Reviewing 2013 Part 1: The Hits

Happy Winter holiday fest Zoners! Now that the festivities are in full swing it is time to take a look back at the year that has passed us by. Yes, the time has come for us to reflect, quietly or otherwise, on the things that we have done...and we here at the General Zone have done some serious growing. When I signed up, we were looking at a couple of hundred views. Now, I ain't typically in the blogging business, but if you start there and work your way up into the tens of thousands after a year and a half then you just might be on to something. I am proud to be here as a part of it! So in honor of that I am going to be looking at some of my proud moments from the set reviews in 2013. If you haven't had a chance to check them out, use all of the sweeet holiday free time to take a look back through the archive; look out for the Set Review tag. If you were hoping for the part where I eat twelve helpings of humble pie, skip ahead to next week where I will be taking a look at my biggest misses!

So let's take a look at what I did right, starting with the recent and rolling it all the way back to 2012.

So I am going to start off a bit easy here. This wasn't a walk off home run, but it was sure close. I was quite sure Unexpectedly Absent was going to be the secret Legacy plant from Commander 2013, and it did manage to see some one-off sideboard play, but it seems White isn't the color you want your new Legacy tech to be; this year we want Blue presents and we aren't accepting substitutes. True-Name jumped straight into Legacy Delver decks and put up results immediately. In Commander it has done a ton of work as well. I guess I'll have to settle for saying it was the second best card in the set.

I have been right occasionally, and about this one I definitely was. This card is sick like cancer and it is seeing plenty of play so I guess I have that going for me (is that joke inappropriate, even among the tristing sewer pipes of internet commentary?). I gushed plenty about this card here on the blog and do so to just about everyone that I see playing it, so let's get on to the gettin' on.



I sort of hit the nail on this one. I believe my exact words were, 'the creatures you control could have a ham sandwich and it would still be good' or something like that. In my mind, this is really only a little bit of an under estimation considering I would take either of these abilities on a card. Again though, I did make a bold claim that Bow of Nylea was better than this by a substantial margin. I was probably wrong about that being true, but this is a heck of a card.



I made some tentative comparisons here to some pretty good cards. Gaea's Cradle? Cabal Coffers? In Commander this isn't quite as much of a show stopper, but if Standard is any indicator devotion is going to be a big thing in multiple formats. So far, we have only seen one set out of this block and it has already shaken up a lot. I excited to see how much more this card can achieve with some more support.




So in my initial review I said that this card was just down right hogwash. And it turns out that that is actually true! One thing I did manage to leave out in my original discussion was that horrible, horrible flavor text. This is one card that may actually be worse than basic Mountain, even in multiples.



Possibly my favorite hit of the year. I have been waving the red flag on this little number since day one. It is an absolute house. It is such a monstrous beating to counter a Reanimate and gain 15+ life in the process. That is being rather conservative as well...This card can gain silly amounts of life. This is the only card that I am considering cutting from my Pauper Cube because it is just too strong. It can't be beat. Every time someone else casts this card against me, in any format, I just instantly want to throw up. Here on TGZ we have been playing up Crypt Incursion for a while. If you aren't on the bandwagon yet...well it is about gosh darn time you dug your head out of the sand and sat it squarely back on your shoulders.




Ugh...I just...don't even want to. I like being right, but not when it means something like this. Have you played against this card? It is so vicious, so conniving that I just can't bring myself to main deck it. This is it. We found it. This is where I draw the line. Debt to the Deathless is just too darn mean. In the DGM set review I relayed a humorous anecdote about a gigantic Exsanguinate for seventeen. Well, just the other day a table of four players just scooped up their cards and left when this card resolved...FOR FIVE! That was it. Pour one out on the curb for your deathless homies. I felt like one of the statues in this art...just projectile vomiting blood onto my board. This ranks up there in my top ten for feel bad cards. Keeping company with Daze and Plow Under is only good in certain neighborhoods. No one should have to feel this bad playing a game of Magic.




This little guy went underrated for a good sixth months before I started seeing him around the tables. Even I was starting to second guess myself, but I held firm. Things first came to a head when I battled against UL's fabled Animar, Soul of the Elements deck. As it turns out, when your whole deck is creatures, you draw an extra card with Domri pretty often. At some point, this just turns into a chain gun, you load it up with a sufficiently sized Animar bullet and it just mows down everything but the front lawn.

It's funny, because in the GC set review I made a joke that getting to Domri's ultimate turned all your creatures into the Predator...and then a few months later all the Slivers became Predators. No? Nobody else finds that funny, I guess. I like to think that the creative team reads the blog.



In the Gatecrash Set Review I made the not-so-bold claim that this would either be completely snapped or completely useless. That isn't much of a prediction. What I got right about this card was that they shouldn't have printed it. When I said that things like this are bad for the game I meant it. Instant dominance in Legacy is an indicator to me that a card is just too dang strong...or free. And that is the problem here! This is way out of the park in power level and, as it turns out, is completely free. I agree that a certain amout of 'puzzle' cards should exist for people to try and break. People like combos. People like deckbuilding. I say let my people brew! You just have to be very careful because it takes a lot of foresight to understand what the effects will be if someone actually does solve the puzzle...

Well, so much for that. Those were the favorite true things I said about a Magic card in 2013. As I said, next week we will be taking another stroll down memory lane to check out my big whiffs! So I hope to see you all then. Make sure to leave a comment about your favorite cards from this year. Or maybe your favorite silly pun that I made. Who knows, we might just have some fun by accident.

-GG