This is not a nice card. I was on the receiving end of one of these at the pre-release. It was attached to a Verix Bladewing (a 4/4 legendary dragon) that I couldn’t do anything about. I just had to sit there and take a beating as it was joined by more and more copies.

I already had one copy of the card that I pulled in my booster boxes. And it had been slotted into my Dragon Tribal Commander deck as a replacement for Coat of Arms. Why? Well at the time my ex-students had also started to play tribal decks, so they were also getting a benefit from Coat of Arms. I couldn’t have that. So this was the natural card to replace it.

This card unless banned, is an instant include for a lot of decks. A new Commander staple. So I got 5 more of these before the price skyrocketed. So at some point I’m going to have to put one in my common box and proxy it in, because I don’t have enough copies. Using a proxy and bringing out the original to use when needed is a great way to save money in a casual format.

The thing about this card is it triggers every turn, you don’t need to attack for it to trigger. So more copies of your Commander, no problem. Just more copies of whatever nasty creature you have on the battlefield, no problem. Plus they have haste so you can instantly attack with that copy too.

Oh this will be so funny in my Scarab God zombie deck. Multiple Scarab Gods on the battlefield that’s going to hurt so much. Get some zombies out, multiple beginning of turn triggers. Ouch! Zombie apocalypse!!!

Just after UKGE next weekend we get the latest MtG set BattleBond hitting the shelves.

This new set is a stand-alone set aimed at specifically Two-Headed Giant. Which is a team based multiplayer format for MtG. Luckily the cards also look like they will be pretty good in other multiplayer formats also, like Commander.

Sadly MtG by the looks of it haven’t done a huge print run of this set. Already my FLGS won’t take pre-orders because they are only at the moment going to have enough to cover pre-release and release events, and not sure if they will have enough to cover pre-orders.

To be fair I wasn’t much interested in the set until the spoilers started to hit. Up until that point my plans were to eventually pick a booster box up, play some Two-Headed Giant draft with my friends and turn the cards into a cube. A bit like my Conspiracy plans.

But then it dropped that in BattleBond we will be seeing a reprint of Doubling Season. Then more spoilers came out and more reprints that people wanted appeared. Plus some of the new cards looked interesting. Ok the new art wasn’t up to the standard I’ve enjoyed in recent sets. But that wasn’t enough to put people off. People are starting to get excited in this set. Will WotC have enough product out there to met demand? It’s not looking good.

So below are a handful of cards from the spoilers that I like the look of, and dare I say it getting excited over.

Naturally I’m looking at cards that would up the game of my Commander decks. Which is why Doubling Season and Generous Patron took me as instant additions to my Elf Tribal deck. With the potential for having a place in an Atraxa deck.

Land Tax, Swords to Plowshares and Play of the Game look good cards for that work in progress of mine the Angel Tribal deck. I particularly like the political element of Play of the Game, and getting help from another player to cast it. The teaming up to remove a common threat with a board wipe. The other two are reprints I believe. That are staples of white I believe.

Lastly I chose a Land to represent all of the dual coloured lands in the set, which are only of use in multiplayer formats like Commander or Two-Headed Giant. Unless you have Blood Sun out I suppose, or you don’t mind them coming in tapped.

If I get the above cards, then I’m going to be happy. I’m sure there are others that will catch my eye. But I’ll worry about that nearer the time.

Not much gaming happening this week due to life events and stuff. Do you want to hear about the diarrhea bug sweeping our dogs at the moment? It has hit Strider particularly badly due to his age I think. But he has started to improve, which I’m relieved about. It means I didn’t get to see Deadpool 2 last night, but Strider comes first every time. So I’m going to fall back on the the ad hoc series I started in the last post as a content filler to at least let you know I’m still alive.

I got Archangel of Tithes the same time as I did the previous card Silverclad Ferocidons. As long suffering readers will remember (that’s assuming you read my MtG ramblings) I’m slowly getting together the cards for an Angel Tribal Commander deck. I can’t remember how I stumbled across this card, but the 4 CMC cost of the card was rather attractive. I liked the abilities as well. Taxing opponents for attacking or blocking me I like. It means they need to leave mana open to do either, and thus potentially slowing them down. If I can give Archangel of Tithes vigilance as well it basically locks things down totally. Being 3/5 means it can’t be lightning bolted away easily. I think for this to not make the Angel deck the cards are going to have to be pretty special.

There have been a couple of good suggestions on recent episodes of the Commandzone. The first suggestion was from one of their listeners/viewers that keeps deckbuilding costs down for Commander. For common cards that are used in a lot of decks the person proxies in the card, then when they need to play they pull the card out of a folder to use. I don’t use a folder, I use a deck box. But it’s a great idea that as I said helps keep costs down. The only draw back is that if I’m lending some-one a deck to play with that I’m doing this with, and I’m using a deck I’ve done this with there may be a clash over the use of a card. But that’s a very minor issue.

The other idea was for drafting amongst friends. Let’s assume that 4 friends want to draft, they also have each bought a booster box of the latest set. Instead of mass opening their boxes, for the draft session they use the box of one of the players. BUT they don’t keep the cards they draft, they go back to the owner of the box at the end of the draft session. Then next time they want to draft they use one of the boxes from one of the other players, and like wise that player gets all the cards back at the end. I like this idea. It gets away from the store drafts of trying to draft a good pool to build from and keeping high value cards. So players can just concentrate of a good draft experience. I have to admit it’s that draft value dilemma that keeps me away from playing draft in a store.

But this got me to thinking. The 2 conspiracy sets are draft sets. What if I used this idea and then put these cards into a conspiracy cube to be used again for drafting?

So my plan goes like this. Buy a booster box of conspiracy take the crown (the second set). Invite 4-6 good friends to an afternoons drafting and multiplayer Magic using that booster box. At the end get the cards back, and use them for the cube. Then repeat until the booster box no longer has enough boosters to be used for drafting. Crack open any remaining packs, add them to the cube. That gives me my final conspiracy cube to play with.

Thanks to my very generous colleague and friends at my last place, I used the money they collected to help purchase a booster box of conspiracy take the crown. Which as I write this is out for delivery according to a text I’ve just received. That text surprised me because yesterday the courier texted me and emailed me to say I would be getting it on Tuesday!

I also have a bid for an original conspiracy set on eBay at the moment too. That finishes later today. So who knows if I win that I’ll have 2 conspiracy cubes eventually.

I didn’t get into all that unstable hype and drafting before Christmas last year. But while I was brainstorming this cunning plan I thought I could do this with that as well. So I may at some point over the Summer do the same with that set. Then I’ll have an unstable cube too. This plan makes unstable more attractive to me. I won’t have some cards that I can’t play with in my decks. Instead I’ll have a whole cube I can draft and enjoy the experience of over and over. It makes me feel better about investing the money into the set.

So that’s the plan. Let’s hope I can pull it off.

Magic the Gathering Arena is many will know is the new/latest digital version of MtG. This version is being given a “modern” Hearthstone look and feel.

This should tick all my boxes so why am I not getting all excited about it?

Well at the moment it’s only PC during its beta stage. Being a Mac and iOS person it means I can take part in the beta program. My main casual gaming platform is iOS. So until it’s out on that I’m not interested.

But there are some recent announcements that are coming out that mean even if Arena came out on iOS tomorrow I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.

Firstly the redemption codes. They are currently testing them down under. In the Dominaria boosters there, they get a redemption code in each one. This code when redeemed in game gives you a booster pack or in game gold and a card. Apparently the split is 10% of the time you will get a booster pack, 90% that card gold combo. Plus I believe there will be a limit of 10 redemption codes per account. This news has put me off this feature straight off. If I buy a booster box I want to be able to use all 36 codes, not be screwed over. Plus that probability of getting a booster pack when redeemed sucks. I’d want a higher percentage of having a booster than the 10%. A fifty fifty split would be more something I’d be attracted to.

The price of boosters, drafting, etc in hard cash. Although this actually doesn’t get announced until tomorrow based on how WotC have behaved so far things are not looking good for this (see above for starters). If this is above $2 a booster, and approximately $6 for a 3 booster draft then WotC might as well forget about releasing Arena. Yes the gaming part of Hasbro was down financially in Q1 apparently. But that doesn’t mean WotC should be nickel and dimming the public. It means they should get their house in order first, stop attacking their player base because they express opinions they disagree with, improve the quality of products that they release (Iconic Masters, Masters 25, Explorers of Ixalan, the list goes on) and the card stock issue. Then maybe they might turn things round without picking the publics pockets.

I’m sure as we get closer to the release date to the general public release other developments will show that WotC are listening to the public and have ignored them. WotC need to listen, and change things big time else they can forget about attracting Hearthstone players to Arena, but also forget about moving over MtG players digitally and physically to Arena also.