Thursday MTG Miscellany

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

The end to a hot and dry summer is nearly at hand, so if you had not already attempted an overdose of long wave ultraviolet A (UVA) and short wave ultraviolet B (UVB) from that bright fiery globe in the sky, we suggest to take advantage before the restart of the academic year, return to work from summer vacation, etc.  Although we do not enjoy any such short term departure from work, we acknowledge that the posts to the MTG Realm had certainly been less than 3 articles posted per week.  Having stated that, we have provided for regular (almost daily) posts to our Tumblr page, linked right here.  MTG Realm on Tumblr continues to deliver Magic: the Gathering related news, spoilers, and funnies to the gaming community.  We are very thankful to all the 17,000 followers who have subscribed.

Some upcoming dates we are looking very much forward to this fall include the September release of Creature Forge : Overwhelming Swarm MTG miniatures from WizKis as well as the October release of Guilds of Ravnica.  For the moment, the MTG Realm playgroup has been picking up singles from the latest Commander 2018 product offering with one member scrapping an existing Enchantress / Pillow-Fort build to meld with the Bant-coloured Adaptive Enchantments Commander pre-constructed deck.

Before signing off, we should very much like to express just how much we had enjoyed the 8-epsisode Core Set 2019 Storyline by Kate Elliot.  The literary work did provide additional depth to the Khans / Dragons of Tarkir story stub that we felt was needed.  We are quite happy Wizards of the Coast had made the decision to serve a short story along with this set.  Here are all the links and blurbs to the eight episodes for Core Set 2019 :

Episode 1
18 years after the events of Fate Reforged, Yasova (formerly Yasova Dragonclaw) leads her granddaughters and a hunting party into the wilderness. There her granddaughter is visited by mysterious vision, telling her the story of the birth of none other than Ugin the Spirit Dragon and of Nicol Bolas himself

Episode 2
As Yasova and her granddaughters are threatened by dragons from multiple clans, they meet a mysterious Ojutai stranger. He has a story to tell about Bolas and Ugin's earliest days, a story which serves a greater purpose.

Episode 3
Hunted by dragons, Yasova and the twins hear more of Tae Jin's tale of Bolas and Ugin and the story of their earliest conflict with humans.

Episode 4
After risking her peoples' lives to save Tae Jin, Yasova demands he finish his story of Bolas and Ugin, revealing its dark conclusion.

Episode 5
In a desperate attempt to assuage Atarka's anger, the hunting band plies her with the tale of an ancient war between dragons.

Episode 6
When Yasova and the twins reach Ugin's grave at last, they find a mysterious, and potentially deadly, stranger awaiting their arrival.

Episode 7
Nicol Bolas gives his own account of history to Naiva and makes her an offer.

Episode 8
Yasova and the twins hear the end of Ugin's version of history and risk defying Nicol Bolas himself.

Lord of War

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

Today at MTG Realm, we would like to yatter a bit about some of the cool new cards in the re-started Core Set, Core Set 2019.  Quite specifically, the five rare tribal lords.  A "lord" is an informal term that refers to any creature or other permanent that confers boons to other members of the same creature type, typically without conferring such bonus to themselves.  In Core Set 2019, there is one Lord in each colour :

• Valiant Knight (W knights) — Grants other Knights +1/+1, activated ability (3WW) to grant Knights double strike

• Supreme Phantom (U spirits) — Grants other spirits+1/+1.

• Death Baron (B zombies) — Grants skeletons and zombies +1/+1 and deathtouch

• Goblin Trashmaster (R goblins) — Grants goblins +1/+1, activate ability to destroy an artifact when you sacifice a goblin.

• Elvish Clancaller (G elves) — Grants other Eleves +1/+1, activated ability (4GG, Tap) to tutor another copy of itself onto the battlefield.

When Core 2019 releases on July 13, 2018, and before the large Fall set on October 5, 2018, there is a metric ton of cards in Standard format, but are we able to double down on the above Tribal Lords ?  Ixalan / Rivals of Ixalan was a block that did have a tribal theme, but restricted to Pirates, Dinosaurs, Merfolk and Vampires. 

There does exist however, some cards which may assist in a tribal theme should you want to move forward with the aforementioned Core Set 2019 Lords -

Arcane Adaptation (2U) - forcing all your creatures to creature type
Metallic Mimic (2) - +1/+1 counters on named creature type when they enter the battlefield
Radiant Destiny (2W) - conditional (City's Blessing) named creature type you control gets +1/+1 and vigilance
Vanquisher's Banner (5) - named creature type you control gets +1/+1, card draw upon casting that type

The most apparent choice may be Zombies.  There was a time, not that long ago, where Zombie tribal did climb to the top tier before the wheels fell off when some choice cards from Magic Origins / Shadows Over Innistrad block rotated out.  There are two Lords, or more specifically, a tribal enchantment and a Lord, in Amonkhet which may be shoed in to build a Zombie Tribal decklist -

• Liliana's Mastery (Amonkhet) - Zombies you control get +1/+1.
• Lord of the Accursed (Amonkhet) - Grants other zombies +1/+1, activated ability (1B, Tap) zombies gain menace

There is also a handful of other useful cards to support this theme as well which we will not go into, but do want to make a point that Embalm and Eternalize are two existing mechanics which also may be of use here.

Happy Brewing !
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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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Core Set 2019 Story

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Yesterday, regular Magic: the Gathering story instalments restarted on the Wizards of the Coast website, with the first of eight short stories to be shared for the Core Set 2019 story arc.  Previously, Wizards had been producing stories ‘in-house’ with the R&D Narrative Team, and on the whole, these were very good.  With Return to Dominaria, author Martha Wells was engaged to produce a whopping 12 short stories.  Considering what a herculean effort it was to pen this, it really did make sense for Wizards to work with a professional author, and have the Narrative Team focus on creating a canvas, characters, and major plots to mesh with the cards created for each set.

Continuing to employ outside resources, Wizards had tapped author Kate Elliott to generate 8 stories for the Core Set 2019.  Kate was introduced to us on June 7, 2018, during a Twitch Video ‘Weekly MTG’ which featured Mark Rosewater, M19 Story Author, & Beta Booster Pack Opening.  We’re uncertain about the ‘weekly’ term for the moment, but were very happy to have watched the video.  Kate Elliott is the pen name of American fantasy and science fiction writer Alis A. Rasmussen, who currently resides with her husband Jay Silverstein currently live in (the non-exploding part of) Hawaii.  Here is her first Magic: the Gathering story, as linked below -

Chronicle of Bolas: The Twins, by Kate Elliott
18 years after the events of Fate Reforged, Yasova (formerly Yasova Dragonclaw) leads her granddaughters and a hunting party into the wilderness. There her granddaughter is visited by mysterious vision, telling her the story of the birth of none other than Ugin the Spirit Dragon and of Nicol Bolas himself.

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Had you not read this great first installment, we suggest you do, before we move along, as we are hitting / highlighting some rather interesting details presented as they unfold on Tarkir.

Yasova (previously Yasova Dragonclaw), is a grandmother.  Her granddaughters, twins Naiva (more a hunter) and Baishya (more a shaman) have been given a message from the Windfolk (some sort of Elemental beings) who communicate with the human ‘whisperers’ with shamanic gifts.  This message seems to be from the Spirit-Dragon, Ugin.  The stage now appears to be set upon a path to find the (corpse or spirit) of Ugin.
Other items of interest folded into the story concern Dragons.  We appreciate the literary device (?) used to capitalise letters indicating the story section about dragons, and dragon-speech.  We are shown what appears to the Ur-Dragon, the primordial essence of all Dragonkind, with its avatar speeding across the skies of an un-named plane of existence, essentially dropping dragon eggs.  The first wave of eggs include Palladium, Chromium, Arcades, Ugin, Nicol, and Merrivia Sal, but two other dragons are stillborn and fall to the ground.  The dragons are born sentient / intelligent and knowing such things as their names.
The big bombshell here (for us at least) is that, not only is Ugin an Elder Dragon, but he's also Nicol Bolas' brother.  These newborn twins witness the death of a ‘sibling’ dragon Merrivia Sal, whose scales had yet to harden, who was killed by a pack of human hunters.  We learn quite a bit from this event which assists us in understanding the character of each of these two creatures.  Where Nicol Bolas is full of fury, wanting to avenge the death of Merrivia by destroying all the hunters, Ugin appears more practical in calculating potential risk (the ‘long game’).

Looking very much forward to Kate Elliott’s next stories.

For now, you should know that the Core Set 2019 card image gallery is now up to be populated with new previews as they happen.

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Core Set 2019 Previews and Promos

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Completely unexpected (at least for us), but there were a slew of Magic: the Gathering previews out this morning from Wizards of the Coast.  Please do click on over to the MTG website and read the article, 'CORE SET 2019 PACKAGING, PROMOS, AND MORE', posted by Blake Rasmussen.  In the post, he goes over a variety of official previews including :

• Welcome Decks
• Standard Showdown promo lands
• Friday Night Magic promos

For this post, we are just touching upon the promotional cards associated with the upcoming Core Set.

Buy-A-Box promo : Nexus of Fate
Open House (June 30–July 1) : Guttersnipe
Draft Weekend (July 14–15) : Desecrated Tomb
Magic League (July 16) : Reliquary Tower
Store Championships on June 18–24 : Demon of Catastrophes
Store Championships Playmat by Ultra PRO: Bolas (?)

The big preview today is a NEW Planeswalker being introduced to Magic 2019 Core Set via The Mary Sue linked right here.  Here is the green Planeswalker Vivien Reid -

According to The Mary Sue, Vivien was born on Skalla, and is part of a tribe of rangers and druids known as the Smaragdi, who protect the wilds of that plane from the growing destructive civilization.  Vivien has a special bond with the animals of the forest, which manifests in her Arkbow. 

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