News: Announcement Day
Big news day over at the mothership, with several developments impacting the world of Preconstructed Magic.
I am disappointed and concerned about the Intro Packs going away. There are two upsides to that, though. First, it’s cheaper to collect them, so I can swing that money over towards completing my collection and sleeving/archiving everything. Second, with only two decks to review per set instead of five, I’ll have extra time to devote to reviewing Magic’s substantial back catalogue. It’s a long history, and we’ve a long way to go!
I’ll have a full reaction piece going up next week on Gathering Magic.
On an unrelated note, you may be wondering where all of the “Part 2’s” of the deck reviews have gone lately. My family battled a stomach bug that laid us low, then Phil moved house, so I’ve just been doing Part 1’s recently. But fear not, we’re meeting up tomorrow and you’ll start to see some Part 2’s rolling out very soon!
-Jay
Ertai's Lament 
I kind of understand phasing out Intro Packs, but I’m not sure if the new Planeswalker Packs are any better, ESPECIALLY if they’re designing the planeswalkers to be competitively irrelevant.
It seems rather arbitrary.
Agree. Case to be made that Intro Packs were “bad,” though what’s often confused with “bad” for veteran players is “good” for newer players. I’d much rather have seen a retuning of the Intro Pack model, or better yet using Planeswalker Decks to replace the Event Decks that went away. Thanks for the comment!
The duel decks usually contain some very nice cards fit for a commander deck and these will probably be no different. Looking forward to them in any case. Since I only own the original Nissa Revane planeswalker, I’m hoping it’ll be Worldwaker, but the one from Oath of the Gatewatch is nice as well. I don’t think it’ll be the transform card though since there’s no equivalent for Ob Nixilis.
Regarding the updates on the “part 2’s”, take your time. Family is always more important. Especially compared to a cardgame 😉
Thanks! It’s a balance I’m still figuring out. It’s a whole different world now than when I took my hiatus, a lot more things to juggle. Not sure on Nissa, I think someone pointed out that she “wakens Elementals” or something, which offers some clue…
When I read about the new planeswalkers decks, I feared Duel Decks were dead. I never really picked up intor packs, many packs, or all that jazz. I was always Duel Decks, Planechase, and the such. Picked up some singles if I needed them to flush out a duel deck or something. This sounds interesting. A good way to get the fun walkers.
I didn’t read the full article, but I’d wager this was to push the story more to the forefront. 5 random decks vs 2 around 2 walkers involved in the goings on.
On the DD news, yay new decks announced at last. Looks like its going to be fun.
4 color commander decks? That’s going to be interesting. @-@
At least those don’t seem to be going anywhere! We’re down a number of precons per year now, so I’d hope they find a few more ‘one-shot’ or special product releases (beyond just Commander Commander Commander) to help give some variety! Still, it’s going to let me catch up on reviewing some of the back catalogue, so there’s always that
It seems to me that Magic has had problems acquiring new players recently, therefore the change in strategy. I don´t mind, having to buy just two intro decks per expansion instead of five is cheaper. There are just two problems I see: first, the new packs contain no rares at all from the set(s) they highlight, and second, with two two-colour decks, one colour will be completely unrepresented.
Yep, and it goes beyond that. Imagine sets like Khans of Tarkir or Return to Ravnica. The number 5 has a lot of significance in MTG, I think this restricts the quality of what we’ll see. Next week’s piece for Gathering Magic will be a full op-ed on this. Thanks for the comment!
Without knowing the contents, there might be a chance that there will be rares from the set in addition to the exclusive rares, but if there isn’t, I’d probably be upset, and just pretend that any set after Eldritch Moon doesn’t exist.
Man, if they say that Magic Duels is the way for new players to start, could you imagine how many more new players they could get if they released Magic Duels on PS4? Heck, they’d get even more new players if they released Magic Duels on 360 and PS3 as well. I know I don’t have PS4 or Xbox One, but thank goodness I have a PC capable of playing Magic Duels.
There’s also that Nintendo crowd. Forget about those people. Not like the Wii U was a popular system anyway.
What a joke. They still couldn’t get the game working on a PS4, and it has been almost a year after it was released.
To my sorrow, it’s also not on Android. I have to play it on my iPhone instead of my tablet, so you can guess how often I choose to play it. To be fair, it also fights for my attention with Magic Puzzle Quest, which I really enjoy.