Unicorn Tribal

Ahhh nice

One of the slew of random products Wizards is scattershotting out is a set of “guild kits” which are guild-themed preconstructed decks. Nothing to write home about really, but!! the Izzet one has Niv Firemind in it - not only with his awesome original flavour text, but also with new alternate art. It’s a lot different than his past iterations... depicted in his fullbodied glory with Ravnica sprawled out behind him in the background... pretty sweet

I kinda have a thing for collecting Niv-Mizzets... why? I dunno, maybe because he’s fucking AWESOME. Anyway that’s pretty cool...

Good old Hurricane 😏

...

Because five guilds were falling to Bolas and we wanted the two sets leading up to the event set to feel as if things are getting worse on Ravnica, we wanted the first set to have two Bolas-leaning guilds and the second set to have three. That way the progression felt as if Bolas is gaining in power. 

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Just idly pondering which guilds next set seem the most likely to be Bolased up. I think it’s obvious that Azorius will be, since they killed off Isperia ( 😡 ) to make room for someone else to take over. (I wonder who that might be? I hope it’s not Dovin Baan, he definitely fits the requirement but he’s boring as fuck... though i’m pretty sure whoever they assign will be boring since you just can’t fill a sphinx’s shoes... I can’t think of any other W/U morally grey planeswalkers. Tezzeret seems like a remote possibility, but... eh, he seems a little too bad to gain the allegiance of Azorius :P)

Apparently, according to some comment spat down by a rando somewhere in the dank depths of the internet, Rakdos got his brain fried, but he’s still around. Rakdos the guild definitely seems like one that would be ripe for Bolasing out... seems likely imo, just for flavour, colour alignment, and opportunity reasons.

Flavourwise i think the least likely guild for Bolas to get his claws in would be Gruul. Then again, they already have a planeswalker in Domri... i don’t know what Domri’s up to but Bolas could easily enthrall him probably.

I don’t know why i’m rambling on about this anymore, now that i’ve gotten this far. Other than Azorius being the obvious choice it seems like the other two guilds under Bolas’s sway are pretty up in the air... Orzhov seems very Bolasian even without any influence, but that could just as easily be a reason for it to not be :P Simic? Who knows. What do fish even do.

Also where did Niv Mizzet go... i hope he comes back in the 3rd set (at least in the story since it’s unlikely it’d be in a card) and gives Ral a good thrashing and a brain-melt for being so insolent.

I would be very okay with it if Niv’s gone because he planeswalked

I wonder if i should open this

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/unbowed-part-1-2018-08-29

Liked this a lot more than i thought i would... maybe because of how strongly i could identify with how she was feeling throughout and her completely justified ...reaction xD The writing is really good too. Magic stories have as wide a spectrum of quality in their writing as they do authors writing them, but I’d say Cassandra Khaw is one of the good ones. I think i discovered like... 4 new words? hah.

I have no idea why Vivien is on Ixalan in the vampire city, but i assume there must be a reason for choosing this event/location/character to commit to lit.

YES i love her!

Not sure what, if anything, i’ll do with her… sphinx tribal is tempting since Unesh was a bit disappointing as a general (not for his abilities, which were awesome, but for being locked into playing mono-blue) but unfortunately a lot of the good sphinges don’t take advantage of Yennett’s free casting ability. 25 of the 45 sphinges that exist have odd CMCs (24 of the 43 if you exclude Petra Sphinx for being bad/nonflying and Arjun for being the sole unusable sphinx outside of esper colours) and that might be enough for tribal, but so many of the good ones are 6 :/

There are two other very obvious features that they have too... the printing pattern is a lot different, and the easiest thing of all to spot is that the top of the “A” in MAGIC on the back is dark, whereas it’s light on every other card.

So i went through all the other 4th edition cards i have and found 3 more... Karma, Weakness, and Red Elemental Blast.

They’re very ugly cards, as far as printing goes, even moreso than regular 4th Edition. But i guess it’s neat having a few cards that were supposed to’ve been destroyed and never released.