Outplay your opponent with this handsome collection of iconic cards.
Call on the power of the moon and control the game with this collection of essential Mountains, now with a stunning new look.
Each Signature Spellbook: Blood Moon will contain nine cards: eight cards and a foil version of one of those eight cards at random.
ORLANDO, FL — Early this morning, photos of an uncut sheet of Rivals of Ixalan were leaked on imgur.
We contacted the leaker for an exclusive close-up glimpse of some of the new cards, seen below. More to come as this story develops.
We at Good Gamery have received an exclusive sneak peek at what Magic fans can cross their fingers and hope to open once Dominaria releases in 2018. We’re excited to see how this new set will go back to Magic’s roots. Click below to reveal all fifteen Masterpieces from the set. Enjoy!
Now and then, GoodGamery publishes real preview cards. In 2010, Wizards provided us with a preview card, Quag Sickness. In 2011, GoodGamery provided our own joke preview card, the random dual land generator. This year, the world will end. However, before that, we have received a new preview card from Wizards. This card is from Avacyn Restored, set to be released sometime soon. Let the spoiler season begin!
(This card has, of course, been generated randomly for your convenience by the Magical Avacyn Restored Card Generator. To share this specific card with other people, click here and use the share link at the bottom of the page.)
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by Fake Mark Rosewater |
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Here at Wizards of the Coast, our work – like the work of Sir Isaac Newton before us – is all about experimentation. Whenever we introduce an exciting new idea, we are testing the waters to see what works and what doesn’t, and what we can rehash further down the line. The ‘free spells’ mechanic in Urza block was a huge success, so we revisited it in New Phyrexia. Increasing planeswalker complexity and utility with Jace, the Mind Sculptor didn’t cause any problems, so we decided to push forward with the five-ability Garruk Relentless, who requires a degree to operate correctly.
With Innistrad we attempted the largest experiment of all, the Magic R&D equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider: double-faced cards. Although St. Richard Garfield originally intended to use card-backs as a means to differentiate between expansions, for the past eighteen years the reverse of a Magic card has been considered sacred ground. Imagine if we could unlock the full powers of both sides of a Magic card – that’s 100% more design space then we’re currently using. In this economic climate, that’s exactly the kind of efficiency-increasing solution we need to be coming up with.
Double-faced cards, of course, have been hugely successful. Meeting with a glowing community reception since they were first spoiled, DFCs have consistently smashed any misgivings that might have been initially held with regards to issues like shuffling and drafting. The fact of the matter is, the idea of a CCG that uses a standardized card-back to conceal information is antiquated. I have previously stated that Innistrad is the beginning of a seven-year plan; by the end of these seven years I hope for every card in Magic to have a completely unique card-back.
We understand that this will be a lot to take in, so rather than leap right in with flip-morph-transform cards that have a card from an entirely different CCG on the reverse, we will be introducing staggered changes to the card-back over the next few sets. Dark Ascension brings us the first and most obvious addition: Color-coding. Starting next February, all card-backs will be subtly recolored to indicate rarity.
I could talk for pages and pages about how great an idea this is, but it might be more interesting for you if I answered a few of your questions instead! Here, then, is the official preliminary card-back FAQ!
What about opaque sleeves?
To properly accommodate the new card-backs, we will regrettably be forced to disallow the use of opaque sleeves from all Magic tournaments. If you really don’t want to go Au-natural, we are pleased to announce that our friends at UltraPro will be selling ‘booster packs’ containing eleven common-backed sleeves, three uncommon-backed sleeves, and one rare-backed sleeve. A small proportion of these packs will even contain a mythic rare sleeve!
While I’m sure that UltraPro’s new product will be of the highest quality, I can’t afford to collect all these sleeves. Must I risk damage to my precious collection?
We’ve got you covered – we will be giving players the option to swap their library with sixty checklist cards.
Doesn’t this mean that all card rarities will be public information?
It absolutely does – we feel that knowing when your opponent is about to draw their mythic bombs will add a strategic dimension to the game, not take anything away from it.
Aren’t you worried about the possibility of cheating used marked card-backs?
Nope!
Tune in next time for the reveal of the next stage in the evolution of the cardback!
Over the years at GoodGamery we’ve had our fair share of exciting preview cards. As part of the Rise of the Eldrazi alliance we spoiled the Timmy-est card in a Timmy set, Spawnsire of Ulamog. For Magic 2011 we eschewed such whimsy for a card the average player on the street could really connect with: limited workhorse Quag Sickness. Those were heady days indeed, but two sets have gone by since then without so much as a whiff of exclusive news. Has GoodGamery been forgotten? That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is no.
Today we are privileged not just to kick off the Innistrad spoiler season, but to give a tantalising glimpse into the fabric of the block itself. We have been entrusted with one of the fundamental components of the Innistrad universe: its dual lands. From Tundra in Alpha to Flooded Strand in Onslaught, from Hallowed Fountain in Ravnica to Seachrome Coast in Scars of Mirrodin, dual lands have always been a cornerstone of both fantasy worlds and tournament environments.
But what exactly is a dual land? The Oxford English dictionary defines a dual land as “a land card that provides two colours of mana, or an indirect means of acquiring two colours of mana.” While technically accurate, this definition fails to account for the soul of the dual land, an intangible phenomenon that has touched the hearts of countless magic players. An exciting new dual is the perfect way to kick off exploration of an exciting new block, and we’re pleased to say our dual is quite a doozy. Are you ready to discover the horror lurking within? Don’t worry, we’ll be right there with you. Let’s go!
(This land has, of course, been generated randomly for your convenience by the magical dual land generator. To share this specific card with other people, click here and use the share code at the bottom of the page.)
Good Gamery’s own dear friend and forum user PMega acquired the very first pack of New Phyrexia, likely from some unnameable inside source. Next, he opened it for our amusement. Feast your eyes on this:
(Click images for big versions)
I am feverish with delight! If you are still famished for spoiled cards, look only slightly further:
On the plane of Grimneath, Unblinking Bleb would be an eye. Elsewhere in the Magic universe, he isn’t, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary.
This isn’t surprising, really. In Magic’s history, there has been a long tradition of almost-but-not-quite-actually-eyes. There have been artifact eyes, creature eyes, land eyes, and enchantment eyes. There have been spells that you’d fairly expect to shower you in an explosion of eyes. But there have been few actual eyes.
In fact, there are exactly two creatures with the creature type Eye in all of Magic: the infamous Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore and his modern cousin from Urborg. Despite their modest numbers, these ocular bogeymen represent an archetype, one with an uncanny ability to evoke an emotional response. They’re mysterious and menacing and memorable, because ultimately, well, eyes are creepy. Specifically, disembodied eyes are creepy. Gigantic, man-sized eyes are especially creepy, and gigantic, malevolent disembodied eyes are perhaps creepiest of all.
For this reason, I’ve always found them strangely compelling. So when I set about designing my world for the Great Designer Search 2, I was drawn to the sordid realm of Orms-By-Gore for inspiration. What might a Magic world populated by eyes look like? Well, it would be dark. Oppressive. Based on the meager available precedent, it would seem that eyes don’t play nicely with other creatures. I pictured them as captors, subjugating other races. Perhaps they’d oversee a mining operation. An underground plane seemed like a natural setting.
And thus Grimneath was born. Though I unfortunately didn’t make the latter rounds of the GDS2, I did continue working on the set for my own edification. From the beginning, it felt like a set that I’d be excited to play with, and I’m pretty happy with the results. The entire 200+ card set is linked below—follow the link below for a brief visit to the world of Grimneath. And remember that if you see a bleb there, it probably really is an eye.
