Gods of War Arise

Theros, Baby!

I’m incredibly stoked at this new set, where its going, and how many levels of awesome it is. But first: Background!

So, I played MTG back a while ago, Invasion, ect. I wasn’t going to start back up again, I just didn’t have the mental investment. My brother, 10 years later, did his damnedest to get me to start EDH, which I balked at for a few years, but eventually gave in last year around Innistrad block. Picked up some cards from Ebay and started being really disappointed that I missed Ravnica Block.

Que awesome timing music!

With return to Ravnica I decided I’d figure out how to draft. It was a fun, entertaining format, and I tore right into it. My first draft of RTR I finished bottom of the pile, with some stupid-dumb mistakes (passing the sphinx of the Chimes as first pick… )

My last DGM Draft I did I took first. In the block I’d learned a lot about a complex draft and how to bend and twist. M14 has been nice, but it’s not the type of draft I like. Slivers is the only theme I’ve really been able to gravitate to. I did well, but it wasn’t what I’d call exciting.

Theros, ladies and gentleman, looks exciting.
All five colors have gods, all 10 color combos have gods. Bring em on!
The three city states are really well represented: Athens, Sparta, Amazonia. As a student of Classical History, I’m really pleased by a lot of the cards they are previewing

The Planswalkers Guides they are putting out, covering Gods, People, and the forthcoming Monsters article have been really informative.
I’m a dork, I know.

The keywords they are using are interesting, in addition. They have a very Grecian theme to each of them, and I really feel that so far they capture the thought process of the Ancient Greeks:
Scry – Oracles and Seers were a huge part of ancient life, and it is really cool to see them represented
Heroic – Oracles and Seers are only useful if they have Heroes to guide, and I really like the Heroic mechanic as presented so far
Monstrous – What good are heroes if they have no monsters to fight? This Kicker-in-waiting is a really cool way to get make a creature into a time bomb.
Devotion – After a strong Multi-color set, its really neat to see a very strong pull to mono-color decks by design. I’m impressed, but I’ll have to see it in play.
Bestow – Man, I can’t say enough about it. Aura’s always had two problems: Needing another creature, and being 2-for-1’d when the creature was finally killed. This seems to solve both those problems. Its a creature if you don’t have any, and its a buff for a creature that drops onto the battlefield as its own creature once the target is taken out. It can be a really good way to buff out sweepers that you see coming, bounce and a number of other effects.

As you can tell, I’m really pumped that this is coming during my time back in magic. I probably won’t last much longer than Theros, my tolerance is extraordinarily low, but I’ll be able to draft it certainly!