Shocks and Spoilers from PAX Prime

Finally, the shocks have come back to standard!  My jubilation at this is slightly tainted by the fact that the value of the old shocks has dropped to the £6 mark, leaving all of the people who payed £10+ each for them a little disgruntled.  However the art for the new shocks is truly stunning, so lets have a look:

Smarter than the average land.

I am informed that it is hard to get excited about land cards, well every time you open one of these in a booster it is time to be happy.  A strong mana base is essential to play anything and these are fetchable mana fixers of doom.  Keep in mind these can be fetched by the Sac lands from Zendikar which are still in Extended for another year.  We also get a cycle of "Gates" which are common duel lands.  A great booster to pauper and the availability of mana fixing.

Helping you live the 5 colour control dream...

We also got to see the first Planeswalker from Return to Ravnica which is Jace, Architect of Thought.

"Hey guys didn't we do a Jace for UU2 before?"  

"Yeah some people got very annoyed by that - should be Ok this time..."

This is not Jace the Mind Sculptor 2.0, make your own mind up as to that being a good or bad thing.  He's great in EDH and his -8 ability is bonkers; go get omniscience from my deck and the best card from yours and play them, oh but now I can play anything Wooooo!  I think since Jace 2.0 they have generally de-powered the Planeswalkers and this is probably a victim of that or he may just be really "flavorful".

We know the promo cards for each of the guilds and these are below;

You will get a foil alternate art version of one of these depending what guild you are in and be able to play it in your deck.  Registration for Prerelease is already available on the Patriot website here.  We think this one is going to be pretty popular so book early.

Looks like there are some pretty cool cards in this set which have been spoilt already including the "new" terminate (sort of).

Not sure this should be at rare - although I guess that works for limited play.  Yes it is terminate for guys and Planeswalkers with one big downside, it is at sorcery speed.  However, in the Rakdos armoury we then have this:

This is really going to hurt.  I wonder if this means there will be a cycle of mythic rares which are guild leader spells?  Oh and speaking of guild leaders this morning those nice people at WotC have given us these two:

Love the way they have kept the feel and flavor of the old cards with these new ones.  The art work of course continues to be staggering.  Mirror universe Niv is going to be lots of fun.

While waiting for the spoilers to start on Sunday morning Johnathan Glancy said he would like to do a deck with Precursor Golem and Wild Defiance.  Here is my take on it, I call it Simic Robots of Death to keep in with the whole Return to Ravnica theme:

4 Cavern of Souls

4 Hinterland Harbour 

7 Forests

6 Islands 

2 Alchemist's Refuge

23 Land

4 Snapcaster Mage

4 Solemn Simularcrum

2 Wing Splicer

3 Vital Splicer

4 Precursor Golem

17 Creatures

4 Mana Leak

4 Negate

3 Artful Dodge

3 Wild Defiance

4 Rampant Growth 

2 Mutagenic Growth

20 Spells

There we go - make your own sideboard for it, we have an article on that coming up soon by the way.  I will be back Wednesday with a new blog, hope to see you there...