23rdPlayable's Guide to Eldraine PreRelease Food Token Options

With the imminent release of Throne of Eldraine, the question on everybody’s mind is - "What snacks can I use for Food Tokens at my PreRelease?" 

Well, fear not, I’ve got you covered!

Here's my 100% guide to the best and worst snack foods for your 

Throne of Eldraine PreRelease!

M&Ms/Skittles - I’m lumping these together because, let’s face it, Skittles are just fruity M&Ms anyway. While these are very conveniently sized, and the candy coating makes them pretty clean, the round shape makes it hard to distinguish between tapped and untapped food. With a huge selection of choices, these are good for those 5 color decks. 8/10

Fun size candy bars - Although somewhat bulkier than M&Ms, these are an excellent choice. They are generally oblong in shape, which is good for denoting tapped/untapped. But I suggest keeping the wrapper on until it’s time to sac your candy food tokens for value. 9/10

Celery sticks - Healthy, tasty, and crunchy! Low mess. An all around fantastic Food Token. (but skip the cream cheese or peanut butter) 10/10

Pretzel sticks - Dry and easy to handle, these are a solid choice. However, they can be very crumbly. Remember, they’re salty, so you’re going to want to have a refreshing beverage on hand. 9/10

Twizzers - I’m not partial to licorice, even red licorice, but I hear it’s popular with the kids these days. These are handy, but long, so they take up an excessive amount of board space. You could cut them down a bit. Also, they’re lacking the hard shell of the M&M, so you’re more likely to get sticky fingers. 7/10

Bite size Pop-Tarts - These are a newer addition to the snack food world, only having been released in 2018. They’re a great size, and nicely shaped for Magic play. There’s a variety of flavor options, but they are crumbly and can leave a little greasy residue. 7/10

Rice Krispies Treats - Inexpensive, as they can be made at home, and conveniently sized. But these are super sticky, and crumbly to boot. If you're going with this option, be sure to bring some handy wipes to clean your fingers! 4/10

Doritos/chips - There’s a world of variety in the chip world for your munching pleasure. USE CAUTION if going the chip route. They can be very greasy, and leave lots of crumbs. Use a napkin or paper towel over your play surface to prevent messes. 4/10

Bread rolls - These are a little hit or miss. Some of them are fine, somewhat crumbly but mostly dry to the touch. Others are very oily and unsuitable for Magic play. 6/10 or 2/10 

Pizza Rolls - While these are the perfect size and shape, they are very oily. Moreover, they’re seriously going to get cold over the course of a PreRelease, and who wants a cold Pizza Roll? 1/10

French fries - Too long, too oily, and they’re going to get limp and cold. 0/10

Buffalo wings - Seriously? No. Just, no. 0/10 

Thanks for popping by my little blog. Good luck with your PreRelease this upcoming weekend!

I’m Tweeting now @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod. 

Have fun, Play on, and Be kind to one another. 

Twice Baked Rotatoes

Twice Baked Rotatoes

Rotation is coming! It’s the most exciting time of the year, as Magic players all around the globe wait with great expectations for Jolly Old St. Rosewater to come stuff their deckboxes full of new and exciting cardboard! Tinsel is hung on the Tree of Perdition, and chestnuts are roasting over the Furnace of Rath. But what does this mean for Arena?

If you are new to Magic, here’s what happens and why. The format you have been playing so far is “Standard”. This consists of the most recent two year’s worth of sets. When the Fall set releases, the oldest year’s worth of sets leave Standard, and the new set rotates in. For this rotation - the first since the start of the Open Beta - this means that we’re losing Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, and CoreSet 2019. We’re keeping all three Ravnica sets, and Core 2020. What’s coming in is Throne of Eldraine.

The “why” of this is a little more complicated, and goes almost all the way back to Magic’s beginning. It became apparent, within a couple of years, that scarcity would be a huge barrier to entry for new players. This is further complicated by the collector aspect of the game, and the need to protect the value of older cards in the secondary market (for which the Reserved List was created). Bringing in new players is essential to Magic’s long term survival. So if you can’t just reprint any card you want, and new players need access to those cards to compete, how do you resolve this? Wizards’ solution in 1996 was to create constructed formats - originally just Type I (now known as Vintage) and Type II (now known as Standard). The emphasis would be put on Standard play, keeping it more accessible for newer players, while Type I existed so more enfranchised players could still use their entire collection.

So how is the Arena metagame going to change? Some of the decks you’re facing now in constructed events are going to disappear entirely - anything that relies heavily on cards or mechanics from those sets. Orhzhov Vampires, for example, is unlikely to survive. Other decks may still exist, but will change which cards they play. U/B, U/W and Esper Control will probably be good examples of this. Those decks are less set or mechanic dependent, and more representative of larger archetypes. There are other decks which *may* survive rotation. I suspect that Temur Elementals will still be viable after rotation. Finally, there will be some exciting new decks which will enter the format. Look for B/W Knights to emerge as a competitive deck.

It is impossible to predict with any certainty what decks will be good, and what won’t. We don’t even know all the cards yet, so the format is obviously not “solved”. So what should you play in those first days after rotation? I’d recommend taking one of two approaches. You could run something very aggressive. RDW (Red Deck Wins) is likely to exist in some form or another, and aggressive decks tend to do well in new, and unknown formats, as the midrange and control decks are looking for optimal builds and play patterns. The RDW Cavalcade of Calamity deck survives almost 100%, with Gingerbrute easily replacing Fanatical Firebrand, which is the only card from the main deck rotating out. Alternately, I’d recommend running an existing deck that you’re familiar with, which will mostly survive rotation. Again, Temur Elementals is a good candidate for this, or possibly Boros Feather. Piloting something which you already understand will make it easier to navigate the new decks you’ll be facing.

In the spirit of the holiday, I’ll end this post with a festive recipe for Twice Baked Rotatoes!

Ingredients:

5-10 medium or large potatoes (always in multiples of 5)
Cooking oil, or cooking spray
Food coloring in a variety of shades
Chives or green onions
Bacon bits or Ketchup
1 cup Sour Cream
Cracked black pepper
Bleu Cheese
Butter or margarine
½ cup Milk

Supplies:

Baking sheet
1 large Mixing bowl, and 4 separate smaller bowls
Cake decorating bag with a large star-tip
Electric mixer

Directions (for 5 potatoes):

1. Preheat your oven to 400°

2. Wash the potatoes, pierce them with a fork, then put them on the backing sheet

3. Bake for approximately 1 hour (until the insides are soft), remove from the oven, turn it down to 375° and allow potatoes to cool enough to handle

4. Slice the potatoes in half lengthwise, and scoop out the insides into your mixing bowl

5. Using your electric mixer, add ½ cup milk, ½ cup sour cream, and 2 tablespoons of butter. Blend the potato until smooth.

6. Split the potato mix into 5 equal portions. Using the cake decorating bag, fill the first potato

7. Mix into each of the other portions of potato a few drops of food coloring to make Blue, Black, Red and Green mixes. Fill each of the other potatoes with these mixes.

8. Place the filled potatoes onto the baking sheet and put them back into the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the tops are golden.

9. Arrange potatoes into WUBRG order on a serving dish, and serve with garnishes for people who want to make Guild, Wedge or Shard colored potatoes. Sour cream for White, Blue Cheese for Blue, Cracked Black Pepper for Black, Bacon Bits and/or Ketchup for Red, and Chopped Green Onions or Chives for Green.

Thanks for stopping by, and consider to heading out to your local game store for their Throne of Eldraine PreRelease event(s)!

I’m Tweeting now @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod.

Have fun, Play on, and Be kind to one another.

Greed, for lack of a better word...

I am not a fan of the 2x Wildcard redemption rate for Historic. Just gonna say that up front. It creates artificial barriers for newer players to the format. It’s some old bullshit.

However -

I think some of the criticism directed at Wizards is misplaced, or at least ill informed. Part of what’s going on here, is that Wizards doesn’t want Historic to dominate Arena as a format. They have stated quite plainly that they want Standard (which may include Brawl) to be the primary format for Arena. And for good reason. If no one’s interested in Standard, then it’s much harder for them to sell cards. This all applies to tabletop Magic as well. Wizards wants Magic to stay profitable, and their biggest profits come from the sales of new cards, primarily - and by orders of magnitude the largest by volume - through the sales of booster boxes. Those sales are driven in part by drafting, but also from people opening product to get the Rares and Mythics which are needed to build competitive Standard decks. It’s part of why scarcity is built into the foundation of the game.

Here’s the rub - If you love Magic, you want this too, whether you realize it or not.

Wizards employs hundreds of people to make Magic. It costs money to design cards, commission artwork, write stories, playtest formats, advertise, translate, provide customer support, manage the various departments, and all the other things which go into creating Magic and running a company the size of Wizards of the Coast. There’s also printing and distribution costs for paper products. It’s an enormous undertaking. So Wizards needs to recoup those costs, and make a profit. And that is primarily done through the sales of booster boxes.

If Magic fails to make money, then it will go away. That’s the law of the capitalist jungle. It can’t just break even, it needs to turn a profit. Personally, I don’t want Magic to go away. I think it’s the best game that’s ever been made, and it’s a huge part of my life. Most of the very best friends in my life, I found through Magic. Playing on Arena is something my wife and I share. I have a substantial collection of paper cards. I enjoy playing almost every format. I write a Magic blog, for fuck’s sake. I want Wizards to make money off this game, because that means I’ll still have a game to play, five, ten or twenty years from now. I hope to be seeing new sets come out of Magic for the rest of my life. I look forward to being on my deathbead, feeling disappointed that I’m never going to see the next set they’ve just announced. OK, that’s a little dramatic, but you get my point.

So Standard needs to stay healthy, and it needs to be one of the largest formats in terms of event attendance. Arena needs to be primarily a Standard platform, because that’s a part of how Standard will stay relevant in tabletop. New cards need to have some value to them, or boxes won’t sell. Who’s going to drop $100 on a new booster box if there’s no card in there worth more than $1? No one. It’s why I accept scarcity as a necessary part of the system, and why I accept Wizard’s focus on Standard play. Because that’s a big part of what drives card sales, which is what keeps Wizards in business, which keeps me getting new Magic cards.

In a Utopian world, we could have people just doing the creative exercise of designing games with no thought of profits, and that would be sweet, but it’s not reality. For some reason, “profit” has become a dirty word. But there’s nothing untoward about turning a profit when you’ve put time and effort into something like game design. In the end Wizards making money is good for all of us who love this game, and want to keep playing.

To be very clear, I’m not saying that Wizards is above criticism. I’m not looking to excuse greedy, or poorly thought out actions on Wizards’ part. I think that some of their “premium” offerings of late have been ill conceived and ill executed. I wouldn’t give them carte blanche to act in any way they wanted, and not call them out when they’ve overstepped the line. Which is why I am willing to say that I think the 2x Wildcard redemption for Historic cards is bullshit. But criticizing them for prioritizing the relevance of Standard is just self-defeating, if you want Magic to continue as a game.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to me ramble.

I’m Tweeting now @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod. 

Have fun, Play on, and Be kind to one another.