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Updates and Opinions on Magic 2010

By Trick Jarrett ⋅ June 4, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Magic 2010 is just around the cor­ner, with pre­re­leases quickly approach­ing. As such peo­ple are grow­ing more and more excited about the upcom­ing set. Let’s look at some of the recent announce­ments and updates con­cern­ing M10, or Magic 2010.

“In Play” is now “the bat­tle­field” and “Out of Play” is “Exile” and “play­ing” is “cast­ing“
Lend­ing to bet­ter them­ing, Wiz­ards in its infi­nite wis­dom is chang­ing some terms to be more the­matic. Here’s the deal, I’m not a fan. It seems like change for change’s sake, but also I rec­og­nize that peo­ple do love the theme of the game and this enhances the theme.

Are peo­ple going to gripe? Yes. But really folks, what does it mat­ter? This is nowhere near the Sixth edi­tion rule change shake-up (we lost Inter­rupts, Enchant Worlds and turn phases changed among other things.)

To com­pet­i­tive play, this will change almost noth­ing. There’s not going to be any penalty for call­ing it ‘in play.’ It’s got no impact on game­play, except that it makes rules text longer. Peo­ple who don’t want to rec­og­nize the new text will just keep call­ing it the old names and life will go on.

Of these term changes, I think the one which makes the most sense is “Removed from game.” It makes more sense how things can now return from “RFG.” How­ever the prob­lem I fore­see is why your side­board is con­sid­ered “Exiled.”

Some cards we know to expect in Magic 2010:

• Night­mare — Noth­ing spe­cial here. A very fun crea­ture and one of my favorites from the Timmy inside me, but it’s been around for a while.
• Serra Angel — Always a wel­come icon of the game, how­ever she’s not look­ing quite as good as she used to, her fly­ing 4/4 for 5 is a bit like your grandma’s caddy. A good com­fort­able ride but not exactly what you want to drive when you go to pick up your date.
• Black Knight — Though they still haven’t pic­tured Mar­tin Lawrence on the card, it’s a good strong card and it will always have a place in aggro I think.
• Shivan Dragon — While it takes a great mind like Zvi Mow­showitz to return it to com­pet­i­tive play (albeit he ran it in the side­board) BUT the card is another icon from the age of yore (means: the good old days.)
• Birds of Par­adise — This is one of the true sta­ples. It’s needed.

M10 + 10th edi­tion for a year:
What does this mean? Well hon­estly I don’t think it will mean much. It means that the loss of cards in M10 is going to be hardly felt since they will still be in 10th edi­tion for now. For those unclear, M10 is not knock­ing 10th edi­tion out. We will have access to both 10th edi­tion and M10 until next year when Magic 2011 (M11) knocks 10th edi­tion out. Only then will the rotated cards really be felt.

Update: 10th edi­tion leaves when M10 enters
It was pointed out to me on the forums that I had mis­read the rota­tion pol­icy for the new core sets. The con­fu­sion arose over the fact that M11 doesn’t knock M10 out, M10 leaves with the old core set with the intro­duc­tion of the new core set for the year. My apolo­gies for the con­fu­sion. How­ever, 10th edi­tion doesn’t leave when Zendikar enters, it leaves when M10 becomes legal to play.

Pos­si­bly los­ing Mana Burn
This is still rumor as far as I can find, I haven’t found any­thing to con­firm it, but it is a rumor that is hang­ing around so I fig­ured I would address it. So what’s the big deal? It removes the dan­ger of spells which enhance the amount of mana pro­duced, such as Mana Flare or other spells. The ben­e­fit is that (new) play­ers don’t have to deal with the penal­ties of too much mana. Aside from the pos­si­ble accel­er­a­tion, I don’t really see that mak­ing too much of an impact. It’s just another change that peo­ple are against.

I find this resis­tance to change to be a very funny point in stark con­trast to our love for a game that, you know, is built on con­stant change with new cards being intro­duced regularly.

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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