Magic Origins

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Wow, what a weekend for Magic: the Gathering fans.  For us here at MTG Realm, the weekend kicked off with Friday Night Magic and the next day, a Tiny Leaders Tournament at our local gaming store, OMG! Games here in Barrie, Ontario.  Saturday  evening, our region got a good wallop of winter and a good bit of snow accumulation, which was perfect to sequester ourselves inside and watch some of the  Pro Tour Fate Reforged event coverage.  The format for this past weekend in Washington, D.C. was Modern with Antonio Del Moral León of Spain taking top spot.  With the recent banning of Birthing Pod, a number of pros turned to Splinter Twin.

Anywhoos, the big news from the weekend came yesterday during the event coverage - the official announcement for the very last 'core set' - not called Magic 2016 (M16) but rather 'Magic Origins'.

Set Name Magic : Origins

Number of Cards : 272

Official Three–Letter Code : ORI

Twitter Hashtag : #MTGORIGINS

Prerelease Events : July 11–12, 2015

Release Date : July 17, 2015

Launch Weekend : July 17–19, 2015

Game Day August : 8–9, 2015

Initial Concept and Game Design : Shawn Main (lead), Mark Gottlieb, Ari Levitch, Nik Davidson, Ian Duke

Final Game Design and Development : Sam Stoddard (lead), Dave Humpherys, Ian Duke, Dan Emmons, Ethan Fleischer, Ari Levitch, with contributions from Matt Tabak

Languages English, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.

Available in Booster Packs, Intro Packs*, Fat Pack*, Clash Pack* (*-Not available in all languages.)

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Magic Origins was announced February 8th, 2015 during Pro Tour Fate Reforged.  Magic Origins will be the 17th and last Magic core set. It will be grouped as a two-set block with Dragons of Tarkir for the purposes of Standard rotation under the new regime.

This is anticipated to be the very first time since Alpha, that a Core Set features two new mechanics. R&D considers Magic Origins not to be the "last core set", but a "new beginning" relating to the start of the Two-Block Paradigm and a new treatment of the storyline. The latter involves telling coherent, in-depth stories about the characters and carrying those out over story arcs across multiple sets. To enable this storytelling, there are more new cards in this set than in previous Core Sets. Magic Origins will reveal for the first time these pivotal moments for five Planeswalkers: Gideon Jura, Jace Beleren, Liliana Vess, Chandra Nalaar, and Nissa Revane. The design of the cards and mechanics mirrors this for the players, as a kind of "leveling up" to their full potential.  There were also these two very lovely arts presented.  

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