----This is not a preview or set discussion thread. Everything here is purely speculation based on tidbits from WOTC and unconfirmed leaks. Post previews elsewhere----
Once again, MaRo has posted a little preview game on his blog and the Boat of WOTC has sprung a leak. Some of the leaked cards actually connect with some of MaRo's hints, so rather than write pointless speculation about cards that have already been (unofficially) released to the world, I'm going to show them first and use them to supplement my speculation. I will not be sharing card text of new cards outside of a dedicated spoiler, although I may mention the names of confirmed reprints outside of a dedicated safe space.
The 4chan/Reddit Leaks
The leaks I am sharing in this thread have appeared in posts by the same 4chan user who leaked the Ikoria Tri-Lands. Unfortunately, I have lost the original /tg post to the sands of internet time. Despite this, other information from informants of mine does line up with what I am sharing from reddit.
M21 rumors that are circulating online:
Companion Errata - Do XYZ and you can pay (3) to put this into your hand from your Sideboard. Do this only as a Sorcery.
Fires of Invention will be banned in Standard on 06/01/2020.
BoP WON'T be in the set. It was pulled due to being leaked early. Ugin and Grim Tutor will stay in though (both at Mythic).
1U
Instant
Draw a card. Then draw another card for each copy of ~ in your GY.
1B
Instant
Destroy target creature or planeswalker with CMC 3 or less.
3W
Lifelink
Whenever 2 or more creatures attack you or a planeswalker you control, you may draw a card.
Whenever an opponent casts a second spell each turn, you may draw a card.
2/4
1RG
As long as it's your turn, ~ has first strike
You may look at the top card of your library at any time. You may play the top card of your library if it's a land card.
4RG: ~ Gets +X/+X where X = # of lands you control
3/3
NEW TEFERI
2UU
You can use NEW TEFERI's ability any time you can play an instant.
+1 Draw and Discard
-3 Target creature you don't control phases out
-10 Take 2 extra turns after this one
[5] - TENTATIVE
---End Leak---
I don't have much to say about these cards. I think the kill spell is probably a cube staple at most sizes and power levels. It allows for the efficient destruction of a small, headache creature or planeswalker without punishing players for running big creatures in their decks.
The new Teferi plays with interesting design space which we have never seen explored on Planeswalker cards before. Unlike his previous iterations, this Teferi manages to be not busted and really showcases his past as a time mage. I like it!
Grim Tutor and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon are both great reprints. I am very happy to see WOTC both powering up standard with old cards and providing needed reprints in a standard set. This is what core sets should be!
Unfortunately, the 4chan leak back in March has lead to the removal of Birds of Paradise from the set. This decision makes me sad, since I would have loved the glorious 4 BoP 4 Guilded Goose ramp deck in a standard format free of Hydroid Krasis and Nissa, Who Shakes the World. Luckily, I think this slot may have been replaced with another 1-mana-mana-dork.
Companion Errata - Do XYZ and you can pay (3) to put this into your hand from your Sideboard. Do this only as a Sorcery.
Fires of Invention will be banned in Standard on 06/01/2020.
BoP WON'T be in the set. It was pulled due to being leaked early. Ugin and Grim Tutor will stay in though (both at Mythic).
1U
Instant
Draw a card. Then draw another card for each copy of ~ in your GY.
1B
Instant
Destroy target creature or planeswalker with CMC 3 or less.
3W
Lifelink
Whenever 2 or more creatures attack you or a planeswalker you control, you may draw a card.
Whenever an opponent casts a second spell each turn, you may draw a card.
2/4
1RG
As long as it's your turn, ~ has first strike
You may look at the top card of your library at any time. You may play the top card of your library if it's a land card.
4RG: ~ Gets +X/+X where X = # of lands you control
3/3
NEW TEFERI
2UU
You can use NEW TEFERI's ability any time you can play an instant.
+1 Draw and Discard
-3 Target creature you don't control phases out
-10 Take 2 extra turns after this one
[5] - TENTATIVE
---End Leak---
I don't have much to say about these cards. I think the kill spell is probably a cube staple at most sizes and power levels. It allows for the efficient destruction of a small, headache creature or planeswalker without punishing players for running big creatures in their decks.
The new Teferi plays with interesting design space which we have never seen explored on Planeswalker cards before. Unlike his previous iterations, this Teferi manages to be not busted and really showcases his past as a time mage. I like it!
Grim Tutor and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon are both great reprints. I am very happy to see WOTC both powering up standard with old cards and providing needed reprints in a standard set. This is what core sets should be!
Unfortunately, the 4chan leak back in March has lead to the removal of Birds of Paradise from the set. This decision makes me sad, since I would have loved the glorious 4 BoP 4 Guilded Goose ramp deck in a standard format free of Hydroid Krasis and Nissa, Who Shakes the World. Luckily, I think this slot may have been replaced with another 1-mana-mana-dork.
MaRo's Game
Alright, with the leaks out of the way, I want to address the Core 2021 teaser Mark Rosewater gave on his Tumblr. I'm going to go through point by point and trying to see if I can decode the set before it releases.Before we begin, we must establish one thing. Core Set 2021 is a Teferi-themed set. As such, we will probably be seeing cards related to Teferi's life and backstory. As such, I believe we will be seeing many cards and characters from Magic's past. I will be using this assumption in my speculation.
.
Let's start here. The new tribe is Dogs!
"But Trainmaster," you might ask. "Dogs aren't an official Magic the Gathering Creature Type. Did you mean hounds?"
And the answer to that entirely rhetorical question is: no, I did not mean hounds. Take a look at these two pieces of promotional material:
This image comes from a Tweet from the Official Magic the Gathering Twitter account. The message it came with says the following:
Huh, it seems they have crossed out the word hound and replaced it with the word dog. It's almost like errata...
Now, look at the Booster Pack art for Jump Start:
It appears that a group of feral dogs are on the loose in the art of the Jump Start booster. This product has been confirmed to contain Core Set 2021 cards in addition to other reprints. Maybe this is a way to reprint old hounds with the new Dog subtype. There are currently 79 cards with the "Hound" subtype, and none of them provide tribal bonuses. I think the Dogs are getting a new pack leader!
.
That character would be Barrin. Not only does Barrin, Master Wizard have a Vanguard and a Legendary Creature, he's also an important character from Teferi's backstory. Barrin was the dean of Tolarian Academy, and taught students like Teferi for Urza.
It's on one of the leaks. I have to say, they were quite ballsy to use that one in a Core Set
.I think this is a new take on either Return to the Ranks or Rally the Ancestors.
Each of the three sets in the Urza's Saga block contained a cycle: The Embraces in Urza's Saga, the Return auras in Urza's Legacy, and the Growth cycle in Urza's Destiny. The Return cycle was so popular that it actually came back in Time Sprial.
.
There are Four non evergreen enchantment subtypes: Cartouches, Curses, Sagas, and Shrines. We can almost immediately rule out Cartouches and Shrines since they are both heavily tied to their respective worlds. Unfortunately, that's really all we can do with this information. Sagas are flavorful tools for telling stories. In a set about a character's history, they'd be a slam dunk. Curses, on the other hand, are easy to understand for new players, and have effectively achieved deciduous status. I think curses are a little more likely since this is a core set, but I would not be surprised to see another new batch of Sagas coming our way.
That's wild. Now, the "place it's never been done before" part of the hint actually doesn't take many cards out of the mix. I would say the most likely candidates for type and zone is Artifacts from graveyard.
.
These hints are too vague for me to make an educated theory on. Shots in the dark:
-I think the planeswalker is either an Ixalani Vampire, Merfolk or Pirate, or a Tarkir Native.
-The card that lets you draw half your library is a reverse Traumatize, perhaps with a cost increase.
-The card with thirty-one different options will have only a few abilities with the chance to pick each ability multiple times, like Mystic Confluence.
Those are the hints given about new cards, but Mark also gave us a bunch of hints about reprints! I am actually fairly confident about many of these predictions.
Core 2021 also has a number of fun reprints, including:
There have been very few french vanilla mythics over the years. However, one of them does stand out: Baneslayer Angel! Not only does the angel, perfectly fit the French Vanilla mythic rare criteria, but she also is the only magic card to have Protection from Demons. There's one other card which could be the French Vanilla mythic rare, but I'll get to her later...
It may be Rancor. If my earlier prediction is correct, there may be another Return aura in the set. Perhaps this is part of a cycle?
I'll be honest, I'm not sure which reprint this could be since so many popular characters fit this bill. Heck, Teferi himself even appeared in flavor text before he was on a card! Mark may also be trying to throw us off here, since were a few characters who were printed in the second or third set on their world's first visit, who had flavor text quotes on earlier cards. I'm going to wishfully say it's Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and move on with my life...
Well, one of these WAS Birds of Paradise!
There are 35 printings of Llanowar Elves, 33 printings of Counterspell, 30 printings of Swords to Plowshares, 2o printings of Duress, 30 printings of Pacifism, and 20 printings of Shock. There are also 29 printings of Lightning Bolt, but it only has 4 unique pieces not counting the secret lair release.
I don't think Swords to Plowshares is a realistic reprint expectation, but I'd be willing to guess any of these other cards could be the case. "Played in Tournaments" is a pretty vague hint, since the power level of each format varies wildly. In an ideal world, the two cards would be Counterspell and Lightning Bolt, but I think some combination of Duress-Shock-Pacifism to be the case. Llanowar Elves would be a good choice, but probably isn't the card for reasons I'll get into later...
A "Premier set" is any set that has been legal in standard. This means that this card comes from either a Commander/Planechase style product or a draft innovation set like Conspiracy, Battlebond, or Modern Horizons. There are so many cards that could fit this bill that I could not possibly cover all of the possible options. However, there is one card that sticks out to me as a potentially good option: Brightling.
Brightling was printed in Battlebond as a new card for Legacy Death and Taxes decks. However, the card didn't really have legs in that format. I think WOTC might want to introduce the card into Modern and Pioneer to help give white decks a boost. Apparently this card is actually very good, it just wasn't quite powerful enough for legacy.
In addition, there is a member of the "ling" cycle currently legal in modern in every color except for White. Perhaps our friends at WOTC are trying to cure our incomplete-cycle OCD?
I'm not sure what this card is. I would guess it's another planeswalker. Chandra, Pyrogenius could be making a return to lead a Planeswalker Deck...
• A Human Monk.
There are 54 Human Monk creatures in Magic. Some of these cards are legitimately good, like Monastery Swiftspear and Dosan the Falling Leaf. There's also absolute jank like Monk Realist.
When I first read this hint, my thoughts immediately went towards Monastery Mentor but upon further reflection I decided this is not the case. Even though this set does include a reprint of another highly demanded Fate Reforged mythic, the Prowess mechanic is no longer considered evergreen. I don't think they'd break the "no non-evergreen mechanics in core sets" rule on two cards in this set, unless they're going back to the "one showcase mechanic" per core set rule.
I think more likely options are Avacyn's Pilgrim and Serra Ascendant. Pilgrim is a card which I think could be in the set over a different Llanowar Elves variant, as it pushes players into a Green-White ramp deck as opposed to yet another simic pile. They obviously were considering putting a 1-mana-mana-dork into the set with BoP, and they probably needed to replace the slot quickly. Pilgrim is way less powerful than birds without requiring WOTC to abandon the slot entirely for the constructed decks they've already tested that require the fact. Serra Ascendant is a lifegain payoff that would bolster the Mono-White strategies we've seen in the last few months. It also fits with the Lifegain theme the design team loves to jam into core sets for no reason. It's a good reprint, with decent implications.
There are 121 timeshifted cards, and this could be pretty much any of them that don't use a non-evergreen mechanic. Tormod's Crypt, a previous core set inclusion, was on the timeshifted sheet. I think crypt is a likely reprint for this spot, since it is good graveyard hate card for combating Escape cards.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath is also a workable option for this slot. She technically fit the "Evergreen Mythic" category from earlier as well. Akroma's biggest flaw is that she has Haste, which is not in color-pie for White. I think Baneslayer Angel is a much better option for the French Vanilla Mythic reprint, but Akroma could do double duty as both our Timeshifted card and our French Vanilla mythic.
I did
Thank you for reading!
-TGT
