I know, I have to respectfully pray down to this IP for giving birth to the modern medival fantasy genre, of which Magic owes a lot to. I also know, I don’t have to because I have the right to demand an Universes Within version of this set that can cost less due to not having to pay the license fee.

1 Mechanics breakdown

Look, your overpriced booster isn’t necessarily to pay for a game that has more gameplay depth. It’s more so to pay for the license, and to translates the eons of characters and events we have no right to change to better suit Magic. So here’s what’s left.

1.1 Amass something

Remember when Nickel Balls amassed his Zombie Army by just putting counters on a token? Well, let’s do it again, this time to expand it to Orcs, because different villain in charge now. So now the keyword will specifically mention what creature type the army is. Which opens the door for literally any creature types. As long as you feel the token still staying black to be reasonable.

As both villains are in Grixis, the color distribution of their amassing very much reflect that. One funny thing to note, among this list is the infamous Orchish Bowmasters.

1.2 The Ring tempts someone

This is probably the infamous one. For the sheer amount of word on the reminder card, my experience with it has been one of complete indifference, like I keep thinking the first tier is sculk, but no it’s the opposite. Bonus point for those arguing that the thing should have had downsides, that would be fun to notice reading this giant wall of text not gonna lie. Ultimately, the fun fact to tell is that did you know Dominaria (the 2018 set that's really peak) could have gotten a second set? And that set would have a better version of this mechanic? Where it’s the cards that enable this leader thing that give the abilities instead of the reminder card telling you this wall of text that’s allegedly innate to the rules. Granted, would that work in this context where the rings tempt you but your neighbors still hasn’t been convinced yet?

Given that this seems to be what both the heroes and villains aspire to, the color distribution this time is much more balanced. As in like every color at least get some taste of it, not like actual balance like equal amount of cards. At draft set’s mythics, it’s both the villains that get it. At Rare, if you count the one mono white card that’s technically Orzhov, you’re looking at a full Atraxa hex that’s just missing Azorius. At uncommon, there’re Izzet and Selesnya for characters but Dimir just get a normal spell, that will be a point of rant for me alright. At common, it’s the set’s Manalith. For the precons, only the Jeskai one didn’t care, and the rare is the Grixis’ villain deck’s Saga.

1.3 Commanders overloard

1.3.1 Counting cards

And you thought they would only cram mass commander amounts in a set when there is dedicated slots for them. How foolish.

In an elitist mind, putting the legendary tag on this much represents Magic bowing down to these “better” IPs because smh we can’t make our Chandra have this much depth. In the flavorist (not Vorthos)’s mind, this is reasonable because many characters need multiple different cards to represent different points of their life. Magic already done this in the same set (Brothers’ War) and you just see more of that now because would you want to return in a different set? The commander hype person will argue that we need this many commanders because every commander is someone’s favorite and that way you got diversity and no correct way to win.

For me, I draw the line when you have less non-legendary creatures than commanders at anywhere above common. Much in the same way I look at the play booster’s drop rate and see in one of the card slot, there are 12.5% chance for a common compared to a whopping 62.5% for an uncommon, at which point do you really think the common is more valuable than the uncommon? You know, legendary isn’t a short word at all, so you gotta think lightly before applying it to any card. Also because you’ll probably the third kindred that the creature would have gotten. Maybe in the timeline where Magic used a shorter word for this like “Unique” or “Notable”, I wouldn’t have this conversation. But well, the word “commander” isn’t that short either, so it has a weight too.

Highlight Reels Can’t Stand Alone II

Frankly what jumps out more to me is how chaotic the color balance is really. Like look at even the uncommons, black would have just 4 had it not been for the rule change that finally let Grond be a commander. And that 2M column isn’t enough to tell the horror story of the way some color pairs don’t get their full share of commanders.

1.3.2 Counting characters

Let’s dive deeper into the characters cast to see how many appeared multiple times. It’s pretty surreal because I usually only count artists to be able to have charts like this.

If you want to sort names quickly, I suggest using this formula on your Excel that just pasted down the Scryfall checklist: =IFERROR(TEXTBEFORE(C2,","),TEXTBEFORE(C2," ")) To note however, there is one team up of this whole set that you’re certainly better off counting manually, also there are some characters whose names start with “the” yet doesn’t have a comma separating parts, so those might ends up in their own funny group.

It's also more important to note that I have no clue about how some characters may have changed their names between different stages of their lives. After all, an Excel formula only knows so much.