On February 6th, 2009, Wizards of the Coast released Conflux, the newest set in the Magic: The Gathering (MTG) stratgey/fantasy card game. Conflux is the second set within the Alara block, with Alara Reborn, the third set, announced for a May 2009 release.
At some point in the development of the game, designers of MTG decided to group individual sets of cards into “blocks,” with three sets per block. Each block is typically then reffered to by the name of the first set in that block. Thus, since the first set in this particular block was called “Shards of Alara,” the block is reffered to as the “Alara block.” Okay. Got it? Moving on.
Before I get to Conflux, something you need to realize is that I wasn’t too impressed with Shards of Alara when it came out last November. Don’t get me wrong: there were some great individual cards in the set, and I’m a big fan of the new Planeswalkers (and am avidly trying to get my hands on most of them). However, as a set I felt that Shards left something to be desired. For me this was a double-whammy, as I had been really looking forward to the release of the new set after my previous disappointment with the entire Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks. My biggest problems with Shards were:
1) The push for 3-color combinations and thus the push for 3-color decks. Hardly anyone I know and play against regularly has a 3-color deck; they are even more rare than rainbow decks! I myself have around 30-35 decks, and of all those ONE is 3-color. They are just way too clunky. It’s almost as though someone at Wizards of the Coast was like “hey…two color combos worked great in the Ravnica block, so surely 3-color combos would work now!” Wrong.
2) Colored artifacts. How stupid is that? The beauty of artifacts is their relative versatility! What’s the use of getting lovely, wonderful artifacts if I am only able to use them in certain decks due to pecificity of color? Of the 43 artifacts in Shards, only 10 of them are Colorless. I had actually never crunched those numbers before, and now that I have, I am doubly angry and more than a little disgusted. What makes it even worse, though, is that the other 33 color-pertinent artifacts from Shards are only White, Blur, and Black or some combination of those colors. What about Red and Green? Ridiculous.
There. Now that my problems with Shards have been sufficiently aired, I can move on to the whole point of this review: Conflux. Conflux seems to be the shining light I was hoping for with Shards. Is Conflux perfect? Not at all. I will address my concerns later, but first I need to focus on tall the delicious goodies found in this new set.
Holy crap, Commons! There are ton of Commons in this set that are awesomely powerful, not to mention Uncommons and Rares. Here are some of my personal favorites:
Rupture Spire: Common, Nonbasic Land, comes into play tapped, tap a Colorless or sacrafice it, then tap it for any color. TAP IT FOR ANY COLOR. A Common! And it stays out indefinately…and you can tap for any color!
Scattershot Archer: Common, Green, 1 Attack/2 Defense, ONE GREEN TO CAST: tap to deal 1 damage to each creature with flying. Wow! With three or four of these guys out, a player could decimate a flying deck. This doesn’t even require the flying creatures to be attacking or blocking, nor is it to only one creature! And in case I forgot to mention, the card only costs one green to cast.
Asha’s Favor: Common, White, Aura Enchantment/Enchant Creature, 2 Colorless and a White to cast: “echanted creature gains flying, first strike, and vigilance.” It doesn’t take an angelic figure in the picture for me to exclaim “holy crap!” Really…I exclaimed that.
The Commons in this set are amazing in and of themselves, but the Uncommons and Rares hold their own as well, especially the Rares. Without a doubt my favorite Rares (two of which I managed to pull) are:
Conflux (one that I pulled): Sorcery, 3 Colorless and one of each color to cast: search your library for one card of each color, reveal them, put them into your hand, and shuffle your library afterwards. This card is obviously great, but my question (and it’s more theoretical) is what if this card is put into a two or three color deck? The card says to search for one creature of each color, but what if there are only creatures of two or three colors in the deck? Does it still apply? I would think so.
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker (the other I pulled): The sole Planeswalker for the Conflux set. Although it’s a bit redundant to title the card “Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker” (obviously it’s a planeswalker!), it is nonetheless pretty sweet. Four Colorless, a Black, two Blue, and a Red to cast: comes into play with 5 counters, add three to destroy target noncreature permanent, remove two to gain control of target creature, remove nine to deal seven damage to an opponent, who then also discards seven cards and sacrifices seven permanents.
Progenitus: Legendary Hydra Avatar, two of each color to cast, 10 Attack/10 Defense, protection from EVERYTHING (I swear, that’s the exact wording on the card). If it is put into a graveyard from anywhere, reveal it and shuffle it into it’s ower’s library. Hairy balls of the gods! In order to get rid of this sucker, literally the only thing that can be done is a mass remove creatures from the game card. Anything less than a total wipe of all creatures — and removal from the game, not even a simple Wrath of God or Damnation — and this sucker keeps on ticking.
Of course, Conflux is not without its faults. The colored artifacts problem still persists and still only applies to Blue, White, and Black. Of the twenty-seven artifacts in this set, only six of them are Colorless. Also, the three-color combo problem is still rampant in Conflux, but that is to be expected due to the plotline of the Alara block, which I will refrain from going into here. However, my biggest concern with Conflux, based on the six cards I cite specifically above, as well as a host of others I didn’t even mention, is that these cards are really too poweful. Cards like these by-in-large leave older cards in the dust, and are frankly why some players are getting turned off from the game.
However, even though Conflux has thus has been a good experience for me, I nonetheless have been picking up on a pattern lately in regards to MTG sets and blocks. It is unfortunate, and perhaps it is only me, but overall I feel like the makers of MTG are kind of running out of ideas, and in their desperation to keep current players interested while simultaneously drawing in new players as well as staying on top of the market, they are cheapening the game a bit, polluting the waters. Maybe the changes are only minor for now, but how long until the game is so different from its original concept that people are tired of it or it’s no longer fun? Don’t get me wrong; I am going to be a hypocrite and, after airing those concerns, start putting these new, awesomely powerful cards in decks or make new decks with them! But still, these are concerns from an avid player. I have been playing MTG for a solid decade now, and I have never seen cards this powerful with this much consistency. I know that the Kamigawa block turned a lot of people away from the game because it was different and had a ton of legendary cards where before legends had been a precious commodity with only a few per set. Since Kamigawa it seems like Wizards of the Coast have been — if you’ll excuse the expression — playing their cards a little too close to their chests, hedging their bets, and making new cards that are technically different from those they have made before, but still pretty much the same. I don’t necessarily have any suggestions (well, maybe a couple that I’ll save for another time), but still, I feel like something needs to be done or else the game will slowly become stagnant. It all makes me wonder what the future will hold for Magic. But hey, I don’t want to end a positive review with doom and gloom. At the very least, the future is a whole day away, so in the meantime enjoy playing Conflux or hate playing against it.
Buy – Try – Pass
