This is nice. Don't expect to be by nights DA stream from because you'll
mind side Hey, everybody, welcome back to another Authors and Dragons side quest
the thing we do when we're not running around playing D and D badly,
And tonight it's another Hartness does interviews with his friends because he didn't want to
play jackbox games. So I've brought on a couple of subject matter experts for
what we're going to talk about tonight. And what we're going to talk about
is the most hyped pile of crap in the history of magic, the gathering
and here to talk to us about that. And I'm gonna let them handle
their own intros because I lost my notes. So first we've got Landon Crispins
and Landon tell of the world who you are and where they can find your
other work. Sure, landon Crispins. I am a writer for TCG player
Infinite, so if you get a TCG player dot infinite dot com, you
can find my articles on Commander, MTG, finance, and other great topics
on magic. And my articles are usually up every Tuesday each month, so
check them out. One is live today, which happens to be my hundredth
article exclusively for TGG player infinite, so at quite a milestone achievement. I've
been writing for them for about three years. That's fantastic, dude. And
Lincoln, who are you? I'm Lincoln obviously, yeah, but I I
am the creator of top decked, the essential magic app, the only magic
app you need, and I've been doing that for about seven years now,
so we've got a lot of people using it at this point. I can
confirm because I'm one of them. But essentially, it's an app for building
decks, collecting cards, basically everything you need to do for magic. Yeah,
you could even read Blanden's articles, and you can track your life totals
during games. You can keep track of your collection, make up your I
use it a lot for my wish list for what I want to buy and
trade for, so that's what I listen. If I listed features for the
app, we would be here all night, maybe in a future episode if
this one gets a lot of use. But also because then I would know
what all the features were. Finally from the app that I've been a subscriber
for for years and that and that's because I'm slack and I use it for
the two things I need. But since we're talking about magic the gathering collections
and magic the gathering finance landon, why don't you tell everybody what Wizards of
the Coast has done with this silliness. Certainly they have created a one of
one version of the ring that everybody wants in the whole wide world, to
the point where there is a bounty offer of over two million dollars from a
company that will fly you overseas, give you PAYAA and two million dollars if
you open the ring within essentially the next couple of weeks. But there are
other people that have offered a million dollars and an other crazy amounts of money
for possibly the most expensive trading card ever printed from a collectibles standpoint, in
at least the modern era of time. There are I'm sure some very old
baseball cards that might be competitive with that, but from a modern era printed
collectible in the last decades of our existence, it's quite insane and wild,
and people are very very excited about trying to open it. I'm personally here
for the offer to throw it in a volcano. There was a guy,
didn't he offer like he'd give you half a million dollars and go with you
to throw it in a volcano. Yeah, because that's what should happen.
I mean, come on, this is how it's supposed to end. It's
supposed to go into the fire. I would not throw mine into the volcano.
I would be on a plane to Spain making requests for Paea after I
emailed the After I emailed the very few rich people I know who play magic,
because maybe they'll preempt but this is part of their universes beyond program where
they bring in other intellectual property into magic, the gathering. A lot of
magic players have strong opinions about this whole thing, and Lincoln, are you
one of those? Yes? Do you want the short answer the long answer?
They're both just we just started, so you can go as long as
you like. We're not running tight on time. I'll start with this.
I'll just say that I think that what they've done with the product is fantastic
from a game development standpoint. I think they're doing really interesting things with the
cards. I just don't want Tolkien in my collectible card game, like there
should be a Tolkien collectible card game. I think it's cool, and I
think the way they've done this in the past has worked for me where they
have universes within the non intellectual property version of the cards, and that's great
because to me, it lets people get the character of the you know,
the theme or the lore that they want, while still having an alternative if
you want this to stay magic. I mean, I grew up with magic.
I've been doing this since nineteen ninety three, and I like Magic.
I like Tolkien too, but I don't want them to be together to the
point where I can't separate them. So no, peanut butter in your chocolate
is what you're saying you like them. It's a horrible, horrible combination land
and what do you think about universes beyond? So I liked they've done for
context Warhammer forty thousand as well. That was a Commander only product. Difference
here with the lower of the range product is it's legal and modern, which
is a very popular format within the game of match. With the gathering um
both are legal and legacy, so I won't touch on that, but it
is a little odd that you can play a modern format tournament or a game
and kill somebody with the one ring and other cards and your deck, you
know, to what Lincoln's point is keeping them separate in like Commander, where
you can choose to include or not include them in your deck. But having
you know, Gandalf and next to Tourmagorf is a little a little odd from
a flavor perspective. I do agree with Lincoln. I think the greater scope
of Magic players are excited about it and don't seem to mind the flavor crossover,
but I think enfranchise players and I would consider myself one two. It
is a little odd that that is a possibility, and you know, breaking
format barriers I think is the odd part of it. Yeah, I think
I will probably wouldn't have much issue with it if it I wouldn't mind if
if the universe is beyond stuff was only a Commander product, something that wasn't
available for any competitive format. Not to say that Wizards supports legacy and vintage
anymore anyway, because they don't really, but having the stuff bleed over into
the core of magic, it's a little ikey. I like the ree skin
kind of things, like what they did with the Boxtoppers. They picked thirty
land and artifacts and gave them new art and new names, but they're still
the same thing. So there's one where you can choose to use this version
of sort of Heart and Home or the Lord of the Rings version of sort
of Heart Home, and you're not locked into the Tolkien printing, right,
And I think that that's what I was alluding to with the universes within.
You know, I think they've done a great job. I mean, even
the Transformers, right, we've had robots in Magic now and I thought that
was, you know, cute. I guess it's not for me, but
they provided you the option to play with cards that weren't Transformers, and I
think that's that's what I would like to see them continue doing. I know
I'm probably the minority, older and franchise player, but I think it leaves
the door open to more people to have the option, and I think that
I think that what it does is it's using the other intellectual property, the
other IP to draw new fans in. And now they're getting mainstream press coverage
for the first time in a long time for Magic, the gathering good mainstream
coverage. Yes, yes, because there's a whole bunch of people who would
very much like to open one of these with a little one of one right
here. So they're buying this stuff and then They're like, well, these
are pretty what do I do with them? Because if you don't get the
one of one, then you have a whole bunch of magic cards, and
then it had better be a game. I didn't even think about non magic
players opening it just for the lottery ticket aspect. Oh yeah, I mean
when they announced this that they were doing this, I said, oh,
oh my god, this is both genius and I hate it. But it's
brilliant. And that just proves it, you know, like the marketing is
working. Yeah, and the volume and speed with which this product is moved
moving off the shelves is ridiculous. I bought this today. This is the
This is the Lord of the Rings bundle. It comes with twenty non foil
basic lands, twenty foil basic lands, a special D, a special D
twenty that has sequential numberings so you can use it to spin down your life
total. It's got a set of four of these scene cards that go together
to make a panorama, the one ring being one of them. And then
it's got eight booster packs. So this is the expensive part. Now TCG
players the largest magic marketplace in the world. I mean, yeah, more
or less, yeah, most most certainly the North America. Definitely the largest
in the world. Private company, can't can't tell you for sure, but
likely it's certainly the most the largest, the largest relevant one to us because
we can't really buy on card Market or whatever or whatever they use as a
TCG player version in Asia, they're usually hundreds, if not thousands of copies
of any magic product on TCG player. When I went to look for a
bundle, and these are the things that usually you're tripping over in game stores
because they're a little more expensive than you wouldn't pay for the number of set
boosters. You don't necessarily if you're an enfranchised player, you probably don't buy
these very often because aside from the box being cool, you're not really getting
a whole lot out of it. There were nine listings and most of them
were one of us. There was one shop that had four listed, so
there were fewer than twenty of these available for sale this afternoon. That's nuts.
Did you refresh the page and seem how many had sold in the last
ten seconds between many view I probably should have, because that would have made
me decide whether or not to try and break them apart and sell the singles
or sell the things sealed, and I did break them apart and sell the
singles. This one's not sold. This one I'm keeping because I want one
to play with. The one I put the one I listed, I listed
at fifty three dollars. That's a lot of money for one piece of cardboard.
And it's a ridiculous amount of money when you think about the fact that
there's one of these in every one of these. It's in all of them,
So why the hell is this worth fifty bucks? It's not. I
listed it for fifty three dollars and it was online for less than five minutes
before it sold. Well, what does Landon think about that? Do you
think it'll stay fifty dollars in the short term yes, and the long term
no, because I believe Wizards can print packs through twenty twenty five per their
agreement with Licensing, and it's going to end up like Modern Horizons two for
those who know about it, where literally I think they just stopped printing it
and it came out two years ago. So in the short term yes,
but at some point there has to be an inflection where a sixty sixty five
dollars bundle with a fifty five dollars card in it doesn't make sense. And
at some point it has to equal sixty five dollars, and right now it's
fifty five. And if you think that eight set boosters is worth ten dollars,
no, they're worth more than ten dollars. So at some point when
the demand and supply become a bit equalized, which is not going to be
anytime in the next month or two, probably a little longer. Yes,
I think it's that being able to just open bundles and flip them for a
profit is going to balance out. But it may be fourth quarter Christmas.
I can't tell you, but they are reprinting holiday bundles, additional collector boosters
that don't have the one of one ring. There is more product to come
in the pipeline, and you are going to see card prices drop. And
if the whole sets were zero and the one rings worth sixty dollars, then
I eat my words. But something has to equalize. Yeah, I mean
Nasgal. They printed the Nasgol because you need the ring race right, Well,
they tweaked the rules of magic to say you can have up to nine
in your deck. And I love that flavor and I like that they've done
it, and it's not the first time they've done it. They did it
with seven dwarves to where you can have seven, So they did it with
a bunch of things that you can have any numb But Nasgal's an uncommon and
they're selling for eight to ten dollars a piece for an uncommon that is getting
opened like nobody's business. That just feels insane. It is kind of insane.
It's considered like the mythic uncommon. And but what's driving it is that
you can play nine of them in a deck, in a modern deck,
in a legacy deck, in a commander deck. And guess what, there's
nine pieces of art that people have to collect. And that's the kicker.
There's nine pieces of art smart that have equal rarity. So yeah, you
can pull an uncommon nascal, but guess what, pulling on the specific one
of the nine is way harder than pulling a mythic rare out of a pack
o. Let me just say that, do you think there's a world where
we see nasgal worth more than the one ring because of rarity issues? It
isn't. It is a perplexing issue that you're more likely to hold a Wine
Raying than a specific Nasgal. I would say, I did not do the
math, but I think that that's probably correct. But I would say the
answer to that is probably I'm gonna say no with the stipulation that not everybody
wants to collect nine nasgal. Yeah, that makes sense, and that's and
that's my But everybody wants oh Raying in their collection, including us talking right
now. For the record, I want nine nasgal. But and I've already
sold five because I don't believe that an uncommon in a in an in print
set can be worth eight or nine dollars, So I may as well take
take my win now. But this card's also good, is it? Though?
Yeah, it is good. I can't deny that I want it to
be bad. Objectively, in certain situations or formats where you have four of
them, it is probably quite could I mean, Okay, So this is
the point at which if we were on a real magic podcast, we would
have all kinds of stuff where the image comes up and all that. But
this is not a magic podcast. So I'm going to read this ship to
you. It's an artifact. It costs four to cast, so it costs
four amount. It is legendary, which means you can only have one on
the battlefield at a time. And here's what it says. It is indestructible.
When the One Ring enters the battlefield, if you cast it, you
gain protection from everything until you're next turn. That means you can't be targeted
by anything, and you will take no creature based damage and spell based damage
you won't take. You can still life, You can still still the game,
yes, and you can still Yeah, you can still lose life.
You can still get milled out if it's an all players thing, so you
can still be put in a position to where you will lose the game.
But it's far more likely that if your opponent is trying to win and you
flash and you find some way to put this onto the battlefield at instant speed,
it's probably a one v one game as soon as because your opponent's not
probably not winning that turn. Yeah, the One Ring does not have flash,
which is probably a good thing. Although there are thirty eight cards that
do have flash. Actually, sorry, not as many as thirty eight.
There are some doubles are multiple versions of cards, but there are a lot
of cards with flash in this set. Yeah, there are now at the
beginning of your upkeep, you lose one life for each burden counter on the
ring. Great flavor, because the ring has a cost to carrying it around.
You tap this, put a burden counter on it, and you draw
a card for each burden counter on it. So you pay four and tap
it to draw one card. If you don't have another way to cheat untapping
and untapping. If all you can do is untap at once per turn,
your next turn, you tap it and you draw two cards. You've paid,
so you've paid one life at this point for two cards. Meanwhile,
you can't take damage, so you're just sitting back. So if you've got
some way to get this onto the battlefield and tap it and untap it,
especially if you then have a way to sacrifice it before your next upkeep,
who cares if you put twenty burden counters on it? If you're not gonna
if you're gonna win that turn, who cares a card? Mind Ever Matter
comes to mind might have just rebuilt my Mind over Matter Volo deck. Yeah,
and for those who don't know what mind ever Matter does. It is
a enchantment that costs four blue and I think two or three to cast and
all it says is discarded card from your hand to tap or untapped target permanent.
So with the one ring, that is an infinite draw cards, sort
of infinite draw cards as long as you have cards in your deck, yep,
and you can just go from there. So you tap it, you
draw one, you immediately throw that card away and untap it, tap it,
draw two. You only have to throw one of those cards away to
untap it. Hen now Lincoln has told the universe exactly why I wanted to
make sure I kept one of these, because it does go infinite with and
it wins you the game with Labman, Fossils, Oracle Jace, Wielder of
Mysteries, any of those effects that if you try to draw and can't you
win. Oh, I look forward to losing to you in a couple of
weeks. Your lips to my deck's ears, buddy Land, And what do
you think about this? What do you think about this card? And modern
So if I must spell out for you, it's pretty busted. And here's
why. So turn four you're playing an artifact, right, and normally it's
like I just took my whole turn to play an artifact to draw me a
card and that's pretty bad and modern. But to what Lincoln pointed out,
you really can't get hurt for a turn. You have protection from everything,
so you're basically playing it and time walking your opponent. Sure they can play
a land, they can play a creature, they can play a spell,
but they can't hurt you. So it's not that much of a cost to
play it when you get a free turn out of it from being put behind
in a sense. I mean, yes, they can advance their board state,
but the protection is quite valuable for a turn. Then you and you
get a card, then you untap right and you get another card, and
you lose one life. Okay, so you get two cards and a time
walk pseudo on your opponent for four man of any color okay, not to
mention, sorry, three cards. Not to mention, yes, three cards
because because it has a bird encounter, sorry, three cards, and not
to mention, it's indestructible, so they can't really remove it very easily.
So then on that turn you can you know, tap it again and as
Lincoln said, and get two cards. So you have three cards over two
turns and you were protected. That's that's not even that's the floor okay,
and he didn't spend any more manner than four. So on your next turn,
assuming you've now advanced your board state, you get hit for two life
and you draw three cards. So you've drawn six cards off the cost of
three life over three turns. That's insane. That's absolutely insane. And that's
and that in the card advantage off of something that opponent really can't stop,
right, you have to exile it. There's not a lot of cards that
do that. They did print a common in the new set that people are
now thinking about syboarding that that is a way to remove it. But I'm
replacing I'm replacing a braid with that in any deck that I run a braid
in. It's absolutely crazy in a mid range deck or a deck strategy that
supports going long and not being very aggressive. So yeah, I think it's
pretty crazy. And all you have to do to like not take more life,
it's just play another one. Oh, I just protected myself again from
my opponent killing me, and now I control another one three or six cards
over the next couple of turns. It's that's that's where it's crazy. The
downside is far less detrimental than the amount of cards you can draw off of
it, and the fact that your opponent just can't touch it. So that's
why I think it's been blowing up in modern and decks that can support it
and will likely continue to because you can just bury your opponent in card advantage.
And that's that's one of the essential strategies of magic is the person draws
miss cards has a good chance of winning. So which does not explain my
win percentage With the number of cards I draw in decks, I I at
least usually win that bit. Yeah, I'll add onto that and say,
as a control player, I like the control strategy. I like to shut
down what my opponent's doing. This is the control player's dream, right.
It's a card that says, I draw more stuff to stop my opponent and
I can't die, which is the biggest threat to a control deck. Is
like getting overwhelmed by stuff that's taken away your life and just being able to
say, to advance that far without threat of dying is incredible. It's everything
I control deck wants to do. Yeah, I mean, if I'm running
a control deck, I'm gonna I'm gonna try and go nuts with this in
Teleportation Circle because then I'm losing. I'm only going to get to draw one
extra card, but I'm invulnerable to everything else. Yeah, and that's I
mean. I think this card is broken in more than just control. I
think the reason it's so busted is like combo decks can use this the same
way that a control deck can. It's just good and everything for the most
part. I mean some maybe like tempo based, low manna profile decks aside,
I feel like this can slot into pretty much anything. Now, what
else from the set is good? What else is seeing play? Because from
a flavor standpoint and from a fantasy book nerds standpoint, I am loving the
idea of being able to build a Bilbo Baggins Commander deck because the Bilbo Baggins
card is white, green, black, does some stuff, but has an
ability to go through your deck, pull out every creature, poop it onto
the board in one shot. If you have one hundred and eleven life,
Oh that's what the first part is. If you were to gain life,
you gain that much life plus one, so you build yourself a little life
gained pillow fort deck and then poop Hi, I'm at one hundred and eleven
life, which is not that hard to get to in Commander. And that's
Bilbo retired Burglar. I believe, no, that's the other one. It's
just Bilbo Baggins. I think Retired Burglar is the blue Red got it.
I was a little confused by Bilbo covering like almost all of the color pine,
Like, come on, bro, you got to make sure you're playing
Bilbo's ring while you're at it. Yeah, and and so many swords,
all the swords. Sting looks pretty good. Sting actually looks really gross.
The one that has my eye is a mythral coat. The flash Indestructible equips
when it comes out to the battlefield. Yeah, and it's a three three
yeah yeah, Yeah, I like that one. Um also really pretty.
Yeah. I think the fact that that card is indestructible itself and gives indestructible
it's pretty wild at flash speed. I mean that's a blowout waiting to happen.
Yes, It's like they looked and said, hmmm, you know,
dark steel plate should cost half and be way easier to put onto a creature.
Oh and let's make it a surprise when you do it. Yeah,
we all need to equip cost Let's just make it happen. Yeah. I
mean, I'm like, Guy's dark steel plate was fine, but this is
better. Yeah. So I'm happy to go go first with the question of
what's getting played, Yeah, because you probably have some stats for that.
I do, actually, and I prepared some for our little hang out here.
I did an analysis of sample hands from top decked simulator. For those
of you who are not familiar with top decked, it has a simulator where
you can play test your decks, see how they run over the course of
a few turns. You can actually sort of go head to head with your
own decks and see how they play off against each other, and all of
the stats from that go into the fancy top deck database. And the top
deck database says that the cards that are being kept in opening hands the most
from the new set in order. Actually, i'll do the list in a
second. I'll give you a little bit more about how I made these statistics
or did the analysis. But I offset the cards that were kept in hands
with the cards that were Mulligant as well, so we don't just see like
a biased result. I'm taking all the cards that were kept and subtracting all
of the cards that were also tossed back. So these are the cards that
were kept more, these are the cards that people want to see in their
opening hands. And I don't know if that means they're actually good in an
opening hands, but it's what people are experimenting with, it's what they want
to see. So the cards people are interested in is what I'm going to
take out of that. And number one, which is probably to no one's
surprise, is Orkish Bowmasters, which is that card's insane, incredibly pushed as
a two drop. It costs one black, one colorless, has flash again
and when it enters the battlefield, and whenever an opponent draws a card that
was not drawn for the first time in their draws step, it is going
to deal with damage to anything and make a big work, actually a little
work, but the more they do that, the orc gets bigger. And
this card is seeing play in every format that it's legal in. Yeah,
card's not. Yeah, maybe I have one going into my shieldred deck.
Into more details on these later, I'll just list a few and we can.
I'll let you guys take it from there, but we have Orchest Bomasters
in number one place, Delighted Halfling. Number two Nasagal in number three,
which I was actually a little surprised to see, and then generous ent march
from the Black Gates Boromere Warden of the Tower, and then in seventh place
the one Ring. Interesting. I've been hearing a lot about Boromere, that
boromer and it's like every member of the Fellowship, every good guy and bad
guy, got like three different cards. So this is a mythic Boromere.
And I've been hearing a lot about that on CDH podcasts for how great it
they think it's going to be in like Oneota stacks decks because Boromere is also
a human and Oneota can go get humans. So and there's it's it's got
a Stacks effect where if your opponent, if an opponent casts a spell that
doesn't spend Manna, counter the spells, so force of will, manacrypt Jeweled
Lotus, force of Negation, some of the new elementals, the endurances and
the evoke elementals. Yeah, subtlety and all of those, um, deadly,
rolic, deflecting, swat, fierce car all of those, and a
lot of these um, a lot of these are cards we see all the
time. I mean, Lincoln, how many times do you think you've cast
Force of Will in your life? I couldn't tell you. I've played it
almost every deck that Yeah, played it at least six times last night.
Yeah, I believe it because you were playing Legacy and there's no way you
were playing a Legacy deck that didn't have Force of Will in it. It
happens occasionally. I'm not proud of it. Well Landon, tell us about
delighted haffling and why do people care? The card is also pretty insane,
maybe not orchest Bomaster level, but it's a one two for one green that
taps for colorless, so that's not that outstanding. Being a one two does
matter in some formats, though, so the extra toughness can survive a little
bit more than than a one one, butters it does survive a paper Bomasters
at least the first draw. Yeah, um, but the other The real
kicker on the card is you can tap it for a man of any color
to cast a legendary spell, and that legendary spell cannot be countered. That's
that is the reason why the card is so good, and there are lots
of legendary spells, not just legendary creatures, but the one ring cannot be
countered anymore. What you mean, I can't counter this indestructible cards all insane
engine I haven't even thought of that. Nope, you can't, not with
the Delighted Hermit and so legendary artifacts. There are legendary um spells in the
game. There's one a black removal spell in the in the new set,
for example. So there are legendary things that aren't that are there are in
other formats other than creatures. And yeah, every plane exactly, every plane's
walker. So yes, there's a lot of cards. And green already has
fixing, is already like a great color to to to splash. But like
you don't even need to run mana of other colors if you can just cast
it uncountable off this card for that pip, you know. So yeah,
it's seeing immediate play next to Orchestra Bomasters index, might I add, which
is pretty wild. Um. Yeah, so you know, y'all, y'all
muff evolution and moderns running both um, and I think there's and and legacy
of course is playing both cards as well and different decks. Uh so are
the set's been out very short time and they're winning tournaments both cards and decks
are winning tournaments on top of the One Ring, which also is winning tournaments.
So it's pretty wild. Yeah, so it's a lot of hermit is
up there, certainly in the top three, no question. Looking, I
heard a lot of people before this set came out talking about how it didn't
feel like it was powerful enough for a modern set, and yet it's had
an immediate impact on competitive play. Yeah, I think that's a fair statement.
Most of us, I would say, didn't think the set was gonna
be anything more than a Commander blip on the radar, and man, it
has definitely shown its colors on some cards. You know, a lot of
the set is not you know, very constructive playable, but you have already
just mentioned you know, Boomer certainly Delighted Orchish Bowmasters, the One Ring.
I mean, you know, not everything that has has cards of that power
level in a sense of play. But like, until people got their hands
on it, we just we just didn't know. Yeah, not every set
is Modern Horizons too or first Commander Legends. And I have to admit,
I'll be totally honest, I was so upset about the inectual property situation that
I did not look at this set for a long time, but I have
been getting into it. And you know, even some of the stranger cards
that I would never have guessed would see competitive play or seeing play in legacy.
The n one that you talked about, which one was that generous N
because that's not because the only one I thought would that would be anything would
be fang Borne, the Big Tree folk Commander. Well, what the hell
is generous? Am D so generous? And I don't think it's really seeing
play in legacy, but it isn't modern And this is it's a six man
of five seven with every it's green one green six man five seven reach,
and when it enters the battlefield, you create a food token, which is
in itself, you know, not a great card. Right, We're still
firmly in the who Cares territory. Yeah. The part that's interesting is that
it has forest cycling, so you're seeing decks that play Living End and Cascade
run this, and I think there's a red one as well to get the
lands out of their deck before they play their Cascade and guarantee hit. Huh,
they're Living End and then they get a five seven with reach that makes
food tokens back out of their graveyard. Interesting, huh, So that's why
that card is getting played. On the one hand, it's kind of like
a green ponder or pre ordain getting stuff out of the way so you can
draw good stuff. But then it also is it's also a little bit like
victimize and reanimate, where you're putting something into your yard and then almost immediately
getting it back out onto the battlefield. And look, you crap out of
five to seven. That's especially in a sixty card format. Yeah, and
it's not even bad if you, you know, have already gotten all the
lands that are your deck because you're just filling up your graveyard for living in
again. Wow. And and I also it's a forest cycling, so that
doesn't mean like a basic forest. That means a forest. And I think
that's a tomb breeding pool. Triomes Bayous and the Red Ones is essentially the
same, but a six five trampoler with mountains so you can find a mountain.
As Lincoln put it out there, they're very similar, just different colors.
Well, they're both gigantic creatures that are very scary on the battlefield,
especially being put there for little to no gos. Huh. The other random
card that I that caught my eye was and again this is this hurts me
inside to say this out loud as the name of a magic card force e
or lingus exclamation point, which is in the name of the card. Yeah,
exactly, it's it's one red, one white and x create x two
two. I think red and white night tokens with vigilance and haste trample,
trample in haste. So this is getting played in Delver. Oh and then
when when you deal combat damage, I think you become the monarch or something
like that. Yeah, so you're going to attack with a bunch of hasty
boys and then become the monarch, draw your extra card, and then good
luck to your opponents to get the monarch back when you have you know,
four vigilant, Vigilance and haste or caste trample knights or whatever. This must
this has got to be out of the Commander product because there was a Jeff
Scott. One of the Commander precounts was Jess Guy, and Amazon screwed up
my order and sent me one of the hosts of Mordor Commander decks as opposed
to one set of all four Commander decks that's unfortunate, Yeah, because now
I'll probably get my gift bundles before I get my Commander decks. But well
landed, what are you what else are you seeing that people want to play?
So I think from a constructed perspective, from modern legacy, we hit
the we hit the big ones. The thing is like they're being as I
said, they're being played together in decks, not even just like here and
there, which is kind of wild that you're seeing orchestra masters until I at
hafling Um. You're also seeing it played in multiple archetypes, you know,
Tron living in yog Moth evolution for modern. Essentially the ring is being played
one Jessica A breach interesting, you know, I mean it's it's it's all
over the place. And Legacy is some different decks for those as well.
But from that's from a constructive perspective, those are definitely the hitters. From
a commander perspective, people are very excited about the same cards. Surprise,
surprise. If it's powerful and modern and legacy, maybe it's broken in Commander,
I don't know. Also, I think from a commander perspective though,
from like a leader of a deck, people are really interested in Sore in
the dark Lord. That card is pretty scary. Already want to built that
for a minute. Well there you go, so you already built it.
You want to share what it does. I'm going to cheat and look it
up so that I don't miss anything, because everything in this set has paragraphs
of text. Sore on the dark Lord is grixus and three, so three
colorless plus a blue, a black, and a red. It is a
seven six legendary avatar horror horror being relevant to a pile of cards that got
print it in either one of the industrate sets. It has ward sacrifice a
legendary artifact or legendary creature. Why not just say hex proof, because holy
shit. I mean, yes, you can sorts to plowshares, my Commander,
but you have to sacrifice yours. Yeah, that's disgusting, and that's
not the part that's making it. See play whenever an opponent casts a spell,
a mass ORCS one. Okay, so I put this guy down on
say turn four, I've ramped my fat ass off and I've got him out
there on turn four and it's a commander game. Well, either I'm going
to have a minimum of a three three orc. When everything comes back around
to me or my opponents aren't going to do anything. You're not going to
take a whole turn off just to keep me from beefing up an orc.
You can end up with an you can end up with an eight eight orc
in one orbit. That's not all. That's pretty gross. Whenever an army
you control deals combat damage to a player, the Ring tempts you. There's
a lot of mechanics about the Ring and it tempting you, and it giving
things to things, and we only have so much time on the podcast,
So go look that up. Go look up Ring tempts you MTG, and
then think every time the big Orc that your opponents made you hits anybody,
the Ring tempts you. Oh, and we're not done. Whenever the Ring
tempts you. And there are a ton of cards in this set that have
things that happen to let the Ring tempt you. Whenever the Ring tempts you,
you may discard your hand if you do draw four cards. So cuting,
yeah, because how often have we been playing Commander And you're like,
well, I'm down to two cards and they're both land because I've been sitting
here, draw nothing but land frop turns. Okay, I'll hit you with
this orc. I'll throw away these two lands and draw four new cards,
and then if it's me, it's four more land. But you know,
other people, your result, your mileage may vary. This card's gross as
a commander. The eight mana Sauron isn't bad as a commander. And who
the hell thought we'd ever say that about an eight man a commander. But
yeah, that one makes five mass five huge to start with, and that's
whenever you cast a spell. I think, Yeah, then there's multiple iterations
of Saron's bitch, Saramon, I'm trying to look for the one. I'm
trying to look for the one that's in Grix's colors. Okay, here we
go, Saramon the white hand one and grixas so one, blue, black
red. Whenever you cast a non creature spell, a mass orcs x,
where x is that spell's man of value. I play a Commander deck that
is designed around casting big non creature spells and getting stuff for it. I'm
already playing that. If this didn't have that pesky black pip, it would
one hundred percent be going into my Ovika Commander deck. But I don't feel
like swapping out I don't feel like swapping out commanders. I like my commander.
But this guy's gross and he goes in you're saron deck because then he
makes your orcs bigger. The way a mass works, if you weren't playing
during that time, is whenever you amass one, you create an army token.
You to create a token creature this to zero zero army, and when
you amass a number, you put that many plus one plus one counters on
your army. Next time you amass if you have an army, you put
that many counters on your army. If you don't have an army, you
make an army and put that many counters on it. So it doesn't let
you go wide, but it lets you go very tall. And then there
are older a mass cards like Dreadhoard Invasion that are really pretty good with this.
Yeah, So to give you a little example of how powerful a mass
can be, like John was saying, I've played Legacy last night and I
was trying out Orchish Bowmasters in my deck, and firsthand of the first game
of the night, I get Orchish Bowmasters. I can play it on turn
one and I play my land, play my man a ramp and passed turn
to my opponent. And what do they do? First turn? They play
a brainstorm and you flash in that Oakish Porkish bow Masters. I flashed in
Orchish Bowmasters did him three damage and then four damage. Sorry because they deal
one damage when they come into the battlefield, right forgot about And then I
had a four fourt work and Orchish Bowmasters. And then they passed turn back
to me because they just played their first bill of the game. That's all
they got, and I attacked him for five. So they've already taken nine
damage on turn one. Yeah, that's insane as a gross that's half their
that's almost half their life total in a constructed format. Yeah, okay,
that's disgusting. That's a control that's a control deck. Playing this card against
them, I assume you won that game. I did. I definitely won
that game. That's that's less amusing than if you had just gotten blown out.
But yeah, they did resolve a Merktide Regent m but it was not
enough. I attacked through it and they died. Anyway. Wow, that's
crazy. So do we think this set is good for the game? Yeah,
and in totality it's it's great for the game. The amount of pr
exposure on local news channels, on articles bringing attention to the game has been
insane. Also, you bring in an IP that's bigger than Magic is also
a great thing because it's attracting. As you already said, lots of people.
You know, Warhammer forty K is popular, but a lot of match
players also play Warhammer forty K, and it's not. I wouldn't know.
I don't I don't consider it gigantically more popular than Magic. But Lord of
the Ranks for sure. You're bringing in and people know what it is.
Everybody knows what it is. Everybody if they haven't seen the movie, they
know why they haven't seen the movies. Right, John, you're you're the
writer. How would you like your books to be Lord of the Rings?
Yeah, I'd be all right with that. I'd be all right with I
would be pretty happy with getting a quarter of Tolkien sales today. As as
old as those books are, they're still constantly churning. They are always solid
selling titles. So yeah, millions and millions of people have are familiar with
that. Sorry, Lyndon, I interrupted you. You were talking about the
i TV and good for the game. Yeah, that p is great for
the game. I mean you're bringing in a lot of exposure people who don't
know magic. That's that that is one of the reasons they are doing it
to attract new players, right, But even then, like you talked about
people buying it just to collect, so they're scene cards. You can create
a whole scene of I think what thirteen or fourteen cards make a gigantic mural
scene the showcase and then and then the ring scene, and then there's another
there's another scene that you got in like the pre release packs and showcase um
with like the Hobbit. So like just collecting those in foil or non foil,
even as a fan of of Lord of the Rings is a cool thing
to do, even if you don't understand the game. So they've they've definitely
like thought of ways to make it fun and interesting for people that don't play
beyond the scope of just the crazy two million dollar card and beyond all of
that, like it is it is nothing but a home run. And the
fact that they're making hand of a Fist now on product but at the end,
but even without making hand or a fist. The pr itself has been
gamebusters. I think, bigger than anyone and kind of expected. I think
bigger than the company expected. Yeah, I agree with that. I think
that the the you know, just the number of people coming to the game
alone or getting exposure to the game is the best thing for the game.
Magic has been for a long time kind of a niche product. You know,
it's played by a lot of people. Don't get me wrong, but
do you ask an average person on the set on the street, They're going
to say Magic what And then you name another card game and they're like,
oh, yeah, my kid plays that or something. But now you're starting
to see that change. I mean, and it's been changing over the last
five years or so, maybe ten years. But that's number one. And
number two is I think anytime you have cards that start to see constructed play
at a large level, like winning tournaments from a new set like this,
I think that's good for the game because it keeps things changing. And when
things are changing, people stay interested and there's more creative space to build decks
and experiment with stuff. And you know that self serving lead makes people turn
to apps a little bit more to see you know what cards are good with
these cards, like I can tell you that, and they start reading TCD
play articles about the cards and it just gets everyone's gears turning, and I
think that it's good. Alrighty guys, Well that's about the time we've got
for today, So why don't we go real quick back through and you can
tell people where to find your work and how they can support you. Landon
yep once again, I write for TCCU player Infinite. That's yeah, tcc
player dot infinite dot com. You can find my articles most tuesdays and you
can also find me on Twitter at my weekly grinds if you care to message
me or follow me. All right, Lincoln. As we covered earlier,
um, my app is called top Decked tp d e c k e ed
and you can find it at top decked dot com. It is also in
the play Store and the Apple App Store for all platforms. You can install
it on desktop and it does everything you need for magic. If you have
any questions about it, you can message me with the feedback button and I
look forward to hearing from you, and you know how to find me far
too often on this channel. And in just a little over a month,
you can find me in Portland, Oregon at Authors and Dragons Con twenty twenty
three. So if you haven't already picked up your tickets for A and D
Con, you need to get over to Authors and Dragons dot com and buy
your tickets now. Thanks guys for joining me, and thank all of you
for watching until next time. Bye. Authors and Dragons brought to hundred Creative
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