Very Far Ahead

WotC has treated fans to an announcement of sets coming out through 2026! There is some wild stuff there and for the most part I'm on board with the concepts. They feel weird and as though they did some 'swing for the fences' stuff. I adore that!

Now, there are some obvious winners for me: anytime they go to Ixalan, I'm hyped because dinosaurs. I refuse to tamp down the enthusiasm of 5 year old me for dinosaurs, ever. Even though my interest in non-Magic IPs in the game is diminished, I 100% see the audience for the Jurassic franchise being excited and hey, y'all go to town. 

It gets far more interesting after that, though, along with the guaranteed moneymakers that will shake up many formats and have the stick in the muds whining about 'my eternal format shouldn't rotate!'.

We ignore those people.

Ravnica remastered-very cool, let's give people another chance at cards from one of the most popular locations and solid mechanics of the game. 

Murders at Karlov Manor-I'm taking this as a 'hunt the serial killer' thing, a Silence of the Lambs but for Magic. I'm undeniably interested in this concept. 

The Ravnica: Clue thing, I haven't the slighted idea about. Clue might be a 'classic' boardgame but is it a good one? Are people actually excited about this notion?

The Commander: Fallout crossover is where I'm staring to see the pattern. If the IP doesn't have a fantasy element, then Commander standalone product is where it tends to go. Warhammer 40k, Doctor Who and now Fallout falling here and I can't say I'm upset about it. I don't care about it much because Commander as a format is one I'm really on the fringes of enjoyment of. 

Contrast this with the recent LotR set, and the upcoming Final Fantasy themed set being full on draftable ones and I am starting to see where WotC is willing to blend their product. The Assassin's Creed set is the outlier here, since the story is technically science fiction but all the action takes place in historical settings where it's easy to implement fantasy tropes. 

And while I am a fan of both Fallout and Final Fantasy, while caring very little about Assassin's Creed, the proof will be in the pudding, yes? I don't care about what they do with these properties, except insofar as they give me less Initiative or the Ringbearer mechanics and more Warhammer 40k's good cards. 

Outlaws of Thunder Junction is something that fans have been asking for for years, and the 'villains at a frontier town' concept is rad. I'm very interested.

Modern Horizons 3 is...going to have absolutely bonkers shit in it and if everyone could just get the yelling about it out of their system now, that'd be great. I personally am looking forward to it because I've liked both the previous Modern Horizons sets. 

Bloomburrow is something I can't believe they haven't done before, honestly. Redwall as Magic set is such a slam dunk for so many reasons, it really plays into what Magic should be messing around with, I think. Again, I'm just surprised they didn't do this before. 

Duskmourn: House of Horror takes the biggest risk of these sets, I think. An entire plane that exists inside a haunted mansion? That is just wild! But I'm excited to see WotC take on such a different idea. 

As for the 2025 sets and beyond, the details are mostly too vague for me to have an opinion about. I can say that of the planes we know we're revisiting, Strixhaven, Tarkir and Lorwyn, I'm far more interested in the Lorwyn one, as Shadowmoor/Eventide is one of my favorite Magic blocks, ever.

0-3-1

So here's how things went:

Match 1 vs Connor, Cephalid Breakfast

Game 1: He had a T2 Stoneforge Mystic to fetch the Shuko, and a turn 3 Illusionist. The triggers happened and he won via Thassa's Oracle. 

Game 2: I was able to get out a Buccaneer while he set up, and got him down to 10, but knowing he had an Illusionist in hand, I tapped out to Reforge the Soul, as I had one card in hand.

He discarded the illusionist, but drew into another one and that was it.

Match 2 vs Shawn on D&T

Game 1: Samwise was used to recur Wasteland and take care of my mana base in short order. Though I was able to use Bowmasters to take out a Thalia and a Sam, I didn’t have removal for the Stoneforge Mystic that brought Kaldra Compleat into play, nor a response for the Karakas bouncing my Tourach.

Game 2: I played two Burning Inquiries which lead to me drawing 11 of my 22 lands.

Things did not go well after that.

Match 3 vs Ben on Sharkstill

Game 1: My deck did the thing! I had Buccaneer out and with a wheel effect, did enough damage to win.

Game 2: When he cast The Wandering Emperor, I realized I had sideboarded incorrectly; he had too many basic lands for Blood Moon to be relevant. The moon took me off BB which I needed for multiple cards in hand, and that was enough for him to take the edge.

Game 3: I made a huge mistake on turn 4, when I had a Plague Engineer out on Servo to keep the Retrofitter Foundry in check. I swing in, not realizing that he had enough mana to make a 2/2 Construct token via Urza's Saga for us to trade.

“Well, I’ll just draw another!”

I did not draw another.

My last game was against Matt, who is a buddy I play with frequently. He runs a Parfait variant that he's been working on for years so I know the matchup well.

In the first game he was able to create all the construct tokens and won.  

So I just brought in four Meltdowns and proceeded to do one-sided boardwipes when I could. Unfortunately, it still took me a long time to get there and while I won that game, we had one minute to play a third and tied. 

What did I learn?

First; four copies of Reforge the Soul are too many. I'll be cutting one, since this isn't a card I want to see in my opening grip.

Second, as much as I like Waste Not, I just don't know that I can spend time setting up like that. Against non-Blue prison style decks, sure but there are just better things to be doing and I should find them. Because there are a lot of Blue decks on Fridays. 

Third, it might be worth incorporating Wastelands into this deck. As a two color deck, the drawback should be minimal. Similarly, Geiger Reach Sanitarium might have a place.

Finally, I'm not certain Blood Moon is not the answer I need in the sideboard. In all of my matchups, graveyard removal would've been just as, if not more useful. Certainly, the Dauthi Voidwalkers represented issues when they were out. 

All Bets Are Off

Looks like WotC is going to be producing proxies. Rather than making reprints, we're getting non-tournament legal proxies. I'm not the only one who's looking at this announcement that way...

I wonder if they're trying to kill the secondary market or just move in on it. Either way, this is...fucking dumb and has further established me in a pro-proxy camp.

Trash Truck (But Buffer)

Alright, here's the more muscular version of Trash Truck:

2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

3 Magus of the Wheel
2 Tourach, Dread Cantor
3 Glint-Horn Buccaneer
4 Orcish Bowmasters
2 Dauthi Voidwalker

2 Waste Not

3 Dream Salvage
4 Sudden Edict
2 Sheoldred's Edict

4 Mountain
4 Swamp
2 Bojuka Bog
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Blood Crypt
4 Badlands

3 Liliana of the Veil

4 Reforge the Soul
4 Burning Inquiry

 15 Sideboard
SB: 3 Blood Moon
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void

SB: 4 Pyroblast

SB: 4 Meltdown

I am still unsure about the Sideboard: Pyroblast vs Defense Grid is the dilemma. Pyroblast can interact on the stack and remove troublesome permanents but my goldfishing with Trash Truck has suggested that the mana is tight. Would it just be better to try and insulate my turns? 

Somewhere along the line, I realized that Bojuka Bog and Daluthi Voidwalker would be great proactive answers to filling someone's graveyard and they were maindeckable, so here we are. This could mean that I'm going too hard on Leyline of the Void in the Sideboard, and that might mean there's more room for something else? Most likely Plague Engineer. 

Trash Truck

 I'm going to have two versions of this deck, the first is the one I will revert back to:

2 Elixir of Immortality

2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
3 Magus of the Wheel
2 Shocker
2 Tourach, Dread Cantor
3 Glint-Horn Buccaneer
3 Orcish Bowmasters

2 Waste Not

3 Dream Salvage
4 Terminate

10 Mountain
8 Swamp
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Rakdos Carnarium 

3 Liliana of the Veil

4 Reforge the Soul
4 Burning Inquiry

This is the fun take on the deck. The manabase isn't set for a tournament build, Shocker is clearly not up to snuff when it comes to power, Elixir of Immortality is me trying to hedge against decking, a situation that is 99% unlikely to happen, and Terminate, as great of a card as it is, needs to be a stronger removal spell. These are just a few of the small details that I'll want to change to shift this from my kitchen table deck to one for an event.

But hopefully you can see the core of the deck, using Tourach, Dread Cantor, Glint-Horn Buccaneer and Waste Not to give me rewards for discarding, while Orcish Bowmasters and Sheoldred the Apocalypse provides rewards for the drawing portion of Burning Inquiry, Reforge the Soul and Magus of the Wheel.

Is this some jank? Hell yes. But it's synergistic jank. 

The second take on Trash Truck is what I'm taking to the Mox events starting on the 28th, and I'll go over the changes to the deck, along with a Sideboard, on Thursday.

The Illusion of Choice (or: Enshittification Via Many Roads)

So, Marvel Snap got a new way of acquiring cards. Sort of. Which almost nobody likes. 

It's lead me to think about what's going on here and I think I've got it worked out. 

Basically, it's Enshittification, but disguised as giving players 'more options' and being better for new players. Like most enshittification efforts, there's a half truth there.

The first part: Spotlight Caches. The initial notion is neat: let's mark the crates on the ladder that will give you a character (or an alternate art)! Players now know what they are working towards. Visualized goals help motivate players. 

Plus, looking at my own track, the Spotlight Caches really are just a new color: the rate at which I was getting new characters/alternative art is the same rate as before! I can just see my goal and I think that's a positive.

However with this came other changes: First, the Spotlight Caches would only offer you a chance at one of three cards, with a fourth opportunity to get kicked in the junk.

Each week: three cards are offered-the new hot card, and two other rare cards, with a fourth random alternative art card. If you already have one of the cards shown and that's what you open up, you get an alternative art version of that card. 

So, the more cards you have, the more likely it is that you're going to get an alternative art card. Or; kicked in the junk. To ensure that you get the card you want, you need to have four Spotlight Caches available to open that week. 

What this system means is that if you don't have cards, you're more likely to be rewarded with a new card, even if it is one you don't want. But if you do have a lot of cards, you're more likely to get a random art card-and because tastes vary wildly, that new art might be great, it might suck ass. Just depends on the tastes of the individual. 

And if you get a duplicate card? Well that's just tough: it seems there isn't any duplicate protection.

And this might be fine, except the time it takes to get Spotlight Caches means that you are either playing Marvel Snap as a full time job, or you are waiting a long time* to get four of them to open in one week AND waiting for a week when a card (but hopefully two or three) you want is available, oooooooooooor you're paying them money. *By a long time, I mean that it will take me, someone who has plenty of free time to play, plus gives them $10 a month, at least two months to get enough Spotlight Caches to ensure I get the thing I want. It will take longer for someone who doesn't have my luxuries. 

The point is; this punishes entrenched players and doesn't reward new players nearly quickly enough. Things were better when you didn't have a choice and just got what you got. We didn't know what we were getting but hey, maybe it's cool, maybe it's just an alt-art but, interestingly, not having a choice made us feel better about the results.

One reason for that is because one could earn tokens via gameplay and with enough tokens, players could simply purchase a card from a rotating collection on offer. The new card was up for a week, and the other two options, a rare alt-art card and another card, rotated every eight hours. 

If you just played the game, it was possible to earn enough tokens to acquire one card per month, and you got to pick the one you wanted. If you gave them $10 a month, you'd get a card for that, too, along with a boost of rewards to make it easier to acquire a second (or maybe even a third!) card. 

Which meant that players DID have a choice for what card they want for the month and could work towards it. Once again: an achievable goal that players could visualize, and options for those goals that players had control over.

However, this leads to the second change made: the one that took away our ability to earn tokens that allow us to purchase things. Gold (which let us buy tokens-F2P games are pernicious in their currency manipulations) was removed from the ladder, so you can only earn paltry amounts via gameplay oooooooooooor you're paying them money. 

Then they cut the amount of tokens we might earn on ladder from 200-500 to 50. Once again: you can earn enough tokens to buy a card but the method has now been cut from once a month to once every two or three months! Maybe more-I haven't really parsed it out but the point remains: they are leveraging players' FOMO about being left behind in a changing metagame against their wallets. 

Which sucks. Our choices have been nerfed and the community is pretty unhappy about this situation. The fixes seem pretty easy: offer duplicate protection and restore the gold and tokens rewards on the ladder. Apparently "the data" is going to guide the developer's decisions, but in the meantime the community is unhappy.  

An unhappy community leaves & where there's nobody to play your game, your game withers. 

But it was inevitable, because the shareholders must be appeased. 

Two Philosophies

I've been theorycrafting a couple decks recently:

First, one based on the recent uptick of Red's wheel effects. 

2 Elixir of Immortality

2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
3 Magus of the Wheel
4 Shocker
3 Tourach, Dread Cantor
1 Glint-Horn Buccaneer

4 Waste Not

4 Dream Salvage
4 Infernal Grasp
1 Sudden Edict

11 Mountain
11 Swamp

2 Liliana of the Veil

4 Reforge the Soul
4 Burning Inquiry

This is clearly unfinished: I've got the most basic manabase for now, because I'm not sure how/if it will be interesting. There were also four Sheoldred, the Apocalypse in the initial build, but that card is $55+ and I can play Liliana of the Veil for $13. But after seeing someone play a Wheel deck on Youtube, I thought: but what if it had Tourach, Dread Cantor?

And here we are.

The second started as a G/W 'spells' build and changed to B/W because of my love of Agent of the Fates. 

4 Phalanx Leader
4 Mavinda, Students' Advocate
4 Leonin Lightscribe
4 Agent of the Fates
3 Tormented Hero
3 Sedgemoor Witch

4 Loran's Escape
3 Blessed Alliance
4 Guided Strike
2 Reverent Mantra

11 Plains
11 Swamp

3 Read the Bones

I really like Mavinda and definitely want to do something with this card. The switch from Green to Black came simply because of Agent of the Fates providing me more to do than anything Green had, which could effectively be described as "I'm big now". 

Big doesn't let you win games though; big and (something else) does, where the something else is trample or haste or 'fuck yo' stuff'. Having a vanilla 9/9 doesn't cut it. However, it is likely true that Green offers me more in the spells category. 

It was while playtesting both these decks, and Matt's reaction to them (he liked the first one more) I realized that there's two design philosophies at play here: one that proactively does stuff to your opponent, as with Red's discard continually disrupting their plan, and one that proactively does stuff just to you as with the B/W deck's plan. There really isn't an axis of interaction with the opponent, which puts it in the realm of a combo deck.

But combo decks need to vomit all their cards out by turn 3 and just win, otherwise the opponent gets to do things, and combo decks cannot allow that!

The other thing is that I have a deck that's doing something like what the B/W is doing, so maybe let's work on the R/B one...

But I'm out of town this weekend, so no new post until Thursday, July 20th!