A First Look at Lorwyn

It is both a blessing and a curse when our office T1 line goes down. We lose email, phones, and Internet, which surprisingly brings the honorable wheels of association publishing to a grinding halt. We have now been without Internet for the past two mornings, and it’s getting annoying.

Oh well, I guess I can write about Magic until I get connected to the world again.

There’s actually quite a bit Eternal-wise that will be coming up in the next few weeks. The RIW “Feeling Blue” tournament I mentioned last time is pretty big. Then in another week there’s a sanctioned Legacy tournament in Columbus that I’ll unfortunately not be able to attend (information at the end of the article). The week after that is Star City Games Power 9 in Indianapolis that it sounds like everybody will be able to attend. Then the weekend after that is the Lorwyn Prerelease.

That’s two times two times the fun!

I’m not sure yet if I’ll be able to attend the Lorwyn Prerelease. I’ll be in Washington visiting my girlfriend, and I don’t know if she’ll be down for that kind of activity on her home turf. Maybe. I’ll have to ask.

Lorwyn is the next “Tribal Block.” Creature type will matter again, like it did in Onslaught (or Don Slaught, in possibly the only clever joke I’ve heard Chris Millar make). Plus, we’ll finally get the Planeswalker cards (and more of the Tribal ones) that Tarmogoyf promised, so Tom Goyfman can now grow to be 8/9—goody, goody.

Normally a creature themed block would mean not much for Vintage, but since Creatures have been taking a push recently thanks to Quirion Dryad, we could see some interesting developments. Time will tell.

There will undoubtedly be more Lorwyn previews and spoilers coming in the next couple of weeks. Last time I checked, though—it was a couple of days ago—the only previews they had up were 20 lands and a couple of random cards.

One of the new cards was a green Treefolk creature that gets +2/+2 for each Forest you play and for each Treefolk spell you play. That intrigued me since I like Treefolk, and it looks like that particular tribe may be a big part of Lorwyn. This is one angry Ent.

I built a Treefolk deck a couple years ago, but most of the creatures were pretty vanilla. The curve was silly because there weren’t a lot of low-cost Treefolk, so you had to play turn one land, turn two play a land and fetch a land, and then on turn three either play Cradle Guard and waste a mana or play something like Heartwood Treefolk.

It was not a very good deck. Maybe with Lorwyn’s Treefolk it will be better.

Other creatures might have actual use in Vintage. For example, there’s a card that I thought had some utility in Bomberman.

White Dude that You Don’t Want to Have Hunted Horror Against
3W
Creature – Type A
Flying
Whenver [this] attacks, remove target creature from the game. Return that creature to play at end of turn.
3/3

With this, you could remove Trinket Mage (or a blocker too, I guess) from the game and get its comes-into-play effect again on the way back in. You could set up the combo with just one Trinket Mage that way, not that there aren’t four in the deck already. It competes at mana cost with Auriok Salvagers, unfortunately, and probably is just a win-more card anyway. Still, there are a lot of tricky things to do with this guy.

Plus, 3/3 flyer for four mana! Good deal! Unless of course it’s the only creature in play.

The other card I noticed was a new version of Ninja of the Deep Hours (or Ophidian or Thieving Magpie):

Blue Guy What Draws the Cards
3U
Creature – Type B
Whenever [this] becomes tapped, draw a card.
2/2

I think that’s it.

Underwhelming to say the least. I mean, when the biggest taunt you have is, “Go ahead and Ice this guy! See if I care!” you’re in trouble. Maybe there’s a new card that combos with this. Of course, as with everybody’s favorite saving grace for Vintage cards, it pitches to Force of Will.

They also previewed an updated Goblin Grenade that makes use of the Tribal card type:

Goblin Thermal Detonator, or Whatever
3B
Tribal Sorcery – Goblin
As an additional cost to play [this] sacrifice a goblin. Target creature gets -5/-5. [This] deals five damage to target player.

I think that’s it. The player either takes damage or loses life; I can’t remember for sure.

One thing to notice is that this spell is black. Does that mean Goblins in Lorwyn are black-aligned rather than red? That’s a sizeable change since, if it’s true, either Legacy Goblins won’t be able to use the new cards, or they’ll lose some consistency and probably the use of cards like Wasteland and Rishdan Port. Okay, it’s more likely that they’ll just splash black and cherry-pick the best new goblins like they do anyway.

Another question to ask is whether things like Goblin Matron and Goblin Ringleader will be able to tutor for Tribal spells and put them in hand. I’m not sure how to feel about Goblin decks having more utility than they already do.

Lorwyn is also the first big set of two consecutive two-set blocks. So we have Lorwyn-Morningtide and Jelly-Doughnut as two separate and distinct but somehow related blocks. Wizards decided to do a four-set Super Block then realized that would make drafting weird, so they made drafting even weirder by making two two-set blocks instead. The extra, fourth set is to fill in summer 2008 with a relevant release, like Coldsnap in 2006.

Many people have said that this change is the harbinger of death for Magic, but those people are idiots.

I’m not sure what this means for the rest of you, but for me I don’t think it matters. LorMor and Jelly-Doughnut will likely produce the same average number of playables for Eternal as did Ravnica block plus Coldsnap, or any other group of four sets. What is that—somewhere between 10 and 20ish, depending on how you designate playable?

Drafters will have a bit of an adjustment to make, but as long as they consider it an experience and not the upheaval of everything they know and love, they should survive relatively unscathed. The problem will be that, without a third set, Lorwyn block drafts will be LorLorMor, just as they would be TSPS for the first two sets of Time Spiral block. Then Jelly will come along and people will draft JellyJellyJelly and then JellyJellyDoughnut. Or maybe they could draft LorMorJelly, just to change things around a bit. Heck, they could draft TSLorJelly and really get crazy!

It can’t be much worse than triple Coldsnap, right? Didn’t everyone hate that? And it was supposed to be designed with drafting in mind.

Anyway, Lorwyn will be great, I’m sure.

Now, as a reward for reading this far, here is the information for the Meandeck Legacy tournament next weekend.

When: September 2, doors open at 12:30 for registration
Where: The Soldiery, 4256 N. High St, Columbus, OH 43214
What: Sanctioned Legacy, $15 entry with cash payout starting at $200

Be there or be square! So to speak.

Oh, and bring your Tarmogoyfs.

Oh, and congratulations AGAIN to Stephen Menendian for living what I assume is every Magic player's dream and going to the Invitational. It should be awesome!