Khans Spoiler Week #1

It begins! Khans of Tarkir, the new set that releases on September 26th, is slowly leaking itself all over the internet! Well, actually not all over, you can catch most of it here, on the Wizards of the Coast website, or the mothership, as many Magic article authors call it. The spoilers started at the gaming convention PAX, at a party Wizards throws annually to celebrate the fall set. The first few cards spoiled are pretty exciting too, with both of the new set's Planeswalkers being made public at PAX. And here they are! (Guess which one I'm really excited for.)

A not-red walker, whose sword is pretty cool, I guess.
Vampires are cool too, maybe?

A mono-red planeswalker! Except when he's not,
 because he's beating your opponent's face in!

Alright, I pick on Sorin, but only because Sarkhan is awesome! A little background: storywise, neither of the characters is very new. Both have two previous cards and incarnations, and they've been around the multiverse a few times. Sarkhan is the focus of the set, as Tarkir is his home plane, so his inclusion is no real surprise. You always want the character the marketing is focused on the be awesome, and Sarkhan does not disappoint. While five mana is more expensive, it nets you an instant 4 damage on the turn it comes down, either at your opponent in the form of an un-killable dragon, or burning a creature of your choice. Mono-red is an interesting choice, since both of Sarkhan's previous cards have been multi-colored (red-green, and red-black). He does play nice with all 3 clans that include red though, so Sarkhan is definitely an awesome card no matter your flavor of red.

Sorin, on the other hand, hits the ground one turn sooner at four mana, and can also start at 5 loyalty with his plus one ability. At first blush he seems very similar to his last version, which was also black-white, but he's significantly stronger, particularly in multiplayer games. The wording on his plus one ability says "until your next turn", not the more expected "until the end of your turn", which means your boost can last quite a long time in a game of Commander. His vampire token are now flying 2/2s, and the ultimate is just gross, particularly in games with multiple opponents. 

Interestingly, both of these Planeswalkers can hit their ultimate ability on their third turn on the table. That's pretty fast, and both of their emblems are game changers. Putting yourself at three drawn cards per turn is huge in a mono-red deck, which focuses on low cost aggressive creatures or instant burns spells, and you should be able to end your game very quickly if you hit Sarkhan's ultimate. Sorin's is equally punishing, as you get to stay a whole creature ahead of your opponent every turn, regardless of abilities like indestructible or hexproof. Either way, hitting that final ability is going to be pretty sweet on both cards, but with Sorin costing one mana less, he may have the edge here, especially if you like your Magic games with more than one opponent.

There were quite a few other cards spoiled this week as well, on top of more information from the mothership about the clans themselves. If you're interested in the mechanics in detail, here's your stop. If you are interested in the story and world information behind some of the clans, this one's for you. Or read both, I won't stop you. If you don't want to read them though, it's okay. I'll summarize.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Magic is a great game. It's been around for 20 years, and it's had its ups and downs, but right now Magic is at the highest level of popularity it has ever been. Each set outsells the last one, more players are showing up to tournaments than ever before, and the community is getting larger and more active. This means, however, that there are a few growing pains that Wizards of the Coast needed to address, and this summer has been full of changes to address the growing popularity of the game.

The difference between this card and Magic's growth
is that Magic's growth is not just until end of turn. We hope.

First, the professional level. Now, a very small percentage of people who play Magic attend Pro Tours and Grand Prix tournaments. Many players who go to their local game store to play may not know a pro level of Magic exists, or have any interest in it. But Wizards really wants them to. They invest money in the professional level of the game because of the effects it has on the local game store level. There are professional level tournaments nearly every weekend, and they can all be watched online. This is a very recent change from when I started playing again almost 3 years ago, when there was only the World Championships annually, and a Pro Tour broadcast 3 times a year. Now they hold 4 Pro Tours, the World Championships, a Super Sunday Series, and over 50 Grand Prix that are all streamed on Twitch, on Magic's own channel.

Deck building for Dummies (Me!)

When it comes to building decks, there are so many ways to go about it. Deck inspiration, at least for me, can come from just about anything: from seeing your friend smash you with his deck and wanting to build one just to beat it, or opening a sweet rare and wanting to exploit it and see it do something cool, to hearing about a cool deck or card combo and looking it up online to see how people have put it together. I am guilty of all of these.

For instance, I like to play Standard. When I do get to go to tournaments, it's the most popular format locally here in Salt Lake, and it's not even close. When I hang out with my friends, things are much more casual, but most of us do keep up a Standard deck as well. This last little while, my Standard deck has been Boros Burn, or Red-White Burn. For me this was because of a single card: Warleader's Helix. I thought the art was great, the gameplay was great, and I just wanted to hit those big creatures with it. The problem was that it was just a little too expensive. Mizzium Mortars did the same damage for two mana, and I'd always get stuck with Helix in my hand while I was casting my own creatures. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.

I wanted to do this, but I couldn't figure out how.
So I "cheated".

Then I was reading coverage for a Grand Prix, and I came across a player I'd never heard of, James Fazzolari, and he beat his opponents with Warleader's Helix. I read the match report, and I knew that this was the deck I was looking for. And because I'd been trying to make the deck for a while, (and I'm very not secretly a red mage at heart) I already had most of the pieces. And it turns out the key to making the card work was to not target my opponents' creatures, but to point it at their faces!

Why I Love Drafting

How many packs of Magic cards have you ever opened? 10? 50? 100 or more? I attempted to count how many since I started playing two and a half years ago, and just counting pre-release tournaments, that's 60 packs ripped just for playing Sealed, with over 40 earned as prizes. So I've opened more than 100 packs with just a tournament I enjoy once every three months.

Now for a slightly different question: how many packs of Magic cards have you opened and never used any of the cards? Isn't that the definition of waste? This is the difference between Limited and Constructed play right here. In the prereleases I played in, I opened six booster packs, and then used at least some cards from each pack. Math-wise, you're playing with 23-25 cards out of the 84 non-basic-land cards you just opened, so you're hitting about 28% of your cards that you just bought. But my prize packs? I pull the rares out, stick them in a binder, then sort and store the rest of the cards into boxes I barely open. If I'm lucky, 1 out of the 14 cards in each pack gets played with, though probably not even that much. That's a terrible rate, less than 7%!

Like this guy. He's never in my 7%, because he's terrible.
I have better things to do with 5 mana, thank you.
Unless I'm drafting the Ajani's Pridemate deck...

Thankfully, there's a much better way to get value out of your whole pack, and that is drafting. When Wizards designs cards, they know that most of these aren't going into decks. Different players have different tastes, play styles and color preferences; and the longer you've played, the less likely you are to use the wearers cards you open. So they design and develop cards to create a specific environment for Limited play. Cards you wouldn't use in a Constructed deck become great cards in a Sealed deck. But you still end up with unplayables in Sealed because you can't use all 5 colors in your deck. Draft helps with this.

San Diego Comic Con Spoilers

San Diego Comic Con was last week, and Wizards of the Coast has held a panel there for the past four years. During the panel they talk about the new products that will come out for the remainder of the year, and this year was no exception. So here's the rundown of what we will see in Magic in the rest of 2014.

The new expansion releasing for the fall on September 26th will be titled Khans of Tarkir. Prior to the Con, Magic's Head Designer Mark Rosewater had released a short video (linked here) that previewed the title and a small bit of back story which involves a world where dragons had gone extinct, and was the home plane of planeswalker Sarkhan Vol. He also teased that there would be something players had been asking for that had never been done before, and something that players wanted to return and would be.