The Planeswalker's Stronghold

Welcome Back! It's been about 2 months since our little weekender in plane of Bant, and about a month before our next mini-vacation in the planes of Alara. This makes it a perfect time to revisit what we have pulled together so far for block, and to shadow the coming of Conflux. We were able to use our $20.00 budget to assemble an impressive power level for our collection, but did we make the right choices? Strap in, because I'm going to be hitting on a variety of topics today, bridging the Past, Present, and Future of Bant, and Magic at large. How did we do? We have had a major shake up to the price structure of Magic cards, how did our collection ride out the change? First off lets talk about the change it self. The price for a NCC (non-chase common) went from $0.25 to $0.10 or a reduction of 60%, meanwhile a NCU (non-chase uncommon) from to $0.25 from $0.50, a 50% reduction. Several factors aligned to make this shift happen. First off S/D (supply and demand) have rebalanced

Wizards has recently confirmed long standing speculation that all print releases will be black bordered. This brings to a close a 10 plus year mistake, and paves the road for improved international re-printings. Beginning with Wizards second major release of Unlimited in December 1993, the precedent was set that all reprinted cards, like those of the base or core set would be white bordered. This also represents the first time in the fifteen year history of the game that I can recall a single Wizards DCI policy change which was universally met with approval. I have to admit that I have mixed feelings on this issue. I clearly remember my very first magic cards were white bordered, from the Revised released April 1994. I even recall how odd the the Ice Age cards seemed when they were released, and how inferior black bordered cards felt at the time, simply because I had grown accustom to my white bordered ways. Black bordered cards ( BB's for short) quickly became much more highly s

Despite months of good intentions, many requests from friends and colleagues, I just hadn't gotten around to doing. Even though I had been playing the deck for months, and it had clearly become my deck of choice, I still had not documented a significant amount of my Deck. So what miraculous thing has changed that has allowed me address this startling shortfall of my attention? In truth it is a combination of many things. For one, we finally have the proper amount of staff in my office. For those of you who had not heard one of my woe filled tirades over the last several months, 80% of the staff in my office turned over with in just a few weeks. This took me from "new guy" to "senior guy" in a frighteningly brief matter of days. This also had the impact of dramatically reducing my down time in the office, and made my off time an often exhausted blur. Next up was the rigidity of the recent meta game. With nearly every tier1 deck out their revolving around the car

When Alpha first hit store shelves the concept of mana/spell color was brought paramount and reinforced with a number of cards. In the common slot White mages were given the Circles of Protection to fend off damage from spell/creatures/effects originating from a specific color. For the mere cost of 1w you could plunk down a reusable enchantment which could nullify the damage from a single source of the appropriate color. The Circles quickly fell into two groups, with white, green, and blue seen are worthless. CoP red and black were viewed as useful, but situational. These cards had the down side of only working on once specific color, so you had to draw into the correct color circle to be useful against your current opponent. Since this was long before the concept of sideboards, this often meant you had dead cards in your deck if your opponent was not in certain colors. Equally problematic was the drawing of multiple copies on the same spell, as there was no added benefit from a second

Special thanks to the fine folks at MTGS .com for not only providing most of the content of this little history lesson, but also the inspiration. I have always been an avid learner of history. and I find that the history of Magic is no exception. I love to spend hours on the wiki learning new connections and interations of the story lines, and people which make up the Magic multi-verse. I have taken the liberty of leaving the hotlinks inthis article to take readers back to the source data. My intention is to give credit where credit is do, and to encourage others to spend some time in this digital library readingg about their favorite corners of the multi-verse. The planeswalker Nicol Bolas was the most powerful of the Elder Dragons to survive the Dragon War . He later became the emperor of Madara until he was defeated by Tetsuo Umezawa . Bolas most recently rose again near Talon Gate and defeated Teferi , and closed the Talon Gate Rift, escaping to a plane of his own design an

Recently, I was involved in a conversation centered around what people thought was the best Magic set ever. One particular answer really struck me. It was his opinion that Ravnica was the best set ever made. Now this opinion is arguable and is probably a popular opinion among many, but it wasn't the answer itself, but the reason which struck home with me. He felt that this was the best set, because wizards had finally acknowledged enemy pairs for deck construction. Now clearly this is a post revisionist player. Long before there was Izzet, Boros, Golgari, Orzhov, and Simic, Wizards had told us a different story. This was the time before the great rules revisions, between Revised and Fourth when there were only 5 expansions to Magic. There was a story of a one eyed stranger in the city of Estark in the nation of Kush in the southwest portion of the Aerona continent of Dominia. It was the time of festival, when mages from all across the land came to compete. Most mages, like this str

Welcome back. Today we will attend the Shard of Alara prerelease event and use our $20 budget to participate in the open dueling event. I am pleasantly surprised to find that in addition to the 41 card Intro deck, and 15 card booster pack, that we also receive the foil promo card for the event. Although Wizards definitely trumped my last article, I really feel like I nailed the content of the new intro packs pretty well, and find myself in familiar territory sitting down for this article. I have selected a Bant Intro pack for our purposes. Although it is not the most budget friendly of the intro packs, I feel like it's theme lends itself to the budget/new player the most and is really easy to play. For our $12 investment in the prerelease open dueling event we will get the intro pack, a random booster, and the foil prerelease card. I'm also going to recommend something a little different, and visit our local budget friendly game store and pick up a play set of the none cha

Once again September dims to twilight and October's dawn looms close at hand. We find ourselves again awaiting the annual cycling of the planes which will redefine the standards of Magic. This fall finds not only the planes shifting, but also the way in which new and budget players prepare themselves fro the new experiences just over the horizon. Wizards not only brings a new plane to us, but have made significant changes to how the product will be presented particularly for new/budget player. This year the tradition of Theme Decks is replaced by Intro Packs. While Theme Decks presented a fully constructed ready to play deck, Intro packs will provide a 41 card preconstructed frame work, and a booster pack to begin your modifications. The modification here is clearly to provide new player with a solid base, but also a need to purchase additional product. This is a simple need to drive sales fro Wizards, and to increase the fun and diversity of deck building for new players, but als

So we all know about the booster pack changes, basic lands, mythic rares, and starter deck concepts, but here is some thing you may not know yet. It has come to my attention that there will be a new battlemage cycle. One will be named for each of the five planes of Alara. Each "plane" Battlemage has a casting cost of 2 and a color, a 2/2 power toughness, and a simple single mana activations of it's allied colors. These will be in the uncommon slot, and are already being watched as possible break out chase uncommons for the set. Odds are all will be playable for their shard deck, but one will break out for Standard and hit a 3-5 range. There was notice taken when the Rhox artwork took it from it's beastly almost dino beater image of Nemesis, to it's current humonoid status. The origins of the Rhox have finally been discovered. There is an intelligent creature type with Rhox clan names. These are expected to be in the white shard, and represent the green overlap. Th