Theros Block Speculation

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

A very interesting post over on the mothersite today - if you've not yet have had a chance to look, click on over.  WotC TJ posted to the Magic Arcana the 'title images' of each of the sets in the current Magic: the Gathering block - Theros, Born of the Gods, and Journey into Nyx.  We have of course seen the Theros art with Elspeth, sun's Champion standing in triumph over a slain hydra and have even seen stylized hints of the other arts on the Hero's Path website but not yet seen them in full - which affords us an opportunity to generate some almost-baseless speculation.  For the Planeswalker Guide to Theros, check out the Magic Creative Team's articles here.  Let's have at it now . . .
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First up - the title art for Theros.

Nothing new - Elspeth, now on Theros is true to form and fights for the humans inhabiting this plane against the many monsters.  A forge with her and Heliod, god of the Sun now emerges.

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Second - the next set 'Born of the Gods' with this title art. 

We can clearly see that the Planeswalker Xenagos from the previous Theros set has a major role to play.  As Xenagos already has received a card, we should expect cards indicating a theme of his (or his 'faction'?) evolution.  This art suggests that Xenagos has supplanted Purphoros and possibly a bleeding through of Nyx (the realm of the gods) in to the corporeal plan.

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Third - the title art for the final set 'Journey into Nyx'

From this image, we see the full extent of the corruption of being that was Xenagos.  Super Xenagos, holding his lyre-spear-staff thingy is about to engage in a confrontation with two well-known Planeswalkers - Elspeth and Ajani.  In the background to the left are battle banners of forces but whether this army is marching against or for Xenagos is unknown. Below this final battle are ruins of temples of which Erebos, god of the Underworld suggests has been, like Purphoros, defeated by super Xenagos.
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Lastly, a heads up about MTG Mint Card (their banner on the left) who are having some pretty amazing deals, so click on over and check that out.
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Theros Holiday Gift Box

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

We'll be heading out to OMG! Games latter on tonight to play in the Friday Night Magic event but wanted to swing by today during lunch break to pick up the 2013 Theros Holiday Gift Box on the chance it may sell out latter today.  Apparently we did have nothing to fear as the store ordered a good number.  While at the store there happened to be a few other players there also on a lunch break to grab some singles ahead of the event tonight and not there to pick up the Holiday Gift Box.  After a discussion of what they would pay for four booster packs of Theros (it's about $5 here in Central Ontario), they realised that given the price tag on the Holiday Gift Box (priced at $19.99 at OMG! Games), it was essentially a no-brainer.

Anywhoos - let's have a looky-loo in the box now !

Contents:

• A storage box that can hold more than 2,000 cards

• Six illustrated plastic dividers

• A sticker sheet for customizing the dividers

• Four Theros booster packs

• An alternative-art Karametra's Acolyte from the Theros set

• 20-card Theros basic land pack

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Release Date: November 15, 2013 for an MSRP: $19.99

Enchant the Magic™ player in your life with the Magic: The Gathering® Holiday Gift Box, containing four booster packs from the Theros™ expansion, 20 basic land cards, and a premium card featuring an illustration unique to this gift box.

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Notes :

• Peel 'n' stick sticker are great.

• The box art is nice but not as epic as last year's Return to Ravnica box art.

• The Dan Scott art for alt-art foil Karametra's Acolyte is stunningly beautiful but we have wishes for a more popular standard-format card.  Last year's foiling on Dreg Mangler was a bit weird 'n' flat.

• The art for the six card dividers are simply gorgeous.  The divider thickness seems a bit thinner from last year.

• Card storage box appears robust and on the same quality as the previous year's box.

•  Our four booster packs did not net us anything epic : Temple of Silence / Nighthowler / Artisans of Forms / Labyrinth Champion.  We did finally get a token that we've been looking for which is cool.

•  All in all a very solid purchase and of great use to just about every Magic: the Gathering player we can think of.

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Journey into Nyx

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We trust you had a great weekend, hopefully filled with some Magic: the Gathering.  Our weekend was rather productive, at least in terms of MTG.  We took that standard Slivers (featuring Bow of Nylea and Thorncaster Sliver) build to OMG! Games for Friday Night Magic to give it a spin and promptly lost every match - but - dang, that was pretty fun to play actually.  We'll likely just keep it at the kitchen table, or perhaps grab a few MTG singles from MTG Mint Card to make it a bit more competitive at FNM - we don't know yet.  Also of note, we think there are a few more players trying out that funky Maze's End Turbo-Fog build - although it seems a bit non-interactive, we have a thingy for alternate win condition games and might just have to give this a try.

Anywhoos - on to today's MTG news.  Over on the mothersite today, we now have the official announcement for the third and last set in the Theros block.  Although we've had the name for some time, we just did not have some of the nitty-gritty until today.  Again, Wizards did not provide an art teaser along with the announcement - rather  sad about that, so we've just added a few images from the very lovely 'Hero's Path' website below to fill in.  Righto - Here's the full run-down now -  
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Set Name     : Theros
Block : Set 1 of 3 in the Theros block
Large September Expansion
Number of Cards : 249
Prerelease Events : September 21-22, 2013
Release Date : September 27, 2013
Launch Weekend : September 27-29, 2013
Pro Tour Theros Dates : October 11-13, 2013
Game Day : October 19-20, 2013

 

Set Name     : Born of the Gods
Block : Set 2 of 3 in the Theros block
Number of Cards : 165
Small February Expansion
Prerelease Events : February 1-2, 2014
Release Date : February 7, 2014
Launch Weekend : February 7-9, 2014
Game Day : March 1-2, 2014
   
 

Set Name     : Journey into Nyx
Block : Set 3 of 3 in the Theros block
Number of Cards : 165
Small May Expansion
Prerelease Events : April 26-27, 2014
Release Date : May 2, 2014
Launch Weekend : May 2-4, 2014
Game Day : May 24-25, 2014

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Promo Round-Up

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Although it was pretty dang cold, altogether it was a rather nice weekend here.  Kicking the weekend off on Friday, we went to Friday Night Magic at our local card shop, OMG! Games (near the College here in Barrie, Ontario) and went 3 wins / 2 losses with a funky Bant Hexproof build, taking us to 7th place which meant some packs and this month's FNM promo (see below).  Attendance was not the best at all (likely due to the horrible weather) with only 20 or so players.  We played agains Duncan, Curt, Brayden, Korie and Ben and in-between rounds brought along a 'fun' experimental deck to see just how well it would perform.  One observation we made - we most definitely need to pick up some additional non-basic lands from MTG Mint Card.  We did a bunch of yard / house work on Saturday / Sunday, got in a few games at the kitchen table and brewed up a few against the grain decks.  We also popped on online throughout the weekend to catch up with the big MTG Grand Prix tournament in Santiago.  Congratulations to player Luis Navas who gamed with a Rakdos Aggro (Exava / Mogis's Marauder / Xathrid Necromancer / etc.).

Righto - back onto topic - we have for you today a bunch of Magic: the Gathering promos from various programs 'n' products.  We may have posted some of these before on our sister site MTG Realm on Tumblr but want to roll it all into a big ball here.  Let's go . . .

Theros Holiday Gift BoxWe absolutely LOVED the Gift Box product from last year (Return to Ravnica) and will most definitely be picking up up again this year (to gift ourselves!).  The box itself can hold more than 2,000 Magic cards and is available worldwide in English on November 15, 2013. You do get more than just a beautiful box to store your cards in for the MSRP of $19.99, though! To wit:

• Four Theros booster packs
• Beautiful storage box that can hold more than 2,000 Magic cards
• Twenty Theros basic lands
• Six illustrated plastic dividers
• Sticker sheet for customizing the dividers
• An alternate-art Karametra's Acolyte from the Theros set

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Theros League
The League is a seasonal Magic: The Gathering tournament organized by the DCI. The ongoing, five-week tournament is played in local game and hobby stores around the world, a month after each a new card set is released. This sealed deck tournament follows up on Game Day events and uses the Standard format.  Check your local gaming store to see when your league starts - If it already has, chances are they may have another league starting up again.  The Theros League promo is a lovely Soldier token with art form Zoltan Boros which now brings us to 3 different white soldier tokens and 1 red soldier token.

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If you've missed it, here's the recent round-up Friday Night Magic promos -

November 2013 - Grisly Salvage
Original art illustrated by Dave Kendall
Alternate FNm art illustrated by Maciej Kuciara

December 2013 - Sin Collector
Original art illustrated by Mike Bierek
Alternate FNm art illustrated by Izzy
By far, the most creepy and unsettling art in recent memory!

January 2014 - Warleader's Helix
Original art illustrated by Greg Staples
Alternate FNm art illustrated by Wesley Burt

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Theros GW Enchant

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

We wanted to yatter to you a bit about Theros Game Day last weekend.  We took a Selesnya green white aggro build with us and lost quite decidedly, which was odd as it did so well at the Friday Night Magic event just the week before.  What we did see at the card shop was a metric ton of devotion strategies, mostly blue and white.  We also saw a lot of white soldier tokens via Elspeth, Sun's Champion and blue Elemental tokens via Master of Waves.  Thank goodness that anthems like Intangible Virtue is no longer standard legal.

 










We did appreciate our inclusion of the hexproof Witchstalker and the pro-blue Mistcutter Hydra, but wish we had addressed the increased numbers of Planeswalkers and those irritating tokens.  No worries, we fiddled a bit and made some room in the sideboard.  We also are now thinking of putting more of a hexproof aura slant on this with Nylea, that Green god card and Heliod, the white one to help boost the enchantment count for our Ethereal Armor - we might order a few extra cards from MTG Mint Card in a week or two.  Anywhoos - here's the build as it stands today . . .
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Firstly, we would like to grab another Loxodon Smiter, Voice of Resurgence and Temple Garden, but we would rather make rent and eat.  After a few weeks of this iteration, we may include the green and white gods and may even consider Oath of Ancient Wood.
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 Sideboard for our local meta-game right now addresses the biggest threats presented by all those blue and white builds, their Planeswalkers and token producers.  Anywhoos - it's a lovely work in progress.

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Commander 2013 Decklists

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

We had mentioned here in our previous post to MTG Realm that the Commander 2013 previews may drag over to next week.  Well, we were wrong.  We now have the full list previewed over on the mothership today with set release notes and a range of related articles expected next week.  The Commander 2013 gallery is here, with the five decklists over here.

Before we get any further into Commander 2013, we have to yatter about what is likely on most Magic: the Gathering player's minds - the Theros Game Day event this weekend.  We'll be heading this weekend over to OMG! Games here in Barrie, Ontario (near Georgian College).  They will be having events on both Saturday and Sunday October 19th / 20th.

Registration opens at 11:30 AM with gaming underway at 12:30. Bring along your standard constructed deck and $6 and you will have the chance of winning a foil full art Nighthowler and an exclusive Game Day Champion playmat.  All participants will receive the full art Phalanx Leader promo card just for attending.

There will be of course the special side event called 'Face The Hydra' which you would likely have heard about already.  All day long at OMG! Games, you and your friends can play against the hydra deck with your standard deck and up to two hero cards earned in the pre-release and release weekend events. This is designed to be played with 1-3 players players and receive the next hero on the Path to Heros.  For players that don't have a standard deck the Theros Event deck, called 'Inspiring Heroics' will be available for only $24.99 - we'll see you out there!

Righto - back to Commander 2013!  All 51 new cards have now been revealed as well as the final decklists of each of the five Commander 2013 builds.  We will most definitely be talking more about EDH / Commander next week but for now, we are admiring the 25 to 30 awesome new card arts on the reprints.  Anywhoos - here's the quick run-down of all the new cards -

 

 

 

White (8) : Act of Authority, Angel of Finality, Curse of the Forsaken, Darksteel Mutation, Mystic Barrier, Serene Master, Tempt with Glory, Unexpectedly Absent

Blue (8) : Curse of Inertia, Diviner Spirit, Djinn of Infinite Deceits, Illusionist's Gambit, Order of Succession, Tempt with Reflections, Tidal Force, True-Name Nemesis

Black (8) : Baleful Force, Curse of Shallow Graves, Fell Shepherd, Hooded Horror, Ophiomancer, Price of Knowledge, Tempt with Immortality, Toxic Deluge

Red (7) : Curse of Chaos, From the Ashes, Sudden Demise, Tempt with Vengeance, Terra Ravager, Widespread Panic, Witch Hunt

Green (7) : Bane of Progress, Curse of Predation, Naya Soulbeast, Primal Vigor, Restore, Spawning Grounds, Tempt with Discovery

Multicolor (10) : Derevi, Empyrial Tactician, Gahiji, Honored One, Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, Marath, Will of the Wild, Nekusar, the Mindrazer, Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, Roon of the Hidden Realm, Shattergang Brothers, Sydri, Galvanic Genius

Artifact (2) : Eye of Doom, Surveyor's Scope

Land (1) : Opal Palace
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Better Red Than Dead

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

Today on the MTG Realm blog, we wanted to yatter a bit about the new Magic: the Gathering standard constructed environment and in particular about a fairly fun build around devotion to red.  Similar to that older 'Chroma' ability in Eventide, the 'Devotion' mechanic in Theros has you sum up all the stated mana symbols within a specific colour and subsequently delivers a particular effect.  The official rules (700.5) states that 'A player's devotion to [color] is equal to the number of mana symbols of that color among the mana costs of permanents that player controls.'  

In Theros, there are about 16 cards with Devotion tech - 2 in white, 2 in blue, 5 in black, 2 in red, 4 in green and 1 reference in Nykthos, the legendary land card.  We realised quite some time ago, that going 'all out' on one particular stategy does not make for a robust build of 60 cards in that it blew out more than it would win, and it was less adaptable to an opponent's sideboard.  To that end, we worked on a few derpy builds to test out and settled on the two red cards - Fanatic of Mogis (which has a ping equal to devotion upon eotb) and Purphoros, God of the Forge which evolves from enchantment to creature after a devotion of five, similar to that of the other Theros 'god' cards, and arguablly, perhaps one of the better cards in this cycle of five.

To this end, we assembled a short list of cards to help us across the finish line - bascically any card with a double or triple count for red mana. Burning Tree Emissary, Ash Zealot, Frostburn Weird, and Boros Reckoner all made the cut.

After some time playing, we added Hammer of Purphoros and the R/G Planeswalker Xenagos, the Reveler.  We discovered just how much we enjoyed the synergy Xenagos had with Purphoros - generate a Xenagos token and have Purphoros ding two damage each time a creature dropped on the game table.  We went even so far as to explore a Naya build (Red / Green / White) with creature tokens from Molten Birth Birth and Elspeth, the new White 'Walker.  Alas, we dropped this idea and may now consider going with a Red / Green monster strategy with Domri Rade and / or Garruk, Caller of Beasts.

We don't know where this may go but we do know for certain that this is a work in progress and there will likely be a few more singles purchased at MTG Mint Card before we call this particular deck finished.
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FNM Report 10-04-2013

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Happy Saturday MTG peeps,

We wanted to do a quick follow-up to yesterday's post about the new Magic: the Gathering standard constructed environment and which direction we are taking our 60-card stack at FNM to deliver a polished product for Theros Game Day.

As misfortune would have it, the green / white Selesnya aggro strategy we had hatched out earlier was placed in jeopardy when it was time to head off to the store and we realised we were short a few cards (traded / lost / mischievous gnomes?).  With only about an hour before OMG! Games started the first match, we scrambled and put together this list :

4x Elvish Mystic, 3x Soldier of the Pantheon, 3x Fleecemane Lion, 2x Voice of Resurgence, 4x Selesnya Charm, 4x Witchstalker, 3x Fiendslayer Paladin, 3x Ajani, Caller of the Pride, 3x Loxodon Smiter, 4x Unflinching Courage, 4x Advent of the Wurm, 3x Temple GArden, 3x Selesnya Guildgate, 9x Forest, 8x Plains.
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At OMG! Games, the crowd was lighter than usual with about 27 players.  First match was lost rather quickly to Chris who had played a blue / black strategy.  The next four matches (to Rob, TJ, Hunter, and Simon) did go rather well, usually going to game three with wins all going to our Selesnya build.  There seemed to be quite a few control decks  (like that delicious hand shown above with Supreme Verdict, Detention Sphere, Swan Song, and Azorious Charm) in the field but that certainly does not mean the same kind of showing next week.  For now, we're going to pick up a few extra missing singles from MTG Mint Card and stick with aggro for the next several weeks.

Coming in 4th place, we scored five Theros packs and the Friday Night Magic foil promo card Ghor-Clan Rampager.  

What was rather awesome was that we were actually looking to acquire (trade / buy) 3 of the 5 cards we were able to pull - Xenagos, Thoughtseize, and Temple of Abandon.  Not too shabby.

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Post Theros FNM

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

Tonight we here at MTG Realm along with thousands of other Magic: the Gathering players will be heading out to local gaming stores to take part in a Friday Night Magic event.  We'll be at OMG! Games (best card shop in central Ontario) will be our first time to the store since Theros, the latest MTG set hit shelves worldwide.  Tonight was particularly difficult to prepare a new standard constructed stack to play since a number of our fav cards from Innistrad block rotated out of the format.

We received our big pile of MTG Theros singles pre-ordered from MTG Mint Card and it sat on the table for a few days while we attempted to come up with a 60-card strategy.  Where we finally began to make progress was with which decks were performing good in Return to Ravnica block constructed and decided to go with a Green / White Selesnya aggro build - aggro is a good default choice in the first few weeks of the new metagame.  There are a lot of powerful creatures in these colours and building it is fairly straightforward.  We'll eventually move on to some other build latter but here's what we have . . .

CREATURES
4 Elvish Mystic
3 Soldier of the Pantheon
3 Experiment One
3 Fleecemane Lion
4 Loxodon Smiter
3 Ajani, Caller of the Pride
3 Voice of Resurgence
4 Witchstalker
3 Fiendslayer Paladin

SPELLS
4 Advent of the Wurm
3 Selesnya Charm

LAND
10 Forest
5 Plains
4 Selesnya Guildgate
4 Temple Garden
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Some of the decisions here was based upon the local metagame, our budget, as well as what cards we actually own.  The new Theros cards now in the Selesnya vehicle are Soldier of the Panteon (solid choice after a 'gold' multi-colour block like Return to Ravnica), and Fleecemane Lion (hexproof / indestructibly after monstrous is pretty sweet - especially if we encounter any of the new 'god' cards).  We'll continue to work tweaks on this over the next few weeks (considering adding Boon Satyr) until the games shifts again after which we really want to brew something up with B/W control or R/W aggro.

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Ordeals of Theros

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

With Theros now out and many players now with these new Magic: the Gathering cards now in hand, we wanted to an informal series of posts over the next few weeks about some of the interesting cycles in the new set.  We have all our singles preorders in from MTG Mint Card and from working on some fun 'n' derpy builds, we've come to appreciate the interaction between the 'Heroic' mechanic and the five colour 'Ordeal' cycle of cards.  In less refined times, an 'ordeal' was a test of guilt or innocence by which the accused was put to severe pain, and survival taken to mean divine proof of that person's innocence.

Heroic is an ability word where a creature with a heroic gives the controlling player powerful benefits every time he casts a spell that targets that creature.  Ordeals are a cycle of uncommon Auras, all with the converted mana cost of 1X (where 'X' is that colour in that cycle).  This tech gives a +1/+1 counter for each times the enchanted creature attacks and after it sacrifices itself (the aura) when it has 3 or more +1/+1 counters you get a sweet trigger a ability.  The ordeal cycle in Theros is Ordeal of Heliod, Ordeal of Thassa, Ordeal of Erebos, Ordeal of Purphoros, and Ordeal of Nylea - and with about 18 cards in the set with the 'Heroic' ability, additional benefits are realised.  Anywhoos, lets have a looky-loo . . .

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After derping with some of the cards, we've realised that most of us here at MTG Realm are sort of evil at our core in that we just wanted to skip dinner and go straight to desert.  What we're talking about is foregoing all the work and time in acquiring +1 counters when we attack with our enchanted dude and bee-line it to the bonus without much bother to undergoing the 'ordeal'.  Kinda like this . . .

Yeah.  Dude, enchant with ordeal, next turn attack and cast something that will drop additional +1 counters on it to get the cake.  Still working out which one(s) suit our taste and our particular build, but we're certainly going to investigate this further.

Until tomorrow, happy brewing folks! 
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