Ok slowly opening the second booster box didn’t last long. All the boosters inside mysteriously burst open yesterday. I wish I knew how it happened.

I have surprised myself and actually got the first booster boxes contents scanned into the Decked app along with the foils and legendary creatures from the second.

With all this new injection of cards I have that ongoing problem of are the new cards good enough to go into the relevant deck? And if so which ones do they replace? That second question will be answered another day. At the moment I’m looking at the cards through the lens of would this card be good in one of my Commander decks. One or two cards have sparked ideas for brawl decks. Others have given me an idea for standard/modern decks (but not sure I’ll act on those for the time being).

I’m very happy with my pulls, I got 95% (a rough estimate) of the cards I was after either as singles or multiple copies. Plus one or two pleasant surprises that I wasn’t aware of mainly due to me not bothering much with the majority of spoilers.

Not sure if I’ll play Arcane Flight but I do like the art on the card. I’m not surprised it’s one of the ultra pro playmats for this set. I find the art whimsical with the expression on the cats face.

So what were the highlights of my pulls?

I’m glad I’m not playing Tron lands at the moment, Damping Sphere shuts them down. Which would slow my Angel deck down completely. I’m thinking this might find a home in my planned Death and Taxes Commander deck. Final Parting was a nice surprise and definitely is a nice tutor for a Commander deck, get the card you want and set up some graveyard shenanigans.

Gaea’s Blessing was on my list, with mill a thing with my students meta both in their modern decks and Commander this is a nice addition to fight against it. Gilded Lotus is it good enough for modern and standard? I think the 5 CMC is a bit expensive. But Brawl/Commander I’m liking the look of it. Grand Warlord Radha was a pleasant surprise, maybe not good enough to be the new commander of my Elf Tribal deck, but as a Brawl Commander?

Hallar, the Firefletcher was another surprise, definitely a Brawl Commander. Kicker isn’t a thing in my Elf Tribal deck so it wouldn’t break into that. Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain was on my list so happy to get her. As was Karn, Scion of Urza.

I really want the promo for Llanowar Elves. But if I’m building a standard deck I think I’d be going green with that Llanowar Elves/ Steel Leaf Champion combo. I’m not sure the other elves are strong enough to go full elf tribal both in Brawl or standard. Lyra Dawnbringer was high on my list and straight into my list of angel includes for my in progress Angel Commander deck. Marwyn, the Nurterer was in a Planeswalker deck and a nice surprise. I’d like to try and fit it into my Elf tribal deck.

Mishra’s Self Replicator is screaming out to be abused in some infinite loop way. Mox Amber not sure I’d ever use it, but it does seem to be expensive at the moment. Muldrotha, the Gravetide was a nice surprise and will be interesting to build decks around. Graveyard shenanigans is always frustrating to play against, and this could be a way to cheat out some expensive cards. Remember Final Parting?

More graveyard shenanigans with another pleasant discovery Primeval’s Glorious Rebirth. I think having some graveyard hate in decks will be a necessity, luckily there is some out there. A rat deck of some kind is back on the books, ’nuff said. I was just thinking white needs some more cards like Seal Away.

There were 2 angels I wanted from this set and I got both. Shalai, Voice of Plenty has made the team for my planned Angel Commander deck. Blue has some really nice big monsters of the deep. They may not be that playable in most formats. But hey that OMG moment when an another player sees them hit the battlefield, worth it. Slimefoot was on my hit list. I had it in my mind to do a saproling/fungus tribal deck of some kind, and this is the commander I wanted for it.

I don’t know what I was expecting from the sagas. But Song of Freyalise with a lot of creatures out, say like elves or saprolings this could be insane. I bet Squee, the Immortal will end up being a very very annoying card. Wish I’d got more Steel Leaf Champions than I did.

These next 3 were unexpected and have potential I think.

Oh look another board wipe for white with Urza’s Ruinous Blast, just what they needed. Ok probably not that great with this big influx of legendary cards in standard and Brawl. But other formats it might be more impactful. Token decks won’t like it for sure. Oh look a dragon for my dragon tribal deck. And with the Ur-Dragon as the commander a turn 3 drop! I can see Warcry Phoenix maybe making it into a Brawl deck. But as a 4 CMC 2/2 it looks a bit weak against Glorybringer and Rekindling Phoenix.

Here are the 3 that got away!

So that’s my haul or my highlights from the Prerelease weekend.

“There will come a day so dark you will pray for death. On that day your prayers will be answered.”
—Minaldra, the Vizag Atum

For the record the above is the flavour text from the card Zombie Apocalypse.

For me my decks are a living thing. Yes I create them, play with them, but over time you come across new cards (well new to me) from the rich history of thousands and thousands of cards that WotC have released for the game, or from a new set when it gets released. You see the card and think that it would go great in X deck. However you are then faced with the dilemma of what card(s) get replaced. Although on occasion it’s so blindingly obvious you don’t have to think about it. But a lot of the time it’s a very hard decision that involves vision quests, soul searching, consulting mystics and wise men hiding in caves at the top of mountains.

But why am I talking all this crap? I have that very dilemma at the moment with 2 new cards that I have got in. Both would fit in really nicely in my Elf Tribal deck. But that big question remains, what do they replace?

I like both of these cards. Hall of Gemstone is a great land/mana hate card that would cripple non-mono colour decks. Which when you are “tiny” elves trying to build up a nice board state helps a lot. Although it does kind of put a target on you for doing it. Realm Seekers, a 6 CMC Elf that potentially in Commander played at the right time come in as a very big creature indeed. In reality I’d expect to see it come in with between 3 – 8 +1/+1 counters. Play this after I have just put my graveyard back in my hand, with unlimited hand size for the rest of the game, and this becomes insane.

I’m pretty sure I may be revisiting this particular dilemma once I get my hands on Dominaria with one or two of the new elves in the set.

But with this current dilemma how would you fit these cards in? Would you even try? Maybe you know better cards that should be going into the deck. Let me know in the comments below. Remember if you haven’t commented before I need to approve the first comment, then after that you are golden to comment whenever you like without me needing to approve anything. This is a simple anti-spam thing.

If you remember in my ramblings Tuesday I mentioned somewhere on the horizon was a plan to build a deck that abused the etb effect. Well I now have the commander I want to use for this deck.

Yep Brago, King Eternal. I saw this card in an article on the top 10 cards in Conspiracy, and thought wait that’s the perfect Commander for this non-existent deck of mine. Possibly would have liked green in there as well, but you can’t have everything. Naturally the one must have card to go along side this is going to be Panharmonicon. I’d like to say the deck is building itself. But sadly that’s not the case.

What cards do you think I should be considering for this etb abuse deck?

This weekend your FLGS will be holding Open House events for MtG. I believe my FLGS The Hobbit Hole are holding theirs on Saturday. These are regular events throughout the year aimed at new and returning players to MtG.

You turn up at your FLGS, get a free Welcome deck, an experienced MtG player teaches you how to play. Once you are happy with how to play MtG, you then play 2 or 3 games solo against other new players. Once you have played those games you get a rather sweet full art Llanowar Elves promo card from the new Dominaria set.

If you are feeling brave after attending there is naturally the weekly Friday Night Magic that are held at your FLGS. You may want to buy one of the new Challenger decks for this if they are playing Standard. If they are doing a sealed or draft event you won’t need anything extra, you use the booster packs that your entry fee covers to build a deck. These can be a bit daunting, but those weird, scruffy looking guys don’t bite, and will gladly help and give advice.

However next weekend is the Prerelease weekend for the new set Dominaria. This means you get to play with the new cards a week early. They are fun things to attend, and the cost covers a Prerelease kit, 3 rounds of playing Magic, and 2 participation booster packs. So for your entry fee you get 8 boosters packs from the new set, a foil promo card, and a life count down die. Which is pretty good value.

Then the following weekend it’s the actual release weekend when the new set officially goes on sale. Your FLGS will most likely be doing drafts with the new cards that weekend.

If you are interested in learning to play this weekend is a great jumping off point. Hope you can get to a store and get that sweet promo card. I’ll be jealous I’m playing TI:4 instead so won’t get one.

One of my students has recently been given entry into the closed beta for MtG Arena. His main complaint about the game is due to him! His pc is not powerful enough at times during the game. Those times are when certain animations occur. Otherwise I believe he’s fairly happy with the actual game play.

For me Arena is dead to me until I can play it in my iPad. They could be testing it on iPad during this closed beta. For starters WotC are developing Arena in Unity. Which means they can export the game for whatever platform they like basically. No reason not to see a console version either. If White Wizard Games can do a closed Kickstarter backers alpha testing of Epic on PC/iOS/Android, and I bet they have less resources than WotC on this, then why can’t WotC with Arena? TestFlight on iOS allows this.

Because of the above Arena isn’t on my radar and wasn’t a consideration when I heard about Brawl. But since then some online have pointed out that one of the reasons Brawl may have been developed was for Arena. Commander is one, if not the most popular formats for MtG. Sadly Arena will not be able to play it due to the share number of cards that are legal in the format (thousands). So with Brawl only using the cards from Standard, and those are the cards available in Arena. The conspiracy theory is that this is why WotC invented Brawl, to add Commander like play to Arena. I certainly can see how this sounds credible. It’s also been pointed out in a podcast that Brawl in Arena may only be a 1 v 1 format, because they can’t see how the multiplayer element and board states would be handled.

For me I don’t want to have to grind to be able to do anything, like deck build.

Math Trade Update

A brief update on the UK Math Trade I’m taking part in. The list is now closed for adding games. It’s now entered the phase where people have until tomorrow I think it is to submit their want lists. This is basically you selecting the games you’d like to trade for and what you are offering from the games you put on the list.

I’ve submitted my want list.

• Apocrypha Adventure Card Game – offered £45 for this
• Tannhauser + expansions – offered Clans of Caledonia and Dark Souls
• Via Nebula – offered Dark Souls

It’s up to the software they run next to make the match ups. The Rebellion expansion I’m using as a wild card and see if I get offered anything of interest for it.