Choose Your Own Alara 
Wizards Announces Shadowmoor Theme Song
Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast today unveiled a new marketing scheme that will accompany the release of the next stand-alone expansion to their popular Magic: The Gathering (MtG) card game, called Shadowmoor. This new set brings back a concept not seen en masse since the Ravnica block: cards that have more than one way to pay their casting cost. This introduces a number of challenges for would-be players, while at the same time introducing deckbuilding flexibility. To help get players — new and old alike — excited about this mechanic, Wizards has tapped popular recording artist Josh Groban to write and perform a thematically appropriate song that champions Shadowmoor.
With Groban’s work complete, Mark Rosewater (a Wizards employee) has released the final version of the song in anticipation of release week. He said that he hopes that the song will be “bigger than that Numa song.” To this end, Wizards has begun contacting some familiar Youtube.com stars in the hopes that they will generate parody videos. He has also asked members of GoodGamery.com, a wildly popular gaming website frequented by rabid Magic players, to head to Youtube and click on the song’s video to keep it on the “favorites” list.
Here then, are the lyrics to the song.
“O Casting Cost” by Josh Groban
(Sung to the tune of “O Christmas Tree”)
Oh casting cost, oh casting cost, how shall I pay for thee?
Oh casting cost, oh casting cost, how shall I pay for thee?
In play I have two swamps, a plains, can I now cast ‘Curse of Chains’?
Oh casting cost, oh casting cost, how shall I pay for thee?
Oh curse you Mark, oh my sore head, how did he ever pay for those?
Oh wait I know, oh now I’m dead, three Demigods: I am hosed
You tap a swamp, and I can’t tell, the color of, your creature spell
Oh casting cost, oh casting cost, how shall I pay for thee?
I have to think, which I despise, I should have quit after revised
Oh casting cost, oh casting cost, how shall I pay for thee?
Generally regarded as possessing an incredible voice and knack for writing, and with one of the best-selling Christmas albums in recent memory, this is not what Josh Groban’s fans have come to expect. When asked about the song, Groban said that he “put time in commensurate to what I was paid. And in reality, I know nothing about the game. Is it related to those Pokemon toys?” One can only hope that more time (and money) was put into designing Shadowmoor than was put into marketing it, but considering a major theme is recycled, prospects do not look good.
(or do they! – paz, ‘Grobaniac’)
