Signature Spellbook: Jace

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

Here at MTG Realm, we are counting down the time until tomorrow (Wednesday, 21st March) when Wizards of the Coast will be posting the first installment of the Dominaria story.  The highly anticipated set has Magic: the Gathering fans holding their breath as to how WotC and contracted story-writer Martha Wells approaches this complex and intricately interwoven Plane in the Multiverse, as it has such a detailed history already.

For today, we do want to bring to your attention the full reveal of the first of what is anticipated to be several stand-alone Magic: the Gathering products, which appear to be centered on iconic Planeswalkers.  The first is Jace's all-Blue Spellbook, and today's preview of the packaging and contents look amazing.  Here is the blurb now -

Signature Spellbook: Jace is a collection of eight cards plus one random premium foil version of one of those eight cards for the serious blue mage. Each card has Jace-flavored art and special frames just for this set.

For a suggested retail price of twenty clams (USD), here are the following 'spells' in this spellbook -

• Jace Beleren, illus. Aleski Briclot.

• Blue Elemental Blast, illus. Slawomir Maniak.  "Contrary to popular wisdom, I find it's best to fight fire with its opposite."

• Brainstorm, illus. Daarken.  "I have a plan. Actually, I have three."

• Counterspell, illus. Jason Chan.

• Gifts Ungiven, illus. Chris Rallis.

• Mystical Tutor, illus. Yongjae Choi.  "It's not just what you know. It's knowing where to find what you don't."

• Negate, illus. Jason Rainville.  Centered rules text, no flavour text.

• Threads of Disloyalty, illus. Tyler Jacobson.  "Every thought is a string. You just have to find the right ones to pull."

From the description, it appears that one of these spells is to be duplicated in foil form.  Our first rough assessment is that the price of this does indeed approximate the cost should one purchase each (previously printed card) as a single, but this is certainly a poor metric to employ for this.   The new frame, as well as some of the new card arts are bundled in what appears to be a very aesthetic box, and for that, we suspect Collectors would consider this an excellent purchase at MSRP, and even a bit beyond that figure.

We are certainly looking very forward to seeing other Spellbooks in this series, and would likely buy into our favourite colours, should Wizards be following a colour model.  One interesting item we have noted, is that this appears to be listed (at the time of this post) as a WPN distributed product, with no release to 'Big Box' stores, such as Walmart or Target.  We wonder if this is a strategy to provide support for local gaming stores.  


Signature Spellbook: Jace releases June 15, 2018.
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