Yottaquest

On January 9th, Wizards surprised us with the announcement (covered in NY times) of a 5th edition of D&D in the works.

On January 28th and 29th, Wizards hosted their first playtest for DnD Next in Fort Wayne, IN. I was so upset that I heard about it after the fact... I mean Indiana is next door. The problem? The playtest is protected by NDA.

You can read the official Wizards summary of the event here. Hopefully this article will save you lot of time and cut straight to what is known and what is not known at this point.

Wizards assembled a dream team of D&D designers. Their design goal is to create a quintessential D&D (no pun intended), capturing the feel of all editions. The hope is that players who were alienated by radical design choices in 4th edition will return. Wizards is setting out on a great experiment to involve the community in the design of the game over the next year. The D&D Experience late January was the first such event.

Using the D&D Next group on the Wizard's site, you can participate in the feedback. There are blog posts about mechanics, seeking player input. And, of course, a whole forum for what have so far been extremely civilized and intelligent discussions. Here, your game design suggestions will become the property of Wizards.

So I have been mulling over the forums and various websites, trying to glean fact from fiction. Since I spend pretty much a whole day reading, I thought I might share.

Millienia ago, the world suffered a great sundering. It is unclear the order of events, but a fantastical world full of high magic faced multiple disasters. The Divine Gods abandoned the world or perished. Sorcery and along with it, defiling magic was discovered, which soon fueled the Sorcerer-Kings' rise to immortality.

 

Jund, Trace, and Blightning Oh My

Well my good friends, I used to be a Jund hater.  It seems to pop up often and invariably do very well.  Since I rejoined Magic at M10, I didn't have Jund cards.  So I bought a box of Alara Reborn.  I snagged an Elspeth... (/cheer) but no Maelstrom Pulses (/boo).  And thus a deep, bitter hatred began to brew inside me.  Maelstrom pulse is very powerful.  First of all, it targets permanents.  That's right, any nonland permanent.  That includes those fancy pants oblivion rings, any creature, artifact,  enchantment, equipment...  And it is a black and green card, and one would normally only expect "target permanent" from a blue card.  Finally, It destroys all other permanents of the same name.  A board sweeper for 3 mana.  Epic.