Magic - Casual Shards of Alara

**Eridanis** · 19th September 2008, 11:25 PM

Has anyone else been following the previews? I've been looking over my old binders recently and thinking of rebuilding an old WUG legends deck with new tech - looks like WotC was looking at my ten-year-old deck lists for inspiration!

I think the art that's been shown so far has been some of the best in a while (cf. Stoic Angel, Kiss of the Amesha). Given how good it's been the past few years, that's saying something. Love the new tri-lands, too.

Kenku17 · 26th September 2008, 09:27 PM

Have been following the previews slowly and right now I can definitly say a couple small things.

GR(my favorite color pair) looks like it could be preety insane between the devour tricks, and Nara's behemoth boosters. The spin on "Colored" artifacts with BUW is also intreaging. The other interesting thing is the insane amounts of mana thats gonna have to be shelled out for the good stuff, and their awesome explosions!

MerricB · 28th September 2008, 02:52 AM

I would have gone to the prerelease but I've just been dreadfully ill this week.

Cheers!

Furtive Noise · 1st October 2008, 04:14 AM

When I looked up some previews for the set I have to say I wasn't super-impressed w/ them other than the great art, but after going to the prerelease this weekend something clicked and I love the set a lot.

I'm a pretty casual player who just plays w/ friends most of the time and I have the feeling people around these boards are as well. So while I've heard that there are fewer 'power cards' that will see constructed play compared to recent sets like Lorwyn, I feel like this set is somehow more fun. First, its generally slower and has a lot of interesting, powerful creatures for each color to ramp up to. Second, there are plenty of common mana-fixing cards so its possible to actually make three or more color decks. I can't tell you how much I hated having earlier dual lands as rares because it seemed you needed them if you wanted to experiment w/ multicolor decks and there was no way I was shelling out the cash to buy lots of singles of them. Finally, the flavor is really evocative. By having a different world for each color combo they didn't have to figure out how to shoe-horn in a color that fits oddly into the set (ie. ok, we've got a horrible swampy ruin, what are the plains and white creatures gonna be).

Maybe the afterglow of a new set will fade, but right now I feel more interested in getting more of the set then I did for the last few releases. Does anyone know if there's a new promo card for release events next weekend?