayden.

You can get your look at the spoilers from MYTHIC SPOILER'S website and see for yourself just how awesome this set of the Masters series is going to be!

As always thanks for reading my blog!

Modern play, Gone?!

Wizard of the coast has made an announcement a while back concerning modern play at the pro tour events.  They decided to do away with the format, why? Here’s just some of the reason why they are getting rid of the format.

Wizards of the Coast made an announcement a while back concerning modern play at the pro tour events;  they decided to do away with the format. Why? Here’s just some of the reasons why they are getting rid of the format.

Wizards of the Coast's goal for the pro tour is to reward the players for their drafting skills, innovative deck building and skillful game-play in an environment they are not too familiar with. They also want to highlight the newest card set in the tournament, which seems like the biggest reason why they’re getting rid of modern. Wizards usually set the pro tour for modern just a few weeks after the new set comes out, which allows the players to showcase the new cards in their modern decks by showing how the new cards work in a premier level setting.

Since modern became a format back in 2011, Wizards of the Coast has questioned if the format is a good fit for a pro tour setting. Even top players have pointed out that the format isn't about being innovative or solving problems with the newest set; it gives rewards for repetitive, established decks. That wasn't what the pro tour was suppose to be about.

As always thanks for reading my blog.

Rotation: the new MTG style

Magic: the Gathering comes out with four sets per year with a different story-line for each set. In some cases they return to one of the more popular sets and continue an existing story-line. Most sets, when they are newly released, enter the Standard format. This doesn’t mean they can only be used for that format; the sets can be used in other formats. Two sets of the block usually stay in Standard for about 18 months (it used to be three sets per block,  but Wizards of the Coast have decided to reduce the sets down to only two per block). When it’s time for a new set to be released, one set will be dropped out of the Standard format instead of two, so the rotation out of Standard will happen twice as often in groups half its size.

For example, the Theros block and the 2015 Core Set have recently been rotated out of the Standard format, in accordance with the old rotation pattern. The Khans of Tarkir and the Magic: Origins sets, although released during the old pattern, will drop out according to the new pattern. This will provided a transition between the two patterns of rotation. The Khans of Tarkir block includes the Khans of Tarkir, Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir sets. Khans and Fate are going to rotate out as if they were a two set block, even though it was a three set block. Dragons and Origin will rotate in the same fashion about 6 months later, as if they were a 2 set block, even though they really weren’t. After this transitional phase is complete, subsequent sets will be dropping and rotating out at the same time.

Taking all of this into consideration, here’s what the Standard format will look like for the coming year.

Khans of Tarkir, Fate Reforged, Dragons of Tarkir and Magic: Origins will be rotated out as Shadows Over Innistrad is released

Battle for Zendikar and Oath to the Gatewatch will both drop out of rotation at the same time, following the new rotating pattern, after the set for Shadows Over Innistrad is released.

All cards (unless they are on the banned list) are legal to play in any format you desire, even after it's rotation from Standard, but after the rotation happens those cards cannot be used for Standard unless it's a reprinted copy released in later sets.

Thanks for reading my blog.

CONTINUING TO MARDU PART DEUX

        I went through all my standard cards and picked out what would be a best fit for the mardu deck. I figure (also help from a friend) control would be a good addition to the mardu deck. Of course I probably picked out like over 100 (seems like) cards I thought would help fit into the deck but I cant be having a 160 card deck around.

I went through my theros block to search for cards fitting in with the mardu colors.  Surprisingly to me I have more white cards than anything else. Which shouldn’t be too surprising because white is pretty good with removal/control. I will give you a list of cards I thought might be fitting for the deck and I will post it on the tappedout.com page where my deck is in the maybe board. In person I will experiment with the newly picked out cards into the deck before messing around with it online (it’s also a pain to be moving and typing new cards in).

Game day is in less than three days. I have not the slightest idea of what to bring (if I am even going) deck wise to the event. The list of cards below are listed as how many I actually have not how many will go into the deck, because some cards can be one to many of and screw up the game because I wouldn’t be able to draw what I needed in order to stay alive.

Leave comments of your thoughts of what you would do to make this deck work?

Thanks for reading my blog!

DECK FROM TAPPEDOUT.COM



FROM THEROS

1x spear of heliod
2x vanquish the foul
4x ray of dissolution
4x gods willing
4x Battlewise valor
4x Scholar of Athreos
2x dauntless onslaught
2x sip of hemlock
4x opaline unicorn
4x spark jolt
4x Akroan hoplite

FROM BORN OF THE GODS

2x fated retribution
3x dawn to dusk
4x excoriate
1x archetype of courage
3x eidolon of countless battles
2x hero of iroas
4x oreskos sun guide
4x revoke existence
4x hold at bay
2x acolyte’s reward
3x nyxborn shieldmate
4x grisly transformation
4x necrobite
4x claim of erebos

FROM JOURNEY INTO NYX

4x oppressive rays
3x eidolon of rhetoric
4x reprisal
3x banishing light
4x magma spray
2x harness by force

KHANS ABILITY

With the new khans of tarkir set coming out September 26, 2014 (prerelease September 20-21, 2014) they comes with a new set of abilities and a returning ability, of course we all know about morph, lets talk about the other abilities that are featured on the new khans cards.

First ability is prowess, it’s whenever you cast a non-creature spell, the creature card with prowess gets a +1/+1 until end of turn.  This ability can work real well in a lot of different ways. It can be useful on both your and the opponent’s turn. I can see it being used more for blocking or saving the creature card from a burn spell, in tournaments and FNM. I don’t know about you but I think that’s a better way of using it.

The second ability is delve. This one is a neat one to mess around with. What it does is you exile cards from your graveyard and each card exiled this way pays for one colorless to cast the card with the ability on it. So with a creature that has the mana cost of 7 colorless and one swamp to cast can actually be one swamp to cast a pretty decent powerful card, providing you have at least 7 creatures in your graveyard to pay the casting cost.

Next ability we have is outlast. This ability allows you when the mana cost is paid to put a +1/+1 on that creature at sorcery speed. Some outlast ability will trigger other abilities stated on the card after you pay the outlast mana cost. Some will give you tokens or make other creatures has first strike. Nice card to mess with, but I don’t know how much play it would actually get in pro tours and such.

  What’s next is raid (no not the bug spray) ability. It triggers only when you have attacked on your turn. When the card enters the battlefield it can give you tokens or add more mana to you mana pool. This ability might be a little tricky to mess with considering the cards with the raid ability are expensive mana cost to cast.

Now lastly we have the ferocious ability. I think I like this ability a lot. Only because whenever you attack, not make damage, attack it does something cool. If you have this card out and if you control another card that has more power or toughness or if it has an ability it will give the card with ferocious a +1/+1 until end of turn. It just makes the card a little more powerful to deal damage with in an instant speed.

Which new ability is your favorite for the set?

Leave me comments of your thoughts!

Thanks for reading my blog!

GO FETCH!

 
       Wizard has announced that they are going to have the return of the fetch lands for the upcoming khans of tarkir block. The crowd went insane when they heard the news at PAX in Seattle, WA. This is very nice thing to hear because I never got to play with fetch lands before and I’ve been playing for a long time, and now I have a chance to.

The thing about these fetch lands are that they are pretty specific on what you should be pulling out of your library and into the battlefield. Which in this case it’s not so bad considering these cards are common color decks people uses. Now for the new cards having wedges on (I know not all of them have three colors on them) you might gonna need different playsets of these cards according to you color deck. Like I said before I never played fetch lands before so im not all up to date on how it works in a tricolor deck.

Tricolor decks can be a little difficult to make but with the wedges, I think they will be a little bit more easier to build a tricolor deck without a problem. That is what most people do when they build their decks, right?

How do you feel about the return/reprint of fetch lands?

Leave me a comment of your thoughts!

Thanks for reading my blog!

ANNIHALATION IS COMING

Another from the vault set is coming out on the 22nd of august 2014. This time it’s called “Annihilation”.  This yearly set seems like it going to be the best from the vault set they would come out with. All because you can destroy each other to oblivion with the type of cards they have selected for the set. With board wipes, destroying creatures, and burning things up. All the fun there is in the world in one set, but for a limited run and pretty much when they are gone, they’re gone.

They have cards like Armageddon, where it destroys all lands and child of alara where the card will destroy all nonland permanents and they can’t be regenerated if child of alara dies. So either way you turn there’s some kind of board sweep going on destroying everything in sight. I’m pretty sure there are some crazy combos that can happen with the set. The only way to do that is to buy one and open them up and see what you get. I’m not certain that all the box set you get will have the same cards in it, but it would be pretty fun either way finding out what you would get when they’re opened. You can pre-order now so that way you will have it when it comes out the day of, like I said there will be a very limited run of the set. Any leftover will be priced way higher than anyone would want it to be and getting it at pre-order price and prie it would be the day it comes out is a bargain price.

The set will include:
• 15 Premium foil cards (including 6 with new art).
• A Spindown life counter.
• Also a collector's guide.

All cards are black bordered and tournament legal. This means that these cards are legal for use in any tournaments where the original printings are still legal.

Would you consider getting the new from the vault set?

Leave me comments of your thoughts!

Thanks for reading my blog!

M-15 GAME DAY

     

         This weekend (8-9-14 to 8-10-2014) the m-15 game day weekend, which also marks when the new core set has been out for about a month.  LGS usually do an event to celebrate its one month, some would only do it for one day and some would do it for 2 days. The one I’m going to is on a Saturday just because there are more prizes to win (by any given chance I actually get enough wins to get anything). I’ve never really had much luck at winning anything but I’ll take it as a learning experience and also see what other people have to play with.

The hardest part about going into game day is what deck do I want to use, and what are the pros and cons of using that type of deck. For me I am torn between my sliver deck and my human heroic soldier deck. It seems like my sliver deck might be the way to go considering how nutty it can get and how quickly it can do so. My heroic human soldier deck has it’s up and down with it. The deck seems to been having problems with mana lately and it was never like that before. But I think I’ll try various decks and see which one seems to fit better for playing at game day.


I will wish everyone good luck with their game day event if they are going, in my next blog I will say what my results was as far as not losing (or not winning).

What deck will you go with for game day?

Comment with your thoughts!

Thanks for reading my blog!

KHANS OF TARKIR CLANS

Khans of tarkir is a newest set to be released in the fall, September 26, 2014. With prerelease on the 20th – the 21st of September. This new set seems to follow the WUBRG color order with one ally and one enemy. Each card has their own mechanics and morph on top of that. Yes, morph is back.

There are 5 different clans with their own wedge colors and theme for that clan. The five clans are:

Abzan Houses – WBG, Theme: Control

Jeskai Way – URW, Theme: Tricks

Mardu Horde – RWB, Theme: Aggro

Sultai Brood – BGB, Theme: Resource manipulation

Temur Frontier – GBR, Theme: Midrange fatties

I probably would pick mardu horde just because it has my favorite colors of cards I like to play. But then again I might change my mind once I start seeing the spoilers for the new set in September. The color combination of the new cards is going to probably eliminate everyone from having a devotion deck in the pro tour or whenever a top 8 is announced and then everyone wants those cards because of it. So far there has been only one card for the new set spoiled, that may just be a tease to us magic players because we probably won’t see another spoiler card until September or the end of august, which is a month away.


What do you hope to see in  the new set of khans of tarkir?

Leave a comment of your thoughts!

Thank you for reading my blog.

THE SLIVERS ARE BACK IN TOWN

     

       With the newest core set of magic the gathering M-15 coming out officially July 18th 2014, the slivers are back. I’m sure everyone loves the new artwork for the new slivers, considering they look just about human in the last core set; now they look more like regular slivers in the new core set.

Let’s look at the biggest fattie of slivers, the sliver hivelord. It’s a 5/5 creature with the ability of giving other slivers indestructible. Sure it’s all the color of mana to drop out on the battlefield which is in some case pretty hard to do. But with the other slivers you can have in the deck with mana weft sliver and such shouldn’t be too much of a problem to bring out. The new slivers still have the slivers you control ability instead of the all slivers get the same kind of ability. Which me personally I like better because why would I want to help my opponent make their creatures better?

Some of the other slivers are pretty good to have. They seem to have one sliver for every color of the mana this time around instead of having two or three different ones for the same color. What’s also different is they have a sliver land card called sliver hive, which helps put sliver tokens out onto the battlefield by tapping 5 colorless and the sliver hive card to get the 1/1 colorless sliver onto the battlefield, but you can only do it if you control a sliver. It also has tap sliver hive to add 1 colorless to your mana pool and it also have tap sliver hive to add any one colorless to add to your mana pool only to cast a sliver. This card is very specific to what it can do only for sliver decks, then again who wouldn’t make a sliver deck with  the land card in it?

Then we have the venom sliver, a 1 and a forest to drop out onto the battlefield with a 1/1 power and toughness to give all slivers you control deathtouch. This is a great card to have in a slivers deck, you can use the venom sliver as a chump block to get rid of the other player’s creatures. If you have sliver hivelord out there with the venom sliver, your sliver will live and the other player’s creature won’t.

Belligerent sliver is 2 and a mountain to drop this bad boy out onto the battlefield with a 2/2 power and toughness and give all slivers you control “can’t be block except by two or more creatures”. This isn’t so bad for the mana cost. Although the sliver looks more like a lion sliver but that’s ok with me, the artwork doesn’t help my gameplay any.

There’s also a sliver that can provide control in your deck as well. Constricting sliver is a five and a plains to cast out. It’s a bit of an expensive sliver to cast but it’s sort of worth it to exile an opponent’s creature as long as the constricting sliver stays in the battlefield. When I say sort of, I really meant not really considering it’d be way late in the game to cast it, unless you have a bunch of spells and mana weft sliver that can give you more mana to produce to get it out quicker.

Diffusion sliver is a one and a island to cast for a 1/1 power and toughness to give all slivers the ability to counter spells or unless it’s controller pays two when they become targets of spells. This would go well against a burn, counter spells type of deck. But I’m not sure of how the counter would work, I think the sliver gets to stay put while the counter or spells that targets it goes straight into the grave yard. This can force the other player to keep mana open to do such spell and prevents them from putting anything else out onto the battlefield.

Then the last sliver I’m going to talk about is the leaching sliver which just like the diffusion mana cost but only with the swamp in the mana cost to drop a 1/1 power and toughness with the ability to give all slivers to give the defending player 1 damage whenever a sliver attacks. This card can be a good ending game win kind of card because even if the defending player blocks and they have very little life left to hold on to the 1 damage still goes to them and lose the game.

That’s all I have to talk about slivers today.

What is your favorite new sliver?

How do you like the new art work for them?

Leave your comments of your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog.

CONSPIRED TO WRITE

The new booster draft set “conspiracy” is out now for your FNM draft or whenever your LGS does draft. It’s a new multi-player set that has new cards along with lots of reprints from magic history. The new set is designed for 6-8 multi-player draft and separated into groups of three or four player free for all games.

The new cards in the set can have an effect on the draft itself before even playing the game. For example, the card cogwork librarian card if drafted is face up, as you draft you can draft an additional card and if you do put cogwork librarian into that booster pack. Weird abilities like that can happen. Some would help other players in their games as well. You will never know what kind of card you would draw or the player would draw either. When you eliminate the other players and you are the one player left, you win (obviously).

This is short because I don’t know enough about the new set to really write stuff about it. Plus I don’t draft much myself. I’m more of the limited type of player, not taking a card and pass it to someone else to choose cards out of it. I rather have all the cards for myself, sounds selfish right? Not really.

Would you rather draft or do limited?

What are your thoughts of the new booster draft set and how it can be played?

Please comment your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog.

SPOILERS “R” US, my favorite time of the year.

        Spoiler time is my favorite time of the year for in between expansions of what to expect in the upcoming new set. It’s a great deciding factor to get the set or not, but most of know pretty darn well that we would buy into the set no matter what. Unless you are so disgusted with the new set that you would quit magic and sell your whole collection for a small payout, then regret it later. Don’t be that guy or gal.

        Spoilers are also great for learning about the new mechanics or returning mechanics for the new set. Some are really cool and some gets you wondering why they would even think of putting that mechanic on there. I like how they try and come up with new mechanics for the set so it doesn’t get boring. Even bring back a mechanic from an earlier set is still cool, as long as it’s a good mechanic. Bushido this means you.

         Strive and constellation is the new mechanics for the journey into nyx set. Inspired and heroic has a use in the new set along with devotion with the gods. A spell with strive ability lets you pump more mana into it to increase the number of targets. Constellation ability triggers every time it or another enchantment enters the battlefield under the player's control. Most of the enchantments with constellation abilities in Journey into Nyx are enchantment creatures, but not all of them.

         What do you think of the new mechanics and cards for journey into nyx? Let me know in the comments and share, like, do whatever the fancy things you do.

                        Thanks for reading my blog.