I watched the Professor chatting with someone else about the Pinkerton thing.
One thing they expressed was that there was no way to act in an immediate way that influences sales number to send a message to Wizards. Like with the DnD stuff recently people could cancel DnDBeyond to send a message and that did something.
I think Magic players do have a medium to send a message. The medium is online play. We should blanket boycott all Magic apps, especially MODO and especially Arena for at least 30 days. They can't take back what has happened but we can send a message that they will feel. I think we should also throw FNM and all physical sales including the secondary market in as well, but digital play is big and more immediate.
This is unacceptable though I don't expect players to stay away forever. A month long boycott for the entirety of May would send a strong message and make them reconsider how they handle future leaks. Backed up with plenty of emails and public messages to say this is why it's happening.
#NoMagicMay
If you agree and want Wizards to know it then I humbly suggest you spread this. Encourage your friends. Encourage content creators. Reach out to big Magic influencer and let them know you're participating in #NoMagicMay and would like them to join.
Theres a lot of rad cards and weird things in that set. So much gets churned out, I wanted to bring up 10 cards worth pennies from C21 that are worth picking up for your binder.
These are NOT price speculations. These are cards I think play interestingly and are fun for the format.
Artifact decks LOVE cracking small artifacts open for different ones. There’s a kind of wheel and deal with them, using goblins or trading post to bust em open for something new. Audacious Reshapers is a great new card for the category, producing a new artifact with another left in the gy for recursion. Great for Ichor Wellsprings and the like to crunch em down for a random but likely more useful thing. And if it ain’t great crunch it down again!
The technique cycle is rad. I think white is the only one I hesitate on. Demonstrate is great and often well worth the extra copy. I feel using the word Interaction to describe removal is being a bit too broad. Removal does’t cover all of interaction, interaction can go beyond removal. I will creative technique a player who is behind and jumpstart their strat to keep from having to solo the stronger player. This card is a red Unexpected Results that can be discounted down to R and works well with Prosper and other cast from exile strats.
This is more interaction I think people should run. Ideally you use this if you can manipulate the top of your deck or have a high mv. You get more cards drawn in the game and you start chipping life totals faster. It comes out turn 2 and each turn after you draw 2 before you start playing things. I’m a big fan, plus you get insight on what your opponents are drawing.
This card is clunky at 5 and lots of things you’ll want to cast hurt your life total a good deal, AND its still (1)B. This card is not the most ideal. Its strong if you have life to spare like orzhov lifegain or life to waste like Greven Predator Captain. Not ideal, not perfect, but this card will enable something nutty in the future. Its gonna be bonkers when it happens.
Essentially a Epic Experiment in blue, Talrand decks get access to whats usually an izzet brand. Its easy to see only casting one card as a downside but really this card digs for a lot of spells then allows you to use one now and keep the rest for later. Great when your spells have delicate timings. Also less likely to be counterspelled than Epic Experiment is.
Paradox Zone is huge. The first turn you play it the card makes a 2/2 then next turn a 4/4. What makes this card stand out to me is its dual counter nature. The card itself doubles counters, then the tokens it produces have power represented in counters. That is NUTS with any proliferate. If you drop this and get a 2/2, then next turn Proliferate, you will double 3 counters into 6 and make a 6/6 then tick up your 2/2 into a 3/3. Proliferate makes this card pop off and it can be played the turn after you drop Atraxa. With how much counter based keyword tech there is its easy to juice these too. This card can make some wild tokens very quickly.
Reinterpret has quickly become my favorite counterspell. You can literally get a turn ahead of your opponent with it. The card you cast doesn’t need to share a typing, it just needs to be equal or less mana. This card is ideal for helping spellslinger set up key pieces before popping off, and it can be discounted to UR letting you counter with one blue mana.
We’d mentioned cracking artifacts earlier. Grinder is a 7/4 menace so you can swing big to deal damage. Its also got mountaincycling so you can discard it to pull a shockland with intent to recur this later. Most importantly you can crack it for a wheel. I find wheeling in monoR artificer to be HUGE. And as a creature you can easily slot it into reanimator builds or sacrifice builds. Its a multipurpose card that refills your hand!
Im shocked by how little I see this card. This is a card that ends games. This is a card I ended a game with tonight. Spellslinger is an archetype that’s perceived as being creature light, and I think that’s false. Talrand, Murmuring Mystic, Alandra, Unlikely Alliance, Shark Typhoon, Metallurgic Summons, Manaform Hellkite, Zaffai, there’s so many ways to spawn tokens off casts its nuts. Getting the damage buff is already good, getting to copy spells is great, getting to freecast is insane. That’s two magecraft triggers per spell. Tonight I exiled Magma Opus and Ignite the Future giving my dudes +12/+0. And the freecast triggers all your Talrand and Metallurgic Summons again! I prefer this over Mizzix Mastery. MM takes forever to resolve and doesnt move the game along unless you win with storm. Victory buffs your dudes, motivates play through combat, and can lead to a nutty level of casting. Also look at that pest. He’s goin so FAST.
Its simple. (2)U, copy a dude. Usually your opponent will stop playing dudes, but there’s a few cases where they’ll be unable to. Primal Surge, Genesis Wave, Sudden Disappearance, Living Death, Rise of the Dark Realms, and the best part is you don’t steal it, the threat level is lower and the game can continue. Theoretical Duplication is a great warding card, one that joins in on a crazy turn rather than stops it. I run it in my Riku hugs so I can copy the spell to get 2 dudes for each 1 you get. It is a potent and underrated pick at just 3 mana.
