Portal to the future
June 21st 2010 06:20
I picked up one of each of the Archenemy theme decks last week. The two coolest things about it for me were the oversized scheme cards, and the basic land art.
In addition to being extremely beautiful, the art was notable because it originally appeared in Portal: Second Age. In much the same was as basic lands are often taken for granted and even marginalized by some players compared to flashy (and sometimes overpowered) nonbasic lands, the Portal sets have occasionally been derided as “Magic for idiots” due to their contents being much simpler mechanically than other expansions. They also had a high focus on creature combat and aggressive play in general, which a certain type of player finds unintellectual or unchallenging (try telling that to all the pros Mark Herberholz beat a few Pro Tours ago). However, Second Age in particular has a backstory and lore just as involved as a “real” expansion, and the artists put just as much work into it as for anything else.
By putting Portal: Second Age lands in the Archenemy decks, Wizards of the Coast is acknowledging that it is part of Magic’s history, and deserves a place in the narrative equal to any other expansion. In fact, considering that the deck types and game environment that the designers seem to have tried to engineer with M10 and Zendikar tend, compared with past metagames, towards fewer decks that are able to lock out everything the opponent does, a more important role for creatures, and slightly longer games overall, they may be suggesting that Portal: Second Age’s brand of Magic is in fact “real” Magic. It's hard for me to fault that.
In addition to being extremely beautiful, the art was notable because it originally appeared in Portal: Second Age. In much the same was as basic lands are often taken for granted and even marginalized by some players compared to flashy (and sometimes overpowered) nonbasic lands, the Portal sets have occasionally been derided as “Magic for idiots” due to their contents being much simpler mechanically than other expansions. They also had a high focus on creature combat and aggressive play in general, which a certain type of player finds unintellectual or unchallenging (try telling that to all the pros Mark Herberholz beat a few Pro Tours ago). However, Second Age in particular has a backstory and lore just as involved as a “real” expansion, and the artists put just as much work into it as for anything else.
By putting Portal: Second Age lands in the Archenemy decks, Wizards of the Coast is acknowledging that it is part of Magic’s history, and deserves a place in the narrative equal to any other expansion. In fact, considering that the deck types and game environment that the designers seem to have tried to engineer with M10 and Zendikar tend, compared with past metagames, towards fewer decks that are able to lock out everything the opponent does, a more important role for creatures, and slightly longer games overall, they may be suggesting that Portal: Second Age’s brand of Magic is in fact “real” Magic. It's hard for me to fault that.
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