Ravnica Allegiance Standard

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

This very weekend, Magic: the Gathering players will be vying for glory at their local gaming stores around the globe in Ravnica Allegiance pre-release events.  The set appears to have all the correct successful ingredients and something for every fan, no matter what their favourite format - Commander, Standard, Modern, or limited.  

Suggested reading ahead of this weekend's event is the Ravnica Allegiance pre-release primer, from Gavin Verhey as well as the Ravnica Allegiance Release Notes, posted to Wizards of the Coast Daily MTG page today.  As an side-note, we had seriously misunderstood a particular card and now clarified, it may now be one of our favourites in the set.

Anywhoos, let's get on to today's topic - post Ravnica Allegiance Standard format. As the official previews were under way, it had become evident that (1) Riot was a particularly good mechanic, and that (2) Gruul Spellbreaker & Rhythm of the Wild is a solid card.  As a result, we expect a lot of the early decklists will lean towards Aggro and specifically these cards.  Just be cautious of cards, now being splashed with the improved mana-bases that threaten to put a damper on your Simic 'Adapt' or Gruul 'Riot' tech, such as Suncleanser.

Also of note - the much anticipated HareruyaWayfinder 晴れる屋 deck suggestions have been posted to Hareruya should you want to either confirm your similar build or looking for a direction.  Here are the creative offerings :

• Deck 1 Rakdos - Good Stuff - By Grzegorz Kowalski
• Deck 2 Rakdos - Aggro - By Christian Hauck
• Deck 3 Rakdos - Theatre Burn - By John Rolf
• Deck 4 Gruul - Almost Mono Green - By Javier Dominguez
• Deck 5 Gruul - Midrange - By Lee Shi Tian
• Deck 6 Gruul - Riot - By Immanuel Gerschenson
• Deck 7 Azorius - Control - By Luis Salvatto
• Deck 8 Esper - Control - By Marcio Carvalho
• Deck 9 Temur - Prime Speaker Vannifar - By Lucas Esper Berthoud
• Deck 10 Bant - Midrange - By Piotr Glogowski
• Deck 11 Izzet Living End (Modern) - By Pascal Vieren
• Deck 12 Light Up the Burn (Modern) - By Jason Chung

• Deck 13 Pteramander Delver (Legacy)  - By Jason Chung

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Guilds of Ravnica PreRelease

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

On the weekend, we, like many other Magic: the Gathering players dropped over to the local gaming store to participate in the Guilds of Ravnica PreRelease.  Specifically, we went on Sunday to our fav store here in Barrie, Ontario - OMG! Games, because, like Fblthp, we don't care very much for crowds.  The Friday midnight prerelease event had 50+ players, which is pretty much close to capacity for our local gaming store.  

The Sunday morning session had under 30 and was likely much less rowdy and rambunctious.  For Sunday, if you had not yet reserved a Prerelease Kit of the Guild of your choice, the selections were limited to Boros and Izzet.  We picked Boros and whined about the chances now somewhat diminished of scoring an Assasin's Trophy in a Golgari Prelease Kit.  Although the date=stamped foil Assassin's Trophy cards are currently fetching values at just under a $100, we were more than happy to be able to pull a regular one out of our kit.  Quite obviously the chances were slim on forcing colours from our red / white Boros kit to accomodate our singular Golgari card.

Here are the six cards collected from our Kit :
• Tajic, Legion's Edge (Prerelease Promo) : $10
• Assassin's Trophy : $27
• Steam Vents : $9
• Legion Warboss : $4
• Bounty of Might
• Response // Resurgence

At the end of the day, we did win enough games to split a prize and swoop in three additional Guilds of Ravnica Booster Packs :
• Knight of Autumn : $5
• Assure // Assemble
• Quasiduplicate

There were no clear winners in our sealed pool of cards but the seeded pack.  The comments we do have is that we love seeded packs, perhaps because our limited game is not our strong suite.  The other comment is that we did pull two Skyknight Legionnaire cards and we think this did a lot of the heavy lifting during most of our early games.

Most definitely looking forward to the new standard format next week.  When we first saw Pelt Collector previewed, our thoughts immediately reviewed how well Experiment One performed when it was introduced in Gatecrash.  We picked up a full deckset for just $3 and now see that the card is going for about $13 locally now, which makes us feel good about the first few weeks of standard, perhaps in a mostly green Steel Leaf stompy aggressive build.

Happy Brewing !
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M19 PreRelease Weekend

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

Magic: the Gathering players around the world will be congregating at their local gaming store this weekend at the newest core set, Magic 2019 prerelease events take place.  Should you find yourself in Central Ontario (just a titch North of Toronto), do drop by OMG! Games in Barrie, just off Highway 400 in the North end of the city near Georgian College.  OMG! Games kick off the prerelease weekend tonight at midnight soon after the regular Friday Night Magic event and will tear through all weekend long, wrapping up with a 2-Headed Giant event Sunday afternoon.  If you looking for a PreRelease event near you, pop on over to this linky at the Wizards of the Coast MTG site.

After the dust had settled from the PreRelease weekend, many gamers will be looking to a new standard format with Core 2019 being officially release July 13, 2018.  There will be a massive card pool to develop your strategies with (from Kaladesh straight through to Dominaria and the new Core Set).  Some players will choose to 'cherry pick' new M19 cards to supplement existing decklists while others may see a clear path forward to victory with a completely blueprint.  Whichever way you may go, it is always inspiring to see what the professional players associated with the Japanese gaming store Hareruya want to try.  Not missing the opportunity to innovate, the popular 'HareruyaWayfinder' standard format suggestions by the Hareruya Pros have been posted here.  Here are the very creative and spicy lists :: 

Deck 1 - Izzet Paradox
Deck 2 - Naya Dragons
Deck 3 - Orzhov Life
Deck 4 - Mono White Monument
Deck 5 - Grixis Midrange
Deck 6 - Mono Black Zombies

Deck 7 - Selesnya Midrange
Deck 8 - Izzet Artificer
Deck 9 - Gruul's Unsealing
Deck 10 - Tezzerator
Deck 11 - Esper Control
Deck 12 - Orzhov Knights
Deck 13 - Selesnya Life

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Dominaria PreRelease Report

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We are returned from this weekend's Dominaria PreRelease event at OMG! Games, here in Barrie, Ontario.  It was great connecting with the regulars and meeting some new people.  It was also great ripping open packs of Magic: the Gathering cards and hearing some vocalisations of some excited players getting a great card.  

Our pool was rather unfortunate, or perhaps better to say, a bit challenging.  Off the top, from the prerelease packs, we scored perhaps about 9 bucks in rares, and the rest of the pool was pretty shallow, with the exception of white, and, for the first time we are able to recall, we made an entirely mono-coloured decklist for PreRelease.  Here are the ROUGH numbers in each colour -

WHITE - 22 cards
BLUE - 12
BLACK - 13
GREEN - 12
MULTICOLOUR -1
ARTIFACTS - 8
NON-BASIC LANDS - 5

Here is a brief video of the start of the event -

Here are the rares I pulled . . .

And here is the rest of the mess we pushed together to game with - entirely in WHITE -

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Dominaria Standard

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

It is Friday (finally), and beginning at midnight tonight and running ALL weekend long at our local gaming store, OMG! Games, here in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, is the much-anticipated Dominaria PreRelease weekend. RawR! / w00t!  Magic: the Gathering players will be cracking packs of the newest set, and getting down to serious fun.  

Although we are looking very much forward, our format of choice is not really sealed but standard.  Going forward for at least a few more weeks of Friday Night Magic (yeah! FNM promos are returning on April 27th), we will still be armed with our existing Standard decklists while we collect the cards we new for the new season.  

One build which was early on our radar was a Red / White (Boros) 'Voltron' list.  The name 'voltron' essentially means using a select number of creatures which may provide some benefit when you equip them with artifacts, or enchant them with auras.  The creature card which captured our imagination in the new Dominaria set, to put us on this path generated a 3/1 elemental token with trample and haste every time you equipped or enchanted it.  Here is the back-bone of this list :

Champion of the Flame - pumped about it
Sram, Senior Edificer - keep the peddle down
Danitha Capashen, Paragon - discounts
Valduk, Keeper of the Flame - those lovely tokens

We will need to think more about what auras and equipment we like best with this mix, but for now, we were very happy to see the HareruyaWayfinder "Dominaria" posts which went up today.  Here, the Hareruya Magic: the Gathering Pros provide suggestions to you, the deck-builder, as to how one may go forward.  Here is the article link, and here are the lists :

STANDARD
• Deck 1 : Mono Green Ghalta, Grzegorz Kowalski

• Deck 2 : Yawgmoth's Vile Offering, Yoshihiko Ikawa
• Deck 3 : Djinn of the Vehicles, Luis Salvatto
• Deck 4 : Powerstone Shard, Javier Dominguez
• Deck 5 : Song of Freyalise, Marc Tobiasch
• Deck 6 : The Antiquities War, Kenta Harane
• Deck 7 : Blue Sky, Thiago Saporito
• Deck 8 : RB Midrange, Petr Sochurek

• Deck 9 : Historic Vehicles, Christian Calcano
• Deck 10 : UW Control, Oliver Polak-Rottmann

• Deck 11 : GW Legends, Pierre Dagen
• Deck 12 : Goblin's Gift, Kenji Tsumura

MODERN
• Deck 13 :  Fecundity Goblins, Yuuta Takahashi

LEGACY

• Deck 14 : Precognition Tide, Yuuta Takahashi

Good Luck and have fun this weekend !
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RIX Planeswalker Decks

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Magic: the Gathering fans are heading to their local game stores this very weekend to participate in the Rivals of Ixalan PreRelease.  As anticipated, Wizards of the Coast posted the decklists for this set's Planeswalker decks, as many (ourselves included) love 'dueling' with these in between games at the event.  Back in our day, these were Intro Packs, and although the intention of this product is much the same - that is to introduce a new or returning player to Magic, there have been some rather decent improvements to highlight the set's theme and new keywords.  The lists published today look like good value for your money and appear to be relatively balanced to be played against eachother.

For a suggested retail price of 15 clams,Planeswalker Decks acquaint players who are interested in Magic with basic strategy, the game's settings, and characters, and include a sweet foil Planeswalker card.  Here's what's inside - 

Contents: 
• 1 Ready-to-play 60-card deck &foil premium PW card
• 2 Rivals of Ixalan booster packs
• 1 Strategy insert

• 1 Magic learn-to-play guide

And here are the lists as posted on the mothersite - 

WHITE / BLACK
Vraska, Scheming Gorgon 
1 Mythic Rare, 4 Rares, 16 Uncommons, 39 Common (including basic land)
27 Creatures, 3 Sorcery, 5 Instant, 24 Lands, 1 Planeswalker

Legendary planeswalker (1) : 1 Vraska, Scheming Gorgon

Creature (27) : 1 Champion of Dusk, 1 Paladin of Atonement, 1 Bishop of the Bloodstained, 1 Deathless Ancient, 1 Dusk Legion Zealot, 2 Queen's Bay Soldier, 2 Skymarch Bloodletter, 4 Vampire Champion, 1 Vicious Conquistador, 3 Vraska's Conquistador, 1 Exultant Skymarcher, 2 Famished Paladin, 2 Inspiring Cleric, 2 Skyblade of the Legion, 1 Legion Lieutenant, 2 Gilded Sentinel

Sorcery (3) : 2 Vraska's Scorn, 1 Recover

Instant (5) : 2 Moment of Craving, 1 Bright Reprisal, 2 Moment of Triumph

Land (24) : 4 Forsaken Sanctuary, 11 Swamp, 9 Plains

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BLACK / RED
Angrath Minotaur Pirate
1 Mythic Rare, 4 Rares, 11 Uncommons, 44 Common (including basic land)
25 Creatures, 4 Sorcery, 5 Instant, 24 Lands, 1 Planeswalker

Legendary planeswalker (1) ; 1 Angrath, Minotaur Pirate

Creature (25) : 1 Daring Buccaneer, 2 Goblin Trailblazer, 2 Headstrong Brute, 2 Storm Fleet Pyromancer, 4 Swab Goblin, 2 Swaggering Corsair, 3 Angrath's Ambusher, 2 Fathom Fleet Boarder, 1 Fathom Fleet Cutthroat, 1 Grasping Scoundrel, 2 Dire Fleet Captain, 1 Dire Fleet Neckbreaker, 2 Gilded Sentinel

Sorcery (4) : 1 Repeating Barrage, 2 Angrath's Fury, 1 Impale

Instant (5) : 2 Lightning Strike, 3 Sure Strike

Artifact (1) : 1 Vanquisher's Banner


Land (24) : 4 Cinder Barrens, 11 Mountain, 9 Swamp


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Ixalan Standard

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

Here in Barrie, Ontario we are experiencing unseasonably warm weather and with a record breaking humidex of 37ºC (about 99ºF) today, I fear that when winter does arrive, there will be no ice on Georgian Bay and we will receive an unholy roof-collapsing volume of snow fall.  Anywhoos, that is long off apparently - we should focus on the present.  

This weekend is the much anticipated Magic: the Gathering PreRelease for the newest set, Ixalan.  The best way to enjoy this weekend if you find yourself in Central Ontario (an hour north of Toronto) is to attend one of many scheduled Ixalan PreRelease events over the course of the weekend at OMG! Games, conveniently located off Highway 400, near Georgian College in the City's North end.  Expect air-conditioning, Pirates, Dinosaurs, Vampires, and Merfolk in this tribal-themed set.

Here at MTG Realm, we do love PreRelease and the chance of pulling sweet rares, winning prizes and most importantly, having fun, but today we want to yatter about the upcoming Standard constructed season starting next weekend during Friday Night Magic.  Over the last two weeks of official Ixalan previews, we have been imagining and contemplating the merits of a dozen 60-card decklists.  

Today is the day to see just how close we may have been in comparison to the MTG Professionals over at Hareruya. Here is this season's offering of innovative and exciting deck ideas - pop on over to this link for the full HareruyaWayfinder "Ixalan" edition from Kenji Tsumura and associates.

Deck 1 RB Pirates By Sebastian Pozzo

Deck 2 Grixis Tezzerator By Marc Tobiasch

Deck 3 Naya Dinosaurs By Marcio Carvalho

Deck 4 WB Tokens By Javier Dominguez

Deck 5 UW Approach By Martin Muller

Deck 6 GB Energy By Oliver Polak-Rottmann

Deck 7 UG Merfolk By Kenta Harane

Deck 8 Tishana Temur By Pierre Dagen

Deck 9 Grixis Pirates By Christian Calcano

Deck 10 RG Dinosaurs By Grzegorz Kowalski

Deck 11 Jeskai Monument By Riku Kumagai

Deck 12 GW Ramp By Kenji Tsumura


Deck 13 UR Prowess By Petr Sochurek

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Monday Miscellany 4-24

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

The big news out today everyone had been anticipated and now talking up a storm about is the Banned and Restricted Update.  You can have a looky-loo at it over here.  Not to spoil anything, but here is a relevant picture -

Legacy:  Sensei's Divining Top is banned.
and
Vintage:  Gitaxian Probe and Gush is restricted.

Anywhoos, as we do not play Legacy or Vintage, this subject is not our forté.  We do know enough that the Miracles decklist in Legacy just took a direct hit, but what we are curious about is why the reprint of Counterbalance (another integral piece of this list) in Amonkhet's Invocations ?

Righto - onto our fav format - standard constructed.  Firstly, bans in standard is a rather tricky piece of work, and would be generally discouraged.  Having said that, we should note that there have been essentially two top decks since the last banned and restricted update - that of Mardu Vehcles and the Saheeli combo.  There may be answers, existing and new (and perhaps somewhat poor) for the Vehicles list, but not very much for the Saheeli combo.  Playing against this is honestly quite 'un-fun'.  We've talked to quite a few Magic: the Gathering players (email, on-line, and in-person) and most have indicated that standard constructed is taking a hit for attendance at their local game stores.  Stores who are running a Modern or Commander event during Friday Night Magic are seeing these standard players now come back in to play that format.
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Moving on to last weekend's Amonkhet PreRelease, which we attended at OMG Games, in Barrie, Ontario.

We did not pull anything very special and attempted a Blue / White 'good stuff' thing which did not do very well at all.  Guess you can't win 'em all.

Rares Pulled :
• Regal Caracal
• Bounty of the Luxa
• Cruel Reality
• Oracle’s Vault
• Vizier of Many Faces
• Glyph Keeper 
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MTG Updates for 4-21

Happy Friday MTG peeps,

Magic: the Gathering players should be a rather happy bunch today as We are finally headed into the Amonkhet PreRelease Weekend.  Should you find yourself in Barrie, Ontario - just a little North of Toronto, then drop by OMG Games and Collectibles (near Georgian College in the City's North end).  Starting tonight at midnight (after Friday Night Magic), they will be running Amonkhet Prerelease events all weekend long.

We hope you have great fun.  If you are new to PreRelease events which are sealed or limited format games, just have a look around online as there are some great resources out there.  As sealed events use more commons and uncommons in their decklists, a good place to start is identifying which of these rarity cards work best.  Zen Takahashi has a good article today over at MTG Mint Card (linked here) to help.  Important as well is the use of instant-speed tricks in your games - to this end, see Sameer Merchant's lists over on MTG Goldfish (linked here).  All we know here at MTG Realm is the tried 'n' true acronym of "BREAD" when constructing our 40-card list :

B - Bombs 
R - Removal 
E - Evasion 
A - Advantage (card) or Abilities 
D - Dudes

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Here at MTG Realm, our favourite format of choice is Standard Constructed.  We are happiest sequestered within our lair and brewing up decklists, most of which would not likely graduate beyond our kitchen table to the game store.  For the last few years, we've been fans of "KenjiWayfinder".  These were batches of standard constructed lists created by Kenji Tsumura and friends of Japan's premier Magic: the Gathering gaming store 'Hareruya'.  Great ideas using the new set's card offerings were created into new lists or supplemented existing strategies.

This year with the upcoming Amonkhet release KenjiWayfinder has been rebranded as HareruyaWayfinder, which is perhaps more appropriate.  In this new set, the following master deck-builders provided input - Mr. Anchan (Yuta Takahashi), Hara (Kenta), Igawa (Yoshihiko), Matsura (Atsushi Ito), and Jeremy Dezani who had recently arrived in Japan to participate.  Here is the HareruyaWayfinder "Ammonket" edition !

 CLICK TO IM-BIGGEN DEM IMAGES

Deck 1 "Infinity Zero" by Atsushi Ito and "God of Modern" Yukio M

Deck 2 "Orzhov Zombies" by Kenji Tsumura

Deck 3 "Azorius Cycling Control" by Yuuta Takahashi

Deck 4 "As Foretold"  (Modern) by Jeremy Dezani 

Deck 5 "Embalam with Nahiri's Wrath" by Yoshihiko Ikawa

Deck 6 "Canadian Threshold" by Yuuta Takahashi

Deck 7 "Red Deck Wins" by Jeremy Dezani

Deck 8 "Bant Approach of the Second Sun" by Kenta Harane

Deck 9 "Abzan Midrange" by Riku Kumagai

Deck 10 "New Perspectives Combo" by Riku Kumagai

Deck 11 "Orzhov Tokens" by Kenta Harane

Deck 12 "Boros Humans" by Yoshihiko Ikawa

Deck 13 "Izzet Dynavolt Tower" by Kenji Tsumura

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Aether Revolt PreRelease Result

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Happy Sunday MTG peeps, 

As we post, the Aether Revolt battle is still raging on at local gaming store, OMG Games, here in Barrie, Ontario.  They are running what is essentially back-to-back Magic: the Gathering PreRelease events since Friday midnight and will eventually close out the weekend with a Two-Headed Giant Aether Revolt event later this evening.

We reserved a seat on Saturday morning and bumped in a number of friends, including 'Andy' who not only brought his two kids but several others from his neighbourhood.  

First up - here's what you get with a PreRelease Pack in which to build your sealed 40-card deck -

•  4 Aether Revolt booster packs  
•  2 Kaladesh booster packs 
•  Random Foil promo card  
•  D20 life counter  
•  Renegade sticker  
•  Insert with deck-building advice

Here was our pulls -

ONE PreRelease Promo card
Midnight Entourage

TWO Kaladesh Packs
Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter
Deadlock Trap

FOUR Aether Revolt Packs
Inspiring Statuary
Aethertide Whale
Spire of Industry
Dark Intimations 

The card pool was shockingly shallow in white, blue, and black.  Cards in Red and Green provided a good selection along with the Artifact cards to put us firmly in this direction to build with.  The end result was a Red / Green list with some themes for Energy and +1/+1 Counters.  

Our most favourite card played in the event had to be Untethered Express, which laid down a beating a won games by itself if it was not answered soon enough.  We also need to acknowledge a singleton of a fog-effect card - Commencement of Festivities, which was used to great effect at least three times over our matches.  Specifically, an opponent would commit all to combat, gets nullified by CoF and would be completely exposed on our next turn.  

Final result was 2 wins and 2 losses to put us out of reach of any prizes, but the real prize was all the friends we met and a great time had.

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Aether Revolt PreRelease

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Happy Friday the 13th MTG peeps,

As it is Friday, you may be planning on heading in to your local gaming store this evening (we'll be at ours - OMG! Games, here in Barrie, Ontario), we suggest you may wish to take along a decklist featuring Triskaidekaphobia - we don't think there is another Friday the 13th until October when this mucho flavour card will no longer be legal to play in standard format.

Righto -  on to the big thingy - its the Aether Revolt PreRelease this weekend.  Find a game near you at that link we've posted.  

Serious Magic: the Gathering players will have already been soaking up all the great articles put out by the countless MTG strategy websites, but since the crew here at MTG Realm are casual / standard constructed to the core we will sadly admit, we've not kept up with the reviews for limited / sealed.  To that end, we have found a very lovely resource to crash study the limited game before we head off to the PreRelease (in just a few hours from now) - we'll strongly recommend popping over to Limited Power.  This great site organises the reviews of four reviewers and pretty much everything is selectable / custom-able (all real words) so that you can zoom on in to the info you are after.

The only other suggestion we have as you head off to your PreRelease is 'have fun' and good luck.  You may also wish to check the singles market before you make any trades after your games.  Again, there is a number of sites available for you to check the fairness of a trade and we'll suggest that the printable price sheet over at MTG Goldfish may be just the thing -

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Aether Revolt Trailer & Tech

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

A Happy New Year to all as well - we hope you had a great year-end with family, friends and perhaps a few Magic: the Gathering games to boot.  With the first few days of 2017, we are now kicking off official Aether Revolt previews.  There is a bit of catching up to do with new spoilers but for this post, we will draw your attention to the Aether Revolt Trailer and Mechanics.  First, here's that awesome trailer.

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On to the mechanics now.  Two mechanics are being drawn from the previous set of Kaladesh - 

Vehicles 
Vehicle is an artifact subtype easiliy identified with a special bronze and grey blocked card frame.  Artifacts with this subtype have the crew keyword, which allows them to temporarily become artifact creatures. Creatures with the Pilot type have an ability that somehow cares about crewing Vehicles.

Energy counters
An energy counter is a counter that, unlike most other counters, is placed on players rather than objects. Energy counters are used to pay the cost to activate abilities.  Energy counters don't evaporate as phases or steps end, or as the turn ends but rather when you spend them.
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Now for the two new mechanics for Aether Revolt - 

Improvise — a keyword ability that enables you to pay generic mana cost with the help of your artifacts. Each artifact you tap after you're done activating mana abilities pays for 1 colourless mana.

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Revolt — an ability word that checks if a permanent you controlled left the battlefield this turn.

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Also - WotC Staff Michael Yichao has this short vid going over the bascis of playing in an MTG PreRelease event.  If you have never treated yourself by playing in one of these events, you are missing a ton of fun.  Check out where an Aether Revolt PreRelease event is taking place near you (lnky right here), and just bring yourself, and some Ultra PRO deck protector sleeves.

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MTG Weekend Wrap-Up

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Although it may be cold and raining here in Central Ontario, we are still basking in the light of this past weekend's Kaladesh PreRelease event at OMG! Games, here in Barrie.  Our pool was mediocre, and we lost more games than we won, but we certainly had a helluva good time playing with the very soon to be released Magic: the Gathering set.  For those interested, we played a Red / Blue build with the following rares pulled -

 Many Servo Tokens died to bring you this PreRelease -

Looking ahead to when Kaladesh is released come this weekend, we've not been head-over-heels to build a Commander deck with one of the seven new legendary creatures, just yet but do have a handful of new Kaladesh cards which will be replacing existing slots in some lists we have.  (Example - we'll want to swap out Ranger's Guile with the new Blossoming Defense in our secret Simic build).

As for Modern, we do have a much-loved Soul-Sisters decklist which may benefit with the addition of Authority of the Consuls.  Not only would this card benefit cards such as Serra Ascendant and Ajani's Pridemate, but may also be a contender for the spot taken by Blind Obedience in the sideboard. 

As for the new standard this Friday, we have no clue (no - not that artifact clue thingy) of what to build.  We do have that derpy mon-white humans thingy featuring Thalia's Lieutenant that did not take too much of a hit with the rotation, but after that, we are undecided.

What we do know for certain is that (most of) the Gearhulks are damn fine for standard and that a lot of players we've been talking to have been liking Smuggler's Copter and Fleetwheel Courier, but the other vehicles are not approaching the same popularity.  It's a brave new world  come this weekend and it will be an adventure as players invent new and fantastical strategies on the game tables.

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