No longer Standard: Magic 2012

I’ve been doing a few game day blogs on Magic the Gathering over the last few months, but today I thought I’d do something a little different, and take a look at some of the older cards. While I really enjoy playing Standard decks, and even like that rotation keeps things fresh and stuff, I also like investigating some of the older things that are still hanging around, and have built up a small collection of cards from previous sets of the last ten or so years. Today, I thought I’d have a bit of a ramble about one of those I’ve recently been investigating: the Magic 2012 core set!

Some of you might think this choice a little odd – why start with a core set? There’s so much theme from the various sets over the years, yet core sets are, by design, fairly bland and easy to get into. Well, I actually like the idea of the core sets, as it seems like they provided a lot of the staple cards for that Standard season, provided a really cool way to get into the game with fairly minimal confusion, and also provided a good amount of reprinted cards for players who don’t have a lot of cards. I’m not exactly cut up to see them go, either, and the new Planeswalker decks do sound cool, but still!

M12 has especially fired my imagination, however, as having a lot of really awesome-looking cards: the staples are there, but there are also a couple of interesting new things along the way, and the art! Oh my, the art. I think this is the first set I’ve encountered where I’ve felt genuine regret for not having investigated this game sooner. I can’t quite explain it, I just feel like it’s a really great set to make a start with.

Like all sets, you get a couple of cycles of cards that have some kind of theme to them, to help provide some kind of theme in an otherwise generic set. Here, my stand-out favourite is the Mage cycle of 2-cost 2/1 cards that have some flavourful theme for their colour. This is one of the things that attracted me to this set in particular – look at the art on these things! They each look absolutely stunning! While these cards aren’t going to set the world on fire, I still love these sorts of things!

The set also has a cycle of themed artifacts that gain you life if anyone casts a certain colour of spell, similar to the Magus Staffs of later core sets; a cycle of Titan cards that cost 6 mana and have a powerful enter the battlefield effect – and five Planeswalkers.

Core sets have minimal confusing mechanics, though do feature a couple to get players into the game. For M12, the returning mechanic was Bloodthirst, which returned from the original Ravnica block in 2005. If you play a creature with the Bloodthirst keyword after an opponent was dealt damage on your turn, that creature comes into play with a number of +1/+1 counters on it. The core set also introduced Hexproof as an evergreen ability, which I thought interesting!

As I said, one of the main draws to this set for me was the art – it’s just so beautiful! I’ve been struggling to get a deck together, as I’ve bought a bunch of packs online in a sale, along with a couple of singles just for the art, but have managed to put this thing together that has yet to see play:

Creatures:
Alabaster Mage (x3)
Onyx Mage (x3)
Benalish Veteran (x2)
Serra Angel (x2)
Bloodrage Vampire (x2)
Vampire Outcasts
Elite Vanguard (x2)
Blood Seeker (x2)
Arbalest Elite (x2)
Duskhunter Bat (x2)
Stonehorn Dignitary
Pride Guardian

Enchantments:
Personal Sanctuary
Divine Favor
Lifelink

Instants/Sorceries:
Taste of Blood (x2)
Timely Reinforcements
Sorin’s Thirst (x3)
Consume Spirit
Doom Blade

Artifacts:
Angel’s Feather (x2)
Demon’s Horn (x2)
Elixir of Immortality

Lands:
11 Plains
10 Swamps

Like most of my decks, it’s creature-heavy, as I like having guys out on the field to do things with. There isn’t really a theme to the deck, though it does have a bit of a lifelink thing going on, notably with the ‘lucky charms’ artifact cards. It primarily sprung out of a desire to use the mages, however, and while I don’t really hold out much hope for it – particularly seeing as how I’ve really limited myself in only using M12 cards – I think it’ll be fun to at least try!

I’ve been enjoying quite a few of these old-style block decks of late, so stay tuned for more “no longer Standard” rambling blogs soon!