“I Think I Forgot To Adventure In These Realms…”
Today, “Adventures in the Forgotten Realms” drops on Magic: Arena.
I haven’t yet downloaded the massive update to Arena, though. That update will add 281 cards to the game, making the expansion a reasonably large one. It is the 88th Magic expansion and releases in actual physical card form on July 23, 2021.
It is the first time that Magic has introduced another franchise into the game, or at least into Standard as a major set, so that’s a big deal. Sure, the company also owns the “Dungeons and Dragons” franchise, so it makes a kind of sense, but it’s a thing of importance.
Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms has no Story Spotlights (cards that tell the “narrative” of a set’s story), but a series of cards represent the adventures of a party composed by Ellywick, Hama, Nadaar and Varis. Those are characters that (I think) were specifically created for the set. Each one of those cards has a name like “You Hear Something On Watch,” and a choice for the player that played the card.
Predictably, he set introduces the “Dungeon” card type. Dungeons don’t go in your deck. Rather, they start outside the game and are played in the command zone. Which is odd, because normal Magic formats don’t have a Command Zone.
Dungeons are connected to the “venture into the dungeon mechanic.” This can be the effect of a spell, an activated ability, or a triggered ability. If you venture into the dungeon while you don’t have any dungeons in the command zone, you put the dungeon of your choice into the command zone and put a venture marker on the first room, at the top. Every time you enter a room, including the first room, its room ability triggers. These abilities all read “When you enter this room, [the effect printed in the room].” When you complete a dungeon certain cards receive a bonus.
Since there are dungeons, there are predictably a lot of Dragon cards. It’s a very dragon heavy set. So that’s a thing.
Dice rolling is used for the first time in a black-bordered set. “Black bordered” cards are legal in all formats, whereas silver bordered cards are not legal in formats except those that allow them…which is pretty much no formats. The cards use the twenty sided die that is typically associated with the game of Dungeons and Dragons, and those die are included in a pre-release pack.
The set introduces the Bard, Beholder, Gnoll, Halfling, Hamster, and Tiefling creature types. Citizen appears for the first time as a black-bordered creature type (save for previous appearances on tokens). Cap is smacking the @#$% out of a beholder in the sketch for today, and Jace is throttling a Demilich, which is an Undead Super Wizard Skull.
Some of the cards look good, but I’m not super hyped about the set. I think that’s more about the need to play on Arena than anything else, and that there’s some real uncertainty about my school Magic: The Gathering Club. Having the club at school really made me a much, much more competitive player, and the social interactions are really the heart of the thing.
As the Professor says, “It’s more about the Gathering, than the Magic.”
As I was drawing this, I wasn’t too sure of exactly what would go into the speech balloons. During that time, I got an update that my sister’s kid was being bullied at “sleep away camp,” and my general contempt for bullies came into Cap’s dialogue. Cap and Jace just want to get some Kryptonian Tacos, and these guys won’t let them be.
Well, @#$% those guys.
Tales of Adequacy! 