Magic: The Gathering – Avacyn Restored

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nce every now and then I feel an incredible urge, an urge fuelled by excitement and driven by wonder and amazement, an urge to experience the out-of-the-ordinary and the brand-spanking-new, an urge to just dive into the random mess and make sense of it so as to ride the wave of logic to victory.

Do you know what that means? It means a new Magic expansion is on the horizon and I intent to make the most of the pre-release.

Fast forward a few days later and the pre-release of Avacyn Restored had done its deed on the congregation of players that attended the events. I can’t tell you at the time of this writing what were in the ’vaults, but I can do what I normally do on the first Monday after a pre-release, and that is to give a brief tutorial on the mechanics of the newest set. Avacyn Restored brings with it some things old and some things new. Undying is back. Tribal themes are there. As for the new, we have Miracle and Soulbond.

Miracles can be casted normally, or they can be casted when you draw the card. If you cast a miracle card when you draw it, the cost is decidedly cheaper, but it also means you may, and I stress ‘may’, have to commit mana at an inopportune time. But considering the vast discount you’re getting for doing it the miracle way, I would say it’s worth it.

Note, however, that to cast a card through the cheaper miracle cost, that card has to be the first card you drew on that specific turn. In a deck with no card-drawing power, this is easy. You just keep drawing cards like normal at the beginning of your turn, and if you see a miracle card, you may choose to cast it for cheap.

In a deck with Think Twice, which allows you to draw a card on the opponent’s turn, you will be able to cast miracles on the opponent’s turn, even if it’s a sorcery. The timing for casting miracles through the cheaper miracle cost is when you draw them – you can ignore other timing restrictions unless you’re casting them from your hand.

And if you draw multiple cards in one turn, say from Divination, only the first card you drew that turn can be casted from its miracle cost. If you already drew a card during the beginning of your turn, then that’s that – Divination won’t give you a chance to cast a miracle because you’re drawing your second and third cards for the turn, not the first.

This all might sound a bit complicated, so I’m going to break it down:

Miracle

-          an alternate cost that allows you to cast a card while ignoring it’s timing restrictions

-          the miracle cost can only be chosen if the card is the first card you drew on your turn, or on your opponent’s turn (or in a multiplayer game, on anyone’s turn)

-          once you have drawn a miracle card and placed it together with the other cards in your hand, you have forfeited the chance to cast that card for its miracle cost

Thus we come to the second important mechanic of Avacyn Restored: Soulbond.

Soulbond is a creature ability with two important details. The first is you may pair a soulbond creature with another creature to get a bonus. The second is that as long as both creatures are paired together, they both get that same bonus.

Let’s look at some examples.

When you have a creature with soulbond, you can pair it with another creature when it enters the battlefield so that they both get a bonus. Once the pair has been made, you cannot unpair them unless one of those creatures leaves the battlefield (through dying, being returned to hand, or being exiled)

It doesn’t matter which creature entered the battlefield first. If the creature with soulbond entered the battlefield, then another creature without soulbond entered the battlefield, you can pair them. If it’s the other way around, you can still pair them. If both creatures have soulbond, then you can put them together and both creatures with get two bonuses.

Remember that soulbond doesn’t target a creature to be paired, which means you can still pair a shroud creature with a soulbond creature. The only thing you can’t do is pair together creatures that you don’t control.

How about two or three soulbond creatures pairing with the same creature? Do the abilities all pile up? Unfortunately, a pair consists of only two creatures. You can’t pair a soulbond creature with another creature that has already been paired. Semantics, I suppose.

And now, we come to the end of this brief tutorial on the newest mechanics to grace the Magic scene. Soulbond is powerful in limited, and miracles are indeed miracles when you get them for a huge discount in cost. The drawbacks can be played around, but their impact on the constructed scene has yet to be understood.

In any case, this has been Aihiave Servir. So long, farewell, and goodbye. May we meet again under the looming silhouette of Magic 2013.