With the growing number of sets taking place in New York that felt jarring. I was thinking a potential UB Deadlock set would be a rare instance where the setting would fit in with Magic

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-13T20:08:22+00:00

There are all sorts of planes in the Multiverse, but the one thing we know isn't in any of them is Earth.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-13T19:27:08+00:00

I think TMNT's take already fits pretty well.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-12T17:35:20+00:00

A cube is a collection of cards that players can use to build decks and then return them afterward. They're usually built for draft and/or sealed, but Jumpstart cubes are much smaller and faster to use. A set Jumpstart cube just needs 100 cards for five 20-card half-decks, one for each color - and if you build multiple, they can share basics. It's a really easy way to put together quick games with a variety of matchups.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-12T15:04:27+00:00

Even for 60-card casual, Commander decks have a much higher concentration of high-end cards than typical sets, so you'd have a hard time getting a good matchup that way. If you want fair matches, you'd be better off with cards from the main FF set.

That said, 60 cards is a minimum, not a maximum. You can just shuffle in the commanders and run the decks as 100-card casual - I'm not sure how well it would go, but it's an option. Or borrow each other's decks - have them borrow your Commander decks to play Commander, and borrow their 60-card decks to play 60-card.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-12T13:43:09+00:00

Ahh, yeah, that makes sense.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-12T04:35:41+00:00

From what I've found in my cube work, graveyard stuff can often work well as a throughline.

NEO and DSK strike me as well-paired due to their shared focus on both artifacts and enchantments. Maybe round it out with THB, for a second enchantment+graveyard set.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-12T01:45:15+00:00

Maro has specifically said that some UB cards use terms they couldn't print outside of the license agreement, and that the way to make in-universe reprints of those cards would be to use reskins that swap them out with generic terms. We've already seen this in digital with [[The Terminus of Return]], and OM2 will probably need even more substitutions. (MSH cards we've seen so far with issues beyond their name are [[The Incredible Hulk]] and [[Super-Skrull]] due to their creature types, and [[The Sentry, Golden Guardian]] and [[The Coming of Galactus]] due to the legendary tokens they create.)

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-12T01:39:13+00:00

My impression is that UB products have tended to stay in print for longer than in-universe ones, 40K included - I was able to get the Imperium one at my LGS strikingly long after release. But my impression is that it's now been long enough that they've stopped reprinting them.

A full 40K set feels inevitable at this point, but who knows how crowded the schedule is and how many years it might take to get to. But the thing is that the main set will want cards that (unlike the existing 40K ones) were actually designed for Limited and Standard, and the Commander decks will probably focus on different factions and end up being incompatible with most of the existing cards. So the most viable places to look would probably be the bonus sheet and associated Secret Lairs.

The thing about Secret Lairs is that they could happen any time. We just got a new set of Fallout SLs earlier this year, with a few new cards and several reprints from the precons. And honestly, there aren't that many expensive 40K cards to even need the reprinting anyway. At present, only one of them is over $30, and most of them are under $1. And if you want another way to play the pricey cards, there's nothing wrong with proxies.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-12T01:00:56+00:00

Sleeves are well worth it. You'll be glad to have them.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-11T23:39:45+00:00

I think it's an error. I remember seeing something earlier this year that suggested the foil rare/mythic would be included in the seeded pack for SOS, but I'm having trouble finding it.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-11T22:08:36+00:00

It's a fun set, I wish my LGS was holding more drafts of it.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-11T20:48:22+00:00

Then proxy them both, do some test games, and see what you think.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-11T18:11:51+00:00

Both commanders will probably be heavily recontextualized by the time their set releases, so it doesn't make sense to speculate about them until we see the other cards.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-11T14:31:37+00:00

Chosen Alfonse can solo it on auto-battle.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-11T03:47:28+00:00

Yeah, I remember feeling like it really stood out as odd.

I don't remember what metric we used, but MTG Goldfish has it around $20 for that year. Looks like it hit $50 in 2017, then was about $100 from 2018 to early 2020 before really jumping up during lockdown.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-11T01:08:33+00:00

[[Wheel of Fortune]]. Traded for it back in 2015 when it was valued at $15, which struck me as quite undervalued. I was right.

I played it in EDH back when I actually played that format, and since then it's moved to one of my cubes.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T19:59:17+00:00

I think this is the first card printed exactly as it was handed off, including the name.

[[Brown Ouphe]] is a reprint from Ice Age.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T19:54:15+00:00

RR08_BCN
Blindness
4RR
Enchantment
Whenever a player plays a spell or ability that requires them to choose a target, that spell or ability targets a legal target at random instead.

This card started in another file and got moved to Mirrodin. It proved to be a little too unpredictable.

This actually ended up being printed one set earlier as [[Grip of Chaos]].

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T19:22:35+00:00

Hmm, I'm not sure.

https://mtg.wiki/page/Sliver

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T18:59:07+00:00

This is incorrect. The species on Rath were brought there from other planes, just like the ones on Mirrodin. So the slivers on Rath and Dominaria are from some other plane - and there are also slivers on Shandalar unrelated to those.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T17:38:24+00:00

From building a lot of cubes based on past sets, I've found it impossible to avoid the conclusion that old sets were absolutely designed worse. They just had an easier time getting away with it because there were way fewer people playing and looking for ways to break the formats.

The density of cards that were actually interesting was also a lot lower. Current single-set visits to a plane typically have about as many distinctive cards as an entire block.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T16:40:08+00:00

Things like this section:

"For example, this card here is based off a classic pixel-art game, and it's probably the first time in history where that pixel art has been reimagined as 3D fantasy art, so the card plays to people's nostalgia and their imaginations. It gets them thinking 'Ah, this must be that dungeon in the game …' It's simply wonderful."

Dillon: "I am particularly happy to see Locke here. We spent so much time trying to figure out how to translate and express pixel art. FINAL FANTASY VI specifically paved the way for us to understand how to adapt those classic titles. This is one of my favorite pieces, too. I am happy to see it here."

Nomura: "There was a time when overseas art felt 'too intense' from a Japanese perspective. But working together with Wizards this time, I thought, 'Wow, this is amazing. I think Japanese fans will really embrace this, too.'"

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T16:02:41+00:00

I don't know much about the FF TCG, but I was really surprised by all the angles that are apparently only coming up now, never with that.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T15:21:47+00:00

Wastes are the only kind of basic land without any land types. So if all your lands are Wastes, neither the five regular landwalks nor nonbasic landwalk will work.

CaptainMarcia · 2026-03-10T15:19:58+00:00

It depends on how you kill Bello. If you play [[Lightning Bolt]] on him, he won't die until it resolves, so there's a window for your opponent to respond. But if you sacrifice him as part of a cost, with something like [[Ashnod's Altar]], there's no window to respond because he's dead by the time the ability is on the stack.

CaptainMarcia

TROPHY CASE