General (BRO) The Brother's War Spoilers

Why not visit the Brother's War? We've got:

Mecha basics:
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Interesting Card Advantage for Aggro:
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References for Nerds
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The Queen
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Shiny Rocks!
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One Genocidal Eugenics Boi
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Genocidal Eugenics Boi (Planeswalker Variant)
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Genocidal Eugenics Boi (Sheldon Version)
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Mushy Boi (Sheldon Version)
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Mystical Archive (Artifact Version)
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Recruitment Officer is one of my favorite 2/1s for W. Fair and fun way to add card draw into white. Good art, too (I prefer the standard to the game day promo for sure).

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Surge Engine

Surprised you didn't mention this one! Blue gets its second Figure of Destiny (lol), and this one doesn't require snow basics or house rules. It's immediately one of my top choices for a blue two-drop: solid base stats, an easy upgrade into an unblockable 3-power creature, supports the artifact deck...and it still has two more abilities after that! Very flexible, good early and late, and the promo art is excellent.

I adore the lands, especially the top Plains and Forest. Very high quality basics that integrate giant robots into lands without them losing their identity as lands. At least half of these will make the cut into my land box for sure.

Very very happy that the promos for this set are old-bordered. I used to feel somewhat forlorn that my cube was becoming progressively more modern border with each passing year. That's really reversed in the last two years, and while I still won't put things like Baleful Strix old-bordered in my cube because it obscures its artifact quality (in addition to making it harder to quickly assess its colors), I'm thrilled to upgrade things like Wurmcoil to old-border, it looks wonderful. The blueprint style is excellent as well, and the EDH decks being entirely old bordered is yet another point of excitement.

The Urza meld card isn't for my cube but I adore the concept and find it a clever way to represent the power of oldwalkers. This set has already surpassed expectations, and I'm about as hyped as it gets here.
 
BEEG Urza looks like a fun Meld card to include, especially because the Mightstone/Weakstone looks like a very solid Meteorite-type card on its own.

I am already testing Recruitment Officer.

I am also testing the Pacific Rim Island.

People have noted this already, but it seems more and more obvious that full-art cards are the intended way to view the art and that the standard versions are inferior crops done without too much attention paid to their individual aesthetic quality. This stinks, but makes sense from a business perspective of WotC trying to make a designated "budget option" that looks pretty much strictly inferior to the "regular" option. At least collectors' boosters help bring prices down. Personally, I don't love the numbering, but if it brings prices down I'm more than happy to see them. Yeah, proxying is Good And Fun, but I like to support Magic when it's reasonable for me to do so--and this will help me do so by slurping a lot of value out of the set.
 
Lemmie know how that one goes XD
Real talk, I've always wanted to include a land slot in my boosters to draft really sick basics. However, the problem is that you're throwing away equity by doing so, and the only solution I've been able to find is to make it a desert cube, i.e. one in which you have to draft your basics, and I'm not quite sure I'm ready for that. If anyone else has other ideas I'm all ears!
 
Recruitment Officer is an easy include for me. Love that the cmc matters theme continues to get fleshed out with recent printings.

Doubt I have room for Mishra’s Foundry, but it’s super cool

I have to say, I literally shouted "oh come on, more spoilers already?" when I saw this thread.

Same!
 
Real talk, I've always wanted to include a land slot in my boosters to draft really sick basics. However, the problem is that you're throwing away equity doing so [...]

Silly suggestion: let people trade in two sick basics of different colors to get a copy of a better-than-usual dual lands for those colors.

Like, maybe your normal RG dual land is a Sheltered Thicket, but you can trade in a cool Forest and a cool Mountain to get a Taiga.
 
Real talk, I've always wanted to include a land slot in my boosters to draft really sick basics. However, the problem is that you're throwing away equity by doing so, and the only solution I've been able to find is to make it a desert cube, i.e. one in which you have to draft your basics, and I'm not quite sure I'm ready for that. If anyone else has other ideas I'm all ears!

Here's my solution: you make all your basics in the land box less desirable and/or identical boring lands, and then give players literal raffle tickets to get the best basics. You can make the default lands all white bordered as an extra incentive. Give every something like 10 raffle tickets to start, and you can even include some cards that represent additional raffle tickets as cards included in the draft.

Then you need to be able to have an easy system for your players to trade in raffle tickets themselves without someone having to arbitrate the system, or else it's just a blocker for deck construction.

Version 1: You make it really obvious, i.e. 1 ticket = standard black bordered land of your choosing, 2 tickets = full art land, 3 tickets = specialty land (making them all foil or something is an easy way to communicate the difference between a 3-ticket Godzilla Mountain and a 2-ticket full art Zendikar one, for example).

Version 2: You have multiple copies of only very specific lands (maybe 10 varieties per basic?) that are each featured on a print-out per land type with their corresponding ticket costs.

I kept trying to think of a bidding or drafting system that could be fun, but bidding would take way too long and drafting just basic lands would feel tedious and provide more feelbad than sick moments. Fundamentally, these are all ways to complicate an already-complicated format, but I broadly do like the idea of making Basics something to compete over somehow.





I think a lot about basic lands and think they're an essential part of my group's cubing experience. The method my cube uses is dramatically simpler but achieves a similar goal: singleton basics, first-come-first-serve. I maintain my land box just as religiously as my main cube (which yes, I promised here I'd share it and its corresponding write-up like...a week ago). I try to be vocal about how the coolest lands go fast as incentive to get people to get through deck construction in a reasonable amount of time, which does actually work when players start remarking out loud on how cool the new additions are in front of the rest of the table(s) :)
 
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Surge Engine

Surprised you didn't mention this one
Didn't mention it because the pictures on Reddit were terrible and I didn't screenshot for myself during the Livestream because I was in class. It's definitely a unique card. I'm unsure how to evaluate it because to my knowledge there's nothing similar (from a stat-to-cost standpoint, obviously there are a couple of other figure of destiny riffs as you mention). I'm not sure I would play a card that is just a 3/2 unblockable for 3, but when the cost is split up, that ends up being a little more appealing.

People have noted this already, but it seems more and more obvious that full-art cards are the intended way to view the art and that the standard versions are inferior crops done without too much attention paid to their individual aesthetic quality. This stinks, but makes sense from a business perspective of WotC trying to make a designated "budget option" that looks pretty much strictly inferior to the "regular" option.
The first couple of times WOTC did extended art cards in collector boosters, they actually didn't crop the art in the normal printings of the card. The reason they started cropping the art in the normal set is because people actually complained that the extended versions in collector boosters were the same as the normal cards, just blown up (or even slightly cropped for space!). It wasn't until Kaldheim that WOTC changed the art scheme, presumably due to player feedback.

Also, WOTC has evidently been cropping art for some time. If you look at both the Normal and Collector versions of Baneslayer Angel, you'd see that the original artwork was actually significantly cropped, losing a huge swath of the angel's robes.

Tl;dr; cropping isn't anything new, but the more frequent crops are because people were upset about collector boosters.

I also think it's a bit annoying, but I think the vast majority of the crops are not noticeable unless you actively sit and look at both the normal and extended versions next to each other.
 
We have some more news about the bonus sheet!
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1) There will be one in every draft booster.
2) There are uncommon, rare, and mythics on the sheet.
3) Foil versions will also be available in draft boosters.
4) There are 63 total, each with both normal art and schematic art.
 
Silly suggestion: let people trade in two sick basics of different colors to get a copy of a better-than-usual dual lands for those colors.

Like, maybe your normal RG dual land is a Sheltered Thicket, but you can trade in a cool Forest and a cool Mountain to get a Taiga.

See, I like that idea, but the reason I want my players to draft cool basics is so that those cool basics get played in their deck. While that sounds more mechanically sound, it works around the problem a little too well for me.

Here's my solution: you make all your basics in the land box less desirable and/or identical boring lands, and then give players literal raffle tickets to get the best basics.

Vouchers are a really cool idea! And I like the idea of letting bling be its own reward.

I think a lot about basic lands and think they're an essential part of my group's cubing experience. The method my cube uses is dramatically simpler but achieves a similar goal: singleton basics, first-come-first-serve. I maintain my land box just as religiously as my main cube (which yes, I promised here I'd share it and its corresponding write-up like...a week ago). I try to be vocal about how the coolest lands go fast as incentive to get people to get through deck construction in a reasonable amount of time, which does actually work when players start remarking out loud on how cool the new additions are in front of the rest of the table(s) :)

I cannot overstate how cool that experience sounds. I'll have to try it!
 
An alternate idea would be to have them as a squadron pick.

You drafted that sick Mountain? Boom, you have four of them to pretty up your deck.
 
Well, since both Warhammer and Unfinity couldn't be less of interest for me, I didn't feel that way. It's like christmas is coming early, but it's still christmas. And we'll have to wait until November to actually play those cards.

I got a feeling that after this set and Dominaria remastered in January I will be able to increase the quantity of the objectively superior pre-8th-edition-frame in my cube by 30 cards or something like that! Awesome!
 
Dude that 2/1 is such a slam dunk. Also lol I knew we were getting robots, but a mecha set? Could be fun
To me the difference is the feel. Urza and Mishra waged war on each other using mechs. It's a Magic story. If things from the story shows up on cards (which is how all cards used to get printed) I like it. When they invent robots because they want a 40K set for Commander players or a robot theme park in space for casual players then I dislike it. That's my personal view on it.
 
Yo what already?
For real. It's crazy to jump right back into a legit spoiler season for a normal set. I'm still picking up Dominaria cards to slot into cube; hasn't even been a full month since it came out. The big Fall set was usually the one they put extra effort into where it remained fresh for like two months (think KTK, KLD, etc.) and then we had some sort of smaller supplemental product later in the year come November/December (usually a Commander or a Masters set) prior to the next set release in Winter. Looking over a release schedule nowadays is insane.

I will admit that I've been looking forward to BRO since I first heard of it months back, but it would have been nice to be able to really enjoy and explore DMU before we moved on to the next big thing so quickly. It feels like they're going to cannibalize engagement like they did with MID/VOW last year without enough time to breathe.
 
What is happening? I still haven't even finished looking at the DMU commons and uncommons to see if I want something from it.

The site shows this schedule, which makes a bit more sense (thought it still feels quite rushed to me):

Debut Video and Previews Begin: October 27
The Brothers' War Magic 30 Previews: October 28–30
The Brothers' War Previews Continue: October 31–November 4
WPN Game Store Prerelease Events: November 11–17
MTG Arena and Magic Online Release: November 15
The Brothers' War Global Release: November 18


Both sets look great to me, but they have a similar vibe and I'm a. bit surprised they are being release back-to-back without something different in between.

My regular playgroup has mostly lost track of what's going on with Magic because it's going too fast, and got burned out of playing Arena because they realized they didn't like Magic: the game as much by itself; Magic: the gathering was a crucial part that's not available in Arena.

I believe that the packed release schedule is alienating a certain age-group that has less free time from the game. I wonder if it's being financially worth it for Wizards, I look around and don't understand who would be making it worth it for them if not these folks.
 
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