Magic: The Gathering Dragon's Maze Prerelease!

The Talk Box went to our local Dragon's Maze Prerelease! We went to Friendly Fire Game Center in Mansfield, CT. While there were 36 people originally signed up, I believe a few more came around midnight to join in the fun! Let's see how The Talk Box did:

Player: Adam (The MC)
Guild/Deck: Orzhov, BWG
Record: 0-3 (Dropped before 4)


Player: Ted (The Voice)
Guild/Deck: Golgari, UGB
Record: Dropped after 1 (lost to Harry)


Player: Harry (The Quiet Australian)
Guild/Deck: Dimir, RBU
Record: 2-2

Player: Pat (The Listmaster)
Guild/Deck: Gruul, RGB
Record: 2-2, Maze Champion!

So Gruul ended up winning the maze at Friendly Fire midnight, with Rakdos winning the next day's event. Here are some pictures from the night!

 Look at all the people!

 Gruul with the early lead.

 Round 2 Gruul win!

 Final few games.

 Intense! 

 Final round! 

Ooooo Ral Zarek!

Thanks to Dan at Friendly Fire for letting us hang out and take pictures!

Check them out on Facebook and their website!

Dragon's Maze Intro Packs: Azorius, Orzhov and Simic

The wait is over! The 5 Dragon's Maze Intro Packs have been revealed! How exciting! I'm going to look at the decks really quickly to see how they might fare. Lets start with the 3 guilds I play/have played and if I'd buy the decks.

Azorius

Little known fact: I used to love Azorius. This deck seems promising and might pique my interest. The main card is Lavnia of the Tenth. Detaining the living daylights out of your opponent is always great. She's great for a late game play if you want to just finish your challenger quickly, but that only works if you have an army to do it. Luckily, this deck comes with 22 creatures with some great abilities. There is plenty of detain in this deck. There are a total of 5 creatures with flying, so plenty of ways to get damage in. The 12 instants and sorceries that come with this deck are also pretty great. It comes with the fuse card Protect/Serve which allows you to bulk up a creature while making sure your opponent won't kill one of your other creatures. Pair it Lavnia and BOOM death to all who oppose you.

Totally might buy this deck. Better than the Azorius one from RtR.

Orzhov

Ahhhh Orzhov. The greediest of guilds. The main card is the lovely Tesya, Envoy of Ghosts. Protection from creatures? Check. Send all creatures that deal damage to you away? Check. Seems great to me! While you work to get Tesya out, there seems to be about a billion ways to gain life in this deck. Extort, Crypt Incursion, Riot Control. You just might gain more life than your opponents can deal with! This deck is just cruel. The fuse card Profit/Loss is included. It allows you to boost your creatures while diminishing your opponent's. So if you don't extort them to death, you can basically trample over your opponent.

Totally buying this at the prerelease. This deck is so mean I love it. 

Simic

I'm nicknaming this deck "Counters For All The People". Granted that's what's Simic is about in general but holy shit guys! Vorel of The Hull Clade basically adds counters to anything you have that may have some. Planeswalker needs some loyality counters? You got it! Need bigger creatures to trample your opponent? You got it! All the counters! Plus Sapphire Drake gives all creatures with counters flying. So basically you can get an army of flying creatures, some with trample to literally flatten out your challengers. Give/Take works wonders too! You can put 3 +1/+1 counters on a creature, then take all the counters of the same one or another creature and draw that many cards. Simic likes cards for some reason. Anyway, get this deck if you like to trample and control your opponents.

Would I buy this? Maybe just for some cards.

 

Check out the full decklists for these as well as the Radkos and Gruul decks here.

Anyway have fun and enjoy the Dragon's Maze! 

DC's First Transgender Character: A Positive Look

On April 10, DC Comics revealed that Alysia Yeoh, roommate of the current Batgirl Barbara Gordon, was transgender.  While certainly not the first transgender comic book character, Alysia is the first one in a major comic run, making her a significant milestone in the comic book world.  She was created by writer Gail Simone, the same writer who rebooted Batwoman as a lesbian to positive results. She explained the idea of making Alysia transgender in an interview with Wired: “I looked out into the audience, saw dozens of faces I knew well — LGBTQ folks, mostly — all avid comics readers and superhero fans and DC supporters, and it just hit me: why was this so impossible? Why in the world can we not do a better job of representation of not just humanity, but also our own loyal audience? I thought I might have to sell it, so to speak, but he ( DC Co-Publisher Dan DiDio) just paused for a moment, asked how this would affect Barbara’s story, and immediately approved it."
While there is some backlash to this announcement, most people are totally ok with the announcement. In fact, the LGBTQ community is new at all to comics. In 1992, X-Men member Northstar revealed himself to be gay and got married to his partner Kyle in June of 2012, marking the gay marriage in comics history. The same month, DC Comics announced that Alan Scott, the first hero to be called Green Lantern, was going to be the newest gay superhero in the DC Universe, making June a great leap forward of LGBTQ community.

Comics are a great sign of the times. They evolve as new things arise and are no stranger to controversy. In the 1970s, Marvel tackeled the idea of interracial marriage by having Vision, an android, marry Scarlet Witch. This lead the way for Cloak and Dagger and many other interracial couples in the Marvel Universe. In 2011, Superman renounced his American citizenship, causing some outrage in the non-comic fan world. Eight years earlier, Superman had the Red Son storyline, in which he was working with the Soviet Union.  There was also some outrage when Marvel "killed" off Captain America. But as comic fans, these events are minuscule in the overall universe. 
I think what DC Comics did with Alysia Yeoh was a brave step forward. With what's going on the political world, I think it was an appropriate time. While there is always to going to be some backlash from the conservative side of things, I feel like the positive reaction will be the highlight of this story. I saw posts on social network sites praising DC for taking a bold step forward. I look forward to learning what happens as Barbara and Alysia's friendship progresses through the next couple issues. 

Our Latest Video: Magic The Gathering Gatecrash Event!

Here we explore the fun of a Gatecrash sealed event!

Here's a Wallpaper For All You Loyal Readers!

Enjoy!

Welcome Matt to the staff!

Hey guys! We have a new contributor! His name is Matt aka PappaPrime. He does cool artwork and stuff. Here's some of his work:

Anyway, he'll be doing stuff on here now, so keep an eye out!
Check out his artwork here!

Interesting Quote

Quote from Lex Luthor in the intro from the Injustice App. Foreshadowing the game?

 

 

Dragon's Maze Spoilers Review!

It's that time of the year again folks. SPOILER SEASON! Here I'm going to review the lovely spoilers the kind folks at Wizard's put out for us! Here we go! 

The Maze

Here we have Maze's End, one of the new mythic rares. It's a land card with a win condition so fun stuff. It would work best in a 5 color deck with a lot of mana/gate fishing in it. Otherwise it's a kind of pointless card. But go for the win condition and BOOM! Victory.

Champions Ahoy!

Here we have the Gruul champion of the maze. We know that the 10 new intro decks will have the champions as the foil rares so this one should be pretty common.  This guy here, Ruric Thar, is quite the nasty guy.  He attacks each turn if able, which is great if you can bulk him up. Plus he has vigilance and reach so fun stuff kids. Also, his second ability takes care of those nasty spell decks like Izzet. So if you can get him out on turn 6 against a spell deck, you win.

Speaking of Izzet, here's Melek, the Izzet maze champion. He's going to be a great addition to any Izzet deck. Heck, I plan on getting the Izzet intro just for this guy. Get him out on turn 6 and you're playing cards like instants left and right. Plus when you play an actual instant or sorcery, you can copy it. So BAM. Victory is yours.

The Ral-Man Cometh

And here he is. Ral Zarek. The newest planeswalker. And I want him so much. Look at his abilities!

+1: Tap target permanent, then untap another target permanent.
-2: Ral Zarek deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
-7: Flip 5 coins. Take an extra turn after this one for each coin that comes up heads.
His plus 1 is great if you have some creatures to swing in with and you need to get rid of some blockers, but also works for tapping effects. His minus 2? Great for killing of low toughness creatures or dwindling down your opponent's health. And DO YOU SEE THE -7????  Five coins could mean 5 heads which means 5 extra turns. Five. Win baby win.

Fusion Time

 Look! New mechanic! Fuse takes the double cards we know and love and allows you to cast one or both halves! Which is awesome. I included Wear/Tear and Toil/Trouble above. Both are a single guild card. Wear/Tear is great because you can take out those pesky artifacts and enchantments in a single card. Toil/Trouble is great for torturing your opponents with your already torturous Radkos deck. But check this out:

 Beck/Call. A Simic and Azorius card. Could this be a hint at the new guild pairings? Or is this just a great combo for a 3 color deck? Looks great for a GWU deck. Throw some populate and BOOM! Cards and birds!

I can't wait to review the set as a whole soon! Keep an eye out for it!