mcgees.org

(Magic post)

I went to the Ravnica prerelease today and had a blast.  Got some nice cards, too.

At the table where we were constructing and playtesting our decks, I played a game against a EE major from Cal Poly SLO. I was using a card with a mechanic called Dredge, which has, as a cost, putting cards from your library into your graveyard. One time when I used the ability, I lost the one card from my deck that could have won me the game against him.

“That’s why Dredge is dangerous,” he said.  “You can lose your best cards.”

An aerospace engineer, another technical person, and I all chimed in to disagree. We contended that it was just as likely that worthless cards would be put into our graveyard, giving us access to our better cards.

The technical person to my left said “I consider the top card of my library at all times to be the superposition of all the cards in my library until drawn,” and grinned.

“But then you open up your deck box and your cat is dead,” I countered.

The engineer exclaimed “What’s this dead cat doing in here?!”  And we all laughed.

“We’re nerds,” I said.

The full spoiler for Ravnica is up, and it is phenomenal. Thirty cards are going directly into decks when they are released (that’s an average of one per deck.) Twenty-four others look quite playable in Legacy, but I don’t know where to put them yet. Char and Lightning Helix together mean R/w Burn will be viable in Extended, I predict. Moonlight Bargain is going to get a ton of play. Cloudstone Curio combos with about half a million cards to form infinite combos; I’m sorry now I scrapped my Aluren deck. Pre-order auctions are already ending on eBay.

Read.  Salivate.  Repeat.  A set hasn’t looked this good since Urza’s Saga.

For Magic players, CardShark seller greggo4randy is donating all proceeds on card sales to “relief efforts for the people affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina”.  He has 9249 cards in stock.