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Random Thoughts About 10th Edition
by Ryan Spring
With a title like that one I'm not especially sure how I should start off this article. So I suppose I'll jump straight to the point. In every way I do believe that Tenth Edition is the best core set that WotC (Wizards of the Coast, the group of fine men and women who bring us Magic) has ever come up with.
Here are some of the basic points that make Tenth Edition better than previous core sets, at least in my opinion, and then a boring conclusion that hopefully won't be boring enough to make you want to miss out on this exciting new format.
Black Bordered Cards!!!
About time! One of the biggest complaints United States players had, as they caught on faster and did this earlier in other countires, was that in all core sets up to this point the cards were white bordered and downright ugly. Traders often disliked the white bordered cards to the point where they would actually value them less than an older black bordered version of the exact same card. Not only does the black instead of white make the set look better, but in that weird way it makes the cards more valuable.
$$$
One aspect that appeals to a tournament player who might want to draft this set is the amount of money cards that are in it. Wrath of God, Birds of Paradise, Pithing Needle, Crucible of Worlds, Platinum Angel, Troll Ascetic, all ten pain lands..... It really is a long list, but a lot of the rares and several of the uncommons are worth a decent amount of money. That makes drafting the set, cracking boosters, and trading what you open a lot more valuable than it might have been in the past.
Legends!
I don't wanna use "about time" again, but that's pretty much how I feel. Correctly, WotC has always tried to keep the core sets simple. They are designed to help people learn the rules of magic and begin getting into the game. What they finally realized however is that legends don't make the game too complicated to new or casual players, just more fun!Never before has a core set included legends, and now in Tenth this is finally not the case. Almost anyone can understand that you can only have one copy of any given legend in play, and in turn, you get creatures with really cool abilities and significantly higher power levels than your average joe common creature. Casual or competitive, it's always fun to slam a fat angel onto the table and smash for a lot of damage, or to throw down Kamal and start wiping out the enemy team.
Random Large Word That Means the Set is Balanced
Can you guess what point I'm trying to make on this one? Even though I'm not the best with big words, I do, in fact, believe that this set is quite even-powered and balanced throughout the colors.In previous core sets, for limited play, blue was just the best color. Finally this is not true. You can make an argument for all five colors, each having their own power commons and bomb uncommons. Red has Incinerate, Shock, and Bogardan Firefiend. Blue still has Aven Windreader and nice counters like Remove Soul. Black gets Terror, Essence Drain, and Gravedigger, along with its usual infinite random removal spells. White loses Master Decoy but picks up Loxodon Mystic in its place and gets old staples like Pacifism plus some really aggressive creatures with first strike. Green gets Aggressive Urge and Giant Growth amongst other combat tricks and has the biggest creatures around, like the 5/4 Scaled Wurm for only five mana. Pick your poison and enjoy!
A Different Kind of Balance...
Since fans can vote on magicthegathering.com as to what they'd like to see in each core set, Tenth Edition brought back a lot of fan favorites. There are a lot of cards that are well liked by players. Classics like Mogg Fanatic, angels with really strong and unique abilities like Platinum Angel and Reya Dawnbringer, and of course the power of cards like Razormane Masticore and Phage the Untouchable. This kind of voting allows casual players to see a lot of the cards that they want to see, but at the same time, since anyone can vote, tournament players get to vote in the cards they'd like to be running on the Pro Tour. This set did an excellent job at including cards for every level of Magic player and should be enjoyable reguardless of how casual or competitive you are.And finally, the boring conclusion I promised you.... Thanks for reading and enjoy Tenth Edition!!!
melokuthecloudedbeatstick@yahoo.com jenovaproject101 on AIM Ryan Spring