The Newest Black-Bordered Core Set!
By Fetar
But for me, it's the re-printing of some fan-favourites that will change the face of standard. I'm talking about cards like Condemn, Troll Ascetic, Platinum Angel, and the choice to carry through all ten of the painlands!
Tenth Edition is the perfect opportunity for you to get into magic, you can check the promotional video out or click the link for more information. For the advanced players, check out the spoiler here.
Anyways, after sifting through the spoiler I realized that my white blue version of control isn't going to be condemned to a lack of Condemn. That card is the backbone of my survival against fast tempo decks. But then I realized that Troll Ascetic is going to return to standard, so Condemn is useless against it. My philosophy with playing standard is, if you can't beat em, join em! Unfortunately, that leaves to an uncreative stance on competitive playfields, but I always enjoy putting my own spin on things. I used to have my own Troll Ascetic extended deck which featured Nomad Mythmaker and Armadillo Cloak. Luckily, my favorite Mythmaker is returning to standard to break the four copies of Shape of the Witigo I found cheap at a card store. Hence, standard for me brings a 9/8 untargetable creature after a few short turns!
On the other hand, we have Platinum Angel, another of my favorites, but this time, the Angel brings a lot of multiplayer fun. It won't see much play in competitive formats because of the current 4 toughness-hate rule (*cough* Teferi), but in casual magic, this card will shine more than any of the others. It is platinum, after all! This card will be especially useful when I build some Xth edition decks to play against a lot of the people in my play group who just started playing and build decks with very little control. Thus, any newbie who manages to get their hands on one of these babies will probably end up with the most wins in their playgroup, because newbie decks never seem to find an answer to a threat like this. Zubera in extended, anyone? Now that most of the good cards in extended are being rotated, I'm going to have to resort to breaking Zubera once again from Kamigawa block. Luckily, Wizards brought back the wonderful "No Rest for the Wicked" as a fun and cheap answer to the Zubera problem. Also, the classic monoblack/zombie controls will return, along with Megrim, Lord of the Undead, Grave Pact, Nightmare, Festering Goblin (a must keep), and even Relentless Rats. I'm sure we'll see plenty of silly Rats-Thrumming Stone combo decks scattered about play groups. If only they weren't 7.50 a piece...
The last thing I want to mention is that one of my favorite red combo pieces is missing, but is being replaced with a cooler one: Form of the Dragon is leaving, WARP WORLD is in! Who knows what madness Lorwyn will bring me for this deck, but already there is enough in time spiral (gauntlet of power!?) to make the card a great combo piece. I will certainly keep an eye on the Warp World deck and post decklists as I make them.
More news and reviews on XTH edition will be updated shortly! Don't miss your promotional card on Magic Game Day (provided they don't run out. I'm still bitter over that Lotus Bloom that they didn't have enough of at the time spiral pre-release.
~Fetar the Beloved
