Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we’ve got a lot to talk about: Zendikar spoilers have begun and we’ll take a look at some incredible new cards and artwork, From the Vault: Exiled is here and will blow your mind, and the new Pro Tour schedule is out… and you’ll never guess how you can qualify for the Pro Tour in 2010. Let’s go!
Zendikar
So this week MagicTheGathering.com begun unveiling a few tidbits about Zendikar. Currently we know very, very little about this upcoming block, but the more we learn the more awesome it appears. The awesomeness officially began when Wizards unveiled the new lands for the set. And while that art is killer, the killer bit is that in booster packs and fat packs, you now get extended full art lands! Yes, it’s not just for Unglued or Unhinged any longer. Zendikar lands will now have actual value instead of being random passouts at the end of drafts. I mean, at this point knowing no other cards in the set, a foil Zendikar Island may be worth first picking in draft! That is just insane!
This is an idea that deserves all the praise it can get. While I do recognize it will most likely damage the value of Unhinged and Unglued lands as Zendikar joins us, you cannot deny the power of cool radiating off these lands. They are brilliant, gorgeous, and I can’t hype them enough. This is another fantastic reason to buy a fatpack, as you’ll get 40 crisp extended art lands for your collection, along with six more from the booster packs inside. Now that’s a deal.
I’m just hoping whoever had this idea at Wizards is listened to more in the future. This was the best pure Magic idea I’ve seen in years. Bravo!
From the Vault: Exiled
Last Friday on MagicTheGathering.com we got another awesome surprise: From the Vault: Exiled is here! And yes, Berserk is in there! This super-foily set is due to be released at the end of this month and let me just say for the record if you are able to get one of these at the Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price of $34.99, you are one lucky Magic player. These cards are ripe for cubing, EDH-ing, and any other casual format decks you may have around, while filling important foil-y roles in Vintage and Legacy decks with their singleton Strip Mine and singleton Tinker and so on.
For those who missed it, here are the fifteen cards reprinted in the set:
Tinker
Balance
Trinisphere
Mystical Tutor
Skullclamp
Goblin Lackey
Lotus Petal
Berserk
Gifts Ungiven
Strip Mine
Kird Ape
Necropotence
Sensei’s Divining Top
Serendib Efreet
Channel
And yes, it appears that I was pretty close in Episode #135 as to guessing the exact contents of the box. Well, not super close, but guessing six correct out of the fifteen isn’t too bad a batting average. Either way, check out some of this new artwork. Just fantastic.
Now the key to this set is that Wizards of the Coast is literally printing money. They know that $35 is too cheap for this set, you know $35 is too cheap for this set, and considering it’s very limited printing, it is basically a ‘Thank You’ for card shops around the country for running events and selling product. These shops will get to set their own price for the collection, and I doubt it will be thirty-five bucks. Currently the rumored price is around $90, but I’m sure some day in the future we’ll look back on this and laugh at how affordable this was upon release. When this bad boy goes for two hundred bucks in a few years, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
All I know is I’m snagging a copy someway or somehow and these bad boys are cube-bound. My only hope is that the warping / bending problem that From the Vault: Dragons was rumored to have in varying degrees has been fixed, and until then this is the cheapest Berserk has been in a decade, so take advantage of it.
Pro Tour: 2010 Style
Yep, even amongst these awesome revelations over the past week, Wizards also found time to let us know about the upcoming Pro Tour schedule, where they’ll be in the world and the formats that will make up our qualifying season.
The first Pro Tour of 2010 will be in February in San Diego, California. The last Pro Tour in San Diego was won by a pair of Sliver Kids, so who knows what’s going to happen this time? The qualifying season for San Diego is Zendikar Sealed, beginning on October 3rd.
The second Pro Tour stop is a new destination, San Juan, Puerto Rico. The nation merely a 1,000 miles from the southern tip of Florida will host its first Pro Tour on May 28th-30th, 2010. The qualifying season for this Pro Tour is Extended and begins on January 2nd.
The third Pro Tour destination is Amsterdam on September 3rd through 5th, returning to the city for another Pro Tour for the first time since 2004 when future Hall of Famer Nicolai Herzog took it home in the Mirrodin Limited format. Once again, based on the spectacular attendance from this year, we’ll have another Standard PTQ season beginning April 17th. Awesome!
The final stop in 2010 for the World Championships will be held in Chiba, Japan on December 9th through 12th. The last Worlds held in Japan in 2005 saw our first Hall of Fame class and a complete domination by the Japanese, winning both the individual portion by Katsuhiro Mori and the home country taking the team title as well. Can they repeat their domination this go-round? We’ll see.
Finally, the most important part of this announcement wasn’t the destinations for the Pro Tour. The most important part was the small note at the end of the announcement. In a move players have been clamoring for for years, Pro Tour Qualifiers are coming to Magic Online! Hell yes! Now you too can qualify for the PT in your underwear! That is awesome sauce!
So begin sharpening your card slinging skills for 2010 and I’ll see you at the big show.
Planechase Revealed
In this week of incredible announcements, the multiplayer goodness of Planechase was unveiled and I must say it’s even better than I expected. While you can play this variant with two players, it was intended for multiplayer games of 3-6 players.
To play, you’ll need a 60 card deck for each player, Planechase cards, and a Planar Die. The Planar Die is a six-sided die with only two faces bearing symbols: One has a Planeswalker symbol, and the other the new “Chaos” symbol.
Then you shuffle, determine who goes first, draw your opening hands and resolve mulligans, then before anything else happens, the player going first flips over a Planechase card from their shuffled Planechase deck, such as Isle of Vesuva.
Now as you can imagine there are some more rules to this, so let’s get to them.
Firstly, these Planechase cards are in a new zone called the “Command Zone,” the same place your EDH Generals will now live. These are not permanents, they cannot be destroyed. The most important part is that the controller of the plane is whose turn it is. If a plane references “you,” they’re referencing the plane’s controller.
Looking at the abilities line, generally speaking there will always be an “always on” ability and a “Chaos” ability that fires when you hit the Chaos side of the Planar die. So when and how do you roll this die? Let’s take a look:
During your turn, any time you could play a sorcery, you may roll the Planar die. This rolling can not be responded to, but the effects it may provide will be put on the stack and can be responded to accordingly. If you roll the Chaos side, the Chaos ability triggers. In the case of Isle of Vesuva, this is the “Echoing Terminate” ability. But what if you roll the Planeswalker side? Here’s where it gets interesting.
Suddenly you put the planar card face up on the bottom of its owner’s pile and flip up your new plane. Suddenly you’re in a whole new world with new abilities! Why is this so cool? Because some planar cards have “When you planeswalk to” this plane and “When you planeswalk away” from this plane. Want an example of some of these new abilities? Check out the incredible Serra Sanctum.
Be sure to check out the full rules for Planechase at MagicTheGathering.com for more on this awesome variant to your duels and multiplayer games. This set turned out to be a hell of a lot more interesting than “every player gets a Mana Flare” that I was afraid of, and I can’t wait to try it out. It’ll be released on September 4th that will be accompanied with in-store release events. Check it out if you get a chance, I know this variant really exceeded my expectations.
And that’s the latest this week in the card game we love. I’m sure next week we’ll have some interesting news from GenCon or at least take a look at our Five-Color infested metagame. Until next time, Magic players, this is Evan Erwin. Tapping the cards… so you don’t have to.
Evan “misterorange” Erwin
twitter.com/misterorange