The doomsday has came, we’ll finally reach the point in Magic history where there are more UB sets than in universe sets. And all of them will be Standard legal, go figure, especially y’all F2P Arena grinders. Whatever side you are on, toxic negatists or toxic positists, keep on the arguing, not like anything else in life exists to divert your attention to. I still feel like I firmly fit in the former, so let’s have this first dedicated installment of “Discrete reads Magic news and have things to say about them”, dedicated because technically one already existed last year for Foundations.

Year of the Metronome Arc finally actually ending

I’ll leave Lorwyn to its own section because there’s a lot to say and having that depth would certainly help the eventual dedicated piece getting off the ground.

The second set is actually an UB one that is going to be announced by the IP holder, much in the same way as Avatar, actually it’s the same IP holder. People alleged that it’s going to be Kappa Cannoneer, so I’m betting on this being the culprit that was supposed to be a beyond booster then stretched to a pick 2 draft set, hence why we get this 7 sets one year mess.

The third set is a return to Strixhaven that stuck to the enemy pairs and promises to give their students a glimse of the bigger world, like Lorwyn for instance. I for one appreciate one color balanced multicolored faction set for two back to back years, but fun fact, original Strixhaven had color imbalances, so who am I kidding. Another thing to tell you, some people alleged that this set might be an alternative timeline version with allied pairs instead of enemy pairs, to which I feel that should be its own plane really. And lastly you should thank that UB set for not delaying this one to May.

The fourth set is going to be a highlight reel of oversaturated characters from the same world as Spoder-Man. I’m predicting no unique showcase frames in this set, no matter how comic book styles the artworks will be. Regardless, it would be very fun to see Through the Omenpaths 2.

The fifth set is going to be the ring world’s second set, so that puts whatever giant UB success exist on about three years for a return. Considering the naming shrink, I expect less epic scales and a more compact tone, so that fits how Bloomburrow was the august set.

The sixth set is Reality Fracture, the end of this giant Metronome arc that got delayed this deeply in (5 months to be exact I think). There seems to be this little to reveal because well, looking at the way this story arc is told currently, I don’t think you can glean all that much about what is going to matter, like there is the Jace Vraska couple wanting to be evil, they tried to get a Loot but then at some point they lost it, that’s about what I remember. This arc seems to only really be kicking by Lorwyn, so that might explain the Standard year split right at this point and not some other points.

The last set is Star Trek, that franchise I knew existed from Prof (who predicted this will be a thing) and some smartphone reviewer guy. I’m predicting this is the hat set version of Edge of Eternities, reusing most of the space adventure mechanics but with real life human characters art quality of Doctor Who.

Second Finale of the Fantasies

Thank god we aren’t slapping all the normal frame cards onto a new funny frame with a lazy filter to sell in a dedicated collector’s booster again. Or a second Jumpstart booster that implies you could just make one booster that haves more than just 5 themes.

So what do we get instead? Four scene boxes, one isn’t showing on the official article because it features like the character of the card that is ruining Standard? And also, a second fancy bundle box that have a lot of these funny birds inside hopefully, not like 5 cards to be able to label as a “commander’s bundle”.

Scene boxes

These things feature scenes from games I (you don’t need to spell the roman numerals for this one?), VIII, IX and XV, so for one that’s certainly distinct from the precons. Similar to the Spoderman boxes, there’re only rare here, no mythics to lead the whole box. Which now leads way for boxes to have more than one commander, especially with normal creatures being absent here.

Color distributions obviously leave a lot to be desired. Two games went for the shards that already got their precons, namely Esper and Naya (duh). Then the other two went for four color combinations, mostly by one color clearly being just a splash so not that big of a deal. If you remove that splash color, you would get Mardu and Bant, the other color trios in the precons already. So that leaves Jeskai and Abzan really disappointed at the end of the day, and yes I singled those two out because once again, all of these boxes have white, because a hero has to be here somewhere.

Now let’s take a look at how each box uses their six rares:

• The Esper box went for an actual Esper commander, one Dimir commander that’s the villain, one hero for each color of Esper that cleverly references the job tools in the draft set by having these commanders follow the name structure of The Destined <Class>. They also stick to a very wordy structure of Keyword + Activated ability to give that keyword to an allied creature + Value engine that resembles their job tools I think that upgrades if you have a full party, well that’s what the Esper commander references. And lastly bottom to the villain is a mono black legendary artifact.
• The Saskia box is actually a Mardu box that splashes blue for the top left villain. One of the hero is actually Mardu, and then each side have one more character that have increasingly less colors. In the middle are magical magecrafts that are either really stupidly wordy or finally have room for flavor text, mentioning the character diagonally left to the card.
• The Naya box, if went by the same splash logic, is actually a Boros box that splashes green in. Discount that, each color of Boros are equally represented here, with white favoring enchantments and red favoring magecrafts that create creature tokens. This box justify its sole commander by representing the other party members on prowess cards, so they’re certainly here and we don’t have another broken thing to throw into a cauldron. And given the creature combat nature of Naya, somehow we got enough room for flavor texts of three different cards.
• Lastly, we get the Atraxa box that is a Bant box with a black splash for the second Esper commander. Each monocolor gets one prowess card that shows a member of the party living life, whether by being an enchantment or beign a sorcery that holds the only piece of flavor text of the box. And on top of them, we got the only colorless artifact and mono green land, that isn’t a Town somehow.