Boy, Odric, Lunarch Marshal sure can grant a lot of abilities! Here’s a look at the original design. We shaved a number of keywords after development raised concerns about “rules confusion”, “tournament time limits”, “shuffling nightmares”, and “how on earth would you even print this”. Take a look for yourself if you want to really flip out!
DO NOT VIEW THIS CARD!
You have been warned!
You are surprised and suspended by Helene Bergeot! She quickly shreds your flesh and devours you.
Hello and welcome to Magic Origins preview week here at Good Gamery! We’ve got a doozy of a preview card for you here today! If you’re the least bit Vorthos, today’s preview card is right up your alley!
In recent sets, the creative folks at Wizards have decided to be more proactive in including pivotal story moments in playable cards. Relevant story scenes encompased in card form that all players can enjoy, such as the defeat of Xenagos at the hand of Elspeth in Deicide or the nexus of two different possible futures in Crux of Fate.
If you’ve been the least bit attentive to the few Magic Origins spoilers that have been trickling in the past few weeks, you ought to know Magic Origins will continue this new trend in Magic story telling. Our preview card today depicts one such important moment. If you’ve read last week’s Uncharted Realms on the Wizards website telling the origin story of our beloved necromancer planeswalker Liliana Vess, you might already be familiar with this scene. If you haven’t, I highly recommend you go and read it but in short, Liliana made a deal with four demons to gain power and stay young forever. One such demon is Kothoped.
Now, our preview card today isn’t Kothoped himself, but he is featured in the art. That’s because our preview card depicts the moment he infuses Liliana with his demonic power, etching her skin with enchanted runes that give her knowledge and power. Without any further stalling, I present to you our preview card:
Amazing, isn’t it?! Pity it’s just a Johnny-fodder uncommon, but you gotta give it credit for the flavor. Wow!
In addition, we sat down with a Wizards employee and were able to ask him a few question about our awesome preview card. The interview went as follows:
Won’t Demonic Tutor be kinda broken in Modern?
It is our understanding that yes, it will be. Which is why we’re preemptively banning it in Modern, to maintain the integrity of the format. The official Banned and Restricted Announcement will be posted on July 13 and more information will be available at that time but basically Demonic Tutor will be banned in Modern as soon as Magic Origins is released.
Okay, but won’t Demonic Tutor be kinda good in Standard as well?
While not as powerful as it would have been in Modern, it is still a concern. We strive to strike a delicate balance in Standard as it is our most played format by a wide margin. Which is why, to ensure the health of the format, we’re preemptively banning the card in Standard as well. Once again, the official Banned and Restricted Announcement will be posted on July 13 and more information will be available at that time but yes, Demonic Tutor will also be banned in Standard as soon as Magic Origins is released.
The card is still uncommon though, won’t that warp Limited in a bad way?
After careful playtesting, we realized that yes, Demonic Tutor does warp limited in a bad way. Which is why, to keep the format fresh, we’re also preemptively banning the card in all limited formats, including prerelease events. The official Prerelease Primer will be posted July 8 and more information will be available at that time but suffice to say, Demonic Tutor will be banned in Limited as soon as you are able to get your hands on it.
What the hell, is the card being banned everywhere?! Why did you put it in the set in the first place?
Not everywhere, no. Demonic Tutor will not be banned in Magic Origins block constructed, for instance. There aren’t really any good cards in the set to search for, so there’s that. There’s also what, Tiny Leaders I guess. It’s already banned there? Good for them. Look, honestly? We were too busy drafting Modern Masters 2015 so we kinda just let Creative do whatever they wanted with the set. I say we got off relatively scot-free, considering the original idea for the set was to tell the origin story of Magic’s antagonists instead. Can you imagine Yawgmoth’s Bargain and Will in Standard again? Man, did we dodge a bullet there!
If you’ve playing Magic for any time longer than a month, you’re certainly familiar with the concept of the spoiler season. A couple of great weeks where cards from the newest set come dripping in and the excitement in the air is palpable.
But if you’ve been through at least one such spoiler season, I’m sure you’ve experienced the foreign spoiler fenomenon where you go look at the newest spoiler and it’s in a foreign language so now you have to go look up the text spoiler or wait for a native speaker to post a translation.
It’s a bit of a hassle, but nothing major. It’s a big world out there and there’s lots of other markets to cater to. The problem is when that happens to the site doing the spoiler preview itself. Here is GoodGamery’s latest Modern Masters 2015 preview card:
Fear not, for I have a handy dictionary nearby.
I know I had it somewhere around here…
Ah, this is embarrassing, I think my dictionary’s been used as fuel for the Magmaw.
I’m sure someone can figure this one out.
All I can say is that my preview card today is a good card. One might even say, a DAMN good card. One that’s had players clamoring for a reprint for a long time now. It’s so DAMN iconic that it’s even got a full-art foil promo version!
I can’t believe I was actually chosen to preview this card. I’m so DAMN excited! Have you guessed the card yet? Click the link to find out…
“DAMN!”
That’s what you’re thinking right now, isn’t it? I know, I KNOW!
For a measly six mana, give your opponent the choice of losing some life or sacrificing a few permanents. That’s right, it’s DAMNED if you do, DAMNED if you do, because there’s no “don’t” here. Seriously, if your opponent doesn’t choose a number, check their pulse because they might be dead.
Here’s a deck featuring the DAMN awesome power of this card:
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The deck could use some sort of board control card at the four mana slot, but I can’t think of any card like that right now, so we’ll have to make do with what we have.
Of course, your reaction to all this is going to be something like, ‘What the heck? This card doesn’t have an alt-art foil version yet! It’s so DAMN exciting, I want one now!’ Well, you’re about to get your wish. We’re super excited to show off the beautiful alternate-art foil promo Choice of Damnations that some lucky players will be getting from their local game stores with their boxes of Modern Masters 2015. Here it is:
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Bendan Blawmi is 20 years old, is single and likes to play baccarat. He has the best profession in the world. He’s a mine bearer. I went to interview him in a coffee house in Jamuraa. Who knows if this isn’t the coffee house Bendan will blow up in soon? To help break the ice, I offer him a cigarette.
Want one?
No, thank you. I don’t smoke. Those things can kill you, y’know?
Why mine bearer?
I didn’t really have much of a choice. My dad was a mine bearer, and so was his dad. As the firstborn, it’s my job to carry on the family work. It’s in my blood, and therefore soon will be splattered on the wall.
How did your family react to the news?
They knew I wanted to follow the fuse my granddad lit. I’ve always had the mine bearing bug in me ever since I can remember. When I was a little kid, I had the habit of throwing myself into the pool, power mine style, and soak all the keldon kids. I think it’s something that’s born with you, y’know? My family took it well. My brothers look up to me, they know a mine bearer is someone who rises up in life. My mother settled herself with my choice, but she insisted I graduated. She said an uneducated man is no more than a goblin and that, if my mine bearer career went south, I’d need something to hold on to. If I still had hands, that is. She said, “crippled is one thing, crippled and stupid is something else!”
Do you have an idea how you’d like to go off?
Well, you can never control these things, but I have an idea what I’d like to do. Above all else, I want to be successful and blow up correctly. My dream, of course, is to take a gargadon or a wurm with me, something big that people will remember me for. The one thing I dread is to be a dud, to fail to blow up a guy because they found someone’s cloak lying around. Sometimes I have nightmares that I try to blow up a Bog Elemental, that I pull the pin but the mines don’t explode. And I’m left standing there, with everyone laughing at me. I wake up panicking. It’s like those dreams you have as a kid, that you go naked to school…
And after you blow up, what do you think happens?
Man! After I blow up, I’ll wake up in heaven, next to the Prophet and seventy virgins! I’ll have seventy virgins all for myself!
Bendan, have you ever been with a virgin?
My sister.
Sexually, I mean.
Oh, no.
Do you know how much trouble a virgin is? You have to convince her to go to the bed, convince her you really do like her and that no one will think she’s a slut just for sleeping with you. Then comes the sex – well, let’s just say all that kinky stuff you see Jolrael doing in your magazines won’t fly with a virgin. And in the end, she’ll hold on to you so hard you won’t be able to get free to take a leak until morning.
I did not know that…
And worst of all, no matter how lousy you were, she’ll always look at you as “the first”. She’ll think you have some kind of special bond or something and she’ll never want to leave you. And that’s just one virgin, now imagine seventy.
I had never thought about it that way. No wonder they call it eternity…
