Insomnia Special - Magic Monday · 8:21am Feb 21st, 2022
As usual, my sleep rhythm is off by about three hours and I need to fill up my time before I hit the spot I'm ready to fall asleep. The topic today? Magic the Gathering, specifically the latest set to be released; Kamigawa Neon Dynasty.
Last year, Wizards of the Coast put out their rendition of a Viking setting called Kaldheim. I bought a box of booster packs when that released and was lucky enough to get every card that I needed to construct a cube for drafting. I was, at the time, greatly downsizing my collection and had a falling out with the majority, and by that I mean the entirety, of my playgroup. Constructed (where each player may design a deck of their choosing) just didn't jive with the sort of games that I wanted to play. I still enjoyed Limited (where players make decks with random cards) so I wanted to collect a sample of some cards I enjoyed to support that kind of game for an evening with other friends that were getting back into the hobby. I enjoy the viking aesthetic and Kaldheim did not spare on the cool art for it.
For those unfamiliar, cards in magic are separated into four different rarity types; Common, Uncommon, Rare and Mythic Rare. New magic sets have roughly over one hundred common cards, somewhere less than a hundred uncommon, about the same amount of rares, and no more than twenty or so mythic rares. In normal packs, there are 10 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic rare card. Each rarity gets relatively stronger and has a different focus for what it needs to accomplish for the game. Commons are the bread and butter of every new set, and carry the burden of making sure a mechanic (Such as a zombie horde arising from the ground theme) will actually function in the broad scheme of things. Rares and mythics on the other hand, are a force unto themselves and are made to win games and give the players stories to tell of that victory. I'm not really a player for those of stories, though. I want to enjoy the games in their entirety, not watch them end because a single card was played.
In almost every set for the past decade, they have included a set of ten cards in the uncommon slots that are dual-color (White and Blue, Red and Green, etc) and just a touch stronger than what would be expected of other uncommon cards. These are called Signposts, and they are made to give a heads-up to players of what that color combination is looking to do in that set. One of the previous standard sets, Theros Beyond Death, had multiple creatures in red and white that made your creatures more offensive when you targeted them. The Red-White signpost for that set not only shared this ability, but made creature tokens to also benefit from that ability as well.
What I did with Kaldheim was take those gold (in reference to the border of the card having the gold nameplate) uncommon signposts and used them to replace the rare/mythic slot in the packs. Kaldheim had two such cycles of gold uncommons, so I was able to make twenty packs as without those gold cards, there remained an even sixty single-color uncommon cards. In the box that I bought, there was at least two copies of every uncommon, so I was able to fill out the two-hundred or so common slots in the packs as well.
On to Kamigawa.
Neon Dynasty is a return to a setting originally printed in 2006 that was inspired by Japanese folklore and mythology, but after an in-universe 1200 year time jump. The world has modernized and with it a culture clash has begun. The plane faces a conflict between the technological (Represented by a card type in the game called Artifacts) and the spiritual (Represented by another type called Enchantments). Some classic mechanics make their return from the original block, such as Ninjutsu (Styled after ninjas and letting players pull off tricks in combat).
This time around, there are only the ten signposts for each color pair. However, there are some cards that fit well in same slot and if I move those up, the math works for twenty-two such packs. Sixty-Six other uncommons are left behind, and doubling up on the commons again fills up those slots. I've been playing the set on Magic the Gathering Arena this past week and have greatly enjoyed it, and I was rather excited when I saw that this will work out just as well as when I made the cube for Kaldheim.
To top it off, my local game store (Where I was unable to really go for about a year) was surprised to see me again and nearly doubled the amount of in-store credit I had received there in celebration. This, along with any rare or mythic cards that I pull from the expenditure, is enough to purchase a box of booster packs for Neon Dynasty. My hope is that my luck will continue from the experiment last year and I'll get the copies I need to make the cube the same night.
As I reach this point in the post, my eyes are finally getting heavy so I must say goodnight. Thank you for listening to me ramble and I hope you all a happy week.
