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Monday, July 9, 2012

Review: White in Magic 2013

This is going to be a series of 6 posts, reviewing Magic 2013 from both a game design and a flavor perspective. The first five posts will each cover one color, while the final post will be review the remainder (multicolor, artifacts, lands) and the overall set.




White starts out strong with Ajani, Caller of the Pride. On a creative side, he's a great example of Ajani's skills and style of magic. His first two abilities help others, and his ultimate summons a pride to fight alongside. The fact that he checks your life is a bit weird on its own, though it's the only reason his Sunstriker makes much sense.

Exalted in general is a fantastic mechanic in both a flavor and design sense, and Angelic Benediction is a good example. The flavor works, and the design, while obvious, is good. Sometimes the obvious thing example is the best. I also enjoy Aven Squire - it's a good choice for a reprint. As a cheap Exalted creature with evasion, it is deceptively powerful and remains useful through the entire game. And I've always liked the flavor of squires, especially when they help others. Attended Knight is a slightly subtler example - they don't name the token it makes a squire, but it's clear what it represents. The other great White Exalted card is Sublime Archangel, which is impressive even if its the only Exalted card in your deck. Nice and splashy, it makes me want to build a deck around it which means it's a complete success.

Captain's Call is a nice utility token maker, but the real success here is that its name puts it next to Captain of the Watch. This makes it clear what deck it goes in, and makes it obvious why it's useful. Nothing exciting going on here, but it does its job well. However, it also ends up next to Crusader of Odric - these three cards together could be nasty.

So, did Faith's Reward replace the traditional Wrath spell? I mean, there's Planar Cleansing, but that's pricy at six mana. I don't know what the decision to skip on the four mana Wrath is, but perhaps they're going to have one in Return to Ravnica? Of course, I do like Planar Cleansing as a wrath effect, though the fact that it's the only one makes me think that M13 white will be more aggro than control.

I don't know if I like Griffin Protector. The design is good, adding an extra decision about when to play creatures, but the name makes it sound like it should have defender. Instead it is almost only useful on the attack, though it could be tons of fun to play with. Maybe if it had vigilance like Guardian Lions the flavor would make more sense, but that might have pushed its cost too high.

I don't think I'll ever play with Healer of the Pride. It appears to be Soul Warden's replacement, but it can't do the same job as well, and it's not aggressively costed enough considering its power.

Knight of Glory (and it's Black counterpart) is an excellent version of the White Knight archetype. Not much to say about it aside from that, but it's elegant in its simplicity.

It's kind of amazing how quickly Oblivion Ring became a staple effect for white, and none have done it as well as the original. It's nice seeing it and Pacifism in the same set, and both with good flavor - though I admit that I like O-ring's original art more than the Shards art, it's still wonderful. And Pacifism's art and flavor text are among my favorite of all time.

Let's talk about Legendary creatures in core sets. There haven't been any since Tenth Edition, and that set was hampered by the all-reprint rule. That means those legends were (mostly) complicated and sometimes not representative of the color - since when does Red get any sort of recursion? The fact that the five legendary creatures were made specifically for the core set weirdly makes them more flavorful - they get more mentions, including another card with their name on it. They also get to represent their color more clearly. For Odric, Master Tactician, this means he shows off the white weenie strategy in an impressive way. This is a rare and powerful effect, but it also won't be difficult to pull off in a properly built deck.

While M13 is the first core set to ever have any gold cards (with the addition of Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, who I'll get to later) it is not the first to have cards that push you towards multicolor decks, and Prized Elephant is part of an Uncommon cycle that serves as this set's multicolor incentive. It's numbers match up nicely if you have a Forest, and otherwise it's the correct size for an elephant. Well done, but not the most impressive of the cycle.

Rain of Blades seems awful strong for white direct damage, even if it is only on attack creatures. It has a nice flavor so I'm willing to give it a pass.

Serra Avatar is a great Mythic Rare - it's impressive and will most likely win the game if it hits, but is challenging to play and probably won't see a ton of constructed play. The fact that there are a trio of Serra cards is nice - Serra Angel is a classic, and it's always nice to see it come back, but I think Serra Avenger is my favorite. It's weird, but also oddly intuitive.

This is the first time in a while I've wanted to make a White deck, and that shows me that this was a very successful design.

Best Design: Sublime Archangel. It shows off Exalted really well, and it's instantly grokkable.
Best Flavor: Attended Knight. A knight with her squire. Simple, yet effective.
Overall Best Card: Sublime Archangel. Wonderful design with powerful flavor.

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