#Strixhaven: School of Mages

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Fracture

"Your defiance is amusing, little mage. It's time you learn how fragile you really are." —Extus Narr

Artist: Miranda Meeks TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[mtg-art-daily]

Hall Monitor

"No unauthorized summoning. No writing in the library books. And absolutely no indoor dueling!"

Artist: Forrest Imel

[incorrect-mtg]

Flavor Text Highlights - Strixhaven: School of Mages + Commander 2021

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Cool - Sudden Breakthrough

Rootha created constantly, passionately, in hopes of impressing her greatest critic: herself.

Funny - Wake the Past

“Belong in a museum? I think we should let relics belong wherever they please!” —Quintorius, Lorehold mage-student

Worldbuilding - Confront the Past

“Why, Gideon? Of all people, why save me?”

Emotional - Go Blank

The only feeling worse than not knowing the answer is the certainty that you once did.

<- Previous Set | Next Set ->

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Excavated Wall by Zezhou Chen

[oops-prow-did-it-again]

screenshotting this from my email bc I guess @wack-at-all-trades replied this and then blocked me

Seriously. If this is what you are getting from this post, FUCK OFF. I don't give a fuck if I hurt your feelings about the totally-not-harry-potter set.

I'm not saying you have to dislike it. I'm not saying that Wizards is blatantly agreeing with JK R*wling's horseshit. What I AM saying is that I think it's very fucking sus that they decided right as she was starting to go off the deep end with her bullshit that they decided to make a setting like this.

Because it comes across to ME that they decided to ride the popularity of Harry Potter/wizard school ideas, even if it was negative, to earn them income. Profiting off the real life issues that R*wling causes. Because whether you bought Strixhaven stuff because fuck Harry Potter or whether you bought it because you just like wizard school stuff altogether (including or excluding Harry Potter), THAT WAS PART OF THE DRAW. It earned that set extra attention and focus on that part alone.

I don't presume to know exactly the decisions that went into making Strixhaven. But whether that was the intention or not, it feels like, to me, it rode the coattails of controversy for profit. Because of the time they chose to make it and then proceed to make it more important.

And I think that's very fucking tacky. I don't like Strixhaven, and I never will. If you love it, great. I'm happy for you. But I never will. And if you disagree with my reasons for not liking it, also fantastic. Also happy for you. But I don't want to hear it; I don't have to change my opinion on the set that feels like a disrespectful blind eye turned to the damage that JK R*wling's bullshit causes just because I hurt your feelings. You can enjoy your magic wizard setting without my approval, and without attacking me because I dislike it. Ok?

(The reason I am being so nasty about this reply is because I was told that 'strixhaven rules' as if I am objectively wrong and just don't know how to think for myself. I very much do, thank you, and I don't appreciate being told that I am wrong for liking what I like or disliking what I don't.)

Now please stop derailing this post about New Phyrexia with fucking Strixhaven. Jesus fucking christ. Make your own post if Im pissing you off with my takes about strixhaven.

New Phyrexia disturbed me - and not how it should have

This is going to be a VERY opinion-heavy post. Before I say anything, I want to make it abundantly clear that I am not condemning the entirety of the New Phyrexia arc, nor am I saying that the people who wrote these stories meant for them to be taken this way. This is just a post getting into why the New Phyrexia arc rubbed me the wrong way again and again, and why it's... kind of ruined my love for Magic, if I'm completely honest.

Also, yes, I understand that New Phyrexia was meant to horrify and unsettle people - but I feel like it unsettled me in ways that they kind of weren't going for. I expect horror to unsettle me and show me some fucked up shit, for lack of a better terminology - but I also was expecting, in the fantasy/scifi horror shit, I'd get some stuff that didn't feel like it hit so close to home.

More under the cut.

First of all, it has always felt as if Magic can never quite decide if Phyrexians are people or monsters. This is worsened in New Phyrexia, where time and time again, we are given reason to think that New Phyrexians are people that are simply heavily indoctrinated from birth. Yes, the glistening oil works in strange ways, and they have somewhat of shared knowledge amongst their entire network, but by and large, you see time and time again, that Phyrexians have individuality. This seems intentional - you are shown from the start that Elesh Norn is an egomaniac, a fool, and that her plans of grandeur are insane. But her insanity shapes this world.

In that way, everyone in this world are... mostly actually victims of her insanity. Ixhel and Urabrask on New Capenna stand out as examples of times where Phyrexians show that they are not the heartless monsters they are made out to be. In Urabrask's first cards, he claims that he wishes the Mirrans to be left alone.

Yet, in ONE, we see time and time again that red Phyrexians and Mirrans are fighting still, Urabrask doesn't seem to be paying that much attention to the Phyrexians, and... frankly, I don't know what the Halo subplot was supposed to be about (forgive me, if this was addressed in passing, I only skimmed the latter half of MOM to see what big things happened, because i was so upset with it at that point I didn't really WANT to read it anymore). Yes, I have read the creators saying time and time again that just because Urabrask doesn't say outright he wants the multiverse compleated, it doesn't mean it's not what he wants, deep down. However... this still harks back onto one idea.

Sapient creatures being born evil.

This is a trope that I LOATHE in fantasy/scifi to my core. I understand that Phyrexians, for all intents and purposes, are created in a monstrous fashion. They are not created in a similar way to people. However, in the end, they still ACT LIKE PEOPLE. They have individuality, free will (yes, even if it is limited by the strict theocratic control of Norn, they still have it - how did Ixhel create, otherwise? How did Sheoldred rebel? Why did Nahiri snap at Nissa to show the skyclaves? Why did Tamiyo freeze upon seeing children?), and whether you like it or not, this makes them people. They are extremely different people, and yes, their existence does present conflict - but they. are. still. people.

I understand how it may feel offensive to real people to call the (rightful) fear and concern towards Phyrexians to be racism, as I feel like that waters down the term. However... again, knowing that Phyrexians are largely a cult that has been severely indoctrinated by Elesh Norn... it becomes difficult not to feel bad for them, and as if they have all been written off simply because they have a terrible leader. It comes across, to me, as another case of fantasy racism; similar to orcs being portrayed as idiot, warmongering beasts in some settings, or goblins being portrayed as stupid people little better respected than animals (and full of antisemitic stereotypes), just with less baggage attached.

It comes across as them having wanted to create a sapient race of people that was okay to bash and throw under the bus, so to speak. And yes, they gave plenty of reasons for why these people needed to go... but ultimately, it still feels like people went out of their way to create a civilization of people and show us justification for exterminating them.

I'm not trying to water down the term racism, but like... maybe I don't know the right words, but you understand why that might be uncomfortable, right?

Furthermore, at the start, I thought the transformative nature of Phyrexians was cool. Hot, even, as plenty others here on Tumblr think. Yes, I always sort of knew it was meant to be horrifying, too... but I also thought that the creators also were making them semi-alluring on purpose. (Look at Elesh Norn in promotional art. Look at her in the ONE trailer!! Look at the email they sent out for Arena on Valentine's Day, for god's sake!) But as time goes on... I start to get this uncomfortable feeling that this borderline sensual, sexual tension the Phyrexians produce is supposed to be PART of the horror.

And that's where things start getting uncomfortable for me. I am a transgender man. I don't know if I like sexualized, different people that transform themselves... being treated as horrible monsters that can't be coexisted with. I know plenty of trans people felt otherwise about Phyrexians; I understand this likely wasn't even the intention. BUT it still felt that way to me, for someone living in a country where trans people are getting more and more hunted on the daily.

Suddenly, it wasn't so fun anymore, to look at Elesh Norn and see her as heehoo sexy dommy mommy everyone joked at her being. It felt, to me at least, like she was a caricature of what I was. Of what people like me are. Monstrous. Out to destroy the world. Egomaniacs who want to force others down our same "lifestyle."

This is not helped by how Strixhaven, despite being an obvious play on Hogwarts & Harry Potter, came back into importance in MOM. They made a new Planeswalker from that plane, even! I loathe Strixhaven, and I was not at all pleased to learn that they have made it more important. The stories from the original Strixhaven set make me uncomfortable, too; Lukka arrives at a tavern and is asking for food, as he is not doing so well, and people comment on how he dresses strange, and when he (not rudely!) tells them they wouldn't know where he's from even if he told them, they react by SHOOTING FIREBALLS AT HIM.

These people saw a stranger. And decided the appropriate reaction was to shoot fireballs. (More on Lukka later, as I'm not done with him yet) but you understand how that might have also been deeply uncomfortable, right? Like yes, it did seem very intentional, to show how unkind the general populace of Arcavios can be... but there never seemed to be any point to that?? So it just came across as people hating a guy for dressing unconventionally for ""flavor"" to the very-obviously-based-on-TERF-school set. Which. WHY?

I also was not blind to how most of the compleated Planeswalkers were the nonhuman ones. Barring Lukka and Jace, every compleated Planeswalker was nonhuman, which I think... was done purposefully, because nonhumans are viewed as inherently more "monstrous" to our primal little monkey brains. (I don't think it was coincidence; there are PLENTY of human planeswalkers, to the point the majority could have easily not been human.) But this makes me uncomfortable too, because it feels like it, again, not only implies that Phyrexians are not people and are monsters (even though they had been given traits again and again that very firmly confirmed them as people), but that these nonhuman planeswalkers are inherently more monstrous, too.

Ajani - leonin. Tamiyo - moonfolk. Tibalt - (half) devil. Nissa - elf. Vraska - gorgon. Nahiri - kor.

And of the human Planeswalkers compleated, they chose Lukka and Jace. Jace, who has had a steep history of being viewed as less than human and little more than a tool (even sometimes by himself, as much as he hates it), and Lukka, who was also viewed as less than human by the society he came from, and was essentially labeled a sick dog to be shot on sight by his home city. (But more on him and why I particularly hate what was done with him later.)

And like... I'm not saying that corruption arcs or that transformation horror can't be done in a tasteful way!! It just started to feel like, as time went on, that this stuff was... malicious. I already was uncomfortable with how Phyrexians were seemingly being set up to be offed or taken out the picture completely (for there being no feasible way for them to coexist in the multiverse), so maybe I was looking for flaws, even where most wouldn't see them. But, I mean.. it just... Idk man. That part, too, gets under my skin.

And Lukka. LUKKA. I loathe what has been done to his character like none other. It is frequent fan interpretation that Lukka is stupid, Lukka deserves everything that has happened to him, and that it's a good thing he is gone. However, having read everything he has ever appeared in, I am so infuriated that even the creators THEMSELVES seemed to have bought into this idea.

For those that don't know, Lukka first appeared in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths - Sundered Bond, a digital novella. He was born and raised in Drannith, a heavily militarized city, one of three so-called "sanctuaries" that have actually managed to stay around on Ikoria. Ikoria is a world of kaiju-esque mutated, crazy monster animals, and he was raised in propaganda by Drannith's military, the Coppercoats. He is 40+ years old when we meet him; he has served the Coppercoats for half of that, and then another 2 years or so as Captain of a Specials force team. You see, through him, that he's actually a very caring leader and a rather simple guy: he is betrothed to Jirina Kudro, the daughter of General Kudro, leader of the Coppercoats, and his concerns seem to only be getting his team back home in one piece and getting quality time with his wife. He's not perfect, he's rough around the edges, would probably be an asshole to hang out with in real life, but it FITS for the world he comes from.

And then, he accidentally bonds with a winged cat that slaughters 3/4 of his team in front of him, within minutes of each other. General Kudro has kept the bonding magic Lukka experienced a secret from Drannith populace. He believes it makes Lukka "sick." (Need I explain why a leader referring to a group of people as inherently 'sick' is bad??) Even Jirina, for as much as she apparently loves her father, so emphatically believes her father will kill Lukka for this that she helps him escape! the city!!!

To recap, Lukka has his entire world upended from beneath his feet in the course of like, a day. He becomes the public enemy of the city he has defended with his life for years. In his eyes, it is us (the humans of Ikoria) versus them (the monsters of the plane). This is how he has been raised and trained; he did not choose the bonding and is (rightfully!) upset and horrified at it (ONE was incorrect when it said he "always knew he was different;" lukka made no such acknowledgments in Sundered Bond, that was an invention of ONE). He later then meets Vivien, who tells him how her home plane was DESTROYED (um??? Vivien? Why would you tell a man whose life is going to shit about that??) which makes Lukka vow to himself that he will not lose his home.

Later in the story, Lukka learns of a presence in a particular crystal called the Ozolith, and he goes to it. There, for reasons that would take too long to explain, a three-way battle ensues, and an unknown Planeswalker reaches out to Lukka through the Ozolith. The Planeswalker shows Lukka one of the bonders he has met along the way getting killed by a skysail's bolt meant to kill monsters and it is only then that Lukka accepts the power of the Ozolith.

Anyway, saying all this to say... Lukka is a villain, yes. But contrary to popular belief, he is NOT stupid. He is just as smart as anyone would be in the situation he was put into, coming from the world he comes from. He wanted, again and again and again, nothing more than to just go home. He even tried to spin his bonding into a way that Drannith could defend itself, by telling Kudro they should use monsters instead of peoples' lives (but Kudro wasn't hearing it; and the kicker? Drannith would go on to use bonders & monsters to protect the city anyway, after Lukka had been run off the world).

Lukka had a SHIT deck of cards handed to him in Ikoria, and he - REASONABLY - lashed out. It was just that when he lashed out, he had the power of a Planeswalker manipulating him, whispering in his ear, and the power to actually make people listen. He believed his choices were come home and die like a good soldier, or force them to let him come home. Maybe other people fault him for that, but I don't fault him for choosing to live, even if doing so caused much violence and bloodshed.

But yes, he was still a villain, and in Strixhaven, he was relegated to villain again, when people once again presume him to be an Oriq - which he doesn't even know what that is - and finally, he simply decides that if everyone keeps calling him one, he might as well be one. This comes after nearly starving to death and having his new bond, Mila, save his life. Had someone from Strixhaven maybe, I don't know, taken pity on this very clearly struggling guy.... I don't know! I feel like his role in Strixhaven really never would have happened. THE GUY LITERALLY JUST WANTED FOOD AND WATER. I cannot emphasize that enough

Anyway, saying this all to say, Lukka's arc felt like it was headed toward a redemption of some kind. He had been given a raw deal, reacted very humanly but very poorly, and now, the only way he had to go was up.

Instead, we got Vivien shooting him dead. Calling him "lukka-thing." We got Vivien saying nothing as she faces down the man she called a friend and seemingly felt bad for by the end of Sundered Bond and killing him.

As someone from a country that is VERY obviously careening toward more VERY conservative bullshit... THAT PLOT DID NOT SIT WELL WITH ME. It felt VERY MUCH like I was being told "if you are born into shit circumstances or bad things are done to you, and you don't sit there and take it, you will be punished for not simply taking it. And that punishment may very well be death."

I especially did not care for how Jirina seemed to be veering into her father's mindset in the story in MOM. And yes, she was called out for this, but the story also seemed to be trying to lean into this "survival, no matter the cost" vibe, which seemed like it was subtly justifying what she did, since it DID technically work in the end. Vivien's emo ass "but survival is the only law out here now" or w/e it was she said to herself as she killed Lukka definitely didn't help that feeling, either.

It upset me very much to see a character born into a shitty society, given raw deal after raw deal, and then be told that he deserved to die instead of get help. Or worse, that dying WAS getting help. It was "putting him out of his misery." He was "irreversibly changed," and "didn't know better anymore," he "couldn't be helped." That, combined with how compleation started to feel like a very negative allegory for transgender people after a point to me (see near the beginning of this), made Lukka's death feel like rapidfire punch after rapidfire punch to the gut.

AND NOT IN THE WAY THAT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN! I would have loved to see Vivien upset that she can't get to apologize. I would have loved to see Vivien agonizing over the decision to kill him. I would have loved her maybe showing some more REMORSE over having to do it, even if she did feel it was the only way forward. We have seen that New Phyrexians, especially compleated Planeswalkers, are still themselves, even while compleated, so the fact Lukka had nothing to say to her either felt hollow, too. He thought she was his friend and she turned on him; why didn't he have anything to say about that?

Urabrask being pulled apart at the limbs, then, felt like the final message to me: New Phyrexians are not people, they are monsters, end of discussion. They are not making it out of this. Stop asking/talking about it.

Suffice to say, by the time I got to the story of Elspeth becoming an archangel, everything felt hollow and gross for me. I've seen the promo art of Aftermath showing Nahiri and Nissa at least recovered; I get the feeling most of them, bar Tamiyo, Tibalt, and Lukka, probably have recovered or will recover.

But, frankly, I don't think I'm very invested anymore. New Phyrexia felt like it crossed a lot of lines, and not in the way that I would have appreciated horror to do so. It hit on a lot of sensitive subjects that made it rather difficult to enjoy as mere entertainment. Maybe I am just oversensitive, due to the day and age I am living in, due to the fact I am deeply unhappy with the fact I am forced to live closeted irl and feel hypervigilant of all slights, but it felt very gross to me.

Lukka's death in particular just... sealed the deal for me. I know he wasn't a big deal. Maybe he was always intended to just be a villain that gets killed off. But it's not even necessarily about him, in particular, it was about what his death represented. It was about how he was a product of propaganda and hatred, and how he was never given a chance to be better. it's about how I was told that death was the only way forward for him.

Maybe when I was 12 I would have liked that, but I'm over my obsession with the 'death is the only salvation.' SO MUCH MEDIA uses this trope, and frankly, I'm fucking sick of it.

I want to see people, even some of the most depraved fucking people you can imagine, getting better. I want to see that people can change and recognize the error in their ways. I'm tired of being told to look and see "us vs. them."

I'm not saying that you can't have conflict. But I am saying that if you're going to have conflict of this scale, I would prefer it to be solved in ways that don't essentially boil down to "kill/put away the Them."

Because that fucking blows.

If you've made it this far, I am grateful, but again, please keep in mind that this is the ramblings of a deeply mentally unwell ADHD-addled 22 year old (who is not on and cannot get Adderall right now). Emotional dysregulation IS a big problem I deal with, and the world I live in right now fucking sucks. If you're reading this going "oh my godd, let people enjoy things, you crybaby" then please just... move on? Because I'm not trying to tell people not to enjoy it, quite the contrary I WISH these things didn't bother me so much because I JUST got into Magic, and I would love to keep enjoying it! And Im happy for you if you have tolerance/could enjoy it through these things!

I'm just... sad. I'm very, very disappointed in this story. It was pretty, it was flashy, people clearly put in effort, but it felt like a low blow, all things considered, and worse, it touches literally all aspects of canon and cannot be safely disregarded. Much like War of the Spark, it affects almost everything, and will for a while yet.

[mtg-flavor]

Tedin, Mark. Swords to Plowshares. 2021, Strixhaven: School of Mages - Mystical Archive

“The blademaster turned his fury to his new foes: root rot and cabbage slugs.” —Myths and Miracles, Vol. VII

[markrosewater]

Now that the polls are closed on your "Top Down/Bottom Up" questions, may you please reveal the correct answers?

Here are the results of the poll:

Ixalan

Top-down: 38.9%

*Bottom-up: 61/.1

Strixhaven School of Mages

*Top-down: 54.7%

Bottom-up: 45.3%

Phyrexia: All Will Be One

*Top-down: 51.8%

Bottom-up: 48.2%

The answer is all three sets were bottom-up designs.

Ixalan was built as a typal set making use of the two two-color and two-three color faction structure we had originally planned to use for Khans of Tarkir.

Strixhaven was built as an enemy-colored faction set with an emphasis on "instants and sorceries" matter.

Phyrexia: All Will Be One was built around making poison structurally work.

All three sets had strong flavor components that we integrated into the design, but the structure of all three had a mechanical core.

The easiest way to think about this is that if you take a top-down set and remove all the flavor components (names, art, creature types, flavor text, etc.) the structure will just seem like random mechanical elements were thrown together while a bottom-up set will have an orderly structure.

[rookthebird]

thinking about the students at strixhaven slowly gathering clues that reveal that the mysterious, taciturn, never tells anyone anything about her personal life and has no mementoes in her office, SCARY Professor Onyx is *married* but not to who.

however, once they find that out, it's clear she's very proud of her husband. Occassionally she drops random information no context, always very smug about it. her husband is a war hero. her husband did time in jail and it was formative for him. her husband likes watching her zombie hordes eat their shared enemies alive. her husband is the only person she'd trust to guard her back while performing certain spells.

meanwhile the Mage Tower coach everyone likes talks all the time about his beautiful wife Lili. Lili is trained as a healer and she's brilliant at it. Lili takes her coffee with four sugars. Lili sulks if she doesn't get her good-night kiss. Lili is the oldest of seven sisters and one brother and loves children, though she can't have any of her own. Lili doesn't sleep as well when he's away from her. Lili once put her life in danger to save innocent people on Ravnica, and her screams in that moment still haunt him.

So, 99% of the school think that Professor Onyx is this intimidating necromancy teacher married to an equally scary military ex-convict, and that Coach Jura has a wife who's a healer who's just as kind and sweet as he is.

And when someone arrives early for a meeting and sees Professor Onyx and Coach Jura kissing passionately on her desk... clearly the assumption is that Professor Onyx has seduced the nice coach into cheating on his wife with her! Or perhaps even used mind-magic!

Some overly passionate Prismari students catch Professor Onyx sitting on Coach Jura's lap with her hand on his chest in the school gardens, and immediately go into a tirade. "Don't you realize he's married, and so are you?" "Coach Jura, what would your wife think?"

Professor Onyx just turns to look at them, utterly unbothered. "You do realize my first name is Liliana?"

[ankh-morporkianpostalworker]

My favorite part of the online DnD community is that it's pretty consistently ahead of WotC and does things with 5e that blows the official releases out of the water.

Take the magic school setting, as seen in 2021's Strixhaven expansion. The idea had already been done, and better, in the original TAZ campaign (2014), Campaign 2 of C.R. (2018, which was so good that WotC published it as its own setting), D20: Fantasy High (2018) and the Mage Madness Arc of NADDPOD (2019).

The big names also consistently do things with 5e it was never meant to do, especially D20, which pushed the system to its limits with Tiny Heist and Starstruck Odyssey.

The smaller indy creators are also doing things the system hadn't before, whether that's the afro-centric content of shows like Three Black Halflings, Jocat's wildly successful Crap Guide, the Arcane Arcade, Tulok the Barbarian's How to Play or any number of other series I doubt this site's character limit would let me heap praise upon.

TL;DR, WotC is far behind the stuff that online creators have made.

[thecornwall]

Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #957: Mavinda, Students' Advocate

Mavinda, Students' Advocate is a mythic rare from Strixhaven: School of Mages.

This is a weird effect. They try to avoid putting "{0}:" in a cost anymore. I woulda thought it would be {8}: and then saying it cost {8} less to activate if it targets a creature you control. But perhaps the way the rules works precludes this from working. Either way, seems like a fun ability. Making a deck around combat trick recursion sounds like fun.

[dbarenzu626-mtg]

Perchance to a Introduction Post!

Artwork by Ryan Pancoast, "Zimone, Quandrix Prodigy", Strixhaven: School of Mages

Ahh, welcome to my humble grounds! If you're a Planeswalker or a fellow fan of the TCG game Magic: The Gathering, welcome!

My name's Dylan, or @dbarenzu626 if you know me from my main blog: Canadian artist, writer and hobbyist. And more recently, MTG player, specifically in the Commander format. I got started this year thanks to one of my cousins, which then spurred me to pick up my first Commander precon in the form of Timey-Wimey from a Wal-Mart. Since then? I have grown my arsenal of decks far beyond, even considering decklists I have in progress ATM.

I love this card game dearly, at a time when my life was entering a strange period, Commander came in and became a bastion of fun for me, whether it have been looking into what cards to build for or even what to add to the 99 of a deck or coming to a table with a new deck ready to just play and enjoy, it's been nothing short of refreshing.

It's worth noting that I'm no TCG newbie either, my first TCGs were Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! back in the day and currently in this day and age, I stuck to Disney Lorcana and Digimon before converging into MTG Commander. To say I always loved collecting cardboard would be an understatement and that obsession has helped me in my deckbuilding!

So why start this blog? To chronicle my adventures with this game, of course!

As this blog starts up, I wanna share what to expect from my cardboard hideaway! So here we go:

Decklists! I wanna share some of my decklists of Commander decks I've built or are currently in the process of building. These decklists may range from being janky to average to even higher power level, but ultimately, I make some of these just to have fun with flavour and build decks I love in the end. Decklists will be talked about with strategies and experiences and I will be sharing lists via Moxfield or ManaBox, to be decided.

Interactions/battles I've had within Commander! The archetype always welcomes new friends and new playstyles and something I love, win or lose, is just the unique energy everyone brings to their deck projects or to battles. It makes my own deckbuilding feel more fruitful and by all means, I wanna talk about experiences like that.

New product unboxings and/or pack results! With Magic, the idea of always getting new cards and/or projects is going to be a reality. So discounting bulk and singles I'm buying, I wanna post about new products I pick up too, whether they be bundles or boxes or even Secret Lair drops and the results that come from them. Sets like Final Fantasy and Spider-Man next year more than invite this for me (these are sets I'm going all in on) and I know with the other original sets like Aetherdrift and Edges of Eternities that I may partake in a few packs or even a Commander deck. Heck, I may even have a few Secret Lairs coming my way already I wanna talk about...

Potentially, a "Card of the Day" feature! It may or may not be daily as I don't think I personally have the capacity to keep up with daily posts, but with so many cards in this game, I'd love to feature some of my favourites, be them for art or for treatments or even for powerhouse abilities. And yes, I may do this at length like with the decklists too, I like talking about certain things or combos you could pull off with a card.

Lastly, questions! These'll be open always, so if you wanna swing a question for me, whether it's a card you want my opinion of or a decklist I'm currently building for or a favourite card treatment or set? You can feel more than free to fire away, this is something I will always respond to (within reason, I probably won't be responding to any hateful comments, be them directed at how I build decks or at my choice of cards regardless of normal or even the hot topic of Universes Beyond sets. Ask and ye may receive!

Hopefully I can meet other players, connect here and have fun with this blog! For now though, let's get his Planeswalking hike going, shall we? Allons-y~! <3

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Blade Historian

"So you see, the reckless battle strategy of the Kathorran orcs was effective, but ultimately proved to be a double-edged sword. As did their double-edged swords."

Artist: Cristi Balanescu TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[ozcarr]

oz can you tell me about your tabletop robot guy who is sometimes a regular guy sometime I'm so curious

Gingey you are so real for this because you FUCKING KNOW I’ll write an essay about him. But I will give you the (still extremely long) reader's digest version.

His name is Aurelio and he's Wizard/Fighter in me and the homies' hiatus-ed Strixhaven (D&D magic college) game.

idk if you have familiarity with Eberron and the Warforged but basically there was this huge century-long, continental war, and things progressed to the extent the government was manufacturing soldiers to like. You know, fight and kill and die for them. Aurelio was built by a private contractor to be a battle mage and gained consciousness 2 days before a peace treaty was signed and all the Warforged were granted citizens' rights. So he was never dispatched and spent the following year and a half kind of just rotting away in a workshop, only 90% finished with only books and newspapers to learn about the world from.

A lot of the people in Ebberon do NOT like the warforged because they're relics of a really scary and dire war (and also they're like. Built to be soldiers, with all that entails.) Aurelio is really book-smart but has a lot of internalized guilt about being inherently dangerous and he also kind of lacks identity. And he's mesmerized by life and death and the human experiences — stuff like falling in love and growing old. He's determined that the only way he'll ever be happy is if he somehow becomes an organic lifeform, and decides that the best way to go about achieving that is through reincarnation (a spell that must be performed by a 9th level druid). Whether becoming a Regular Guy would ACTUALLY fix him or not... remains to be seen. What he wants and what I want for him are usually sorta at odds.

Anyway -- what better place to find a high-level mage than academia? So Aurelio gets really good at basic illusion spells and crafts a little persona based on his creator and his creator's two sons. Cause he doesn't wanna make people uncomfortable. And he thinks he’d be happier playing out this little fantasy.

He steals some military academy records, and ships himself off to Wizard College... in hopes that he can live some facsimile of human (elf?) experience, secure the allyship of a druid, figure out what he wants to do with his life one he gets it, then self-destruct at the opportune time so that his new druid buddy can randomly generate him a new body.

But he makes all these wonderful friends and has to keep them at arm's length because he's constantly lying to them, even though he's a terrible liar. Until he feels he can't do it anymore and finally tells them. But he's in too deep, he's married to his little lie (not to mention he faked his identity to the school), so he just keeps up with the disguise -- up until recent in-game events which caused his world to shatter a little bit.

He's super emotional (because he's basically brand new and every feeling is new and horrible), a little mischievous, cagey, lacks tact, and is constantly fucking up his interpersonal relationships. But he’s well-meaning and earnest. All he knows how to do is lie (illusion magic) and wreck shit (lighting-damage evocation magic). He wants to be a good, gentle person and a good friend but he's so self-involved that his actions usually backfire in some way.

That's the guy! He's a mess!

[loreleywrites]

*wave*

New follower here so I don't know much about you. Hope you don't mind the twofer.

What has been your favorite MTG product or storyline?

What MTG related projects have you been a part of?

Thanks for following!

It feels a little unfair to promote Distant Planes since it was published in 1996 and copies are like $30 now, but it's an anthology book with a lot of delightful stories in it and a bunch of pretty solid entries and a few mediocre ones and one really bad awful stinky one, but it has some of my favorite deep cut characters and moments in it.

As for Magic projects, in an official capacity I have written all the planeswalker VO for MTG Arena since War of the Spark. I also have been on the name/text teams for Modern Horizons, Theros: Beyond Death, Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, Zendikar Rising, Strixhaven: School of Mages: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, Streets of New Capenna, The Brothers' War, March of the Machine, March of the Machine: Aftermath, and all the associated commander decks associated with those sets. I also wrote for Thunder Junction next year.

I've also written a few MTG videos with IGN this year.

Unofficially, I am a founding cohost of The Vorthos Cast, a podcast all about Magic's flavor, story, and characters. We release new episodes every Monday.

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Velomachus Lorehold by Raymond Swanland

[geekynerfherder]

'Symmetry Sage' by Jehan Choo.

Card art from the 'Strixhaven: School of Mages' expansion set, released in April 2021 by Magic: The Gathering.