Innistrad MaRo Tweets

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

It being Friday, we suggest you head on out to a local Friday Night Magic event and play Magic the Gathering. Alternatively, it being the long weekend here in Canada-Land, you could enjoy being stuck in Holiday traffic on the way up to the cottage or park and not play at the FNM - your choice. Speaking of the long weekend - we unfortunately will not be updating the website for the next few days as we are heading up north to play with wild bears and not blog about it cuz there's no freak'n internet or phone - so please, bear with us.

Anywhoos - while we are yattering about FNM, we should ensure that you are completely caught up with what the lastest promo cards are . . .

June, 2011 - Rhox War Monk

July, 2011 - Jace's Erasure

August, 2011 - Cultivate

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Righto - next up - let's talk about the title of today's post - 'MaRo Tweets'.

We wanted to bring everyone up to date about what Mark Rosewater, MTG card designer over at WoTC has been saying about the upcoming set - Innistrad . . .

http://twitter.com/#!/maro254

@maro254 Seattle, WA

Magic Head Designer and Dedicated Family Man

Just spent the last twenty minutes opening Innistrad packs. I so badly want this set to come out. #somuchawesomenessstuffedineverypack
27 Jul

We were doing a printing check on the packs to make sure everything was as it should be.
27 Jul

I opened a Liliana, a bunch of werewolves & a foil of one of my favorite cards. I also opened a card I never thought would make it to print.
27 Jul

The foil copy of one of my favorite cards is a card that makes zombie tokens.
27 Jul

At the Magic panel I said that Liliana was new and that she's seeing plenty of FFL play.
27 Jul

"Tales from the Pit" #74 #TftP http://t.co/T75atQc
21 hours ago

Today's #TftP officially outs the fourth tribe of Innistrad - ghosts (aka spirits). What colors do you all think they'll show up in?
20 hours ago

Ghosts appear in all five colors in Innistrad, but they're concentrated in just two colors. I'll tell you... after this commercial.
20 hours ago

The fourth tribe of Innistrad: Ghosts in W/U.
19 hours ago

Blue made a lot of sense as it played into many ghosts tropes: flying, unblockable, invisible, etc.
19 hours ago

I'm not revealing G/W's tribe today so talk amongst yourselves. I will say that it will make sense once you hear it.
19 hours ago

Let me stress as I did in the panel, Innistrad is not a tribal set. It's a horror themed set with a tribal component.
19 hours ago

When you draft Innistrad, you will have opportunities to draft tribes but you will never be forced to draft them. Innistrad is not Lorwyn.
19 hours ago

Invisible is not a new keyword. When we flavor things as invisible we tend to do a combination of hexproof and unblockable, both blue things
19 hours ago

To recap: WU: Ghosts, UB: Zombies, BR: Vampires, RG: Werewolves, GW: ???
19 hours ago

Yep - Ghosts and Zombies and Vampires and Werewolves - oh my !
We're gonna take a stab in dark here and call /w Clerics . . . hey - could happen.

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Lastly,
With all the hub-bub with the M12 release, don't forget to ensure you have the lastest Commander singles - MTG Mint Card has these available in stock now.

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Get Unreal

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

We here are MTG Realm have an opportunity today to take a look back at all those Magic the Gathering M12 spoilers and yatter about them. Specifically, we wanted some further discussion with the new blue lord from Magic 2012, Lord of the Unreal, which according to this post will be soon getting it's own event deck ..


Last week at Friday Night Magic, we saw another player with this card in their build. Unfortunately, we did not play against that deck or have an opportunity to check out their mix of cards altough we fairly certain what most players would brew up to game with. This human wizard provides a +1/+1 pump as well as hexproof to illusion creatures you control - so let's have a look at what illusion creatures there are currently in standard :


Summoner's Bane, Phantasmal Abomination, Aether Figment (a pumped-up / hexproof unblockable is pretty sweet), Phantasmal Image, Phantasmal Dragon, and Phantasmal Bear.


Additional support may be had through Phrexian Metamorph, Cryptosplasm, and even the fill-in-the-blank lord, Adaptive Automaton.


Now - onto the nitty-gritty.

One thing you will want to focus on as soon as you are ablt to is to copy your Lord of the Unreal with Phantasmal Image. This will now provide you with copy Lord of the Unreal with Phantasmal Image. The copy is still an illusion in addition to it's other types along with with it's drawback. What you have done also is give the Image the lord ability which is worded 'All Illusions you control', instead of 'All other Illusions you control', thus giving itself +1/+1 and Hexproof, including all your other Illusions. This would be pretty much the same as playing a Xenograft, naming 'illusions' as a creature type and giving your Lord of the Unreal the same hexproof. The weakness lies with any mass / blanket spells such as Day of Judgement or Black Sun's Zenith.


OK - let's next imagine a brilliant opening hand before we get into suggested servings -

Turn 1: Island / Phantasmal Bear
Turn 2: Island / Lord of the Unreal
Turn 3: Island / Phantasmal Image (of Lord of the Unreal)
Voilà ! - you should now have three 4/4 hexproof creatures on turn 3 in addition to one blue mana available for a Spell Pierce or a Turn Aside.
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As there are quite a few very lovely cards in blue, we leave it to you to how best decide what should go mainboard or sideboard depending upon your local metagame. Some suggestions we've received from local players include but are not limited to the following - Volition Reins, Distant Memories, Gitaxian Probe, Turn to Frog, Into the Roil, Spellskite, Distortion Strike, Grand Architect, Spreading Seas, Flashfreeze, etc.

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Finally, Magic 2012 M12 Chinese Foil Singles are now available at MTG Mint Card . . .

Feel bored with English singles? We have the Chinese Magic 2012 M12 singles available in our store. Full set of Chinese Foil and Regular singles are in stock now. Foils singles are with very limited stock only including, Jace, Memory Adept, Gideon Jura and Solemn Simulacrum.
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Argyle's Liliana

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

Way back in March of this year, WoTC staffer Monty Ashley announced on that the block "Shake" would be called Innistrad. The same Magic Arcana article provided the preview artwork of Liliana Vess shown sitting upon a throne holding her veil with a smoking body (perhaps a vampire?) lying upon the ground.

Fast forward to today - Steve Argyle, Artiste Extraordinaire, has revealed (on his DeviantArt and personal website) the high resolution artwork for "Liliana of the Veil," which is speculated to be included in this fall's Magic: the Gathering expert expansion set Innistrad.


Text from Steve Argyle's site :

When Liliana blows a kiss, it can crack the earth's crust, spewing out molten planet as though Mother-Gaia herself were nothing more than a giant, white-hot whipped-cream filled balloon.
However, it is an ultimately sexy wake of annihilation; you'd die happy.
Here we see the lovely Mistress of Death showing off her sleek new dress of hideous, screaming doom. Woven entirely from the shredded hopes of the unfortunate souls who've crossed her. (Which, as it turns out, makes a comfortable, breathable material which accentuates both shapeliness, and pure smoldering evil.)
As is not uncommon for me, I have two versions of this card. One that's a little simpler, clearer, and so will work better when shrunk down to card size. And another, that is dripping with detail and extras, that would pretty much look like super grainy multi-color sand at card size. So I give you both the official version, and the blingtastic version.

For Magic: the Gathering. Copyright Wizards of the Coast. Art directed by Jeremy Jarvis.

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Next up -

The state of standard is undeniably improved after the ban-hammer came down on Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic. There has been a proliferation of new decks, and altough the general meta-game still favours a Valakut or Caw-Blade build, the doors are open to any Magic the Gathering player to challenge the existing archetypes.

To this end, we personally have returned to a fun Tempered Steel build.


What we would love to see at our local Friday Night Magic are more combo-type decks and of course anything in between. Here are some other ideas we are kicking around at the moment . . .

Deceiver Exarch + Splinter
Twin Unlimited Tokens

Bloodchief Ascension and Mindcrank
Unlimited Milling

Suture Priest, Leonin Relic-Warder, Phyrexian Metamorph
Unlimited Life-gain

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What (casual standard) builds are you planning to run ?

What decks are other players running ?

- Use the comment thingy below - cuz we wanna know.
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Graveborn

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

We're catching up on some Magic the Gathering news again in today's post. More specifically, the recent announcement of this fall's Premium Deck Series product. The Premium Deck Series is a series of special preconstructed theme decks, released by Wizards of the Coast each year in November. All of the cards in the set are black bordered foil and tournament legal. This of course means that these cards are legal for use in any tournaments where the original printings are still legal.

Anywhoos - onto the announcement :

Premium Deck Series: Graveborn

Call Forth the Dead.

Legions of corpses await your sinister commands. This 60-card, all-foil deck entombs, exhumes, and reanimates some of the most powerful Magic creatures from all five colors of mana. Harvest your graveyard for an assortment of these face-beaters as you walk over a field of bones to claim your victory.

Contents:

• 60-card premium foil deck, including 8 rare cards
• Exclusive Spindown life counter
• Magic "learn to play" guided
• Strategy insert
• Foil deck box

Deck Design and Development: David Humpherys
Release Date: November 18, 2011
MSRP: $34.99

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EDIT : see updated spoiler post (10.25.2011)

Of particular note with this product is the person who designed and developed it - David Humpherys. He had piloted a very nice Reanimator deck way back in 2001 at the Pro-Tour New Orleans. Although we know that there is no chance of getting the same decklist, we are very certain that David can deliver a solid Premium Deck.

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Finally, Magic 2012 M12 Chinese Foil Singles are now available at MTG Mint Card . . .

Feel bored with English singles? We have the Chinese Magic 2012 M12 singles available in our store. Full set of Chinese Foil and Regular singles are in stock now. Foils singles are with very limited stock only including, Jace, Memory Adept, Gideon Jura and Solemn Simulacrum.
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Dark Ascending

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Today we're following up on the announcement of the next Magic the Gathering set in the Innistrad block. Our last post provided a rebroadcast of Innistrad tidbits, including the announcement of the next set provided by Wizards of the Coast's panel at San Diego's Comic Con.

Over on the mothership today, Monty laid out the boilerplate facts on Dark Ascension, set two of three in the Innistrad block. Information so far accumulated indicate a gothic horror theme set including Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies - not much unlike the contemporary fictional town of Bon Temps in the HBO series True Blood. The Comic Con panel has confirmed the following tribes :

Werewolves
Zombies
Vampires

Not very much information yet on what white could expect but MaRo did tweet this hint : "Everyone speculating about white in Innistrad seems to be forgetting a key part of Horror stories. Just saying."

Spectral Rider, Creature - Spirit Knight

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Anywhoos - onto today's announcement . . .

Command the Night

Set Name : Dark Ascension
Block : Set 2 of 3 in the Innistrad block
Number of Cards : 158
Prerelease Events : January 28-29, 2012
Release Date : February 3, 2012
Launch Parties : February 3-6, 2012
Game Day : March 3-4, 2012
Official Three-Letter Code : DKA
Twitter Hashtag : #MTGDKA
Design Team : Mark Rosewater (lead), Jenna Helland, Zac Hill, Graeme Hopkins, Matt Tabak
Development Team : Tom LaPille (lead), Mark L. Gottlieb, Zac Hill, David Humpherys, Ken Troop

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Also of note today - an image, titled Planeswalkers Pantheon by D.A. user, Cryptcrawler who was commissioned this piece by Wizards for the Duels of the Planeswalker game and which was also provided as poster swag at the recent Comic Con.

(left to right)
Group one:
Tezzeret, Sarkhan Vol, Karn, Elspeth, Nissa.
Group two:
Sorin Markov, Jace Beleren, Gideon Jura, Garruk Wildspeaker, Chandra Nalaar.
Group three:
Kiora Atua, Koth, Liliana Vess, Ajani Goldmane.
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If you wanted to pick up that foil Jace, Memory Adept to pimp out your commander deck or slide this flashy piece of awesomeness into your standard constructed build - now is the time to pick it up. MTG Mint Card has restocked this.

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Innistrad ComicCon Panel

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Happy Saturday MTG peeps,

Last night's Super FNM at OMG! Games was a complete success. The place was jam-packed not only with players vying for the coveted first-prize Time Walk but also with the camera crew and show staff for a filming of the upcoming Risky Business reality show.

Anywhoos, we ran that Tempered Steel deck that Ishida had won the Japanese Nationals with but could not get there with the curiosities of the local meta-game. Speaking of curious, in our last round, our opponent side-boarded in some very strategic Creeping Corrosion which blew my full board out of the water. What was curious was that he had kept these cards under the table and un-sleeved . . . hmm(?).

Righto - back on track -
Reports are in from the much anticipated Magic Panel from this weekend's Comic Con in San Diego. Let's get to the eye-candy first ->

Announced -
The second set of the Innistrad block will be named Dark Ascension which has the tag-line - "Command the Night" (Images courtesy of Brian David Marshall (@Top8Games).

This image certainly looks like a Sorin Planeswalker to me chillaxing in Castlevania with a feeling similar to that of Ral Zarek's art.

Next - a very, very lucky Magic the Gathering fan won an orignal (!) piece of artwork reported to be a card from Innistrad named 'Creepy Doll'. We are thinking this may be a kick-butt artifact creature.


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Spoilers from the panel below:

Quote:
Originally Posted by @dailymtg
New art for Kresh the Bloodbraided, & Su Quan, Lord of Wu! Crowd goes wild.

Quote:
Originally Posted by @dailymtg
Now onto Duel Decks: Ajani vs Nicol Bolas. New Ajani & Bolas art shown. New alternate art for Lightning Helix. #mtgsdcc

Quote:
Originally Posted by @dailymtg
It finally looks like @maro254 gets to talk about Innistrad finally! Vampires, zombies, and werewolves oh my! #mtgsdcc

Quote:
Originally Posted by @dailymtg
"There's some graveyard & tribal mechanics" --@maro254 #mtgsdcc
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Red Vampires! Blue zombies! #mtgsdcc

Quote:
"Werewolves are a very very key part of this set, they're red & green." #mtgsdcc

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"YES she (Lillian) is in the set. Also, there are TWO planeswalkers in the set." #mtgsdcc
Quote:
One more thing. Dark Ascension. Control the Night. February 2012.

Quote:
"There ARE more than just vampires, werewolves, & zombies in horror. I gave you just a taste." @maro254 #mtgsdcc

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evilempire22 View Post
Doran, the Siege Tower was also revealed to be part of FTV: Legends. Old art.
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The big news, given the above -
Werewolves
Zombies
Vampires

Weridness and coolness - no hints yet on what to expect for white and it's allied pair green and blue. SPECULATE AWAY below folks !
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Super FNM

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

It being Friday, we, as we are certain, most of you will be picking up your standard-format 60-card build and heading out to a Friday Night Magic event. Personally, we are re-assembling a Tempered Steel deck similar to the one that Ryuuichirou Ishida piloted to first place at the Magic the Gathering Japan Nationals 2011 just the other week. For a look at this build that won $3,000 and 10 Pro Points, click here.

Anywhoos - some exciting news about our local FNM at OMG! Games in Barrie, Ontario, Canada tonight (Friday July 22nd, 2011). We've been slinging Magic cards here since around 2008 and have taken in some great 'Super FNM' events (where a small entry fee could net you amazing prizes - but tonight is rather exceptional. For $6, Owners Rick and Josh are providing an Unlimited edition Time Walk ( This card is worth about $400 !) for first prize and FNM foils to Top 8 with additional excellent prizes based on attendance.

Check out the map below - this is well worth the drive from Toronto to Barrie. Registration will open at 6 pm and play will begin at 7 pm sharp. As with all FNM's, format is DCI sanctioned Standard format with modified Swiss pairings with 50 minute timed rounds. There are also $10 drafts being planned with first spot prize taking a free draft. Drafts will run from 11 pm until the wee hours the next morning.

Also of note for this evening - a full camera crew will be in attendance at the event, and the first few rounds will be recorded. You may also be asked to say something on camera between rounds. The recording for the reality television show 'Risky Business' will be airied on Global in October, so please be aware that you may be on TV. The show will be hosted by former Dragons' Den panelist W. Brett Wilson. After leaving CBC's Dragons' Den, Canadian investor, iconic entrepreneur and philanthropist W. Brett Wilson is getting down to business with a new reality series. The series will feature 13 half-hour shows where ordinary and experienced investors alike will get the chance to choose between two unusual investment opportunities pitched by entrepreneurs.

Contact the store for more details -
Location:
OMG! Games and Collectibles
130 Bell Farm Rd
Barrie, Ontario
store@omggames.ca
(705) 721-GAME (4263)

Driving directions :
From the South:
Take Hightway 400 northbound to the Duckworth St exit, and turn right onto Duckworth St. Turn right onto Bell Farm Rd from Duckworth St. The store is just ahead in the plaza with the Pizza Hut on your right.
From the North:
Take Highway 400 southbound to the Duckworth St exit, and turn left onto Duckworth St. Turn right onto Bell Farm Rd from Duckworth St. The store is just ahead in the plaza with the Pizza Hut on your right.

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While we are yattering about our fav gaming store, we should also mention that on Saturday August 6th, 2011, OMG! Games will be holding a Standard fomat tounament. The top prize will be a complete foil set of Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged and New Phyrexia with an approximate Value of $1200 ! The winner will also receive 3 byes for Grand Prix: Pittsburgh. Entry fee is $25 and there will also be draft side events planned.
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