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Magic’s Next Year — Worldwake, Rise of the Eldrazi, M11 and more!

By Trick Jarrett ⋅ November 17, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

If 2009 was any sign of things to come, 2010 is sure to raise the hairs on the back of neck as we begin to tin­gle with excite­ment. Per­haps a lit­tle bit too much excite­ment there, but con­sider the record-setting turnouts of 2009, the record-setting sales for M10 and Zendikar, and the record-setting speed at which the Magic meta­verse has expanded online with blogs, new sites and the adop­tion of social media. With his eyes to the future, Trick con­jec­tures and reveals some details for the upcom­ing year in Magic. Think of him as the ‘Jimmy the Greek’ for magic.

World­wake

This set has many of us excited purely by this fact, that it was done under the lead design of Ken Nagle. Mem­bers of Wiz­ards’ R&D refer to him as ‘Mini-Rosewater.’ Why exactly? We’re not sure, whether for his cre­ativ­ity, his tena­cious­ness, or his inabil­ity to judge power-levels (we kid MaRo!) But he has been an excit­ing addi­tion to R&D and while he has con­tributed for sev­eral years, this is his first set as lead.

Almost as impor­tantly, the set will be fol­low­ing Zendikar and car­ry­ing forth the excit­ing set­ting and abil­i­ties. Though it is almost guar­an­teed the set won’t also have the ‘trea­sures’ which drove us all bonkers with Zendikar, the set should sell just as well, and based on pre­orders to online ven­dors, looks like it cer­tainly will.

Let’s look at a few things we can expect.

Kicker Vari­ant — Mark spoke to us and to Evan Erwin that there would be a ‘Kicker Vari­ant’ in World­wake which would be ‘Kicker with­out [blank].’ As to what [blank] can refer to in this sense, we’re not quite sure. But we do expect it to be excit­ing. The the­o­ries being it could be a kicker abil­ity that lacks mana cost and is instead paid in another way, per­haps by return­ing lands or sac­ri­fic­ing them in some way.

New Land Themed Abil­ity — This was also spoiled by Mark Rose­wa­ter to us and it has been called into ques­tion by another mem­ber of R&D. Not that it is inac­cu­rate as the descrip­tion may be less than obvi­ous as to what it actu­ally means. Unfor­tu­nately this clar­i­fi­ca­tion only con­fuses us fur­ther. Is it some­thing on land cards? Or a new abil­ity that allows non-lands to act as lands as had been sug­gested dur­ing the Zendikar design arti­cles MaRo wrote? We don’t know yet.

Allies Con­tin­ued — Allies have proven to be a true force in Zendikar lim­ited and it would be a major blow if they are not seen in World­wake. We must believe that they are present and will add sev­eral new dimen­sions to the sub­type with the release of the set.

Planeswalk­ers — We’re fairly cer­tain that World­wake will have at least one, pos­si­bly two planeswalk­ers, Jace and the Zendikar Mythic rare, Ob Nix­ilis. Jace comes from an MTGSal­va­tion forum mem­ber report­ing that the Wiz­ards booth at a trade show that stated that World­wake will include a new form for one of Magic’s most pop­u­lar planeswalk­ers, which is believed to be Jace Bel­eren. The sec­ond, Ob Nix­ilis, is from a hint from Mark Rose­wa­ter in one of his columns, and the fact that the World­wake expan­sion sym­bol appears on his forehead.

Rise of the Elrazi

Rise of the Eldrazi was announced just this week, but that isn’t too soon for us to begin mak­ing our edu­cated guesses.

Sliv­ers — With the offi­cial con­fir­ma­tion that RoE is real, the rumors can begin to flow. As the third set, it is known that this set is designed to stand alone in lim­ited play, though it will be the­mat­i­cally tied to Zendikar and World­wake (obvi­ously.) The set is under the head design of Matt Place, who was largely respon­si­ble for Allies in Zendikar. Though the sets are to be mechan­i­cally dis­con­nected we have to believe that there will be some sort of Ally like mechanic in this set. Some on the MTGSal­va­tion forums have sug­gested that we may see Sliv­ers in this set as story-wise it is known that the Sliv­ers were cre­ated by a supe­rior race but not what race that was. It could be a mas­ter­stroke if this is true in RoE.

There is also sug­ges­tion that the Sliv­ers con­cept is sup­ported by the recent release of the Pre­mium Deck: Sliv­ers. The prod­uct seems sus­pect as Sliv­ers are apro­pos of noth­ing in the cur­rent metagame and the deck would be rel­e­gated to col­lec­tors and casu­als since the deck sees very lit­tle play in con­structed recently. The tim­ing would be that it is early enough to not draw too much sus­pi­cion but not too early as to be for­got­ten by the time the block comes out.

Planeswalker? — It is also pos­si­ble that the above men­tioned Ob Nix­ilis may appear in this set rather than World­wake. A small set hold­ing two planeswalk­ers could prove trou­ble­some for lim­ited play. Con­flux only held one Planeswalker, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. And in the story it would make sense that Ob Nix­ilis would become a Planeswalker dur­ing the war and chaos that this set promises.

Magic 2011

PureMTGO.com wrote about an inter­view with Erik Lauer dur­ing the Com­mu­nity Cup Chal­lenge and dur­ing that dis­cus­sion Erik unveiled some very choice tid­bits about 2011. Wiz­ards will have fewer renamed ‘new’ cards than 2010 did. Inter­est­ingly, 2011 is a return to Magic’s orig­i­nal plane “Dom­i­naria” which is where many of the early blocks were set includ­ing Ice Age, Alliances, Home­lands and others.

We can likely expect the rota­tion of the Lor­wyn planeswalk­ers along with Magic 2010, to allow them to be fully replaced by their sec­ondary iter­a­tions, lend­ing fur­ther sup­port to a ver­sion of Jace being princed in World­wake. It does make me ques­tion where in the pro­duc­tion sched­ule we’ll be see­ing a new ver­sion of Gar­ruk Wild­speaker and Lil­liana Vess.

New Sorin? — It is known that Sorin is a planeswalker from some­where other than Zendikar, and given his pos­si­ble ties to the Sen­gir fam­ily, he could be from Dom­i­naria. This would be a quick turn around for a new planeswalker, but not impossible.

Mis­cel­la­neous Products

From the Vault: Relics — Fol­low­ing on 2009’s must-have col­lec­tor ‘From the Vaults Exiled.’ It was dis­cov­ered from a US Patent & Trade­mark reg­is­tra­tion it will be the sequal to be released next year. It is still yet to be announced but we can expect it to mir­ror this year’s tim­ing as a release around August of 2009.

Phyrexia vs the Coali­tion — The first rum­bles of this deck series began when Mark Purvis, at Wiz­ards, hinted that the next deck series (after Gar­ruk vs Lil­liana) would fea­ture a very famous bat­tle in Magic’s his­tory. It was announced by Wiz­ards to be released in March of 2010. Akin to the belief that Sliv­ers is hint­ing at Rise of the Eldrazi, many feel this duel deck is meant to inte­grate and con­nect with ‘Lights, Cam­era, Action’ the next block which we dis­cuss below.

Deckbuilder’s Toolkit — A sur­prise announce­ment made quite recently by Wiz­ards, they announced this prod­uct with­out any art­work to go along with it. It should prove a very pop­u­lar item for casual players.

Dark Ascen­sion — We have no idea what this is, and it may not even be a Magic prod­uct, but the trade­mark was reg­is­tered with text sim­i­lar to those they use for a Magic the Gath­er­ing prod­uct so we are led to believe it is… some­thing. We have no idea what.

Lights, Cam­era, Action

The next block, “Lights, Cam­era, Action” was dis­cov­ered by another trade­mark watcher and it is a return to arti­fact themed block. It’s been seven years since Mir­rodin struck fear in our hearts with Affin­ity. To give you an idea how scary it is, since that time we’ve had two Gold themed blocks, a Leg­end block, a tem­po­ral themed block, Tribal and most recently lands. Thou­sands of cards and 7 years. When this block comes in Mir­rodin will rotate out of Extended, mean­ing we won’t have to fear it fuel­ing Affin­ity dur­ing the 2011 Extended sea­son. How­ever, in a Man­a­Na­tion exclu­sive, we believe we know not only the names of the blocks but also the order of their release!

The set names, ‘New Phyrexia,’ ‘Scars of Mir­rodin’ and ‘Mir­rodin Pure’ are believed to be the names of the sets in the next block. Also those being the order of the sets, mean­ing the block will likely be called ‘New Phyrexia.’ The sup­port for our belief is that we have dis­cov­ered all three sets’ domain names (NewPhyrexia.com, ScarsOfMirrodin.com, MirrodinPure.com) are all reg­is­tered to Wiz­ards of the Coast. We are 90% sure the block name is ‘New Phyrexia’ due to the fact that domain was reg­is­tered first on July 14th, 2009. Then the sec­ond two being reg­is­tered together on August 28th, 2009. This means their order is less cer­tain, but that we believe it to be Scars of Mir­rodin which will then lead into Mir­rodin Pure. This order is sup­ported by the Alara block being about a plane under tur­moil (as most blocks are) but that it sta­bi­lizes in the final block. The domains we spoke of are cur­rently not being used but should become active in the near future as the sets become offi­cially revealed.

New Tezzeret — Tezzeret seemed rather out of place in Alara block. A gold themed block hav­ing an arti­fact hun­gry Planeswalker, though fed by the col­ored arti­facts, pro­vides a good timed entry for a new form of Tezzeret in this block. Tezzeret’s loca­tion is unknown after depart­ing Alara, and it could prove for­tu­itious for him to reap­pear in this block.

New Gar­ruk — Green has become the enemy of arti­facts. Where as Dis­en­chant began it all in white, it was replaced by Nat­u­ral­ize and a num­ber of other arti­fact destruc­tion spells. Green will prob­a­bly prove to be the foil of the arti­facts and so it would be log­i­cal to believe we could see a new Gar­ruk in this block. Some may say why not a new Nissa but aside from Ajani in Alara block, we have good evi­dence that Wiz­ards prefers to put some time between the orig­i­nal planeswalker and their new form.

Urza as a Planeswalker? — If there is one myth­i­cal char­ac­ter from Magic’s his­tory it is Urza. The pro­tag­o­nist of the ‘Brother’s War’ who fought his brother Mishra. When Planeswalk­ers were revealed it imme­di­ately caused us to ask, would we ever see Urza as a planeswalker? Could we call him to our side dur­ing bat­tle? Many feel not as it would be nearly impos­si­ble to sat­isfy play­ers with a Planeswalker whom was any­thing less than unbeat­able. But if there were a block he would fit in, this would be it. Per­haps he will be printed as a planeswalker, per­son­ally I hope not, but if he is, I’m sure he will be played.

Dom­i­naria vs Phyrexia vs Mir­rodin — The sto­ries of Magic are not my strong point, but it seems quite inter­est­ing that Magic 2011 is return­ing to be anchored in Dom­i­naria, just before the duel deck and the next block. It could hint that we’ll see ties of Tolar­ian Acad­emy or other Tolaria inspired arti­facts com­ing into ques­tion dur­ing this block.

And though it won’t be legal dur­ing Stan­dard, you may con­sider pick­ing up your Tezzeret the Seekers and Mishra, Arti­fi­cer Prodigys in case they become abus­able next year. Obvi­ously, lots is still unknown and many of these are pure edu­cated guesses, but take it as you will, Magic’s in an excit­ing time and look­ing to con­tinue on its upward trend.

Trick Jarrett is the host and founder of ManaNation.com, he writes, edits, covers, and spoils Magic for a living. Playing it whenever he can manage to find the time. He is engaged to a lovely woman who refuses to learn Magic, and they have a cute cocker-spaniel puppy who is all too eager to play Magic.

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