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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Review: Magic 2013 Wrap-up

Today I'm going to finish up my review of Magic 2013. First up I'll look at the Artifacts, Lands and the sole Gold card, then I'll make my decisions on best flavor, best design and best overall for the entire set.





Let's start with the 8-mana elephant in the room: Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. He's the first Gold card to ever appear in a core set and he breaks the mold of the five planeswalker lineup of coresets that started in M10. I can't find fault with either his design or his flavor - it fits together well, and he feels like the Big Bad.

I love the new art on both Primal Clay and Door to Nothingness. Door to Nothingness in particular feels a lot nastier than it used to be. The Door also is also a good choice for a reprint, as there feels like a slightly greater focus on multicolor in M13 than there was in past core sets.

I love the Ring cycle. It allows them to replace the lucky charms cycle with something that new players are equally likely to gravitate to, while also being useful in Limited and maybe even seeing some Constructed play. I enjoy the flavor too - if I'm not mistaken, each ring references a location in Shandalar, and I love these weird references.

The dual lands remain good designs, but it might be time to refresh. We've had these dual lands for a long time now.

Cathedral of War is excellent. It's confusing at first, but is an auto-include in Exalted decks without being overpowering, and the flavor is great, especially when you realize that the building is covered with blades.

Reliquary Tower is interesting only in contrast to its previous printing in Conflux. It looks like there wasn't a happy ending to the knight's story.

Best Flavor: Reliquary Tower. This is a great example of how they're using the core sets to do little updates on how the various planes are doing.
Best Design: Ring Cycle. There's an elegance in their simplicity and it helps teach new players which colors get particular abilities.
Best Overall: Cathedral of War. An overall tight package.

As a refresher, here are the winners of each color:

Best Flavor: White: Attended Knight. Blue: Master of the Pearl Trident. Black: Murder. Red: Krenko, Mob Boss. Green: Timberpack Wolves.

Best Design: White: Sublime Archangel. Blue: Jace's Phantasm. Black: Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis. Red: Mark of Mutiny. Green: Roaring Primadox.

Best Overall: White: Sublime Archangel. Blue: Master of the Pearl Trident. Black: Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis. Red: Krenko, Mob Boss. Green: Fungal Sprouting.


It's incredibly difficult to narrow any of these down, but let's start with Flavor. While I enjoy Master of the Pearl Trident and Attended Knight, I don't think they can stand next to the other three. Murder's great, but the lack of flavor text hurts it at this point (though I still think it helps the card) Overall, I'm going to have to give Krenko, Mob Boss my award for Best Flavor of Magic 2013.

Design is a little easier, and I think I'll just come out and say that Sublime Archangel is my choice. It's just a fun card with interesting deck building options.

That brings us to Best Overall, between Sublime Archangel and Krenko, Mob Boss. While either could win, I'm going to have to let my bias decide this one. Therefore, Krenko, Mob Boss gets the win! Congratulations!

Best Flavor: Krenko, Mob Boss.
Best Design: Sublime Archangel.
Best Overall: Krenko, Mob Boss.

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