Day: May 8, 2019

TWR: The Value Proposition – War of the Spark

Izlain2 Comments

The newest Magic: The Gathering set, War of the Spark, released this past Friday, and for the third year in a row, I’ve purchased a box of booster packs around this time of year. This time around, I don’t really have an LGS without making a trip out of town, so I opted to utilize Amazon, which Wizards of the Coast recently partnered up with for people like me to have easier access. The main downfall to this is the fact that you do not get the Buy-A-Box promo card, and since I didn’t have an LGS to go to for the pre-release, I didn’t get any date-stamped promo cards this year either. Apparently the purchase price for the box was supposed to be lower on Amazon, but I don’t really think that’s the case, unless I missed somewhere that box prices went up? Whatever the case, I’ve written about the past two box openings with a break down on how I did, so I thought I’d keep with tradition and do it again.

I actually pre-ordered my box back in April, but the set didn’t release until last Friday, and initially it appeared that I wouldn’t get my order delivered for nearly a week past that date. Thankfully, once the box shipped on Friday, the delivery time was updated to Saturday, and it was awaiting me on the porch when I got home from work that morning. Above, I sort of “live-tweeted” my box opening experience with pictures of most of my best pulls. You can see visuals if you read that thread. Let’s get on with the goods, and the card breakdown in the box.

Multi-color:
10 Rare
42 Uncommon

Colorless:
1 Rare
4 Uncommon
19 Common

White:
1 Mythic Rare
3 Rare
12 Uncommon
67 Common (1 foil)

Blue:
1 Mythic Rare
5 Rare
13 Uncommon
70 Common (1 foil)

Black:
1 Mythic Rare
3 Rare
12 Uncommon
66 Common

Red:
1 Mythic Rare
4 Rare
12 Uncommon (1 foil)
66 Common (1 foil)

Green:
1 Mythic Rare
3 Rare
14 Uncommon
65 Common (1 foil)

Miscellaneous:
36 Tokens
6 Non-Basic Lands – Emergence Zone, Mobilized District, Interplanar Beacon, Gateway Plaza
37 Basic Lands – 1 foil Swamp

The breakdown for this box is a bit misleading, since a majority of the cards in the set are Planeswalkers and a bunch of them are uncommon and still pretty damn useful. So I think the value is skewed a little bit given that some of these cards are bulk, and yet they’ll still find homes in decks where you usually only see one or two uncommons/commons become staples. I did pretty well with my pulls, getting most of the chase cards, but I didn’t pull Feather, which I was really hoping to get my hands on to brew. However, with the large amount of Planeswalkers I have on hand I’m thinking of making Atraxa superfriends first. I’ve had her for some time and was going to do an infect build but I think instead I just might roll with the walkers instead. Whatever the case, I ended up with a bunch of great cards and I’m excited to tweak my existing decks and make new ones. Cards like Massacre Girl and the new Gods have me excited. Speaking of the Gods, let’s take a closer look at the Mythic Rares I pulled:

I managed to pull all but the new Bontu, but I wasn’t overly thrilled with him anyway. Ilharg is intriguing as a build around, but I think I’m going to slot him into Jodah instead, as cheating out big Eldrazi is the name of the game in that deck. It will also lose most of its Planeswalkers if I go that route with Atraxa, so I’m going to be looking for a few replacement cards that I just might find from the set. Oketra is slamming into my Zombie tribal deck, while I think I’m finally going to build a mono blue deck around the new Kefnet. Rhonas looks more like a finisher for a green beatdown deck, so I’ll probably put him somewhere that I already have a Craterhoof Behemoth for redundancy. Finally, the only non-God mythic I opened was the new Liliana, and she is a beauty. I really want to put her into my Zombie deck because I have two other Lilianas already in the 99, but I feel like this would be better for superfriends. As it stands, the possibility of building Atraxa means needing to re-evaluate where I have my other Planeswalkers, however I think I sold off most of the ones I had before now, outside of those in decks.

This set has reinvigorated my love for building decks and collecting these cards. It was definitely worth the money. I’m sure I’ll have some new brews to write about soon enough, so until then, I bid you farewell.