Hands of Flame

~
Good Day MTG peeps,

We're taking a quick break from Magic 2010 spoilers today to yatter about another new Wizards of the Coast Product - Duels of the Planeswalker - paper edition decks. We first posted about this last month and with the release just last weekend, got our paws on the Chandra Nalaar deck, courtesy of a friend of ours (thanks JS @ PN !).

Here is our deck dissection . . .

Here is the corporate skinny -

Get your favorite decks in your hands—literally!

Inspired by the decks from the blockbuster Duels of the Planeswalkers digital game, these powerful 60-card decks come with a 15-card booster pack, allowing you to customize your deck and take total command of your game!

. . . and the deck we got -

Hands of Flame –

The Chandra Nalaar Deck Burn them all with Chandra’s red deck. Put your opponent on the defensive, then unload an awesome arsenal of fiery destruction.

REVIEW

Rating : |||||-|
4 out of 5

This is a classic and well loved deck build. My red Mage approves. This is a solid deck for new and experienced players and makes for some great games. Our only complaint is that Chandra Nalaar was not included.

CONTENTS :

Land : 24 Mountain

Commons : 4 Goblin Piker, 2 Goblin Sky Raider, 2 Cinder Pyromancer, 3 Incinerate, 2 Shock, 4 Hill Giant, 4 Lightning Elemental

Uncommons : 2 Earth Elemental, 1 Enrage, 1 Bloodmark Mentor, 2 Dragon's Claw, 1 Blaze, 2 Act of Treason, 1 Prodigal Pyromancer

Rares : 1 Kamahl, Pit Fighter (FOIL), 1 Banefire, 1 Shivan Dragon, 1 Rage Reflection, 1 Furnace of Rath

Hands of Flame also comes with a 15-card Magic 2010 Core Set booster pack, to enable you to tweak the deck and add to your collection.
~

Conflux

~

Planned to be released on 6th February, 2009 is 'CONFLUX', the second set in the Shards of Alara Block. This set was code-named 'Paper', from the popular dice-less game 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'.







Wizards formerly announced this set's release today on Magic Arcana. We are lead to believe that each of the 5 shards alluded to in the first Alara block has "developed it's own tri-coloured theme" (white / blue / black , etc.).












Given this, Conflux (meaning the flowing together of something), may indicate that there may be a possibility of drawing yet another colour into this theme (white / blue / black / red, etc.). Hey - your guess should be about as good as mine.

The lead on the Design Team is Bill Rose, head of Research & Development - we have not heard much from him since 2005. The lead for the Development Team is Mike Turian, a core developer and avid MTG player.

'fnord' over at one of the forums worked on a very neat Alara-to-Conflux morph.

~

Speaking of forums, BantSentinel was very kind to share a sneak peak with us of what he saw in the yet-to-be-released WoTC publication 'A Planeswalker's Guide to Alara: A Magic: The Gathering Field Guide'. Here is what he says . . .

There is no theme shared by all of Alara. Rather, each of the 5 Shards has its own theme. Each Shard is primary in one of the five colors and secondary in the two colors which are allies of the primary color.

Here are the 5 Shards and their themes:

1. Bant
Primary: white
Secondary: blue, green
Theme: Enchantments.

2. Esper
Primary: blue
Secondary: white, black
Theme: Artifacts. From what I saw, I got the very strong impression that there will be a significant number of Esper-associated colored artifacts.

3. Grixis
Primary: black
Secondary: blue, red
Theme: Graveyard.

4. Jund
Primary: red
Secondary: black, green
Theme: Controlled Chaos. This is a tricky one, and I'm not sure this is the best description. It looks like there will be lot of random effects, growing/shrinking creatures, etc. However, it is unmistakably mentioned that this chaos can be and is controlled/manipulated by savvy planeswalkers to tilt the odds in their favour.

~

Until next time, Happy & Safe Gaming !