M15 Intro Pack- Price of Glory

     It is that time of year again, the core set is out, and that means I have something to rant....I mean discuss.  First up, Price of Glory.

M15- Prerelease Weekend

      Well, I managed to squeeze in some time at a prerelease for the new core set.  Time for some quick observations, list style.
1.  The blue promo, while having cool art, is incredibly dependent on what other cards you pulled.  (I have no regrets though)
2.  People in general seemed to enjoy the sealed event.
3.  Green and red seemed to be the strongest color.  I say this as someone I played against nearly decked himself out after a few Mind Sculpts  and their own Indulgent Tormentor.
4.  I can't wait for M15 sleeves to be on sale, they look great.
5.  Sadly I still don't have a Nissa.
6.  This is a very solid core set to get boosters from compared to M14.
7.  The updated card frames, in person, look better than I thought they would.
8.  I can't believe I hit eight points on this list.

Expect some more things on M15 once the actual set releases on  7/18.

M15 Complete List Spoiled aka the M15 Set Review (Sort of)

     Well, they've uploaded the full list into the image gallery (scroll down) for M15, so I can actually give a decent prerelease guess at what are going to be good cards (more so for limited) and just cards I'm exited about.  Minor warning though as they don't appear to be in gatherer yet, just the gallery, so links are going to not exist in this article.  I suppose I should keep with the "probably better in limited" stack and mix in the favorite cards with those.

Theros Block: Part the Second

After the entertaining set that was Theros, I was hoping to see some good things out of Born of the Gods, but alas, as a whole, the set didn't live up to that personal hype.

Inspired was a cool mechanic, in theory.  The only problem was to use it effectively you needed two conditions:  A) Tap your creature and B) Untap a still living creature.  In a limited format, this is somewhat easy, as Deepwater Hypnotist is a better card than I first thought if your opponent chooses to make a poor early choice, effectively keeping itself alive.  But in a more....planned format you basically need to rely on tap effects or tap costs under most situations.  This made it a lot less desirable.  Then again, we saw a Springleaf Drum reprint for this so.......I'm not one to judge beyond that.

Tribute was another introduced mechanic, although this was a bit cooler and well done.  Take Oracle of Bones for example.  Either you deal with a 5/3 haste Minotaur, or you let it be a 3/1 and possibly take a Bolt of Keranos to the face, or worse, Fated Return.  (On a side note, the Fated cycle were interesting, but maybe could have been handled a tiny bit better.)

Once again they bring us more enchantment creatures, and bestow, but not on the same card.  Meet the bane of EDH for this one, and the reason why I'm/we're no longer allowed to do 4 man Bant vs Bant, Perplexing Chimera.

I don't often intend to post full cards in summaries like this, at least for more recent sets, but this card was made to cause glorious chaos.  I'm tempted to use this and Kiki-Jiki for some high level shenanigans.  The only downside of creatures like these comes to adding another way to get rid of them (i.e. enchantment hate).  Getting back on topic though we also got the rather entertaining Archetype cycle, which I like the call the "no one is allowed to have nice things" cycle.  No to trample, first strike, flying, hex proof or death touch, just not allowed to have them.  They're more worth to have in a deck to deny the benefits they give, although the benefits are nice indeed.

      Scry returned, devotion and gods returned, but this time with 7 devotion requirements and no enchantment artifact cycle.  Due to the multiple color requirement they were easier/harder to get out.  As you may have noticed this (seems to me anyway) is shorter than the first part, one because fewer new things to explain, and two smaller set.

More M15 Chat Time

Well, two weeks until prerelease (basically), and the set has been mostly disclosed (we're over the halfway point sort of), I'm starting to be able to say I'm exited for this core set.  More to come later.  I'm also hoping to do a few more wall of texts more and some videos, but for now RL family type things to be kept busy.

M15 Updates

     So they've updated the site it seems to a new look, as well as showing off some more of the cards (http://magic.wizards.com/en/content/magic-2015-core-set-card-set-archive-products-game-info and keep scrolling down) and so far this set seems a bit silly in the good way.  On a side note the confirmed basic land art seems okay.

Theros Block: Part the First

     Theros (when it first came out) was a very interesting set concept.  With focus on enchantments for the block, I sort of had high hopes for how things would turn out.  The first set was a fun one for that initial draft and still has some gems to it.  My personal favorites of the set are probably still Curse of Swine and Shipbreaker Kraken, and I normally don't run blue (nothing against it, but for most of my MtG experience I was usually white/green/black with a splash of blue and red over the years).  Voyaging Satyr is an all around great card as well.  But enough about silly things in blue, I suppose I should go on about the set as a whole.  Let us talk first about enchantments.

It's all a Conspiracy, I tell ya!

      Sure enough, one of my recent experiences was to have a nice sample game of MtG's weirdest set in a while, Conspiracy.  If I didn't know better, they were working out not having made an Un-set in a long time.

      For those that don't know, Conspiracy is basically a draft set with a bunch of silly new cards and reprints like Exploration or Phage, the Untouchable (which is a Zombie Avatar Minion like it should always have been rather than a flavor fail Zombie despite her having a kid while being Phage instead of Jeska...but enough about lore) and fun new cards like Selvala and Marchesa, and reprinting the classic land cycle set of commons.  Oh right, and official squirrel tokens.

Back to Earth: A quick chat on M15 before they start spoiling it properly.

      So....I have a tendency to get distracted by, well, life.  This time however I'm going to let my actions, rather than posts, speak.  So first up is a bit of random discussion on M15 for Magic The Gathering, before it comes out of course.

Magic the Gathering M14 Intro Pack - Psychic Labyrinth Review

     Well, it is that time again, and this time it is the mostly blue slightly white Psychic Labyrinth deck.  Three down and two to go.  I've gone back for the Intro Packs and put in links for cards I named now.  Also I have been testing the decks against each other, granted in a rather controlled way (always attacking and blocking when possible, trying to make the best decision on what target a spell will have, 10 games, 5 with one deck going first, 5 with the other, that sort of thing), and I will get back later with the results of that as well.  For now though let's get to this deck.

Minor Updates

So I went back to the Bestial Strength and Fire Surge Intro Decks and put in links to most (ignoring the basic land) cards mentioned.  I say most because I only linked once per card and not once per naming of said card, as well as not linking if the card was originally brought up elsewhere.  Also links to the official Wizards MtG page for each deck were put in the names.

Magic the Gathering: M14 Intro Pack - Fire Surge Review

One thing I can promise is this will be shorter than the Bestial Strength article.  This will also have a video at the end as I'd like to stick to format.  Let us get into the Fire Surge Intro Pack.

Magic the Gathering: M14 Intro Pack - Bestial Strength Review

     With a new Core Set upon us, I suppose I should cover the decks, or at least the ones I've seen in person.  It is important for me to mention that the wall of text here will not really cover the same things as the video at the end of the article, as that is more an opening.  The Bestial Strength Intro Pack is sort of tricky to really describe.