M15 pt 2

Why? Because I haven't had a chance to play a single game of Magic since Sunday.

Sometimes, it's like that. Instead, I've been looking over the M15 spoiler and I have to admit: I think the hype is justified, at least as far as making constructed decks go. I have no idea what the draft environment will work like, although I have a suspicion it may resemble a bit of Onslaught from years ago, where you hope to get a giant creature and ride that to victory.

That doesn't mean M15 is absent removal or some really solid aggro spells and creatures. Just that the eye popping ones, especially the avatars, with their graveyard abilities, suggest that looking for the biggest beast is a good thing.

Or maybe I'm blinded by cool fatties, and don't know a thing about draft. That's the most likely thing, since it is true.

The Planeswalkers are especially juicy, interacting with other Planeswalkers....which has ups and downs.

Magic is a game that lacks enough ways to really deal with Planeswalkers, which can provide the player who was able to acquire a bunch of them a significant advantage over the player who could not, likely due to financial reasons. Which makes the game about money instead of skill. Again. Previously, it was about mana bases; now that those are cheap(er) we are seeing Planeswalkers as the next step of power.

I'm not discounting how cool it is for the new Garruk to destroy other Planeswalkers, nor Ajani to give them a boost! I think that's awesome. It's just that Hero's Downfall is listed as a $5 card and that's because of one little bit of text: 'destroy target...planeswalker'. The card type is seven years old and I still don't think we have enough appropriate ways to handle them.

Still, it's been a long, long time since I saw a Magic set, much less a core set, that seemed to be doing so many interesting things. This one is really giving the impression of a 'gathering' a place where the planes of Magic converge and you could see anything from any dimension they have visited. The big creatures are worth playing, the small creatures are reasonably valuable and the connections to Theros block (enchantments and auras) as well as the potential setup for the next block (enemy colors, creature type matters) is executed well.

So far, so good.

M15 Begins

The hype train for the Magic core set has begun and I have to admit: I like what I'm seeing.

Mostly.

Warden of the Beyond is my; 'No, no don't do that', card of the week and here's why:

Magic needs a place where cards go and are never heard from or interacted with again.

Now that the game is twenty years old it's changed quite a bit and by now, a place like the graveyard just isn't the graveyard anymore. Many decks have interactions with it, from very small ones, like Threshold or the power/toughness of Tarmogoyf to being based wholly around it, as the Dredge or Reanimator decks are.

The two other zones in Magic where cards go to be excised from the game are the Command zone, used for Planeswalker emblems, Conspiracy cards and Commanders. Commanders are the only ones that really interact with the Command zone, being able to re-enter the game at will from there (assuming you can pay, of course). Wizards has recently experimented with having creatures that have abilities that are relevant to the Command zone and from what I've read at the Reddit community, many (like me) are not fond of what cards like Oloro or Derevi do to the Commander format. The impact that cards you cannot interact have on the game is generally considered to be a negative one and with good reason: decreasing interactions makes games boring.

And then there's Exile. Cards that are put into Exile are meant to be absolutely gone forever. Then they printed Misthollow Griffin.

Sigh. I get that there are very few absolutes in Magic but this should be one of them. Cards sent to Exile should no longer interact with the game.

I'll give Wizards this: Warden of the Beyond is in the appropriate color, because White has more Exile effects than any other color I am aware of. However, the doors have been opened, now. We have cards that are interacting with what should be a dead zone and I'm going to argue that this is bad for the game because it is another step towards turning the Exile zone into another Graveyard. Since we already have the Graveyard, we don't need another and while they can mock the idea all they want, if Wizards continues to become more hands on with the Exile zone, the more they are going to need to establish a fourth zone.

We don't need a fourth zone.