TGZ News 4/25/14: Journey into Nyx and Announcing...

TGIF Zoners! Grandpa Growth here with a couple quick announcements!

First, this weekend is the Prerelease tournament for Journey into Nyx. This is your first opportunity to play with the new cards and get your hands on some sealed product. Make sure you reserve a spot at your local store for the event and have some good old fashioned fun playing with the new set!

Secondly, coming up next week we will have coverage of the new set here on the blog all week long with our set review. Uncle Landdrops and I will be breaking down all the cards and giving you our take on how JiN stacks up in the land of Commander. Make sure to check every day next week for the new content as it goes live!

Finally, we have a very special announcement. We are all very excited to reveal that we have a new contributor joining the team here at The General Zone. A long time friend and associate is ready to make the jump from consumer to creator and will be taking over the Thursday spot on TGZ. He has chosen the Zachroling as his pen name, spoiler: his name is Zach and he likes Saprolings. I won't give away too much more now, but look for his articles coming soon on Thursdays and he will be sharing his thoughts with us every Saturday in The Stack! Give him a warm welcome as he settles in here on the blog.

This has been a public service announcement. Thank you for listening. That is all.

-GG

TGZ NEWS 4/11/14: Duel Decks, Duels 2015, and Spoilers

After a short lull following the release of Born of the Gods, TGZ News is back with some exciting new developments in the world of Magic: the Gathering! New duel decks, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015, and Journey into Nyx spoiler season is upon us! Let's take a look.

Duel Decks: Speed vs. Cunning
Announced earlier this week on Daily MtG, this Summer's Duel Deck release will be called Speed vs. Cunning. Not much information was given in the initial announcement, but we can safely assume that it will follow the same formula as previous Duel Decks offerings: a few cards will feature new arts, there will be a couple of cards that haven't been printed in the new card frame, and there will be one or two money cards to try and hook us into buying an otherwise extremely boring product. Unlike other limited print Magic products like From the Vault or retro booster boxes, you can expect this to hold MSRP for a while...mostly because there won't be anything of value inside. Link to the announcement below:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1463

Duels of the Planeswalkers
This year we will get yet another iteration of Duels of the Planeswalkers, the annual release video game that ties into the annual release of the Core Set. This year's offering has some interesting twists! It will include the ability to fully customize decks from a larger pool of cards and to build your own decks. Whereas previous games have forced you to use under-powered pre-constructed decks and substitute only a certain amount of cards, Duels 2015 will push the game closer to the full customization potential of the Magic Online platform. Speaking of platforms, Duels 2015 will be available on Steam, Android, Xbox Live, and Xbox One. The expanded story mode will focus on escaping Garruk, who has been cursed by the Chain Veil. This essentially confirms that the Garruk featured in Magic 2015 will, in fact, be Garruk the Veil Cursed. This points towards Transform being the featured mechanic in this year's Core Set, although that has not been confirmed. Link to the announcement below:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1470

Journey Into Nyx Spoilers:
In an exciting change of procedure, Wizards has begun running previews a week earlier than usual. We will get to enjoy a full three weeks of spoilers leading up to the release of JiN. Stay tuned to Dailymtg.com for the latest spoilers as they are previewed and make sure to read our ongoing coverage of all the spoilers right here on The General Zone.

Till next time Zoners, this is Grandpa Growth signing off.
-GG

TGZ News 2/21/14

Hey Zoners! Big news from the Magic world and beyond. I am back in the world of the internet living and much has happened since our last news segment. Let's dig in and see what all the fuss is about.

For the last few years Wizards has been in the habit of releasing new casual products every Summer. This has brought us some awesome products like the Commander pre-constructed decks and Planeschase. This years product is called Conspiracy and is designed for multiplayer drafting. As a big fan of casual drafting, I am very excited by this. The preview cards revealed with the announcement have already got me salivating, but what I am most excited about is this: this is the newest expert level product that also shares a name with a card. You can read the product info here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1430

This year's From the Vault product is also poised to deliver excitement. FtV: Annihilation, as it's called, is a collection of the most 'brutal' cards from Magic's history. As always, they have teased the announcement by showing one of the beautiful new pieces of art and, always, the internet is aflutter with speculation as to what this card might be. If you as me the answer is pretty clear, Sulfur Vortex. It is brutal, powerful, has a storied history within the game, playability in Legacy and Cube, and has never received a reprint.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1426

Magic has always had appeal to collectors, but many of the side merchandise have never really caught on. Wizards plans to change this with a new line of collectible figurines from Funko featuring the ionic planeswalkers from Magic. http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1431

Finally, Pro Tour Born of the Gods begins today. The top players in the World are going to be battling it out with Modern decks featuring the brand new Modern Banned list. So far, the effects have already been felt with Wild Nacatl powering a resurgence of Aggro Zoo decks alongside a small smattering of Faerie decks utilizing Bitterblossom. You can follow the coverage all weekend long on dailymtg.com and you can watch the live web stream here: http://webcastplayer.wizards.com/

TGZ News: GPSAC, MTGO Cube, and Born of the Gods

Hey Zoners! Grandpa Growth here bringing you what is up in the world of Magic in another TGZ News!

GP Sacremento finished up last weekend and it was definitely an exciting tournament. The live coverage by members of Team ChannelFireball was awesome and their very own Tom Martell ended up taking down the whole tournament. If you missed out you should definitely check out the text coverage on the mothership and the video of the Top 8 Draft on Channelfireball.com:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpsac14/welcome
http://www.channelfireball.com/videos/grand-prix-sacramento-top-8/

Exciting news for casual fans, MTGO Cube will return January 29th! Announced this week on Daily MtG complete with an updated Cube list. Make sure to set aside some time next week to crack virtual packs and have some good old fashioned fun.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/01202014

Born of the Gods spoilers are all over the internet making waving and lighting up Twitter feeds from here to Hong Kong. Whether you are testing modern for the upcoming Pro Tour or just trying to get a leg up at your local prerelease make sure you check out the full visual spoiler. At the time of this post nearly the entire set has been spoiled!
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/bornofthegods/cig#

It's "Born of the Gods," not "Bored of the Gods..."

Now that most of the cards are spoiled in the second Theros expansion, Born of the Gods, it's time to do some pre-reviewing before the pre-release next week. 

Today, we're going to examine and re-visit some of the spins being done on previous set mechanics as well as the two new ones. 

Let's begin.

NEW MECHANIC- INSPIRED

Our first example is a card I've already heard people call, "The New Dark Confidant." 

I hope I don't need to point out the irony that comes attached with this "Inspired" mechanic.

Now, I have no idea how good Pain Seer is going to be in Commander, or any other 60-card format. I'm using this card strictly as an example of what seems to be the best card with this mechanic, and I'm really not seeing it.

What I know is that the thing about Dark Confidant is that he really doesn't want to attack. He wants to stay in the shadows until the board is clear of other little Goombas so that he doesn't lose his 1 toughness. 

That's why I believe that if this is supposed to be what Wizards calls, "Inspired," it's not. There's a rule taught in writing and reinforced in everyday life that we define ourselves how we want to be seen, not what we are. 

This is the inherent problem with this design of most of these cards. I don't see anything here that feels truly inspired. The mechanic itself is so innate to the game that it's obvious, and the majority of triggers that happen feel very similar to the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block cards with untap symbols.

While it appears to be a pattern Wizards is showing us, Devotion is actually awesome across most of the formats being played. It's in the strongest decks in Standard, and it's rewarding people who play mono-colored decks in Commander.

Again, I don't have any in-game experience yet with these cards- but all signs point to flop. 

PAYING TRIBUTE

Tribute, on the other hand, feels a little more interesting.

For Commander, the best Tribute card revealed is probably this hot-lookin' Hydra. 

Though Wizards seems to be catching up for lost time with all the Hydras printed in the last year, I feel like I can still get behind some of the designs.

Here, I'll be willing to admit that I like NWR because it fights, which isn't as much about the Tribute as it is about the fight mechanic.

Clearly, Fighting is much better than Tribute as a mechanic because of elegance, natural color inclination, and simplicity (Fighting doesn't have numbers!), but still- I can see Tribute creating an entire Doctorate-Level course in Magic Player's Psychology. Some of our staff's favorite cards are Realms Uncharted, Fact or Fiction, and the always banned Gifts Ungiven. Though not the same, Tribute has a similar, tricky quality that just might be compelling. 

MULTICOLORED DEVOTION- NOT TERRIBLE, NOT BROKEN

Reddit was all abuzz a few days ago with the discussion on how the new gods make everything a little more complicated this time around with their color-split allegiances. 

So, in case you were probably wondering, but too afraid to ask, or too smart and thought you could make a great rules assumption, let's clear this all up:

1) Devotion on multicolored Gods is combined. For our example, it is not seven devotion to Green AND seven devotion to Red to turn our evil Planeswalker pal turned God into a creature. It is a combination of seven Red OR Green mana.

2) Hybrid mana symbols do not count double. Naturally, Deus of Calamity turns on Xenagos as a creature. That's because combined, they create 7 red and green devotion. 

The best way to look at this is to count number of non-numerical circles in a converted mana cost, not the color(s). With Deus' 5 symbols and Xenagos' 2, our Legendary Enchantment Creature God is a Creature.

However, your individual color Devotion is a different count (SIX devotion to red, and SIX Devotion to Green), and obviously never add up to twelve. 

Ultimately, I think this makes Devotion possibly better than it was in the first block. This isn't necessarily because of the strength of the cards spoiled either. I didn't think I was going to like it before I looked up how this is being counted, but I'm digging it. Devotion creates a fresh angle of game design which was already printed on every single non-artifact/colorless card in Magic, and it's going to force us to read the game in a different slant of light. 

Well, that's all I got for today. Continue to look for more Born of the Gods stuff once the full set's spoiled.

Until next time, devote yourself to something inspired so we can pay tribute. 

-UL