Magic: The Gathering (Unreleased Sets)

The announcement I linked to did have something to say about Spike;

The Rule that quote refers to is;

I know I have read the rule before, but for some reason it did not click.

I mean, they did legitimise "faster Shahrazad" with The Countdown Is At One.

Enter the Dungeon is also legal for the time being.

So apparently there's a ton of Unstable cards with different versions, similar to how older sets used to have alternate art for some cards. The kicker though is that they don't just come with different artwork and flavor texts, some versions come with different watermarks, rules text or even card names! The list includes but might not be limited to:

Beast in Show having different arts with different animals and flavor text.

Amateur Auteur having different arts and flavour texts, with each version staging a play about a different set.

Garbage Elemental coming with different stats, mana cost and rules text.

Secret Base having a different version for each faction, complete with that faction's trademark (which then also affects what trademark the card's rules text refers to)

Really Slow Zombie having four different versions depicting the four seasons. The punchline is that if you follow the cards chronologically from summer to spring you can see the zombie slowly raising its hand and its flavour text has it slowly saing "brraaiinnss"

Knight of the Kitchen Sink having different versions with Protection from different things and also different flavor text.

Sly Spy having different versions with different rules texts and also different explanations for what S.N.E.A.K. stands for.

Novellamental have different flavor texts that combine to form a story,

Very Cryptic Command has a lot of different versions that all have different modes to choose form.

The Killbots have different versions that are functionally and artistically identical but have different names, which is good if you want to build a deck around them.

Target Minotaur having different versions were the art shows it targeted by different things, hence the "Not again!" in the flavour text.

Ineffable Blessing has different versions that cares about different things when it comes to which cards get buffed. The flavour text is also different, but they seem to all be saying the same thing but with different words.

I've heard rumors the Everythingamajig might have different versions too, but I've seen no proof so far.

Behold: proof.◊

Here's Wizard's article about it, with all the alternate versions of the cards.

Oh, it's a cycle, sort of. Every colour (and colourless) has one card that comes with multiple ability sets and a name that suggests that it was randomly cobbled together or is somehow vague. Knight of the Kitchen Sink, Very Cryptic Command, Sly Spy, Garbage Elemental, Ineffable Blessing and Everythingamajig.

Also I love how Sly Spy has one variant that destroys creatures facing left (as if he's backstabbing them) and another that destroys creatures facing right with the art flipped.

edited 6th Dec '17 9:45:54 AM by Elfive

Rivals of Ixalan Promos, Packaging, and More

Hm. So Vraska's going to be mono-Black, and it looks like she might be going to get vampires to defect the Legion in her favor? Interesting.

It'll be interesting to see if she has a non-Planeswalker Pack card, and if that's mono-black.

She already got a card in the first set. They don't normally give planeswalkers two proper cards in a block unless something significant happens like with Sarkhan.

edited 12th Dec '17 3:24:54 AM by Elfive

I took it to mean that Vraska defected in favor of the Legion. The name "Vraska's Conquistador" is pretty unambiguous.

But take the planeswalker packs with a grain of salt. Hour of Devastation's pack strongly implied that Nissa was going to commune with the plane's soul, educate a legion of followers in the ways of the natural world, and restore beauty and life in defiance of Bolas. That did not happen.

Grain of salt noted, but all the same the flavor for the card — Abandoning both queen and church, he chose to follow power — made me think the vampire was the one defecting.

All the same, I agree. We've got nothing but fairly sparse speculation until actual stories start getting released.

edited 19th Dec '17 4:07:20 AM by Theriocephalus

Challenger Decks and the Final Duel Decks

The final pair of Duel Decks will be Elves vs. Inventors. And the "Challenger Decks" are basically the return of Event Decks.

From the Wizards Magic Tumblr, Dominaria Key Art

So Rivals of Ixalan spoilers are emerging.

The main new mechanic is "Ascend". This checks to see if you have ten or more permanents, and then if you do, gives you "the City's Blessing" for the rest of the game. Permanents with ascend check constantly; spells check on resolution. Things with ascend generally have some kind of bonus if you have the City's Blessing - creatures get bigger, spells more effective, as you would expect.

Azor, ladies and gentlemen.

I vaguely remember someone here-ish saying that revealing Azor as a planeswalker in The Secretist was useless and inconsequential piece of lore.

Anyway! So. Many. Questions! I need to digest this.

edited 3rd Jan '18 10:38:03 AM by googlebot

Notable: he is not a planeswalker. That doesn't mean he was never a planeswalker, mind, but at least at present, he is not a planeswalker. That's interesting.

I said before that all the hype and intrigue surrounding the Immortal Sun as this ancient relic seemingly brought to the plane from elsewhere meant there needed to be some kind of grand reveal about it being something from the history of the series. It couldn't just be a brand new MacGuffin, not with the way they were playing it. It needed to be something fans would recognize and go, "HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT".

Azor just stepped up and satisfied that need. Honestly, it doesn't even matter what the Immortal Sun is anymore; this is big enough in and of itself. Now, if you'll excuse me,

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT

And now he's going to meet the Living Guildpact and a Ravnican outcast. How about that?

A sphinx that comes with Sphinx's Revelation, that's hilarious.

Wizards' website is down at the moment, but I'm hyped about Azor. I'm guessing that he's the "winged being" that carried the Immortal Sun away to the continent of Ixalan. But either way, I'm excited to see him in action, both in-game and in-story.

Speaking of, I'm super-relieved that the winged being isn't Bolas. He was the "likely suspect" at the time but that never sat well with me. If Bolas was the one who left the Immortal Sun here and wove the spell that prohibits planeswalkers from leaving, then he would provably have a means of bypassing it, as demonstrated by the fact that he's not still on Ixalan.

Bolas is the biggest, meanest thing in the Multiverse. Some situations call for a scalpel, some for a patsy, and others for brute force. If Bolas could just swoop into Ixalan, snatch up the Sun from the place where he remembers leaving it, and then either tear down the binding spell or Awesome his way through it, there would be no reason for Vraska to have even gotten this job. Sending her only makes sense if a) Bolas isn't actually sure where the Immortal Sun is or how it works, and b) Bolas doesn't want to risk getting stuck on Ixalan like everyone else.

It'd be mindlessly stupid for him to be like, "Well, I know exactly where the Sun is and how to get it, but I'm going to have someone else do it and not give them any useful information because I like making things harder for myself for no reason!" Given the circumstances, Bolas was an easy assumption to make as to the identity of the winged being, but one that falls apart painfully under scrutiny.

Azor makes much more sense and also closes any potential plot hole as to how the person who left the Immortal Sun here was able to leave the plane with the binding in place: he did nothing of the sort. He's still there.

edited 3rd Jan '18 2:03:26 PM by TobiasDrake

Rivals of Ixalan Full Card Image Gallery!

For reference, the artbook already spoiled that Azor was the creator of the Immortal Sun (it mentions him giving up his planeswalker spark to create it). Also, people had been speculating it was him for quite a while due to Ixalan's Binding essentially being a reversed version of the original Guildpact, which prevented planeswalkers from traveling to Ravnica.