MTG ‘BEARserker’

~“Would you rather feel the edge of my blade or the sharpness of my fangs?"

Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Incoming event this weekend at a gaming store near you, is the Dominaria Store Championship.  With Dominaria having been officially released on April 27, 2018, Magic: the Gathering players should now have been afforded ample opportunity to hone their standard format deckles.  This weekend, your time and effort; blood and tears; and countless hours of research will pay off as you are crowned Store Championship.  To the victor - priceless treasures in the form of a Champion playmat and deck boxes from Ultra PRO, and promo cards. 

Should you find yourself North of Toronto, do drop in to OMG Games, in Barrie, Ontario on Saturday 23 June at half-past noon.

On topic again -
As of this afternoon, Magic: the Gathering gamers have been delivered about 215 (of 280) official Core Set 2019 card previews by Wizards of the Coast and their media friends.  The Core Set, releasing on July 13th, returns to MTG after a short ( THREE YEAR ! ) hiatus after this was dropped after Magic Origins in 2015.  To date, we have been treated to 2 installments of a storyline created by author Kate Elliot which has been a very good read.

We could talk about some of the very cool and slick new cardboard which has been previewed so far, and perhaps how this new set may impact the meta game in each format, but we really do want to talk about the big BEAR in the room - Ursine Champion.

Ursine Champion, artwork by Alex Konstad

Here is the freak’n awesome card now for your review -

This sweet card is most definitely a 'bear' - 1X for a 2/2, quite conventionally in green or perhaps white.  Although the creature type is a 'Human BEARserker', she does have an activated ability to actually turn into a freak'n bear ! These WereBear creature shenanigans may be more at home on the Plane of Innistrad, but we are loving it.  Late game, with a pinch of mana acceleration, this 2/2 grows to a sizeable 5/5.

This is no common 'Vanilla Bear', and most certainly in the territory of 'Value Bear', but will the discerning MTG fan dare even say bear at all ?  

Here is a very handy Bear Alignment Chart, created by redditor IanUlman for reference should you wish to provide a shot to categorize further . . .

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