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Previous topic: Hour of Devastation (OT12)
Next Standard set: Rivals of Ixalan
Trailer
Card image gallery
INTRO
Welcome to the Multiverse! Multiple worlds exist side by side in different dimensions, known as planes, and they are as different as night and day. All of them, however, have a form of magical energy known as mana. Most residents of these planes are unaware of other worlds, but there are some special beings with the ability to safely travel between them, known as Planeswalkers.
Magic: the Gathering is a Trading Card Game, the first of its kind, developed by Richard Garfield and his playtesters for the gaming company Wizards of the Coast in 1993. The game quickly became a hit, and it is currently bigger than it has ever been. You and your opponent play the role of dueling Planeswalkers, using customized decks made up of your spells, the creatures you can summon, your mana bonds with lands, and even other Planeswalkers you can call in to help out. Whoever can get every opponent down to 0 life wins.
Last set, the dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas performed a Chaos Dunk on the Egyptian plane of Amonkhet and Slam Jammed our heroes, the Gatewatch, forcing them to scatter throughout the Multiverse. Now, Jace finds himself a castaway on the plane of Ixalan, where pirates led by the gorgon planeswalker Vraska are about to come into conflict with Mesoamerican natives riding dinosaurs.
Note that huge parts of this set have been leaked months ago, particularly rares and mythic rares. Rather than ignoring this, Wizards has decided to make the reveals official. The actual spoiler season has been adjusted to focus on commons and uncommons, with only 1-3 card reveals each day. This unfortunately means spoiler season will be significantly less interesting than usual. This thread was made early because discussion has already shifted to Ixalan in the Magic OT. Not the best time for an energized thread start, but that's long past.
Also, on September 8–10, 2017, at HasCon, for the first time in years, we have a prerelease for a set without any card reveals: Iconic Masters. That set will officially release on November 17, 2017.
Banned and Restricted List - For the first time in years, cards have been banned in Standard:
* Smuggler's Copter
* Felidar Guardian
* Aetherworks Marvel
The sets in Standard will be: Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, Amonkhet, Hour of Devastation, and Ixalan.
CHANGES
As announced in this article, Standard will use the new "three-and-one model" starting from the spring 2018 set, Dominaria. What does this mean? Well:
* No more small sets. Starting from Dominaria, every Standard set will be large and drafted by itself.
* That also means no more blocks. Or rather, the block structure is allowed to be very fluid now. One world might get only one set, while another might get two or even three. Sets that take place on the same world might not be mechanically connected, even if they are right after each other.
* Core sets are back, in their old summer slot, starting 2018. Compared to before, where they tried to appeal to both beginners and experts and thus muddled the message, they will err on the side of appealing to beginners. Still, there is appeal to experienced players in that they will act as places to print relevant Standard cards without too much concern for fitting them into a world or set theme.
* The Masterpiece rarity has been downgraded from evergreen to only a sometimes thing. Masterpiece cards are exciting reprints printed at a higher rarity than mythic rare, and they did very well at first, but they had diminishing returns, and caused all kinds of problems with card prices. Ixalan will not have Masterpieces.
Standard rotation will remain the same as it is now, with the oldest four sets leaving every fall release.
Also, the planeswalker uniqueness rule has been removed. Instead, all planeswalkers have been updated to be legendary, thus rolling them into the legendary rule instead. The biggest difference is that you can now play as many Gideons as you want, as long as they all have different card names. Planeswalkers will be printed with the legendary supertype starting this set, as demonstrated by Hillbilly Jace.
GETTING STARTED
If you're a beginner, feel free to come in. Us regulars can get a bit technical with card evaluations and use a lot of jargon, and many of us will loudly proclaim that a cool-looking card is junk, or say that a lame-looking card is really powerful, so ask us if you want an explanation.
To see what a game is like, check out Geek and Sundry's Spellslinger series (now discontinued), where Day[9] battled various geek celebrities, often losing, using simple and easy to follow decks.
To get started, check out the official page. Basically:
* It's recommended that new players play Magic Duels (thread). It's a great way to learn the game on your own, and it's free! That said, there will no longer be new updates, but the next digital project, Magic: the Gathering: Arena, should fill the void.
* After that point, the act of deck building can be intimidating, so it's recommended that you try out a preconstructed deck and customize it with other cards you get, before you start making your own from scratch. Planeswalker Decks are preconstructed decks that come with four unique new cards, including a new Planeswalker card. If you have a friend to play with, there are also Duel Decks that provide two decks for a game right out of the box, but are a bit more complicated.
* To get your physical collection started, buy a Deck Builder's Toolkit, which includes not just a starting collection of cards (including a lot of lands), but also some booster packs and a good box to store cards in.
* The different play formats can be found here. The most popular formats where you bring a 60-card deck ahead of time (Constructed) are Standard, Modern, and Legacy. The most popular formats where you start out with no deck and have to make them from scratch (Limited) are Draft and Sealed. Casual play has no restrictions other than what your friends decide. Once your skill advances, another popular way to play Magic casually is Commander.
* While game stores will often hold Magic events at other times, every store that has Magic events will have Friday Night Magic. There, you will be able to find other players in your area to both have matches with and trade with. Find game stores here. And to get started participating in your local game store (LGS) scene, attend an open house or prerelease event!
OPEN HOUSE AND PRERELEASE
While the set won't officially be sold until the release date, that isn't the first time you can get your hands on the new cards. Game stores will hold Magic Open House events specifically meant for new players, with people there to give you simple Welcome Decks and teach you how to play.
The big thing to look forward to, however, is the prerelease event held for every set. You play in the Sealed format, where every player is given a box with six booster packs and a random additional rare card. From this pool of cards, all of which you keep, each player builds a deck of 40 cards and participates in a Swiss-system tournament. This is a fun and casual event, where everyone is still trying to figure out the set, so don't worry about messing up. In addition to normal duels, there are also Two-Headed Giant events, where you pair up with another player and face off against another team.
The Magic Open House will be on September 16–17, 2017. Prerelease events will be held on September 23–24, 2017. Call your local game store a few days ahead of time to register for the prerelease, or they might just run out of room. Find local game stores here.
STORY
Lore introduction
Ixalan story
Trailer
Fleeing Bolas with his mind barely intact, Jace finds himself a castaway on the plane of Ixalan, where the Brazen Coalition of pirates follow the planeswalker Vraska to a lost city of gold deep within the Sun Empire. It won't be an easy journey, as they have to deal with not just competitors like the merfolk River Heralds and the vampire Legion of Dusk, but the dinosaurs the Sun Empire uses to guard their lands!
Story archive
Planeswalker biographies
CARD THEMES
Card image gallery
Mechanics
Tribes are creature types that are encouraged to be played together. Ixalan is a tribal set, focused on four tribes below.
Do what you want cuz a pirate is free! You are a pirate!
Yar har! Pirates make their grand return after Mercadian Masques and a brief preview in Kaladesh! Raid is a returning mechanic from Tarkir block, where spells and creatures care if you attacked this turn. If you did, it produces an additional or stronger effect. And what are pirates without booty? Treasure tokens are artifacts that can be tapped and sacrificed for mana of any color, and many cards will care about you having them. Pirates are centered in Grixis (blue-black-red) and are aggressive yet tricky.
*insert complicated plot to get to the Fountain of Youth that somehow involves carnivorous mermaids*
Merfolk are centered in green-blue, with monogreen merfolk making their debut. They have no particular named mechanic, but care about +1/+1 counters and being hard to block.
Awaken! My masters!
Vampires are centered in white-black, with monowhite vampires making their debut. They have no particular named mechanic, but care about persistence, paying life, gaining life, and draining life from your opponents.
Uh, now, eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs, on your on your dinosaur plane, right?
No longer are they Lizard Beasts! Dinosaurs are here for real now, and they're angry! Evoking good old Fungusaur, creatures with enrage do something when they are dealt damage, whether it be by blocking creatures or your own spells. Dinosaur tribal is centered in Naya (red-green-white), and of course involves playing big dudes. Oh, and they have feathers.
Go on a cruise with your nakama!
Translator's note: nakama means friend. In this set, it's time to set sail for a mystery, and you can only do that if you explore. Creatures explore by revealing the top card of your library. If it's a land, put it in your hand. If it isn't, the creature gets a +1/+1 counter and you can choose to either keep the card on top or put it into your graveyard. Vehicles make the quickest return of any non-evergreen mechanic, and act the same way as they did in Kaladesh. Tap any number of creatures, and if their total power is greater than the crew cost, the vehicle activates and becomes an artifact creature that can attack and block. The set also has double-faced cards that can transform if you fulfill their condition, flipping over to their back half. Here, every double-faced card transforms into a land with a unique frame design.
RESOURCES
Official articles - Nicknamed the Mothership, these articles are the primary source of news. Recommended columns are Making Magic, written by the head designer, Mark Rosewater (aka MaRo); Magic Story, which tells the story, written by various authors; and Latest Developments, written by various Magic developers. The other articles generally discuss deck building. For older articles before the site changed, go here.
Card image gallery - Best way to see all of the spoiled cards together, but only updates once a day.
Blogatog - Tumblr ran by Mark Rosewater where he answers questions, updates very frequently.
Drive to Work - Mark Rosewater's weekly podcast about Magic that he literally records as he drives to work. Two episodes are released every Friday.
MTG Reddit - The best place to get new card information. The community sucks, though.
Mythic Spoiler - A good way to see what cards have been spoiled, updates throughout the day.
Gatherer - The official method of searching through released cards. Has autocomplete.
Scryfall - The better search method, with bigger cards, but it doesn't have autocomplete.
Game store locator
PREVIOUS THREADS
Hour of Devastation (OT12)
Amonkhet (OT11)
Aether Revolt (OT10)
Kaladesh (OT9)
Eldritch Moon (OT8)
Shadows over Innistrad (OT7)
Oath of the Gatewatch OT (OT6)
Battle for Zendikar OT (OT5)
OT4
OT3
OT2
OT1
Official page
Previous topic: Hour of Devastation (OT12)
Next Standard set: Rivals of Ixalan
Trailer
Card image gallery
INTRO
Welcome to the Multiverse! Multiple worlds exist side by side in different dimensions, known as planes, and they are as different as night and day. All of them, however, have a form of magical energy known as mana. Most residents of these planes are unaware of other worlds, but there are some special beings with the ability to safely travel between them, known as Planeswalkers.
Magic: the Gathering is a Trading Card Game, the first of its kind, developed by Richard Garfield and his playtesters for the gaming company Wizards of the Coast in 1993. The game quickly became a hit, and it is currently bigger than it has ever been. You and your opponent play the role of dueling Planeswalkers, using customized decks made up of your spells, the creatures you can summon, your mana bonds with lands, and even other Planeswalkers you can call in to help out. Whoever can get every opponent down to 0 life wins.
Last set, the dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas performed a Chaos Dunk on the Egyptian plane of Amonkhet and Slam Jammed our heroes, the Gatewatch, forcing them to scatter throughout the Multiverse. Now, Jace finds himself a castaway on the plane of Ixalan, where pirates led by the gorgon planeswalker Vraska are about to come into conflict with Mesoamerican natives riding dinosaurs.
Note that huge parts of this set have been leaked months ago, particularly rares and mythic rares. Rather than ignoring this, Wizards has decided to make the reveals official. The actual spoiler season has been adjusted to focus on commons and uncommons, with only 1-3 card reveals each day. This unfortunately means spoiler season will be significantly less interesting than usual. This thread was made early because discussion has already shifted to Ixalan in the Magic OT. Not the best time for an energized thread start, but that's long past.
Also, on September 8–10, 2017, at HasCon, for the first time in years, we have a prerelease for a set without any card reveals: Iconic Masters. That set will officially release on November 17, 2017.
Banned and Restricted List - For the first time in years, cards have been banned in Standard:
* Smuggler's Copter
* Felidar Guardian
* Aetherworks Marvel
The sets in Standard will be: Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, Amonkhet, Hour of Devastation, and Ixalan.
CHANGES
As announced in this article, Standard will use the new "three-and-one model" starting from the spring 2018 set, Dominaria. What does this mean? Well:
* No more small sets. Starting from Dominaria, every Standard set will be large and drafted by itself.
* That also means no more blocks. Or rather, the block structure is allowed to be very fluid now. One world might get only one set, while another might get two or even three. Sets that take place on the same world might not be mechanically connected, even if they are right after each other.
* Core sets are back, in their old summer slot, starting 2018. Compared to before, where they tried to appeal to both beginners and experts and thus muddled the message, they will err on the side of appealing to beginners. Still, there is appeal to experienced players in that they will act as places to print relevant Standard cards without too much concern for fitting them into a world or set theme.
* The Masterpiece rarity has been downgraded from evergreen to only a sometimes thing. Masterpiece cards are exciting reprints printed at a higher rarity than mythic rare, and they did very well at first, but they had diminishing returns, and caused all kinds of problems with card prices. Ixalan will not have Masterpieces.
Standard rotation will remain the same as it is now, with the oldest four sets leaving every fall release.
Also, the planeswalker uniqueness rule has been removed. Instead, all planeswalkers have been updated to be legendary, thus rolling them into the legendary rule instead. The biggest difference is that you can now play as many Gideons as you want, as long as they all have different card names. Planeswalkers will be printed with the legendary supertype starting this set, as demonstrated by Hillbilly Jace.
GETTING STARTED
If you're a beginner, feel free to come in. Us regulars can get a bit technical with card evaluations and use a lot of jargon, and many of us will loudly proclaim that a cool-looking card is junk, or say that a lame-looking card is really powerful, so ask us if you want an explanation.
To see what a game is like, check out Geek and Sundry's Spellslinger series (now discontinued), where Day[9] battled various geek celebrities, often losing, using simple and easy to follow decks.
To get started, check out the official page. Basically:
* It's recommended that new players play Magic Duels (thread). It's a great way to learn the game on your own, and it's free! That said, there will no longer be new updates, but the next digital project, Magic: the Gathering: Arena, should fill the void.
* After that point, the act of deck building can be intimidating, so it's recommended that you try out a preconstructed deck and customize it with other cards you get, before you start making your own from scratch. Planeswalker Decks are preconstructed decks that come with four unique new cards, including a new Planeswalker card. If you have a friend to play with, there are also Duel Decks that provide two decks for a game right out of the box, but are a bit more complicated.
* To get your physical collection started, buy a Deck Builder's Toolkit, which includes not just a starting collection of cards (including a lot of lands), but also some booster packs and a good box to store cards in.
* The different play formats can be found here. The most popular formats where you bring a 60-card deck ahead of time (Constructed) are Standard, Modern, and Legacy. The most popular formats where you start out with no deck and have to make them from scratch (Limited) are Draft and Sealed. Casual play has no restrictions other than what your friends decide. Once your skill advances, another popular way to play Magic casually is Commander.
* While game stores will often hold Magic events at other times, every store that has Magic events will have Friday Night Magic. There, you will be able to find other players in your area to both have matches with and trade with. Find game stores here. And to get started participating in your local game store (LGS) scene, attend an open house or prerelease event!
OPEN HOUSE AND PRERELEASE
While the set won't officially be sold until the release date, that isn't the first time you can get your hands on the new cards. Game stores will hold Magic Open House events specifically meant for new players, with people there to give you simple Welcome Decks and teach you how to play.
The big thing to look forward to, however, is the prerelease event held for every set. You play in the Sealed format, where every player is given a box with six booster packs and a random additional rare card. From this pool of cards, all of which you keep, each player builds a deck of 40 cards and participates in a Swiss-system tournament. This is a fun and casual event, where everyone is still trying to figure out the set, so don't worry about messing up. In addition to normal duels, there are also Two-Headed Giant events, where you pair up with another player and face off against another team.
The Magic Open House will be on September 16–17, 2017. Prerelease events will be held on September 23–24, 2017. Call your local game store a few days ahead of time to register for the prerelease, or they might just run out of room. Find local game stores here.
STORY
Lore introduction
Ixalan story
Trailer
Fleeing Bolas with his mind barely intact, Jace finds himself a castaway on the plane of Ixalan, where the Brazen Coalition of pirates follow the planeswalker Vraska to a lost city of gold deep within the Sun Empire. It won't be an easy journey, as they have to deal with not just competitors like the merfolk River Heralds and the vampire Legion of Dusk, but the dinosaurs the Sun Empire uses to guard their lands!
Story archive
Planeswalker biographies
CARD THEMES
Card image gallery
Mechanics
Tribes are creature types that are encouraged to be played together. Ixalan is a tribal set, focused on four tribes below.
Do what you want cuz a pirate is free! You are a pirate!
Yar har! Pirates make their grand return after Mercadian Masques and a brief preview in Kaladesh! Raid is a returning mechanic from Tarkir block, where spells and creatures care if you attacked this turn. If you did, it produces an additional or stronger effect. And what are pirates without booty? Treasure tokens are artifacts that can be tapped and sacrificed for mana of any color, and many cards will care about you having them. Pirates are centered in Grixis (blue-black-red) and are aggressive yet tricky.
*insert complicated plot to get to the Fountain of Youth that somehow involves carnivorous mermaids*
Merfolk are centered in green-blue, with monogreen merfolk making their debut. They have no particular named mechanic, but care about +1/+1 counters and being hard to block.
Awaken! My masters!
Vampires are centered in white-black, with monowhite vampires making their debut. They have no particular named mechanic, but care about persistence, paying life, gaining life, and draining life from your opponents.
Uh, now, eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs, on your on your dinosaur plane, right?
No longer are they Lizard Beasts! Dinosaurs are here for real now, and they're angry! Evoking good old Fungusaur, creatures with enrage do something when they are dealt damage, whether it be by blocking creatures or your own spells. Dinosaur tribal is centered in Naya (red-green-white), and of course involves playing big dudes. Oh, and they have feathers.
Go on a cruise with your nakama!
Translator's note: nakama means friend. In this set, it's time to set sail for a mystery, and you can only do that if you explore. Creatures explore by revealing the top card of your library. If it's a land, put it in your hand. If it isn't, the creature gets a +1/+1 counter and you can choose to either keep the card on top or put it into your graveyard. Vehicles make the quickest return of any non-evergreen mechanic, and act the same way as they did in Kaladesh. Tap any number of creatures, and if their total power is greater than the crew cost, the vehicle activates and becomes an artifact creature that can attack and block. The set also has double-faced cards that can transform if you fulfill their condition, flipping over to their back half. Here, every double-faced card transforms into a land with a unique frame design.
RESOURCES
Official articles - Nicknamed the Mothership, these articles are the primary source of news. Recommended columns are Making Magic, written by the head designer, Mark Rosewater (aka MaRo); Magic Story, which tells the story, written by various authors; and Latest Developments, written by various Magic developers. The other articles generally discuss deck building. For older articles before the site changed, go here.
Card image gallery - Best way to see all of the spoiled cards together, but only updates once a day.
Blogatog - Tumblr ran by Mark Rosewater where he answers questions, updates very frequently.
Drive to Work - Mark Rosewater's weekly podcast about Magic that he literally records as he drives to work. Two episodes are released every Friday.
MTG Reddit - The best place to get new card information. The community sucks, though.
Mythic Spoiler - A good way to see what cards have been spoiled, updates throughout the day.
Gatherer - The official method of searching through released cards. Has autocomplete.
Scryfall - The better search method, with bigger cards, but it doesn't have autocomplete.
Game store locator
PREVIOUS THREADS
Hour of Devastation (OT12)
Amonkhet (OT11)
Aether Revolt (OT10)
Kaladesh (OT9)
Eldritch Moon (OT8)
Shadows over Innistrad (OT7)
Oath of the Gatewatch OT (OT6)
Battle for Zendikar OT (OT5)
OT4
OT3
OT2
OT1
