DAILY RANDOM MTG CARD: Dragonrage

This uncommon card from Fate Reforged is one of my favorite ways to pump instant spells in Magic: The Gathering. Just declare your attackers and use your 3 mana to cast this bad boy out and then boom, everyone attacking gets a red mana and get to use that red mana to give them a +1/+0. It may seem like it’s not that much being given to them, but any little bit can go a long way in a game of Magic. Not to mention the artwork is really cool.

Which instant is your favorite?

As always, thanks for reading my blog!

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.

KELADESH RELEASE DATE!

Sometime ago, Wizards of the Coast released a picture of the future set of Keladesh's newest planeswalker, Saheeli Rai (picture above).  Initially, everyone thought she was going to have a blue and white mana cost Planeswalker; now the card has been spoiled I think everyone is sort of surprised that she has a red and blue mana cost. Her abilities are pretty good for an artifact running deck. I believe she will be seeing plenty of play at the Pro Tour, LGS and the kitchen table.

Two more planeswalkers were spoiled (picture above): Chandra and Nissa. The new Chandra is my favorite Planeswalker card, I’d love to get my hands on it. Will they see play? Who knows. Let me know what your feelings are on them.

Keladesh is set to be released on September 30th, 2016, with the pre-release being held on September 24th and 25th 2016.  The online release date is much later, as usual: to be released on October 10th, 2016, with the pre-release date of October 7th-10th, 2016.

The pro tour for Keladesh starts on October 14th-16th, 2016, set in the beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii. The format is of course Standard; players will be drafting the cards to build their decks. Good luck to all the players visiting the beautiful islands.

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!

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.

A..MAZE..MENT

       There are various resources to find the information you need for your deck, such as looking up the card and reading the comments on the card for idea of what other people would do with the card in a certain deck. Sure they would only talk about certain other card that might be quite expensive in mana cost or price to buy, there’s always a chance of another card that could do the similar thing for cheaper mana and price cost. Always explore your options.

       The deck I’ve been looking up revolves around the land card maze’s end. A lot of people don’t like it because of how slow it would be to do the game around it. But the more research I have done on the card, the more ideas I got to piece together a decent deck that could potentially be quicker than what people would say about the card being slow. Granted it is still a pretty slow deck to mess around with, it’s almost impossible to make it a quicker deck to work with.

     I had been staring at this maze’s end in my binder since I did the prerelease to return to ravnica. Never used it because I dismissed as a crappy card right away, it’s also a promo card too. Pretty much almost no one wants it. I’m not going to try and play it in a tournament or anything big like that. I thought it’d be a fun deck to play at the kitchen table with friends and family. Making this kind of deck is quite unusual for me to be making with the older cards in the deck. I usually make standard decks.

    

     There’s something about the flavor text on the card about getting those gate cards out to win the game. The card was not attracted to me before, but for some reason now, I like the card a little more than I did before. Maybe it’s the challenge of trying to get the gates out before I get brutally killed by the other player. But the deck idea I have has creatures in it that can help with the gate cards. For example I have cards like saruli gatekeepers that give me 7 life if I control two or more gate land cards, sakura-tribe scout that allows me to put down a land card from hand into play any time after the first time the card gets put into the battlefield. Just about every nonland card I have is helpful in some way; it’s either gaining me life or making my creatures tougher.  

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KHANS PRERELEASE RESULTS

       

       I went to the prerelease Sunday afternoon with my brother in law. I happen to pick mardu and he picked (I think) temur (only because they ran out of mardu.) the box is pretty cool, its got a sticker (which really doesn’t show the clan symbol which I thought was odd), a pin button, a d20 roll down dice, and of course the khans booster packs and the seeded pack.

I was really hoping to get the legendary creature for my clan but I didn’t, I really don’t know if anyone really got their legendary creature for their clans but the promos some people have were pretty darn cool. Mine was “Utter End”. It’s a 2 colorless and white and black to cast instant to exile target nonland permanent. Of course I used it in my deck, it was helpful against some big creatures or threats.

There were around 15 or 16 players that attended the prerelease, so we had four rounds to play with. First player I played was his first time playing in a tournament setting. He’s got a pretty decent deck but he doesn’t really play smart. First hand went pretty well, he had two creatures out and I had at least 5 creatures out. So I had two act of treason in my hand and took control of his creatures and swing in with everything for 14 points of combat damage, in this case he only had 14 life left so I won.

        Now for the second hand, it gets interesting. I don’t have as many creatures out this time around but he played a creature called meandering towershell, which is a 5/9 with island walk and whenever it attacks exile it. Return it under your control tapped and attacking at the beginning of declared attacking step on your next turn. Notice it said “your control” in the flavor text. So I act of treason it and it became mine for the rest of the game. And since he can’t block because he controls a island and meandering towershell has islandwalk. So the rest of the game was smooth sailing for the win.


       That was pretty much the play of the day for me, my deck didn’t play as good at the other three matches, so I went 1 win and 3 loss. Either way I had a good time and got some excellent cards. For the first time ever at a prerelease I pulled a Planeswalker card, Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker. Word got out about it and everyone wanted to be my friend.

      How did you do at your prerelease?

     What clan did you picked?

      Leave a comment of your thoughts!

      Thanks for reading my blog!

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!

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!

M-15 PRERELEASE

Here we are again with another prerelease weekend for the newest core set M-15 which starts tonight Friday at midnight (which technically is Saturday) July 12, 2014. When you join the prerelease you will chose a color. You'll receive a Prerelease kit with five (5) M15 booster packs, one (1) special "seeded" booster pack loaded with cards in the color you chose, a spindown die, an exclusive foil promo that can be used in your sealed deck, and a Garruk the Slayer Challenge card for players to get involved with the "Hunt Bigger Game" contest.

As for the hunt bigger games contest, it looks to me that you can win a nerf Garruk axe and the duel of the Planeswalker online game, although I’m not 100% sure since searching for this info just leads me to enter the contest pages, and if you snap a photo of yourself being the victim or the victor with the cardboard cut out of Garruk to facebook using the hashtag #huntbiggergame in the image caption and then complete and submit an entry form for your chance to win, and both victors and victims can win.

I think if I were going to my LGS prerelease I think I would pic green for my color of choice. But since I am very broke (sucks to be a grown up) I won’t be able to go one of the prerelease event. But I have chosen red, and white at the previous prereleases and I wonder if green would do me any better.

What color would you choose for your prerelease?

Leave comments of your thought.

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MY JOURNEY EXPERIENCE

      Saturday evening, me and my brother in law entered All the King’s Men game shop in pitman, NJ for the journey into nyx prerelease sealed event. Upon entering the shop the shop owner announced that there are only a very few white left, 3 to be exact. Right away I shouted I’ll take one. The owner decided to step in and play due to small turn out, which is including the owner, 8 people. The owner decided that everyone would get a booster pack to the person in whatever place they are in, in other words, a pity pack. And do 3 rounds instead of 4.

      Now it’s time to sort through the cards and see what I got. This is one of those moments where I wish I had written down what cards I ended up using during the game. But first round didn’t do so well for me. My opponent beat me down pretty good with his black and red deck, destroying my creatures every turn. I was also doing ok with my second hand of round 1 got him down to 9 but he came out swinging for 13 with his creatures. 0-1.

      The next round I got paired up against the owner. My w/u against his mono white. First hand he got me good. The second hand took the longest of going back and forth. I manage to get my flyers out (one of them has double strike), enchanting them with +1/+1 counters and life link. He came out with a big creature with the power toughness of 5/6 and I casted nullify to counter his creature. He swings with his creatures he has out with 5. And then it was my turn to do stuff. Cast another flyer out on the battlefield and swung with all of my creatures killing him and I gained life. I gained enough life to get me up to 37 life total. Which he had me down pretty far before the life gaining happens. Then we were a draw as far as wins, but he decided to give me a win and drop out to go home and walk his dogs. He said that was such an amazing game he played with me.

       Then the last round was against my brother in law with his g/u. I’m just gonna cut it short and say he beat me both hands. Almost had him in the second hand but I made the mistake of attacking with all my creatures and have nothing to block. It wouldn’t have really matter either way because most of his creatures are hexproof and pretty much unblockable. He swung with a 6/6 with me having only 3 life left. And for the first time ever I walked out of an event with a win, 1-2.

I’m going to leave you with a few questions
1. What was your color for prerelease?
2. How did you do win/loss wise?
3. What good cards did you get?

Leave me a comment with your thoughts and thanks for reading my blog.