Path to Exile

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

We'd be happy too were it not for another blast of winter and a solid accumulation of snow (that's frozen water if you've not seen that stuff before).  We still are of good cheer as we will be off to Friday Night Magic later this evening at our local games shop, OMG! Games here in Barrie to get some standard format Magic: the Gathering in.  Although the store is in a plaza nearby Georgian College, one would think that the lion's share of attendees would be coming from the College, but in fact, there has been an increasing number coming in from nearby Canadian Forces Base Borden in Angus, not quite a half-hour away.  

Anywhoos, enough of us whinning about the ever-lasting winter and delayed spring, let's get into some MTG news.  In yesterday's Arcana post by Blake Rasmussen, he provided updates as to upcoming Friday Night Magic promos and DANG! we gotta say we are pretty impressed with July's upcoming FNM promo - 'Path to Exile'.  Typically for the last year or so, most of the FNM promos (perhaps all?) have all been cards currently in standard which we feel is a good thingy, but colour us impressed with this older card, although not legal for standard, it is a "near-universal staple in Modern" and very popular in many other formats.  When we were playing at the time when Conflux was released in February 2009, we were sure to pick up all the Paths we could.  This was for almost the next two years before it rotated out of standard, the 'go to' spot removal.  We recall some players splashed white just for this.

What made this card rather handy is that one could Path to Exile on your own creature to serve as a passable mana-fixer were you in a crunch.  PtE also ignited a good deal of debate as to which was better - Path to Exile OR Swords to Plowshares.  With Path, the downside was giving your opponent an extra land where Swords provided the controller of the exiled creature life gain equal to the exiled creature's power.  We never really did take any sides of this argument as the game state situation dictated which card proved better.  So popular is Path to Exile, WotC printed this in Modern Event Deck, Modern Masters, Duel Decks, Commander, Archenemy, and originally in Conflux (Shards of Alara block).

Anywhoos, we do not want to divagate from today's news on the July's FNM promo - check out the incredibly sweet card art by Raf Sarment !

Path to Exile, W
Instant, Uncommon
Exile target creature. Its controller may search his or her library for a basic land card, put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle his or her library.

For reference, here are all the arts to Path to Exile we've had -
July 2015 FNM Promo, illustrated by Raf Sarment
Gateway / WPN Foil Promo 2008, illustrated by Rebecca Guay
Duel Decks: Venser vs. Koth, illustrated by Erica Yang
Conflux Uncommon, illustrated by Todd Lockwood


Good Luck at FNM tonight gamers !

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