Tag: Magic the Gathering

No Longer Standard: Zendikar

Hey everybody,
It’s time for another one of these no longer Standard blogs! I wouldn’t say that I’m getting back into Magic per se, but I am definitely paying some more attention to the game once again, and have been enjoying looking through the collection to see what I have, and so on. Zendikar is one of the big planes that looms large in the lore, for me, and really seems to provide a certain something that really showcases what the game is about. I don’t really know what it is, there’s just something about this block, more so even than Ravnica or Innistrad, which just screams “this is Magic!” to me!

Zendikar was released in October 2009, and was the 50th expansion for Magic the Gathering, coming on the heels of the Alara block. Alara Reborn was apparently a bit of a dud, with 5-colour decks being pushed to the point where everything seemed a little bland, players were hyped for a new set on a new plane. The set brought us to a new plane within the multiverse, although we had seen the native Kor in earlier sets. Zendikar is also home to goblins and vampires, among others. The set was flavoured mainly around Land, with the new mechanic Landfall forming a big part of things. Landfall is an ability word that grants an effect when a land is played, so can become quite important if you get such a card early enough when you’re still building up your mana base. Land was also given importance by the inclusion of full-art land cards in boosters, the first time this was a thing in a regular Magic set. Players seem to love the full-art lands, but I’m not a big fan personally. However, they do excite the player-base!

One of the most important aspects of the original Zendikar set was the enemy-coloured Fetch Lands being printed. Allied colour Fetch Lands were a thing going back to 2002’s Onslaught, so having the cycle completed here gave people a lot more choice. Generally speaking, allied colour combinations get more support than enemy pairs, it’s just the way the game seems to be designed, so it’s always quite nice to get these things (especially for me, as I love Black/White and Blue/Green!) Fetch Lands also had a useful tie-in to the Land theme, as they would provide two Landfall triggers if that’s something you were going for. Of course, they’re not cheap, because they’re so sought after…

The style of Zendikar is quite distinctive thanks to the fact there are massive floating hedrons scattered across the plane. The theme was one of adventure, and I think this comes across when you look at the artwork on the cards, you can see there is that element of places to discover – somehow, the Zendikar artwork really manages to excite me into wanting to discover more of the plane! Priceless Treasures to be discovered was a pretty bonkers thing Wizards did to market the set, as well, by including cards from Beta and other early sets randomly in booster packs, including cards from the reserved list – they weren’t reprinted cards, but cards from the original print run that were obviously just lying about. So you could get one of the Power Nine cards from a booster, which is probably why booster boxes for Zendikar are so rare out in the wild, regardless of its age. It’s interesting, because when Wizards revisited Zendikar with Battle for Zendikar, they introduced Expedition Lands which were reprints with new artwork etc of powerful land cards from the past. Heretofore I hadn’t realised that this idea was a callback to the original marketing!

In addition to Landfall, we have Quest cards which are enchantments that gather quest counters on them, usually giving a reward at the end. A subtype of instant spells is the new Trap card, which have an alternative casting cost if an opponent did something this turn. Ally is a new creature subtype that was introduced, and will trigger off the number of existing Allies you have out on the board. Intimidate replaced Fear as a form of evasion, making the creature unblockable except by artifacts and creatures who share a colour with it. Kicker is back, and finally, the vampires of the set have the Bloodied effect which makes them more dangerous if an opponent is at 10 or less life.

The second set of the block was Worldwake, and was released in January of 2010. The set continued the theme of lands being important, and introduced Manlands (I think they now call them creature lands) which have the ability to turn into Elemental creatures until end of turn. Here we had the allied colour pairings; it wasn’t until Battle for Zendikar block that we had the enemy colour pairings. There are also Zendikon auras that you can attach to regular lands to make them into creatures. Multikicker was a new keyword introduced here that allowed you to Kick a card as many times as you could afford to pay the activation cost; you could then activate the ability on the card for each time you paid the cost. I like Multikicker for a late-game play, when you might have a lot of mana but not a great deal to do with it. It’s like including X-spells, where you can make an effect bigger the more mana you pump into it.

Worldwake brought us the first four-ability Planeswalker, too: Jace, the Mind-Sculptor. He’s a bit like Liliana of the Veil from original Innistrad block, in many ways – one of the mythical Planeswalker cards that excites the fanbase so much whenever the name is mentioned. His abilities are notorious, with a +2 that lets him look at the top card of a player’s library, then put it on the bottom; and a -12 that allows him to exile a player’s library and shuffle their hand to form their new library. Remember, if you can’t draw a card, you lose the game. Of course, Jace’s starting loyalty is 3, so it’ll take him a while to get there; also, he came out in a block that included the Planeswalker-killer Vampire Hexmage, who removes all counters from a card (meaning all loyalty counters in this instance, killing the Planeswalker). But he still gets consistently more play than the Hexmage, who is predominantly used in strategies to bring out Marit Lage from the Dark Depths – but that’s a story for another day.

Zendikar block concluded with Rise of the Eldrazi in April 2010, which was another large set and shifted its focus slightly to the massive Eldrazi creatures. They had been previewed of sorts on the card Eye of Ugin from Worldwake, but with no further explanation until this set came out. The set was innovative for the time, as it was the first time a block had had a second large set, which included basic lands and new mechanics etc. Subsequent blocks such as Innistrad would also have a second large set, but anyway. The Eldrazi are the focus here, colourless creatures native to the Blind Eternities, the space between planes, intent on destroying the plane by devouring its mana. It becomes clear in the set story that Zendikar has held these Eldrazi prisoner, but the hedrons are now opening and the Eldrazi are being released!

Annihilator is a new mechanic specific for the Eldrazi, and forces the discard of a number of permanents from the battlefield when that creature attacks – representing their huge, devastating effect. Level Up is a mechanic that I’m quite fond of – it allows you to pay mana to level up a creature, giving it more effects and potentially increasing its power/toughness. It’s similar to X-spells as I was talking about before, nice to have outlets for a lot of mana in the mid-to-late game. Rebound is one of my favourite mechanics, allowing you to exile a spell as it resolves, then you get to cast it for free at the start of your next turn. Getting twice the effect from a single card is great, and I think I’m still in that phase of including Staggershock in almost every deck I build!

There are ten Totem Armor aura spells that essentially act as a kind of protection for a creature. Normally, when a creature is killed, it goes to the graveyard with all of its auras, but these spells essentially soak up the damage and one aura would be removed instead. You can still outright kill the creature, but if dealing damage to it, the aura would go before the creature is damaged. I believe there’s a Modern deck that uses all the totem armor on a Slippery Bogle creature, and so pretty much any aura card with totem armor is very difficult to come by…

I really enjoy Zendikar as a plane, and I think it’s one of the player favourites from back in the day. When I was first building my Magic collection all of those years ago, I remember feeling particularly impressed at being able to get my hands on cards from the block, as it held some kind of mythical fascination for me that I can’t quite explain! Zendikar vampires are some of the best vampires though, and as I do enjoy a good vampire deck, it’s only natural that I’d want to get my hands on some of those cards. When I was first getting into the game, though, Battle for Zendikar was the first main set I was around for, following Magic Origins (which was my first set), so I suppose there was a kind of borrowed nostalgia at work as well. Seeing the new cards in comparison to what had come before was really interesting, and learning how the story had evolved was great.

Remembering Zendikar block

I’ve been playing around with a bit of a janky white/green deck to kinda celebrate the original Zendikar block, which involves a few of the block’s mechanics and stuff. I don’t have a massive back collection, of course, so it’s not going to be particularly amazing, I’m sure, but I thought I’d present it here nevertheless as a bit of a first draft. I’ve not bought Magic cards for a long time now, and I don’t know if I’m about to for this particular deck, but it might well be the deck that brings me back into the fold, as it were! Last month’s vampires were fun, but this one has weirdly got me really keen to play once more! At any rate, let’s take a look!

Creatures (16)
Armament Master (2)
Kor Duelist
Kor Sanctifiers
Lightkeeper of Emeria
Loam Lion (2)
Greenweaver Druid (2)
Mul Daya Channelers
Gnarlid Pack (2)
Aura Gnarlid (4)

Instants (5)
Might of the Masses (2)
Harrow (2)
Bold Defense

Enchantments (11)
Eland Umbra (4)
Mammoth Umbra (2)
Snake Umbra
Boar Umbra
Sunspring Expedition (2)
Khalni Heart Expedition

Artifacts (7)
Adventuring Gear (2)
Hammer of Ruin (2)
Trailblazer’s Boots (2)
Seer’s Sundial

Land (21)
Plains (7)
Kabira Crossroads (2)
Forest (8)
Turntimber Grove (2)
Greypelt Refuge
Stirring Wildwood

There isn’t really a great deal to this deck. There are a bunch of totem armor cards in here, and more equipment than I would usually want, but it’s all there to buff up the select few creatures that I have. Stuff like the Kor Duelist gets double strike with any equipment on him, but he’s only a 1/1, so he’s a prime target for some auras to buff him up. There are a few green creatures in there who are useful in a variety of ways, including the Aura Gnarlid who gets bigger the more auras are on the battlefield. There are some anthem effects, some landfall triggers, some ways to get extra lands out to make more use of these.

Green and white isn’t my natural comfort zone, it has to be said – in making this deck, I toyed with pretty much every colour pairing with white, but ultimately it’s a deck that I’ve built within the limits of my own collection. I’m sure I could refine it down with better creatures, or shift the balance of stuff so there are fewer auras but more lands or whatever (21 lands does make me nervous!) but for now, this is how I’m choosing to build it.

A celebration of Zendikar!

I really love Zendikar as a plane – I think it might even beat out Ravnica for me as my favourite plane. We’ve been back there twice now, with Battle for Zendikar in 2015 and Zendikar Rising in 2020. I wonder if the plan is to return to the plane every five years? BFZ was the first Magic set I was around for all the way through spoiler season, as I came to Magic in June/July 2015, and I have tremendous affection for it. I also have a lot more cards for that set than original Zendikar! Zendikar Rising is more of a mystery to me, as it came out after I had fallen away from the game. I know it is mechanically related to Kaldheim, with the whole Party thing, and I think I did get some kind of preconstructed deck for it back in the day, but I’ve not really been paying any attention so I think I might take a look at that sometime soon. Who knows? Maybe I’ll revisit the White/Green deck with cards from across all three Zendikar sets! Wouldn’t that be something…

June 2022 retrospective

Well, June wasn’t quite such a busy month as May turned out to be, in the end! I suppose it would have taken a lot to beat though, posting every day throughout May.

It’s been quite a month for Star Wars this month, starting with gaming. I have been on the look out for the remaining Force packs to complete my collection of the Star Wars LCG, and after a fairly interesting search, I’ve been able to get 10 of the 12 I was missing. Searching game stores across the UK, the US and, of all places, Belgium, I’m now much closer to the finish line! However, those last two will forever elude me, I think, as they are possibly the rarest left in the product line. Ah well. Maybe one day…

It’s nice to have a good collection like this, though, as it gives me so many options for the future, so long as my wife continues to humour me by playing it!

It wasn’t just all about the LCG, however, as I finally started to look into the earlier card games – the juggernaut CCG from Decipher, and the TCG from Wizards. This has been really interesting, because they’re games that I’ve been aware of forever – I even have a huge chunk of the TCG in my collection – but I have never really taken this time before to actually see what I’ve been missing. While I have not been tempted to buy into the CCG, I have nevertheless thought (fleetingly!) about trying the TCG out. Maybe…

Star Wars card games may have been the star of June, but I did begin to look at my Magic collection once more as well, and have given some thought to a red/black deck that I’ve had in varying states for a long time now. Magic is a lovely game, and I think if you’re only playing casually it can be a real treat to get out the decks. I don’t get to play Magic anywhere near as often as I used to, since moving away from the easy reach of my buddy Tony. It’s always nice to get back to it though, as it reminds me of some great times either playing with friends, or generally being fairly immersed in that particular hobby. I’ve not really been keeping up with it at all, though, despite trying twelve months ago to see what I had missed since the whole Nicol Bolas / War of the Spark thing was going on. While I was probably on my way out back then, I still dabbled enough to have a rough grasp of what was going on. Now, however… no idea…

But it’s fun to look at what I used to play with, every once in a while.

40k has barely had a look-in, though, and there are a few reasons for this. I went to Ireland in the middle of the month for my youngest daughter’s first birthday. We stayed with my brother in law, and it was really nice (even if Ireland wasn’t getting the weather we missed over here in the UK!) but gave no time for any hobbying, of course! I’ve also been trying to lose a bit of weight, and have been taking some fairly significant steps with cleaning up my diet, which wasn’t exactly awful to begin with. But I’ve been learning a lot about nutrition and the like, and researching healthy meals and whatnot. With all that, and a focus on Star Wars in both literature and gaming, it left me with barely any room for plastic in my life!

However, I have still been doing a few things, mainly focused once again on the Black Legion. I want to do another update blog for these guys shortly (if I had been better with my time, it would have been ready this week, but never mind!) Now that the Chaos Marines codex is on its way, I’m quite excited to see what I’m going to be able to use, and I have a third group of Chaos marines waiting for this arrival so as to be built. Maybe I’ll wait until I pick the codex up, then, and then I can do an update and maybe some list thoughts.

Anyway!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CehAFJstRLn/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

It’s taken me just over a year to get the first ten Khorne Bloodreavers painted, but I finally finished them this month! Took a lot less time to paint the second batch of five than the first… I want to have a small force of Khorne mortals for Age of Sigmar, but that’s kinda on the back burner for now. I did nearly get to try the new edition of AoS this month as well, but that game was cancelled so hopefully I’ll have better luck in July. Indeed, I didn’t have much luck with games at all this month. I think my buddy JP still wants to convert me to playing the Middle Earth miniatures game at some point, too…

I had a brief play around with Kill Team, to try and get a feel for how the game works prior to trying to introduce it to my friends. I’ve been steadily buying each Kill Team release, so it made sense to finally give the game a go, after all! I think it’s a good iteration of the format, and will definitely take some getting used to. I’m definitely going to need to try this again before attempting to sway anybody to play it, though!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce0RSOgtrW5/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

I’ve also finished painting these objective markers, which I had started sometime around Christmas, but just hadn’t done anything further with them. Not the most earth-shattering of paint jobs, but I think they’ll do!

Hopefully at the weekend I can write up some reflections on the first six months of the year in terms of the hobby, comparing my completed projects with the hobby goals blog from January. That sort of thing is always pretty hilarious, in fairness!

But there we go! Due to the trip, there hasn’t been a lot going on this month. We shall see what bounty July has to offer, though!

The Blood Harvest

Hey everybody,
It’s been a while since Magic has been at the forefront of my mind, but today I thought I’d once again spend a bit of time talking about a deck that I’ve been tinkering with recently. It’s an older red/black deck, which I think I’d originally built years ago – Vampires and Demons, Zombies and Wizards! It was, like many such decks, a bit of a homage to the deck I used so often with the android app, but has since evolved into something a bit more like my normal style of deck-building. Any time I’m building a paper deck, it’s hampered by the fact I didn’t get into the game until well after most of the legendary sets, such as Zendikar and Innistrad, so the card pool is somewhat limited! But still, enough prattling on, let’s look at the deck itself!

As always for me, it’s creature-heavy, but this one is particularly big on bodies.

Creatures (22)
Harvester of Souls
Blood Cultist
Kargan Dragonlord
Onyx Mage
Blind Zealot
Stonewright
Rakish Heir (2)
Bloodcrazed Neonate (2)
Markov Blademaster
Stromkirk Noble
Vampire Outcasts
Falkenrath Torturer
Falkenrath Aristocrat
Falkenrath Exterminator
Guul Draz Vampire
Kalastria Highborn
Vein Drinker (2)
Sangromancer
Blood Seeker

Instants / Sorceries (5)
Uncanny Speed
Dark Temper
Vampire’s Bite
Feast of Blood
Blood Tribute

Enchantments (5)
Curse of Wizardry
Raid Bombardment
Talons of Falkenrath
Maniacal Rage
Claws of Valakut

Artifacts (3)
Veinfire Borderpost
Onyx Goblet
Elbrus, the Binding Blade

Land (25)
Swamp (11)
Mountain (9)
Lavaclaw Reaches
Crypt of Agadeem
Smoldering Spires
Teetering Peaks
Akoum Refuge

The main idea behind the deck, then, is to just beat on my opponent with constant attacks. There are a few effects that don’t allow my creatures to block, emphasizing the vicious nature of the deck. There aren’t really any key pieces for the deck, either, which is something of a philosophy for me when making these kinds of decks. Far too often, you’ll be playing a game with an army out there, and key cards are getting removed in one way or another; for me, it’s much better if I can just keep going with whatever I have to hand.

The Innistrad vampires have the subtheme of +1/+1 counters going onto cards, and I was thinking about including some of the Proliferate cards from Scars of Mirrodin block, as I have done with my Sheoldred deck, but I think this deck is a little less involved than that one. If the cards can generate counters, then that’s great, and there are a couple of “target creature can’t block” effects to hopefully get some combat damage through to make it happen, but that’s not the force of the deck, really.

It’s just all about dealing damage, all the time. There’s a little bit of deathtouch, and a little bit of intimidate, but otherwise we’re not being too fancy here. Sometimes it’s just good to go all out and kill stuff, you know? The big lad in the deck is the Harvester of Souls, which would be nice if he had some form of evasion like flying, but I think deathtouch can be enough of a deterrent at times that he should still be able to get some damage through. I’ve got Falkenrath Aristocrat in the deck as well, who is quite a powerhouse in the right circumstances. I was actually trying to alter the deck up to include more humans to sacrifice to her abilities before I realised that I basically have one copy of her in the deck, so it became a bit silly.

There are a couple of cards that I can still see myself swapping out, though for the moment I’m leaving them where they are. Raid Bombardment is just a nice call-back to my deck on the app, but isn’t really necessary for the deck to work (it’s just good to have, as there are a lot of low-power creatures here!) Falkenrath Exterminator is another of these cards that I think I could potentially do without, but for the time being I’m leaving him in, as well. I was considering going heavier with artifacts at one point as well, but that’s gone by the wayside somewhat, too.

It’s definitely the type of deck that I enjoy playing. Relatively straightforward, no requirement to set up a combo and won’t fall down if some cards get removed. There are a lot of singleton cards in here, so it’s not vulnerable to stuff that discards all copies, and stuff. Generally, it’s the kind of janky deck that nobody expects, and can very often do well as a result! But it can definitely be vulnerable to -2/-2 effects…

Having written all of this up, I am now kinda tempted to try and make this into a much more “streamlined” kind of deck. You know, the sort of deck where you have 4-of everything for maximum efficiency, and whatnot. I probably won’t, of course, as I can’t afford it, but it’s an interesting idea!! The deck originated in an idea that I’d had for making a singleton deck (aside from basic lands), and included a lot more cards from Alara block. It’s interesting to see how it has been refined into the Vampire deck that it is today, at any rate!

Game Day!

Hey everybody,

As you all know, Tuesday is game day, and this week it’s particularly exciting as I recently had an actual game day! First time in almost five years that my buddy Tony and I sat down to play some games together! Much fun and laughter was had, and we got some cracking games to the table as well!

First up is Ankh, the Egyptian gods themed game from Cool Mini Or Not. The game was put out on Kickstarter back in May 2020, and was successfully funded within the first day – no surprise, really, as that seems to be CMoN’s business model, and this game is designed by the renowned Eric Lang.

In Ankh, you take the role of one of the gods of Egypt, and compete with your fellow deities for control of the land, aiming to be the god to inspire the most devotion. The game runs on a pretty fast timer, so even though it’s one of these huge miniatures-heavy things, it actually feels pretty streamlined and very straightforward once you get into it. This is something that I was immediately impressed with, because it has so much potential for replays.

You get two actions per turn, which you choose from a set menu of four – move, summon, gain followers, or choose an Ankh power. You need to spend followers to gain these latter powers, but in doing so, you can potentially also gain Guardians, which act as additional figures in your pool from which you can summon. It’s going to be useful to have figures on the board, of course, because that’s how you gain your devotion points, through claiming territory and monuments.

The elegant timer system is built into the actions track – when an action has been taken so many times, it triggers an event, which may allow you to claim a monument, or split up a region, or trigger a conflict. Conflicts are resolved by counting up the miniatures that each player has in any region, each mini being worth 1 strength, then by playing cards to potentially add strength or kill off an opponent’s models, or even build a new monument. When the dust settles, you might end up in the lead in the devotion stakes.

It plays really, really well. We made a couple of errors, sure, but nothing too dramatic. On the whole, the engine is quite easy to pick up, and the fact that the meat of the game occurs during timed conflicts means that overall the game doesn’t feel bogged down, turn after turn. It won’t appeal to everyone, I know, but there is a real possibility for you to make of the game as much as you want – spending the turns between conflicts either strategising like a Field Marshal, or just going with the flow and enjoying the game as it unfolds. I mean, we were hardly obsessing over which actions to take, when to trigger events, etc, but it was hugely enjoyable regardless!

I’m fairly sure that we barely scratched the surface when we played the game, but it was definitely a good game, one that I think I’d like to play a lot more to get a handle on. It’s odd to think that there’s a Kickstarter game that I’ve said this about, as a lot of my experience with games like this does tend towards the once-and-done, but then I suppose CMoN are a bit different, as they’re a professional games company working with an established designer, and merely use KS as their marketing and distribution model. It’s debatable whether that’s what Kickstarter is meant for, of course, but it’s working for them, I guess! I think that my mental image of Kickstarter games goes back to the days when anybody and their dog was putting out games on the platform, and while some turned out quite beautiful, most did seem to be turkeys.

There are five gods in the core set, with multiple expansions that came out at the same time, some of which feature plenty more gods and guardians, and a plethora of other shiny bits. Of particular note is the fact that one of the Kickstarter perks was 3D monuments, but we were only using the core set so hadn’t delved too far into any of the other boxes. It’s a very exciting way to deliver a game, for sure, but there is still that part of me that longs for the days when you’d not see an expansion for a game like this until a year or so had passed! It was interesting, talking with Tony about it, how he just wanted to play something else from the massive collection that he and Lee have put together, but I would have been down for playing this one a couple more times! I remember, years ago, playing games like Last Night on Earth 4-5 times in a game day with my ex, and not really thinking twice. Sure, we’d also have days where we’d play two or three different games as well, but I think Tony is in that situation where he has so many board games that it needs that constant churn just to get through them all. It almost begs the question, what’s the point of having multiple expansions for a game you barely play enough of with the core set?!

In summary, then, I really like this game, and have thought about it a lot since we played it. I think it represents what I used to love about Kickstarter games, getting an absolute ton of content for a game and then being really excited about trying it all out. I think, if I hadn’t been in the middle of so many life-changing events at the time, I may well have backed this one at the time, but these things happen! I’m definitely looking forward to trying it out again sometime soon, whether Tony wants to or not! 🤣

Anyway…

We also had three games with Warhammer Invasion, which was amazing, as it was like a return to the old days! Me playing Chaos, him playing High Elves, with all their nonsense! I won all three games, but I think that was something of a fluke because I’d recently looked up the rules again, and had looked at my deck as well, while Tony hadn’t looked at his elves since we last played this game, in 2016!!

Rounding out the day were three games of Magic, which I also won. I think I was very lucky at one point though, as I was playing a somewhat modified version of my Shadows Over Innistrad vampires deck, and was land-flooded so was down to something like 4 life before I got my first creature out! However, once he came out, I buffed him stupid and gave him lifelink, which got me firmly back in the game for the win!!

I also took my Kaldheim deck out for a spin, which was fun, though I think it could do with quite a bit more tinkering! It worked well enough, for sure, but I think the theme has overshadowed the potential for the deck to work well. If I were still as into Magic as I used to be, I would probably set aside an afternoon to do some research, but I don’t really have those luxuries anymore!!

After all that, I then had another game of the Star Wars LCG with my wife, once again Rebels (me) vs Imperials (Jemma). I’d tried to mix the decks up a little, so that they were predominantly objectives from the core set and Hoth cycle, to try and keep things simple. As it happened, I won this game as well, but I do think this game can be quite swing-y in how it plays, where you might have some luck and get a lot of key units out so you can launch offensive after offensive. I didn’t have that last time, but I had it in spades this time, which kinda surprised me, I’m not gonna lie! Jemma did blow up two of my objectives, but I won when the dial was at 9, so it could have been worse!

I’m not entirely convinced that Jemma likes the game, but she does seem to want to keep at it, which is encouraging! I’m hoping that I’ll be able to convince her to keep playing, though I don’t think she’ll ever be a fan of it like me!!

Kaldheim!

Following on from my catch-up with Magic a few weeks ago, today I thought I’d talk about the set that really caught my attention when I started to make some tentative steps at returning to the game. Kaldheim came out in February this year, and is a Norse-inspired set along the lines of Theros. The story heavily involves the planeswalker Kaya, who is one of my favourites as the only planeswalker in black/white, though as far as story goes, I’m not entirely sure what is supposed to happen on the plane. There are a lot of Vikings, clearly, and other cues from Norse mythology that link in quite well to the overall theme.

While the block structure is a thing of the past, WOTC has linked together the sets of a Magic “year” through a couple of themes, notably the tribal theme established in Zendikar Rising’s “Party” mechanic, and modal double-faced cards, where you choose which side of the card to cast as you play the card. In Kaldheim, all the nonland double-faced cards are Gods, which is quite fitting! The tribal organisation here is based around the ten realms of Kaldheim, which are analogous to the ten two-colour pairings. There is some development here of each realm, such as black and red (Immersturm) being a realm of fire and demons, though there isn’t really a great deal of development that you can do when you only have one set to showcase the entire plane.

The new mechanics of the set are Foretell and Boast. Foretell works in a similar way to Morph, where you cast the card face-down for 2 generic mana, and can later be turned face up for its Foretell cost. Morph cards were always creatures, even as face-down cards, but Foretell cards are exiled and so can’t be interacted with (except, I guess, by Eldrazi? I’m kinda new!), and you won’t know if it’s a creature or a spell that is about to be turned up. Boast is an activated ability that will only trigger if the creature attacked this combat. So it’s a slight drawback in that the creature has to survive that combat first!

Snow is back, first time in a main set since 2006 and Coldsnap, with more snow-covered lands as well as snow-covered dual lands, which is very nice! Snow creatures and other permanents (and non-permanents!) also feature, this time with a distinctive, frosty border! Nice!

I’ve been buying quite a few packs of Kaldheim, and a bundle. I’ve been investigating the different types of booster packs now available, and I really do feel out of my depth in this game right now. There are draft boosters and set boosters and collector boosters and some other types, with different cards that have different frames, that I don’t really follow all of the ins-and-outs, if I’m honest. Is there any need? Well the amount of content coming out seems to have had an effect on Standard becoming a bit cheaper, thanks to the number of packs being opened. But it feels a bit like the somewhat casual player – even the slightly-more-than-casual player like myself – might just be overwhelmed by the whole thing. I mean, it took me a weekend to work out everything, and I’m not sure I really get it, even now!

Anyway. Having bought up all these packs, I’ve been able to build a black and white deck that features the new Angels, or Valkyries as they’re called here. I opened three copies of Firja, Judge of Valor, a legendary angel cleric (party!) who triggers off the second spell, which is an intriguing mechanic. I haven’t built a Magic deck in a very long time, so this could be entirely awful, but I’m excited for new cards, so we shall see I suppose!

Creatures (20)
Firja, Judge of Valor (3)
Vengeful Reaper (4)
Hailstorm Valkyrie (4)
Cleaving Reaper
Doomskar Oracle
Starnheim Aspirant
Skemfar Shadowsage (2)
Elderfang Disciple (2)
Bloodsky Berserker (2)

Artifacts (2)
Valkyrie’s Sword (2)

Enchantments (11)
Valor of the Worthy (2)
Rampage of the Valkyries
Firja’s Retribution (2)
Ascent of the Worthy
Rune of Sustenance (3)
Rune of Mortality (2)

Land (27)
Snowfield Sinkhole (3)
Shimmerdrift Vale
Great Hall of Starnheim
Plains (7)
Snow-Covered Plains (3)
Swamp (8)
Snow-Covered Swamp (4)

The first thing you’ll probably notice here is that there are literally no spells. Well, no instants or sorceries, at least! This wasn’t by design, but purely accidental as I was building the deck and found nothing that I really wanted to include. This is very much a first-cut though, and could definitely do with refinement. I think it also speaks to the fact that I was doing it only with the cards that I had opened, without any real attempt to buy the singles that I wanted or needed. There’s also the element of sticking to just the Kaldheim set, of course, and the restrictions there. Strixhaven is an enemy-colour set, and there are a number of black and white cards in that set for the Silverquill college that I think might be a good fit, but I’ve not really investigated that set in great depth just yet. Of course, if we’re going to plumb the depths of my overall collection, I’m sure that the opportunities would be endless to get a really interesting deck ticking over! Might have to do that, at some point!

The basic plan for the deck is just to go wide with these angel creatures and smash into my opponent. There are some useful abilities and interesting things that might be possible, but I don’t think I’ll be making full use of any of them for the time being. Firja’s ability to draw cards when the second spell has been cast could be handy, paired with some graveyard recursion to get those others back from the discard side of the ability. There is some, for sure, but not a massive amount! Creating Angel tokens should be nice, though I do seem to run the risk of just having hundreds of creatures out with nothing really flashy – it could be a very blunt and obvious deck to play! I’m sure I’ll have a tinker with it though, and see what else I can come up with!

I do find it interesting to note how, in a recent video, the Professor was talking about the overwhelming quantity of new product coming at us this year, and made the comment regarding how can anyone be expected to remember the ten realms as a shorthand for the colour combo, as they do for the Guilds of Ravnica. While we’ve spent three entire blocks on the plane of Ravnica now, and so it can be reasonably expected that the guilds are quite well-known, I think he does have a point when Kaldheim only came out six months ago, but I had no idea the black/white realm was called Starnheim, and would forever refer to the deck as Orzhov.

I wonder if we’ll ever come back to Kaldheim? I suppose, if the story allows, why wouldn’t we, but we seem to have been dashing about so much lately, and we’re set to continue dashing into 2022, that it’ll be interesting to see whether there is ever the room to come back. Magic seems to be in an interesting place right now, where it is old enough that there is a nostalgia that can be banked on – returning to Zendikar, Ravnica and Innistrad, to say nothing of Dominaria, is always going to be a huge draw for people. Giving us new planes, such as Kaldheim and Strixhaven, Ikoria and the upcoming New Capenna, feels a bit like the design team trying to get away from the whole Gatewatch thing. But the constant new stuff seems to be just diluting the overall feel of the game, somehow. Added to that, the branching out into other IP does feel a little bit like the game is lost, maybe?  

At any rate, I am finding things interesting with Magic right now, almost as an outsider-looking-in. I haven’t played it for a very long time, of course, so even given my history with the game and my fairly substantial collection, I do feel a bit like I’m on the sidelines. Maybe that’ll change as life continues to get back to normal, though!

What a weekend!

Kill Team: Octarius has gone up for preorder, and it looks pretty sexy, I have to say. I’ve put my order in at my local store, so I’m hoping I won’t be in for any disappointment in a couple of weeks. I do like the look of the box – even though I’m not an Ork fan, I think it looks like a cracking game and I’m very excited to get my hands on it!

It’s also been really interesting to see the news that Kill Team will be supported, going forward, with new ‘seasons’, for want of a better word, every three months. That feels almost too much, if they’re all going to be launched with a big box like this, but maybe the big box route is how GW is modelling their business now. Seems like they’re getting to grips more with the idea of actual pre-orders rather than adding a week on to your delivery time, with how they’re doing this made-to-order thing if they sell out. In my opinion, that’s how they should be producing every “event box” from now on.

However, there’s nothing to say that some of these ‘new season’ boxes won’t be strict repackages of existing stuff. Will they be able to produce so much new stuff to such a schedule? Why not just stick some Sector Imperialis terrain in with some Battle Sisters and some Tau Pathfinders, and job done! No massive design outlay, there!

Word on the street, of course, is that the release model will mimic Warcry and give us fairly unique, new teams that will have normal 40k rules, but will be primarily for Kill Team. Furthermore, the next box is already rumoured to be Sisters vs Tau. Given that Sisters have had a lot of releases recently, something just tells me that the release model just isn’t going to be purely new teams, but there will be those elements ported over from 40k where it makes sense. I guess we’ll see, of course, but yeah, it feels a bit off to say that we’re getting yet more plastic Sisters good stuff.

I would love to get the odd special box every once in a while, though – perhaps along the lines of Pariah Nexus, where the KT box is used to launch a new plastic unit from an existing army? Eldar, maybe your time is coming?

Speaking of what’s coming, the new codex road map for the rest of the year has been revealed, showing Black Templars as coming up, with a new Primaris Emperor’s Champion being shown off as well. Tyranids seem to be a strong option for their book coming, with a lot of people expecting Imperial Guard as well, though a persistent rumour of an Imperial Agents book has got me quite intrigued!

I guess time will tell! I’m looking forward to getting some of this good stuff – September seems to have become my traditional time of the year for really reconnecting with 40k, so after a lot of time spent with Warcry and Necromunda, I’m sort of hoping to have the hobby time to devote to maybe getting some Necrons painted!

Oh, and apparently this is a thing! I’ve been tentatively getting interested in Magic for a while now, and this weekend was watching a few of the Professor’s videos when I came across this – Commander decks themed for 40k, apparently coming out with a full set themed around Lord of the Rings. Weird! In his video, the Professor talks about diluting the world of MtG, and I have to say that I agree. I love 40k, of course, and while I don’t really play much these days, I still love Magic. But I love them as separate entities, and have no wish to see them mixed together. I’m sure it might be fun to get Primarchs as Legendary Creatures, or whatever, but ultimately I feel like this is going to be detrimental to the game. Sure, collectors will probably buy them, I may even be tempted myself, but I wouldn’t want to mix them into my collection of Magic cards. Worlds don’t need to collide!

Finally, this arrived today! Very much looking forward to getting my teeth into it!

June Retrospective

Hey everybody,
It’s already time for another retrospective, and we’re suddenly already halfway through 2021! That soon happened. June has been something of a slow month for my blog, because I had the fairly huge event of my second daughter being born on the 18th of the month! Freya came into the world only a couple of days early, although completely unplanned as she couldn’t wait to join the world, so was delivered on the bathroom floor 😳 She’s been doing great though, and her big sister Phoebe is hopefully going to be a big help to us all, despite being only 21 months old, herself 🤣

I’ve been reading quite a bit, and was able to schedule a couple of book reviews to make sure that my blog didn’t just shut down for a few months as happened with the birth of the Firstborn. Master and Apprentice was a little disappointing, but I’m aware that I seem to be almost routinely bashing the new canon stuff, so I need to try to be better and approach these books a little more positively. Hopefully when I get round to stuff like the Alphabet Squadron series, I’ll enjoy them as much as I did Alexander Freed’s Battlefront novel.

I’ve really been on a bit of a Horus Heresy bender, though, partly because I’ve grown tired of continually making statements here along the lines of “I just want to read five more books in the series this year” and “I just want to make it to x, that’s only 4 books to get through”. I’ve been going back to read some of those anthologies that I skipped over back in the day, thinking I just want to read the actual story, and I’ve also been progressing forwards, getting to book 32, Legacies of Betrayal.


This is a bit of an odd duck, to me, being a collection of lots of short stories that previously saw release as audio books, or as part of the BL Advent Calendar that usually has shorter-than-normal stories. It kicks off with Brotherhood of the Storm, which is a novella prequel to the excellent Scars, and one story that I enjoyed quite a bit, even if at times it felt a bit superfluous. There are some interesting shorts in here that give us a tiny insight into how the war is going, such as Strike and Fade showing a group of Salamanders ambushing some Night Lords on Isstvan V while the dust settles. Veritas Ferrum is a short prequel to Damnation of Pythos, and shows the Iron Hands rescuing the Salamanders before they escape the Isstvan system – the sort of story could (should?) have been included as a prologue to the parent novel, but anyway. There are a couple of World Eaters stories by ADB that were quite good – I particularly enjoyed Heart of the Conqueror, which showed the internal conflict experienced by the ship’s Navigator – aware of the fact the Legion has turned against the Emperor, who she sees as a kind of saviour/patron figure, she kills herself and thus pulls the flagship out of the Warp. The stand-outs though, were Censure, which showed us the Ultramarines vs Word Bearers on the irradiated world of Calth (I had no idea that Kurtha Sedd was a character before the box set!) and Kryptos, which featured the Raven Guard/Iron Hands stealth assassin team from Angel Exterminatus. These stories were of a more traditional length, and were able to give a more proper development to the actual storyline they had.

So it was a curious book, overall, having a lot of short, forgettable, dare I say pointless little side stories, but at least I’m ploughing through – only another 23 books to go! 😳

There was some very exciting news about Arkham Horror LCG at the start of the month, with the change to how they’re going to publish cycles from now on, and last week we had the news that there’ll be a revised core set doing the rounds, which will feature a complete playset of the player cards, as well as some of those cards from later expansions to give new folks a better experience right out of the box. Otherwise, it’s still the same 5 investigators (albeit with new art) and they’re going up against the Night of the Zealot as before. I find it interesting that they’re choosing to do this, full playset of cards etc, as it seems to be indicating the shift of the LCG model away from what it has been, and instead making it more like the board game that it pretty much was anyway. I think it’s really exciting, especially if they can pepper the year with stand-alone scenarios to keep the attention on the game, rather than just relying on one, potentially two release events in a year.

Of course, there’s a part of me thinking perhaps this could be signalling the end of the game, as Call of Cthulhu went to a similarly concentrated release schedule of deluxe boxes only before it folded. But even if that were to happen, I think I’m pretty confident that this game has got enough content and playability in the existing cycles that I’ll be playing it for years to come!


Speaking of playing with old stuff, I suppose Lord of the Rings can now be counted as an older game that has finished! I’ve recently had some time to have a few games with this old favourite, playing the first three scenarios in the Angmar Awakened cycle. I was initially planning this for Christmastime, of course, but better late than never, I suppose!! I’ll post something next month going over these, anyway!

June has been pretty much all about rediscovering Magic the Gathering, after I’d found some cards in the attic that I have no real memory of buying! I’ve written a couple of posts where I’ve caught up with the recent sets, here and here, though I’m still trying to be a little circumspect with it, not flying off the deep end with buying cards left and right! I’ve got a couple of deck ideas that I want to share, too, so stay tuned for more on that front!!

However, the biggest game news from June came from Necromunda, when I was finally able to play a real game with James, my Delaque vs his Orlocks. That was a lot of fun – I knew I’d enjoy it, having previously solo played the game at the back end of 2020, but it was a whole load of fun with another person, and we’re planning to get more games and hopefully a campaign in once Freya is settled and the kids are sleeping through the night!


As a consequence, I’ve picked up the new Hive War box set! I knew I wanted more Delaque models anyway, and after playing with the zone mortalis stuff, I think it was clear that the Dark Uprising stuff, while excellent, wasn’t going to be enough for a 3×2 board. The cost of more Delaque and more terrain would be around the £58 mark at my local store, where I could also pick up Hive War for £71, netting me more Escher for just £13, as well as the new book and stuff. So that was pretty much a no-brainer, I thought!

The set is actually quite nice as a starting set, coming with enough terrain to play some games, but I’m pretty sure that even GW themselves tell you it’s only intended as a starting point, and you will get more out of it with more terrain. Which is fine, after all! The rule book, specific to this box, has got the basic rules in it, as well as some “starter” gang rules for all six House gangs, allowing you to build a gang using the box only and these rules. It feels pared-back, but this is the point of this box, remember!

When the Hive War box came out, we also had plastic weapon upgrades for Escher and Goliath (the original two gangs, remember), which seem to be a blend of weapons from the Forge World weapons kits for both gangs. I’m really hoping that, when House of Shadows comes out soon, we’ll also have plastic upgrades for Delaque, so I’m holding off from building too many more gangers for the time being! As I mentioned at the start of the week, though, I’ve started to poke my nose into House Escher, so I could well be making a move there in the coming weeks!

I feel like Necromunda is in a very exciting place right now, as we’re poised on that brink of “what’s next?” once the Delaque get their book.

That pretty much sums things up for now, anyway! I’m hoping that I can do a proper catch-up of the hobby goals sometime in early July – I had planned a mid-point check in for this blog, but I think I’m running a bit long here already. But stay tuned for that!

A little night Magic… (part two)

Hey everybody,
Following on from my last Magic catch-up earlier in the week, it’s time to finish up my look at what I’ve missed from the last couple of years. I left things at Jumpstart, which was released last summer – which was followed by Double Masters, which looks like a phenomenal set for reprints, seeing a lot of expensive cards being reprinted almost like the intent was to simply increase supply. Classic Commanders like Kaalia, Sen Triplets and Riku, as well as more recent stuff like Atraxa and Breya. Jace the Mind Sculptor also reappears, alongside the Swords, and the Filter Lands from Shadowmoor/Eventide.

This was followed by Zendikar Rising, a Return to Return to Zendikar set. This is a set of adventure and exploration, apparently, and returns specifically to the feel of the original Zendikar block, without the Eldrazi. As far as story goes though, we’re in the post-BFZ era, where the plane has been ravaged by the titans. There’s a lot going on here, so let’s get into it!

Zendikar Rising is the first set to see Set Boosters, which are different to Draft Boosters in that they’re not designed, well, for Draft. Instead, you get a different distribution of card rarity, and we have the introduction of something called The List, 300 cards from the game’s past which are not Standard legal, but offer a chance to get reprints (though at random).

In terms of set mechanics, there is a new Party theme which grants boons based on the creature types you have in play. Modal Double-Face Cards are a new type of double faced card that players can decide which face to cast (they don’t transform). These cards eventually proved to be the theme among the sets of the Magic “year” (it seems they’re not calling them Blocks anymore).

I adore Zendikar, the art is some of the best in the game, and I went through a phase of buying as much of the lands from that block that I could, which I’m quite pleased about. I’m also a fan of the Party idea, as I like the idea of assembling a proper type of Fellowship for my games. I think this is definitely a set that I need to look into soon!

Commander Legends is a draftable Commander set, which I just don’t understand how that’s supposed to work. There are 165 new cards, and almost 200 reprints. Drafting a Commander deck just seems odd – you’re drafting a 60 card deck, picking two cards at a time. You still have the colour identity stuff, though it is no longer a single-card deck. Weird. I don’t quite get it – though it is always handy to have Commander cards in circulation.

Commander meets Draft. Weird.

The next set is Kaldheim, which brings us to February of 2021. We’re getting there, folks! Kaldheim is Magic’s take on Vikings, and it kinda works. Much like Theros and Amonkhet, we get some fairly decent God cards which is always nice. Kaya is front and centre of the packaging, which is perhaps a reflection on WotC’s attempts to compensate following the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 (remember, they decided cards like Cleanse and Crusade were “culturally offensive” because they destroy black creatures and pump white creatures, respectively). Kaya is a fairly badass character in her own right though, and being a big fan of Black and White as a colour combination, I’ve appreciated her as the BW planeswalker since she first arrived in Conspiracy 2. Her role in the cinematic trailer makes it clear, in case there was any doubt, that she is amazing, anyway.

I’m getting too political here, let’s rein it in!

Kaldheim is somewhat tribal themed, with Giants and Dwarves, Angels (Valkyries) and Elves showing up. There is a huge development on Snow as a theme, moving on from 2006’s Coldsnap to have Snow on instants and sorceries as well as creatures (and of course, lands). I’m a big sucker for this, anyway – snow and fantasy games always reminds me of Runebound, one of my all-time favourite board games!

In addition to more modal double-face cards, and the second return of Sagas (again, something I like!) we have two new mechanics: Boast and Foretell. Foretell is a bit like Morph, which allows you to exile a card for 2 generic mana, and later play it for its Foretell cost. Boast is an ability that can only be used if the creature with said ability attacked that turn. All very interesting stuff, for sure.

I’ve really been sucked into the whole Kaldheim thing, and have actually been buying cards again – specifically for this set. I’ve been buying boosters and stuff, including Set boosters as well as Draft boosters, and have begun the process of creating a BW Angels deck. There’s a lot more to be said on this topic, so stay tuned for a blog coming on this, soon!

Something very strange has been happening with Magic though. They’ve announced that there will be sets released with themes from outside of Magic as we know it – called Universes Beyond – and they’ve released in paper Time Spiral Remastered, a single set that distills the essence of the original Time Spiral. Why? Who knows. Weird.

The first Universes Beyond set is coming sometime next month, and is set in the Forgotten Realms. I’m actually quite excited to see Drizzt on a Magic card…

The most recent set to release is Strixhaven: School of Mages, which came out in April and seems to be Magic’s take on Harry Potter. Well, not exactly, though it is described as “the magic school genre” – so that’s clearly a thing! The set is an enemy-coloured theme, spells matter theme delight – I think I’ve read somewhere that it’s the first set specifically devoted to enemy colour pairs since Apocalypse in 2001. Anyway, Strixhaven is a magical school that attracts only the best and the brightest. Among these are Will and Rowan Kenrith once more, who are really establishing themselves now in the lore of the multiverse.

Modal double-face cards are once again here, tying all of the sets of the “year” together, and we have a focus on instants and spells. Magecraft is a new ability word that triggers when casting instant and sorcery spells, and there is a new keyword that ties into the theme of the set, Learn. The keyword lets you either discard a card and draw a card, or to reveal a Lesson card from outside the game and add it to your hand. Lessons are a subtype of instants and sorceries that allow you to focus on a specific type of gameplay, their biggest thing being that you can “fetch” them with Learn cards. Seems a little one-shot-wonder to be of any real impact, but who knows? Maybe we’ll get more to support this type of thing in years to come.

Confession time: I’ve also been buying some Strixhaven cards. I’m a sucker for BW right now, and have been plotting another deck around the Silverquill college. There are five colleges in Strixhaven, each named after the Elder Dragon that founded it. Nothing to do with Harry Potter, whatsoever. Anyway – stay tuned for more on this deck, once I’ve figured out just what I’m trying to do with it!

Strixhaven brings us to the end of this two-part run-through the recent years of Magic sets! After the D&D set (in a similar move, Strixhaven is an upcoming sourcebook for the RPG, I believe), we’re going back to Innistrad once more, though I don’t know anything about that other than the set names appear to have been announced. I think I’ve got my work cut out for me in getting to grips with Valkyries and Ink-mages though, so I’m gonna leave it there for now!

Hopefully the challenges that parenthood has in store won’t interfere too much with me getting some more blogs written in the near future, so do check in soon when I hope to waffle on about my new favourite colour pairing of white and black in the most recent MTG sets!

A little night Magic… (part one)

Hey everybody!
It’s been a while since I’ve talked about cardboard crack on this blog, but following on from my discovery of some cards in the attic, which I mentioned very briefly in my May update, I thought I’d do a little bit of investigation into what I’ve missed in the few years since I last cracked a pack. What else am I going to do with my paternity leave, right?!

So let’s just remember that the last set that I was anything like present for was War of the Spark, which released in May 2019. Oh wow, so since I last shuffled up a deck of cards, I’ve had two children… wow! Since that time, I count six full sets have been released, the most recent of which is Strixhaven. But I’ll get to that later.

2019 saw a new core set, M20, the second of the new core sets to be released since they had been abandoned after Magic Origins back in the day. The core set was roughly based around Chandra Nalaar, although there doesn’t seem to have been much in the way of actual story for the set. Fair enough – it’s a core set, after all. Gimme the reprints I need!

After M20, the next set was Throne of Eldraine, which I do remember coming out as being something of a fairy tale set. Apparently it’s a top-down design based on Grimm’s tales and Arthurian legend. Sounds interesting! The storyline seems to be based around a conflict between the Knights and the Wild Peoples, with Garruk turning up to kidnap the resident king, but his kids manage to rescue him and ignite their sparks. The kids are Will and Rowan Kenrith, who I seem to recall came as partners in the Battlebond set.

There is a new card type in the set, called Adventures, which are spells stuck onto creatures. The video above shows how they work, but honestly, I just don’t get it. It’s not really like there’s a link between the two aspects on the card – the Adventure portion doesn’t seem to make the creature you can cast any bigger or anything, it’s like they had too many cards they wanted to fit in, so stuck 30 of them onto creatures and made up this weird thing.

Otherwise, Eldraine seems like an interesting enough set, and maybe I’ll look into that some more at a later date…

Moving on!

2019 also saw something called Secret Lair, which appears to be a very expensive booster game where you can get older cards reprinted. I’ve heard some pretty negative stuff about this whole thing, though, so suffice it to say I won’t be looking into these things.

Moving into 2020 now, the first set of the year was Theros: Beyond Death. A return to Theros, how delightful! The set is mainly focused on the Underworld of the plane, however, which the above trailer seems to show really well. Elspeth isn’t dead, or maybe she is but she’s beyond death now (eh? eh!) and we’ve also got Ashiok running around, one of my all-time favourite pieces of creepy-weird art from the game. There’s also a new Theros god, Klothys the god of destiny (in red/green, weird). We’ve got mono-coloured gods, the original five returning, plus five demigods, who I’m pretty sure we’ve seen previously as dual-coloured creatures. These demigod cards are more like their prequel versions? I don’t know.

The big news, to me, is that the set uses Sagas once more, the legendary enchantment type introduced back in Dominaria. Nice!

Despite COVID breaking out, we still had set releases almost as normal. Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths was next up, and is a set that I’ve previously mentioned as sounding interesting to me. It features the Tarkir wedges once more, and we have some pretty crazy-huge creatures (well, it is the land of behemoths!) The set is one of those for which I’d picked up some cards somehow without really realising! So I think I need to get in on this and see what it was all about!

This set is all about massive monsters, with a vaguely kaiju air to it. Narset is back as a planeswalker, by the way, in her original Jeskai colours as opposed to the blue/white of her last Tarkir incarnation. One of the big themes of the set is Mutate, a kind of “build your own monster”. Cards with this keyword can be cast for their Mutate cost, where they are attached to a non-Human creature, either above or below that target, and the two (or more!) creatures become one – that is, they’re considered to be the creature on top (for CMC and power/toughness) but with the abilities of all the other creatures below it. Interestingly, if the creature is flickered, then it comes back to the battlefield as individual cards.

There’s also the neat little keyword Companion, which is featured on some cards and instructs a deckbuilding limitation (such as all cards need to be a certain CMC or something), but allows you to include that card in your sideboard and then cast it – almost like a mini version of Commander. Originally, there were no particular rules around this, but later it was revised to cost 3 generic mana to cast your chosen Companion.

Having at least some of these cards has made me excited to start thinking about building decks with something of an Ikoria theme, so we’ll have to see if parenting duties will allow for that to happen!

We got the summer core set, M21, as well as a supplemental product called Jumpstart. This has been fascinating me since I’ve now taken the time to actually look into it and see what I’ve been missing. A massive set of over 500 cards, most of which are either reprints from the history of the game, or else ported over from M21, with just shy of 80 actual new cards. It’s not just new cards, but a new way to play – the boosters have 20 cards in them, and the idea is that you buy two, shuffle them together, and you play! The packs all have basic lands in them, but it’s kind of a case of just throwing together two random packs and hoping for the best, as there’s no way to plan a deck because of the random nature. It’s really quite fascinating, I have to say!

A MTG version of Smash Up? Interesting. It’s been a while, obviously, since I’ve seen a video with the Professor, but I feel as though any MTG product that he speaks well of must actually be worth looking into!

This blog seems to be running long, so I’m going to close up for now. I’m going to continue to catch myself up with the game that I’ve missed later this week, so stay tuned for more!

May retrospective

Hey everybody,
Well this has soon come round again, hasn’t it? Doesn’t seem like five minutes since the last retrospective blog, does it now?! I’ve not actually been posting all that much on here throughout May, unfortunately, and I doubt that June will be very busy at all, given that we’re eagerly awaiting the birth of baby number two, but I hope that I’ll be able to do something. At any rate – it’s not the time to look forward right now, it’s time to look back!

May has seen the temporary culmination of my Ossiarch Bonereapers army, with three heroes joining the ranks of the rest of the models that I’ve painted up for the army. Arch-Kavalos Zandtos, Vokmortian, and the Mortisan Soulreaper have been a nice way to finish things off, I think!

I’ve got somewhere in the realm of 1400 points painted up now, which is very exciting, though I do think I need to get more basic troops done before I can call this army done. I’m hoping that the new edition of Age of Sigmar will bring us some more models, as I’d really like to get a unit of those archers, if nothing else!

So the start of the month was almost consumed with Age of Sigmar and getting the Bonereapers into shape. I’ve also got some more games of Warhammer Underworlds in, which has been really nice, including with the original Shadespire set.

It’s been really nice getting to play the game, and I’m hoping that I can pick up some of the Direchasm expansions when the world returns to normal and they’re actually available to buy again… fingers crossed!

It’s not all about the Mortal Realms, though, as I’ve also made a return to the grim darkness of the far future. Specifically, with the Sisters!

Sisters of Battle

It’s been far too long, of course, but I’m really glad to have finally made an effort with these ladies. I’ve gone for a custom scheme, though intend to play them as Order of the Sacred Rose – I’ve written at length on my plans for the army, here and here, so please do check those blogs out!

I very nearly had a game of 40k the other week, though my buddy JP had a drunken night and figuring out the rules for a system we’ve barely played was not to be! I’ve got a game of Necromunda lined up with James next weekend, which should be good because I’ve only ever played it solo up to now! So gaming is slowly coming back on the radar, even if it will be curtailed while I look after a newborn again!

Jemma and I have started to watch the MCU again, working our way through Phase One during May. There’s probably a lot more to talk about with these things, although at the same time I feel like there isn’t really a great deal that I can add that has already been said. Two Iron Man films, Thor, Captain America, and the Avengers movie. I do find origin films to get a bit same-y after a while, and this is very true of the MCU, where you get to feel like they’re just giving us yet another superhero who comes into his or her power (actually, I guess they’re just male) and fights the bad guys, gets beaten down, comes back stronger and saves the day.

There is a definite élan to the first Iron Man, which updates the action from Communist China to Afghanistan during the War on Terror superbly well. Indeed, that’s one of the great things we see during the series as a whole, the way that they’re updated and made relevant, almost. For sure, they all exist as pure escapism, and they’re all just great adventures that you can sit back and bask in the effects without needing to really think. But I do find it quite fun to watch the development of Iron Man, the one that started it all.

The Avengers is also an amazing film for the fact it managed to pull together so many A-list stars and not feel like it favoured one too heavily. It was nice that we’d been having hints and shadows of SHIELD since the very beginning, but that film very definitely exists in a SHIELD world. It’s almost ten years old, and I still can’t quite believe they managed to pull it off!

Phase One has got some great stuff in there, though. I think it’s possibly because of the fact that they’re starting off, and so all the big names are being established. Things are definitely getting more niche in some of the post-Infinity Saga stuff that we’re hearing about! There’s a lot to enjoy in this first act, I found myself in particular enjoying Captain America more than I remember, and Jemma was appreciative of Thor as a sort of classic fantasy movie merged with the conspiracy-theory stuff based here on Earth. Things definitely began to get unwieldy after this, although I do think Phase Two managed to keep a fairly decent lid on things until it all seemed to go nuts in Phase Three. But that’ll be for another blog!

Now then. I was up in the attic recently, trying to choose my next book, and I came across a stack of unsorted Magic cards, which seem to have been my last purchase from maybe 12-18 months ago? Feels like it might be longer, though I’m not 100% sure. Anyway, it brought back a lot of memories, and I have been doing a bit of tinkering with some things, in the hope that – as I said before – real-life gaming may well be on the cards once again.

They’re mostly from Ikoria, though some M20 in there as well. I need to get to grips with what I’ve missed since I was last interested in all this stuff. Was it War of the Spark, last time I paid attention? Can’t remember… It’s been a long time, anyway, though seeing these things, and flicking through them, and even the smell – it’s all triggering those fond memories, and it’s got me wanting to build decks again! Let’s hope that it won’t all be for nothing, though…

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that you can expect to see some more Magic blogs here, as I attempt to catch up with what I’ve missed!