My Magic Coreset 2020 Bundle has finally arrived last Monday after a slight delay in the logistics part of Lazada Shipping. Also, it has been a while since I did a product unboxing and so I decided to do it live on my Facebook page last Monday night. Here below is the video.

The two Mythic Rares I have opened is not that impressive as per card value but I am looking for them to be playable in Standard in the near future as more Magic sets are released.

The notable Rares are Nightpack Ambusher, Steel Overseer and the Temples . I might keep the Overseer for now as its current value is at a low because of the reprint. I might also do the same for the dual lands as we already have the Theros block printing of those for uses in our Standard decks.

I am currently here in studio apartment near the Katipunan Ave. and I arrived a day ahead to avoid travel hassle and get me enough time to stroll the nearby places. That would mean checking the nearby MTG local gamestores and the nearest one is Dragonforge located at the UP Town Center.

After checking in and getting a few hours of rest, I readied myself and went to the place. It was a good thing that the tricycles here has the route that could actually take you point-to-point. It removed the issue on dealing with expensive fares of taxi and Grab bookings. Anyhow, I went directly to the shop which I somewhat forgot its exact location inside the mall. There I found some people playing War Hammer and there were no scheduled FNM for that night. I then checked on the boosters displayed and saw that they have enough of the current and previous sets and even have those of Khans of Tarkir.

After a few impulse decisions, here are the boosters I bought in this order: two M20, two WAR, one M20 and one RNA. That extra booster pack contained the single cards I bought from the store album.

Here below are the notable contents of the packs.

The Core Set 2020 products of Rei arrived a day late which is not a big deal as the players would still storm the local game store for the Saturday Standard tournament. I was also there for the event and got the chance to crack some Magic Core Set 2020 boosters after most of them had opened their booster boxes and stuff.

Here are the Rares (no Mythic, unfortunately) that I have opened:

Leyline of the Void
Tale’s End
Chandra’s Regulator
Voracious Hydra
Dungeon Geists
Temple of Triumph
Temple of Malady

While the two lands maybe quite useful for the deck upgrades of the card pool, the rest can also be considered such as Dungeon Geists for my planned Azorius Flyers deck and Voracious Hydra which can be a potential Simic Ramp new component.

Tale’s End is a maybe board, along with Leyline of the Void which the existence of Izzet Phoenix in Standard as the main reason.

The regulator might find its use in a Big Red Chandra-based planeswalker midrange deck. Come to think of it, I have not yet seen an actual match online with that deck. Maybe I needed to research more.

Anyways, that were the booster pulls last night. Hoping to get lucky the next time.

Brewing can be complicated and basically mana color-based building. We can conclude that the easiest to brew are the mono-colors, up to the difficulty level of a three-color deck. Of course, most Tier 1 archetypes in the current meta are at a common three-color builds because of various dual land support.

Today we talk about the strategy of just turning your creatures sideways and bashing the opponent with them. We will look on the card options in the Magic 2020 Coreset and see if they can be a new addition in the main deck or another sideboard option. Here below are the Green notables from the set.

Howling Giant – How about a giant with his wolf buddies? A 5/5 body is already a good threat and beater but having an additional value of two more creatures, it looks like the card can win on its own especially in Top deck scenarios.

Nightpack Ambusher – this is probably my favorite Green creature of the set. Being able to flash in to block small critters and can produce an army on its own, the Simic flash deck is surely its home. I saw its power in the limited format during the prerelease yesterday and just having 3/3 wolf token each turn can just overwhelm opponents in the late game.

Shared Summons – A one-half of the Tooth and Nail card. if you are planning a Green Stompy deck build with a few one-ofs at your disposal then maybe you can also add this card.

Vivien, Arkbow Ranger – The newest version of Vivien in the four casting cost slot and can be easily cast a turn earlier with an elf or druid. Its +1 ability pumps a few of your mana dudes and protects them from effects like that of the Chainwhirler damage. Its minus 3 ability lets a creature you control deals damage equal to its power to target creature or planeswalker. It is better on the curve casting a fatty creature after playing Vivien on the previous turn and activating her ‘fight’ for an efficient damage and most likely kill off an opposing creature or walker.

Voracious Hydra – An efficient mana dump in the late game and can be a good four or five drop depending on your mana availability. It also has bonus fight etb effect to deal with small critters and later on can trade with bigger ones if needed.

Wakeroot Elemental – Being able to create 5/5 creatures out of your lands is just pure card advantage in itself. The issue here though is how to protect this dude as it is an obvious removal target once it enters the battlefield. Maybe having a copy or two of Veil of Summer main deck can solve this.

To conclude, going with a Mono Green deck in this current metagame is still viable and reasonable. Core Set 2020 has offered new tools for the archetype including that one card that hoses Blue counter spell decks, Shifting Ceratops. It is just how you adjust the build and the sideboard to be that efficient against specific matchups.

That is a wrap, until the next blog post.

What does it feel to get value on every spells you cast? It is like Magical Christmas land right? Having two effects from one card is just overwhelming especially in critical scenarios. One particular example is casting Elderspell on your opponent’s planeswalkers, and getting the extra loyalty counters to your own. For today’s card feature of the upcoming Core Set 2020, I have this card that presents thrice the value. Here is Repeated Reverberation:

At first glance it is suited to be a compo of Red Burn deck. Checking on the current Standard sets, there are enough spells to make this build viable. I would not want to go that route though as we have a lot of mana color access so we can have various versions. First question is: how to achieve this card advantage? The answer, lots of mana. You would either add Green to access mana ramp spells, or Blue for cards draws and to consistently play your lands each turn. I would like to detail with the latter as we have a lot of things to do than just building around this card.

For the Izzet build, we have the planeswalker Ral to further multiply the copies and with the possibility to one shot your opponent with just one burn spell. Here are the current components that I am looking at:  

Red
1 Banefire
1 Fight with Fire
3 Lava Coil
4 Lightning Strike
4 Shock
2 Repeated Reverberation

Blue
2 Chart a Course
2 Chemister’s Insight
4 Ionize
3 Opt

Multi Colored
3 Ral, Storm Conduit
4 Goblin Electromancer

If the upcoming Magic 2020 Core set would have a newer version of a burn spell then maybe, I will include it in the list above. We will be sticking with the main strategy of burning out opponents via copied spells as soon as possible. The full decklist will be up and updated once the complete Magic 2020 Core set spoiler is out.

That is a wrap, until the next blog post.

While I had not much delve into the cards of the Modern Horizons set, here comes Wizards releasing a new set and which is the recent Magic Core set 2020. The previews have officially started at the mothership site and while we had a few interesting cards to do some initial rating and writeup, I may need to start writing on it on the next few days.

What I mainly observed from the set is that Chandra is the main character featured, along with her origins as a young pyromancer ascending into a planeswalker. Maybe they will also have a card for her childhood buddies, co-workers, her favorite pet, and the like.

For now, just enjoy looking at the card spoilers in the various articles published. Here in the Core to the Point by Maro, and the Core Set 2020 Packaging, promo foils and stuff.

Up until the next blog post. Good night.