#gatecrash

The Primordials have aged so gracefully after commander picked up in popularity, all of them are still good enough to be played as top ends more than a decade later. This was surprisingly forward when commander precons had barely been released two years prior, and the second set of them wasn't even out. A shame they never made a green one, but it'd probably have been broken or something.

Thespian's Stage is not only a generally useful cards in formats with powerful lands, I like it found competitive homes in different packages across formats. In pioneer, it's a Lotus Field. But of course its most fun interaction happens in eternal formats.

The flavor of actors on stage depicting an eldritch entity so well it actually ends up summoning it and destroying the very stage that brought it about is funny, and I could see that being the plot of a book somewhere. Dark Depths+Thespian Stage is the whole 1+1=20 they warn you about in math class.

Cipher is a cool mechanic and Stolen Identity does it really well, in part because you can encode it onto the same creature it makes, or something you already had that can get in for damage to get another copy immediately! I do agree the design space for it is very small, it's a mechanic that gets busted easily if you aren't very careful with it. But I still like what few Cipher cards we already have.

Evolve was an interesting mechanic for the Simic, and it gave us what still is some of the best +1/+1 counter support in the game! An excellent job after Graft's... Less excellent... First showing for the Simic. It becoming harder to do as the game goes on but still synergizing with counters makes it a pretty good mechanic at self-balancing.

These two get a mention even if they break everything. Despite it not being as much of a puzzle as it once were, they do demonstrate pretty well how deep a game Magic can be. If you're not familiar with them, you're probably only seeing the draft chaff they were intended to be.

These guys are the linchpin of the current strongest deck in legacy, the most broken of the relatively supported competitive formats. A deck that has been making waves since they were printed a decade ago. How? Well, you see, you mill cards from a player until you find a land in their deck. If they happen to not have a land in their deck, you finish their deck off, of course, but that'll basically never happen unless they're almost dead, right? Every magic deck has lands in it! But what if a deck had zero lands in it from the start? That'd be ridiculous, there's no way that'd work! Even if somehow they could make milling their entire deck an advantage, it'd never-

Ah.

It turns out getting all your cards exactly where you want them is pretty good, and it doesn't matter much if that's your hand, your graveyard, your battlefield, or, as Thassa's Oracle has demonstrated many times, even exile.

The deck was a pretty fun and quirky thing to exist for years, and competitive enough to not be a joke, using free artifacts and spells that make mana to set up their win as early as turn one. After all, they only need four mana to do it. Now, it has lost a lot of its magic, because the deck without lands can and do play lands. Thanks to MDFC lands that don't count as lands while in the deck, the deck is much less spicy now. A bit sad, but still a neat thing to note.

When the card starts with "Draw your entire deck", you know you're in for a ride. Turns out all that fuss with getting your deck in your graveyard? Well, what about putting it all in your hand instead! You just need to get to cast a 12-mana spell, that's it!

It's an iconic card, and for a good reason!

As I've said before, I love activated abilities on creatures. What about that, but again! Sadly, it's becoming a bit clunky to use as even commander gets more efficient, 5 mana is a lot to invest before seeing any return, but it's still good for combos, and I sure am still riding that train in my Bracket 4 dedicated combo deck.

I've mentioned before I like Master Biomancer effects, and that extends to Master Biomancer itself! A fun card with amazing art, I love the gameplay of it being open to buffing the Biomancer themself.

I wasn't playing Standard at the time, but Nightveil Specter was a big player there, particularly once Devotion became relevant and it contributed three to both mono blue and mono black devotion decks. I include it here because Nightveil Specter was the one that really kicked off the ability to steal stuff from opposing decks and cast it later. There's a few prior cards doing it, like Shared Fate, but Nightveil Specter seeing play really started the ball rolling on it being a normal ability, and one in black. I love playing with my opponents card with this kind of ability, because it ensures every game is different and I get to play with different cards every time. I owe Nightveil Specter thanks for that, and it gets a place here.

Aetherize leads to a lot of fun moments. When it isn't expected and catches someone off-guard, it's pretty great! When it is expected, people might try to play around it... Whether you have it in hand or you're just bluffing it. Settle the Wreckage before Settle the Wreckage, I'm glad Aetherize made its way into Foundations.

Soul Ransom is a fun variation on a control magic. Usually not worth playing because it gives opponents the option of what's least bad for them, and they can wrest control of the thing from you at instant-speed. Still, going up 4 cards in advantage is pretty great.

Gideon is only here because I make custom cards sometimes. He's great because I can use him as an excuse that all that text I'm cramming on a planeswalker is fine because Gideon did it worse. Seriously, a single ability taking 7 lines of text on a planeswalker?! Nobody else has done it that way since, particularly not as one of three different loyalty abilities.

Unexpected Results is a fun card. A bad one, for sure, but who doesn't love a little blind gambling? And if you miss completely, well, it offers you a double-or-nothing, how kind of it, you can spend more mana gambling!

A lot of blue cards in this post, uh. Well, I pick what I pick and some other sets have been unbalanced towards other colors.

It’s weird and creepy, yeah.

But I’ve always found it MUCH worse when people do it at funerals.

Who DOES that?!

I don’t care if you like the misery! That’s no excuse!

No!

A fan art I drew of Scrap from Gatecrash. I actually drew this a year or two ago when Jazza, Gatecrash's lead creator, announced it on his gaming channel, TabletopTime.

I loved the concept, and decided to draw it. Hope yall like it!

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Today's Date is May 16th and today's card is Totally Lost!

Fun Fact of the Day: This was the first card depicting renowned little guy Fblthp! On the other hand his most recent appearance was in Outlaws of Thunder Junction as 'Fblthp, Lost on the Range'!

[ID This card depicts an especially tiny green humanoid creature with one eye trying to walk down a busy street. He is struggling to not be stepped on by any of the sea of people among him and this is making him visibly terrified.

Totally Lost is an Instant that costs 4 colorless mana and 1 Blue mana. It is a Common.

Its rules text reads "Put target nonland permanent on top of its owner's library."

Its flavor text reads "Fblthp had always hated crowds."

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Cool - Merciless Eviction

“I once saw the Obzedat moved to action. Since that day, I’ve been thankful that they’re mainly lazy, and dead.” —Aurelia, to Gideon Jura