So yesterday I mosey on down to the Comic Book Shoppe for the Gauntlet and there's someone sitting there that I vaguely recognize, vaguely because he didn't have a goatee almost 20 years ago, but the voice starts stirring up old memories in the back of my head. Memories of the "Boeing 747" deck and so on...and then he goes "It's Dan, Dan MacDonald from the old Downtown Gamer's Club".
I'm obviously floored at this point so we start catching up on what's gone on the past...decade or so and then I hear he's been brought back into Magic through the Commander pre-cons and his group of friends and that he's heard of the Gauntlet event and that he'd like to try it out. This is obviously fantastic news, as new players joining the fray is always fun, and even moreso when it's a real old friend joining in. We look at his Oloro pre-con and discuss stuff and then he pulls out this little weapon of mass destruction, because what's scarier than a bunch of animated garden tools and household appliances coming over the hill, really? We laugh about it then lo and behold we're in the same pod in round one.
Now, far be it for me to bemoan the lack of focus fire and "Screw Pierre" philosophy at the magic tables of late, but guess who gets the first hit from that Stormscape Familiar? Yep...good ol' Charlie Brown. So I spent the entire game trying to manipulate Dan into helping me out and he does a great job of killing some of Kevin Belisle's soldier tokens (Kevin still kills me) and then wins the table with a drain life effect. Bear in mind Dan hadn't touched Magic cards in well over a decade, so I'm super happy for him, but at the same time...I feel shame for not giving Dan the absolute trouncing he deserved for that uncalled for Stormscape Familiar assault. Wait till next time Dan, when you don't have 80+ life points to buffer yourself. Just you wait...
Fetchlands return, huzzah!
So anyone that's been playing any Modern to Legacy format (or EDH) knows how valuable these lands are. For a cost of one life and a land slot, you get to find your shocklands or dual lands and smooth out your mana base. Unfortnately, scarcity had driven up prices on some of these to close to $90 in some cases and around $50 or so for some of the less used fetchlands. As philisophical troubadour and internet buzzhumour proponent Nick Sirman has stated on more than one occasion, making your mana "Rare" isn't the smartest of moves on the part of Wizards. You need multi-lands to make the game and your strategies more fun and though Wizards does need to sell packs to stay in business, it's just a grind on players that need to get their painlands/fetches/duals and thus to pounding others in fays. Hopefully we can be a little greedy here and have the Zendikar fetches come back in the coming year or so as well.
Planeswalkers as Commanders? Not the end of the world but...
So people have bene asking to have legendary permanents of whatever kind as Commanders forever. Not sure how I feel about a Mindslaver commander, or a Gaea's Cradle commander, but that's neither here nor there. The new Teferi has been making some waves, and his abilities are pretty silly (untapping any four permanents and using Planeswalker abilities as instants is pretty dumb) but the new Commander products will live or die by the other Planeswalker abilities. Green, White, Black, Red...also need to be doing things at instant speed, or at the very least need to be on par with Teferi's abilities or there will be little reason to buy them outside of potential reprints in these products.
Speaking of reprints, since the cat is out of the bag as far as Portal Three Kingdoms stuff, how about Temporal Mastery, Riding the Dilu Horse or Imperial Seal in the Commander precons? The new versions will only be around $20 or so but it will put more of them in circulation. What about it, Wizards?
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