Ravnica Spoilers at PAX!

Hello everyone!

My head just exploded! I have been at college for 2 days now, and it has been tons of fun! I even got to break out my party suit twice already, which is a green morph suit! To say the least the party went from lame to insane in about 31 seconds.

But that's not all!

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RAVNICA SPOILERS!

It took me a few days to get my wifi hooked up here, so when I did I looked on facebook and learned that they were showing off some new cards at PAX and IT IS INSANE!!!!! I'm not going to waste your time with the intro. You're probably not even reading this part anymore anyways, let's just get to the cards!

Starting things off, we have the Rakdos mechanic "unleash". To say the least, this ability is aggro as piss! You can have a creature with unleash ETB with a +1/+1 counter and then have that creature unable to block. Carnival Hellsteed probably costs just a little too much to be good, but it should be solid in limited. I really like the mechanic though, and I can see a card or two possibly making its way into a BRains deck.

Chromatic Lantern is crazy! I think this card will be able to single-handedly bring back 5 Color Control as it gives you a completely perfect mana base! When comparing this to Prismatic Omen, this card is actually better because it's colorless, but it also produces its own mana and ramps!

Adding to the Charm cycle, we have the UW one, which is... alright.... Obviously the best version is to put an attacking or blocking creature on top of an opponent's deck, which is good for tempo reasons, but really isn't good for anything outside of a delver deck. This card is actually just bad for control, but I can imagine Snapcastering the Charm to keep on Submerging your opponent can be a major part of next year's standard!

Now this card has be excited! Along with Burning Vengeance and Goblin Electromancer, I think there's a potentially awesome combo deck to be built! When you have cards like desperate ravings and think twice fueling your combo, there's a lot of gas! With Burning Vengeance it was good, but inconsistent because of the overwhelming need for its namesake card. Now with Guttersnipe we have 8 effects and with Electromancer we don't lose to the high mana costs like we used to!

Now this is a charm I can get behind! Before getting into the first 2 effects, this is a 2/2 vigilance flash creature for 2 mana. That's cool! But wait, if you need a different effect at the moment, Selesnya Charm can help! A mutagenic Growth effect is actually far better than you think even in constructed! Think about how many times a certain block happens that would simply be ruined by a Giant Growth? Now consider that any GW deck can run that effect at no cost! Oh by the way, this also deals with huge bombs an opposing control player may lay down, so this is absolutely relevant regardless of the matchup!

Sorcery Terminate is a strictly worse Terminate..... What's that you say? Destroy target planeswalker? Now we're talking! This is the first card ever printed to have that text, and you can absolutely expect foil Dreadbores to be an INSANELY hot commodity! This card seems insane in BRains, but the applications go far beyond that! 5CC? Seems good. Jund? Check! Is this card playable? Check!

This card is awesome in all your graveyard shenanegry that will probably include Splinterfreight, Ghoultree, and friends. This, along with Forbidden Alchemy allow us to rapidly dig and mill through the deck picking out the cards we want/need to make the combo work. By the way, did you know that they're both instants?! This will allow some very tricky game situations to come up that will be simply awesome to see happen!

This card I feel is absolutely fantastic and under appreciated. Normally it's a Flame Slash, but then you can Overload it and turn it into a Flame Wave! Take note that this effect is completely one sided, so it actually plays more like a Bonfire of the Damned! I feel like Missium Mortars isn't seeing enough love right now, but will actually be insane!

And then there's this guy.... What a chump! Who ever thought a 4 mana jace could be playable? Well I think it goes without saying that the Architect of Thought is worse than the Mind Sculptor. Now is this new Jace on the level of a normal planeswalker? Kinda? His +1 is pretty unimpressive, however his -2 and his -8 are very good. I think if Jace sees play, it will be primarily for his fact or fiction ability. With that ability it basically reads, "draw 3 cards" because you only get the cards that are useful to your situation. I think he will definitely see play along with Tamiyo in some sort of U/x Superfriends deck, but as for what the rest of the support is, or what the second color is, must still be determined.

Now here's a card I'm actually very excited about! Why? Isn't this just a different Borderland Ranger? Well it says you can also get a gate....

Woah! You can tutor up a Dual Land! This will make mana bases so much easier now that we can tutor up the Dual of our choice! I would also like to point out that these are called Gates and the next set is called Gatecrash. Just sayin.

That's all I have for today! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack




















Oh wait..... I think this might be worth showing off....
















Get ready........

!!!BAM!!!

Yes, we have official confirmation that the Shock Lands are back!!!!! This is a huge step in the right direction for making Modern super easy to get into for an Eternal format, but this is also sweet in its own right! It was pretty obvious from the start that Shocklands were coming back when they printed Arbor Elf instead of Llanowar Elves and they brought back Farseek, but some people didn't want to cry wolf quite yet. I have been championing Shocks for a while and I'm glad to see them all released!

I just want to put something out there quickly for a moment: Steam Vents into Sulfur Falls.

Yeah, that works how you want it to! So now we have 3 full sets of Dual Lands between Innistrad/M13, the Gates, and the Shocks! Just saying.... (5CC!)