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Details You May Have Missed from the MTG Panel at SDCC 2014

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Thanks to Twitter, we knew much of what was said in the MTG Comic-Con Panel the day of the event. Last week, Wizards of the Coast posted a video of the presentation to YouTube, which is embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

There were a few things I took away from this video that were not necessarily discussed elsewhere online. Had you heard these details?

  • Khans of Tarkir is a wedge set, but it is not a wedge block. Presumably due to the time travel element, we won't necessarily be seeing wedge cards in the still-to-be-named-publicly winter and spring sets of 2015.
  • Although the Shards of Alara factions were based on the central color of each shard (Bant's central color was white, Grixis's central color was black, etc.), the wedges of Khans of Tarkir won't be so symmetrical. I assumed that the central color would be the mutual enemy of the other two colors, but in fact, we're going to be jumping around the color wheel by twos. In other words, the Abzan Houses will be centered in white, including white, black, and green (skipping blue and red on the color wheel). The Jeskai Way will be centered in blue with red and white as its other colors. The Sultai Brood will be centered in black with green and blue allies, the Mardu Horde will be centered in red with white and black allies, and the Temur Frontier will be centered in green with blue and red allies. Even though it's not the symmetry I anticipated, it's still symmetrical in that each clan has the same pattern of moving around the color wheel. Mark Rosewater assured the audience the reasoning for this choice would become clear as we moved into spoiler season.
  • The reveal of Zurgo Helmsmasher is the first time WOTC has given us a spoiler from the fall set as San Diego Comic-Con. That's pretty cool.

Zurgo-Helmsmasher

  • Despite being roughly $175 at TCGplayer mid, the audience could not have been less impressed with the Rolling Earthquake spoiler for From the Vault: Annihilation. "Scattered applause" would be a generous description of the response; "smirking laughter" would be more accurate. It's not hard to discern that what the audience really wanted to see was Choice of Damnations, and short of that, there would be no impressing them.

  • Finally, I previously alluded to the chance of seeing Urza in the Commander decks coming out this fall, but Mark Purvis's exact words reiterated my feeling on this: the Commander decks will feature "different characters from throughout Magic's history that maybe didn't have a card in the past." This isn't true of the revealed Teferi, but it sure is true of the big man, Urza himself. Unless you count Blind Seer, which you shouldn't. Considering the lore of Urza has him much stronger than modern planeswalkers, putting this in a casual-only format will help WOTC be able to push the card without breaking Standard.

I hope these details were new to you. They certainly were to me!

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Danny Brown

Danny is a Cube enthusiast and the former Director of Content for Quiet Speculation.

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4 thoughts on “Details You May Have Missed from the MTG Panel at SDCC 2014

  1. Strange, nothing new. This information was all on Twitter and mtgsalvation.

    One thing that sounds different. The commander PW’s will be PW’s from magic’s past.
    The legendary creatures will be characters that never had their own card before.

    Urza should be multicolored in my eyes (like Mishra). But I’m sure my opinion doesn’t matter in this speculation.

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