FNM Non-Token Promos

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Some big news out today, at least for those like us love our Friday Night Magic routine to kick the weekend off.

FNM promos (aka - Friday Night Magic promotional cards) are foil promotional cards provided by Wizards of the Coast as additional prizes at Friday Night Magic events.  FNM promos have been around since 2000, with a very much appreciated change in 2008, when the foil FNM promos started featured alternated art.

In October 2017, Wizards of the Coast started replaced the regular FNM promo cards with foil doulbe-sided tokens.  Although these were appreciated, we think, from discussions, that a large number of players really preferred cards over tokens.  Today on the mother-site (linked right here), staffer Blake Rasmussen announced that there is to be a return to non-token Friday Night Magic promo cards timed with the release of Dominaria on April 27, 2018.

We are certainly looking very much forward to this change and do hope that Wizards still provides those foil double-sided tokens, perhaps as part of a product offering or special participation program at local gaming stores (League, Showdown, etc.).  

Before the change in October last year, the FNM promos printed generally were sought-after cards and perhaps the best selections in some time.  We do hope Wizards continues that trend and in addition to the very good standard cards, provides a few non-standard cards per year as well to entice Modern and Commander players.
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Big Change to FNM

Friday Night Magic WUT?
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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Congratulaiotns to Magic: the Gathering player Michael Hamilton who took first place this weekend at the StarCityGames.com Standard Open in Cincinnati.  This was the first large tournament taking place after the release of the newest set Hour of Devastation.  The metagame breakdown of Day 2 was incredibly varied with 36 different archetypes represented, which is a strong indication of healthy standard format.  

Here are the Top 8 decklist archetypes :
1st Four-Color Control
2nd W/U Monument
3rd Four-Color Emerge
4th B/G Energy
5th W/U Monument
6th Mono-Red Aggro
7th Mono-Black Zombies
8th Temur Energy

Obviously not an accurate prognostication for this new 'season', but certainly very promising right out of the gates.  There will be a good measure of evolution going forward and it may be of interest to read the article today posted on the Wizards of the Coast site from Luis Scott-Vargas as to the direction of standards existing decklists with the new options presented in Hour of Devastation.
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Next - Almost every Magic: the Gathering player is talking about the news posted to the mothersite on upcoming changes to Friday Night Magic, linked right here.  There is a number of items of interest, but for sake of brevity for today's post, we will just address the item on FNM promos.  A short clip from Wizards - 

"FNM has been and continues to be the foundation our weekly in-store play. It is one of our longest-running and most successful play programs in our 25 years, so we're not looking to mess with the formula too much.
We are making two changes that are related—FNM "seasons" now align with set releases, and promos, which have previously been foil cards, will now be foil double-sided tokens."

The TL/DR summary of the Friday Night Magic essentially is -

• Wizards is shifting from FNM promo cards to double-sided foil tokens

• Less FNM promos per week for Core and Advanced level stores.

Double-sided tokens are cool !  But certainly not at the expense of the traditional FNM promos.  The more recent promos have certainly been improving - Aether Hub, Fatal Push - oh heck yes.  Wizards was tracking in the correct direction with these more 'playable' cards.  They would have been better served by having these promo tokens as an adjunct for other stand-alone products to entice purchase.

Other than this incredible loss of inventive to attend Friday Night Magic, we want to mention the change to Game Day.  This event has now been replaced with a 'Store Championship' event which is to take place later than the typical 4 weeks after a set's release.  It is now planned to be a "climax of the season's competitive Magic narrative"

With this event's inaugural run planned for December 30–31, to coincide with Rivals of Ixalan, the prize support here appears great - store champion playmat, exclusive deck boxes for the top 8, and foil full-art promo cards  from Rivals.  The issue really is, just how many players will be available to attend at the most packed week in most people's calendars - year end holidays have a multitude of social engagements which provides little to no time to take even a day out of their schedule. 

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MTG Tumblr Friday

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

As it is Friday, many Magic: the Gathering players will be making tracks to their local gaming store to participate in a Friday Night Magic event.  We'll be heading out to our local shop, OMG! Games, here in Barrie, Ontario where both Standard and Commander are on tap.  

With the latest MTG set, Shadows Over Innistrad, now on tap, one can expect a lot of fresh new ideas for decklists in play.  A reminder as well as this month's FNM promo is the very lovely looking Blighted Fen with alternate artwork from Jason Felix.  We still have not yet put together a new list yet for Standard and expect to do some crazy building right after school today.  

Anywhoos, here is a round-up of MTG gaming miscellany borrowed from our sister site, MTG Realm on Tumblr -
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Photoset April 14, 2016 41 notes

Magic: the Gathering - Ultra PRO for SOI

Have you seen just how awesome the Ultra PRO goodies look for Shadows Over Innistrad ?  Here’s some gamer eye-candy.  :)
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Photoset April 14, 2016 65 notes

Magic: the Gathering - Power Rankings
I’m a fan of the nice summary that the Channel Fireball produces in their Power Rankings - you can catch these over here - http://www.channelfireball.com/power-rankings/
Anywhoos - Week One after Shadows Over Innistrad and the the standard constructed power rankings are quite decidedly in the suit of White.  :)
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Photoset April 13, 2016 126 notes

Magic: the Gathering - MTG Jewelry
Zsolt Székely, goldsmith and fellow Canadian (in fact, right here in my Province of Ontario), runs Precizió - Jewellery and Studio in Thorold and has some amazing pieces.

Drop by to check out some lovely works from just about any Fandom you can imagine including something themed from your fav digital game (think Deadpool to Zelda) -

http://www.facebook.com/precizio

http://www.zsoltszekely.com
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Photoset April 13, 2016 57 notes

Magic: the Gathering - Open that Armory
Artist Steve Prescot knocks this illustration right outta the park.

In other news, dude’s armory looks to be chock’d full ‘o’ badassery.


This Shadows Over Innistrad card did catch my attention as soon as it was previewed - sooo many possibilities - a red/white equip build, or a lovely tutor for Invocation of Saint Traft in a blue/white humans or spirits list - just tasty.
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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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FNM Promo Round-Up

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Tonight at midnight, we'll be in line at our local gaming store here in Barrie, Ontario - OMG! Games as they'll be open late to mark the official release ('street date') of the latest Magic: the Gathering set - Fate Reforged.  We'll need to pick up a Fat Pack as is our custom here at MTG Realm (look for a video un-boxing later) as well as a few singles to incorporate into our existing standard constructed builds for tomorrow's Friday Night Magic event.  

One of the first decklists we want to try out in this new standard is black / white warriors, perhaps splashing red.  With tomorrow's official launch, players will also be able to pick up the launch promo card - Sandsteppe Mastodon which might not be perfect for standard format, but we have some Commander builds which would love some of this bolster tech.

Anywhoos, speaking of FNM, we have an update on the mothersite for the next few monthly promos -

February
Disdainful Stroke 
Khans of Tarkir regular and FNM Promo Art by Svetlin Velinov

March
Hordeling Outburst
Khans of Tarkir regular and FNM Promo Art Art by Zoltan Boros

April
Suspension Field 
Khans of Tarkir regular and FNM Promo Art by Seb McKinnon

Sorry - Can't find Seb's other illustration.

Here's a brief history of the FNM promo cards for last year.

2015
1/15: Frenzied Goblin
2/15: Disdainful Stroke
3/15: Hordeling Outburst
4/15: Suspension Field

2014
1/14: Warleader's Helix
2/14: Elvish Mystic
3/14: Banisher Priest
4/14: Encroaching Wastes
5/14: Tormented Hero
6/14: Dissolve
7/14: Magma Spray
8/14: Bile Blight
9/14: Banishing Light
10/14 Fanatic of Xenagos
11/14 Brain Maggot

12/14 Stoke the Flames
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FNM Promo Round-Up

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

We don't care how snowy, cold, or otherwise nasty it is outside right now, we are definitely planning to get across to the other side of Barrie tonight to OMG! Games to get some Friday Night Magic gaming in.  There is not to many chances left to win one of those juicy / icky Brain Maggot FNM promos and we hope to get a Top 8 under our belt tonight.

Speaking of Friday Night Magic promo cards, the mothersite revealed the February 2015 card - 

Regular Khans of Tarkir Common, illustrated by Svetlin Velinov

Friday Night Magic Promo, illustrated by Svetlin Velinov

We are liking the promo card art that Velinov had provided over his earlier.  As we are wrapping up the remainder of the year rather soon, we should do a re-cap of this year's FNM promo cards.

FNM Promos for

November / December / January

2014 Friday Night Magic Promo Cards

January: Warleader's Helix
February: Elvish Mystic
March: Banisher Priest
April: Encroaching Wastes
May: Tormented Hero
June: Dissolve
July: Magma Spray
August: Bile Blight
September: Banishing Light
October: Fanatic of Xenagos
November: Brain Maggot
December: Stoke the Flames 

These were all very decent choices and we're more than pleased with WotC and their picks - all decent standard legal cards that see play (some more than others - Encroaching Wastes and Fanatic of Xenagos were weird but still OK).

In other news, it looks like a card image of the colourless Ugin, The Spirit Dragon is circulating the interwebs.  This card is expected to see print in Fate Reforged but we are of the opinion that the card is fake until additional proof is provided.  Anywhoos - have a great weekend y'awll !
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MTG Tumblr Thursday

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

One more day away from our fav day of the week - Friday!  Expect us at our local gamery shoppe, OMG! Games here in Barrie, Ontario with some newly acquired Magic: the Gathering singles from MTG Mint Card.  We hope to make it again to Top 8 with our take on that popular Abzan Midrange, and if not, we certainly relish our time spent creating rogue decklists.  

Anywhoos, it's been a while since we've last revisited our sister site MTG Realm on Tumblr.  Our Tumblr site now boasts almost 3,000 posts and has 7,400 followers, so come on in and scroll on through our content.

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Photoset October 23, 2014 6 notes

Magic: the Gathering - Frenzied Goblin 

New January 2015 FNM promo card was posted to the mothersite today. The new Goblin critter illustration has moved away from the more ‘traditional’ goblin to that of those inhabiting the Plane of Tarkir. 

• Magic 2015 Core Set Uncommon, Art by Carl Critchlow


• January 2015 Friday Night Magic Promo, Art by Kev Walker
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Photoset October 22, 2014 149 notes

Magic: the Gathering - COMMANDER 2014

Official previews start Monday 27th October 2014 ! !


Is much excite !
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Photoset October 20, 2014 759 notes

Magic: the Gathering - Dice Coffin

Very kewl dice box for your games - especially witty if you are playing something with dredge or other graveyard shenanigans.


Top - from a tutorial here.  Bottom - from stoney916.
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Photoset October 20, 2014 225 notes

Magic: the Gathering - Wait . . Wut ?


Oh reddit - you never fail to deliver the lulz and the wtf’s.
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Photoset October 16, 2014 152 notes

Magic: the Gathering - Standard Metagame

Rather witty image / post by redittor gereffi with follow-ups from ubernostrum and others about just how popular Khans of Tarkir Siege Rhino was at KTK Pro Tour Honolulu last weekend … .

Ajani, Mentor of Rhinos
Drown in Rhino
Elspeth, Rhino’s Champion
Goblin Rhinomaster
Mantis Rhino
Mass Rhinofy
Nissa, Rhinowaker
Rhino Charm
Rhino Mystic
Rhino of Kruphix
Rhino Siegemaster
Rhino, Solemn Visitor
Rhinoblast
Rhinobreath Rhino
Rhinoseize
Siege Courser
Sorhino, Solemn Rhino
Sylvan Rhino
Wingmate Rhino
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Photoset October 15, 2014 611 notes

Magic: the Gathering - Moxen

The Moxen or Moxes are a collection of powerful gems infused with one of the colors of mana — Mox Pearl for white, Mox Sapphire for blue, Mox Jet for black, Mox Ruby for red, and Mox Emerald for green. These five moxen are part of the Power Nine. Each Mox from Alpha set typically fetch prices in the range of $1,500 to $2,000.

You can get jewelry replicas from a variety of different sources including the ones shown here from PixelStar07 on Etsy.

• Mox Pearl Necklace
• Mox Sapphire Necklace 
• Mox Jet Necklace
• Mox Ruby Necklace
• Mox Emerald Necklace


Spuggs on reddit recently posted a pic of himself with the kewl Moxen swag - “Think I’ll be a planeswalker for Halloween. They’ll know me by my artifacts.’
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Organised Play Announcements

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

What a great Thanksgiving long weekend its been up here in Canada-Land - loads of food, fun with the 'fam 'n' friends, and following the Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir tournament held in Honolulu in Hawaii, where Magic: the Gathering fans were closely watching how the Pros tackled the new standard format.  We'll yatter about this tournament in a follow-up post but for now, we'll congratulate Ari Lax take an Abzan (white / black / green) midrange decklist to the finish line.  We rather excited about this as we've been contemplating a similar list and have most of the cards from MTG Mint Card to complete it.

For today's article, we definitely want to talk about some exciting and important announcements made yesterday during the Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir tournament coverage.  Director of Global Organised Play, Hélène Bergeot sat down with MTG tournaament coverage host / commentator to discuss changes to Friday Night Magic and Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers taking place next year.

The big news is that you local gaming store will now be able to sanction any game format from now on, instead of just Standard and Modern.  This means the doors are now wide open for FNM organisers to better respond to the local player community and run one or more formats as shown below -

The other FNM related announcement from Hélène is that Friday Night Promo cards which were typically provided to just the top finishers during the Friday Night Magic event may now be distributed as the organisers deems appropriate.  Local stores will from now receive the following number of promo cards based on the store level for each FNM event - 

• Core stores get 5.
• Advanced stores get 10.
• Advanced Plus stores get 15.

The other news provided was a full list of all locations for Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers taking place on 24th April 2015 as well as the foil promo card for those players participating in the events - Liliana of the Veil.

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Stoke those Flames

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

This morning we had fully planned on getting up early to see that Blood Moon we wrote about in yesterday's article but just could not drag out butts outta bed - it's grey, raining and cold (about 48ºF / 9ºC) and it was much more pleasant under the covers than outside at 6:30 this morning.  Anywhoos, given the weather here, our thought are turning towards getting some firewood in for the season in preparation for a series of enjoyable fires.  As our brains are nearly hardwired to think Magic: the Gathering, when we think about a wood fire, we think about burn spells.

One rather popular burn spell in standard format just right now is the Magic 2015 uncommon, Stoke the Flames, which for four mana (2 colourless and 2 mountains) delivers four points of damage to target critter or player.  Wow that sucks you might say, but wait - this sucker has 'Covoke' meaning you can tap your creatures down to help pay for that spell and that is not that shabby at all.  This is made all the better with cards like Raise the Alarm (colourless and a white instant giving you two 1/1 white soldier creature tokens), and the new Hordeling Outburst from Khans of Tarkir (1 colourless and 2 red sorcery dropping three 1/1 red goblin creature tokens).  We made sure we picked up decksets of these from MTG Mint Card as soon as they came out.

Jeskai Ascendancy is the bees knees with this one-two punch.  With that Ascendancy enchantment in play as well as at least two of the previously mentioned creature tokens, you can then cast Stoke the Flames and now have Jeskai Ascendancy untap and get +1/+1 until end of turn - pretty damn sweet synergy we think.

Anywhoos, we are very excited that the Friday Night Magic promo card for December will be Stoke The Flames.  A very solid choice from WotC given the playability of the card right now and just an outstanding job on the new card illustation as well.

Original Art by Ryan Barger
FNM Promo Art by Mathias Kollros

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