Magic 20XX: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Magic 20XX: (Generated at 2025-08-08 19:49:13)
| Magic 20XX: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Recent updates to Magic 20XX: (Generated at 2025-08-08 19:49:13)
Pushes the envelope, I know, but certainly not broken... just surprising when it happens. Also, Hellbent and Wisdom love this thing. You know what also loves this thing? The cycle of Flash auras in the set. Plopping this down on the board with, say, Exhalambation can result in a very surprised player.
Unlike Coadjuvantational Tabulator, this creature allows double enabling. The two creatures would go well together, if they weren't a bit nerfed for being artifact creatures.
Heh. I had to copy-paste the name for this card. I'm pretty sure that name means something, but when I went to google it, I got back a mess. Let's just assume it's an "adding machine".
I got some nice feedback from this one, which is kind of odd. Stress in game design is often seen as a bad thing, but I guess obvious stress is no big deal. People knew they could play this in either Wisdom or Hellbent. In blue it sometimes results in surprise Lifelink. Surprise Hellbent can often seal the deal.
Monday's here, and 7 more cards from Magic 20XX, this time, shifting to Artifact and non-basic land.
I know the fans have been demanding the return of Adarkar Sentinel, and who am I to deny them that? (read as: sarcasm]). The Sentinel oddly fits two roles in my set. It encourages Wisdom, by giving players a 'relevant' activated ability to sink mana into, and it's a soldier... which is one of the two supported tribal types at common. It also provides an emergency 12th pick mid-range creature as well. No one's going to argue it's a great card, but you could do worse.
Mmm. That's a fair assessment. For draft, it's removal and gets taken early no matter what your deck looks like. In that sense, it pushes you to make your deck faster. For constructed, however, it only really 'works' when you expect Hellbent. I suppose I can appreciate the negative comments on Gatherer, even if I disagree with them. This card doesn't work in the type of decks they play.
Back in the when? Is this some kind of newfangled post-legends set?
Anyway. Mmmm.... It's not lightning bolt 5-8, but yes, it's a nice chunk of damage ratio. (Incinerate is still worth using, nuking regenerators is occasionally nice, but it is mainly bolt 5-8 paying the cost to have more copies.)
Well, that's my "Too old to have played with 'back in the day' cards pennysworth :)
One thing I dislike about this is that you pretty much HAVE to run it in pure aggro. It's not a sensible thing to splash. Which is a shame. Brimstone volley would seem to partly help that - many more decks want (or can't stop) creatures dying than want to empty their hands.
Wow, calling Dissension "back in the day" makes me feel old...
It's interesting to compare this to Brimstone Volley.
It's kind of funny. The set has a number of walls in it. This has to do with the charm cycle. You see, I planned to reprint one charm from each block that had a cycle of 1cc charms in it, then add a new one. Sounds cool, right? Turns out that this was a tough nut to crack. Mirage and Visions instants aren't as relevant as they used to be. Onslaught's charm cycle all cared about creature types that may or may not be represented. Timespiral included two 2cc charms in its cylce, and a reprint.
It took me some doing, but after a while, I mapped out a way to do it and be relevant. In the end, Chaos Charm ended up in the set... but for that to make sense, I had to add enough walls for Chaos Charm's first ability to matter. The players don't seem to have caught on, though. They tend to table Chaos Charm for more exciting offerings.
For more about Flash Auras, see Alexis Cloak.
Man, what is up with red and the reprints? This card's name is new, but it's really just the card Flaming Sword given a new name (and new artwork... which is cute, and I don't know if I'd be able to find it again on the internet). Nowadays, enchant creatures aren't given names that sound like equipment. Thank you Magic 2010 for giving me the precedent to just rename the card and move along.
For more about the pactmakers, see Elf Pactmaker. I could say some things about DD and QT here, but I might as well wait till they pop up.
Four cards and four reprints. Originally, the set was supposed to be 50% reprint, but if I did the math, I'm pretty sure I'd find closer to 60-40 split with more new cards than old.
Coal Stoker is pretty strong for a common. It certainly makes a player get to Hellbent faster... in the same way that it helps you win the game faster. I'm also a fan of it being virtual vanilla. I'm also a big fan of its flavor text. :)
The discussion for Cackling Flames on Gatherer clearly shows that the people judging cards from back in the day are often doing it without playing them. Cackling Flames is boss. It's what made Incinerate have to go bye-bye in my set. If you are playing red 'the right way', you shouldn't have any cards in your hand anyway. Dealing 5 damage to target creature or player for
turns out to be very good.
I made sure both red and black had one card that you could pitch cards to liberally, but not make the action automatic. I understand why Odyssey block would include cards like Putrid Imp... because that block was focused on the graveyard and discarding cards. For Threshold and Madness to be relevant, you would need to have cards that made it simple to do. You don't want to be jumping hoops for block identity.
Hellbent in 20XX isn't that, though. There's probably 10 commons total in 20XX that have Hellbent, and not much else that needs you to have a graveyard. Therefore, I don't want to make dumping your hand an easy thing to do. Getting rid of the cards should be a journey, which players have to work to get right. Barbarian Bully is the fastest common shortcut to get there, and you still have to wait a couple rounds to toss them all away, if that's what you want.
It's Monday again, time for another 7 cards from 20XX. We're spinning the wheel from blue to red, and completing the circle.
Act of Treason was a late addition. I needed something to replace Incinerate which proved to be too good. Well, okay, Incinerate isn't too good, but it was surrounded by too many strong red removal cards, and red drafts were threatening to ignore combat and go straight for the head. Taking out the most versatile pick in the red removal suite brought red closer to the norm of 20XX.
Red, like blue, is, in theory, supposed to have lots of instants and sorceries. Unlike blue, red doesn't monkey around much. Most red cards burn a player or destroy a permanent... which is fine, except if you keep adding cards like that to a file, you're going to have to start making them all suck for power level reasons. I'm rather glad to see Act of Treason in the common slot nowadays. It's not a complicated ability or broken ability, an abundance of them is probably bad, and it's a sorcery speed combat trick. Red could use a few more cards like this, actually...
I did realize that I gave Dredge a rather potent tool. It doesn't help that this, itself, is a creature and will activate Bridge From Below and Ichorid (Edit: Complete lies. I obviously don't play that deck and just assume the cards are better than they are. Oh well. It still returns Nether Shadow if you find yourself running that...). But I can't be expected to worry about Super-Legacy combos. Besides, Development would probably push this card. They seem to like Dredge, and ban cards to make it come to the forefront.