MtG Monday: The Forgotten Realms Set

It's been some time since my last MtG Monday post.  It has been almost as long since my last game of Magic, in person or on Arena.

Inevitability exists in many circumstances, to include my buying a bundle of the Forgotten Realms set of Magic cards.  While the cards intrigued me, it was the promise of the d20 that sealed the deal, as it were.

Isn't it pretty?  Below it towers over some of my other d20s, but not the d30.

Opening the packs, I know I didn't break even, monetarily, but I'm not all that concerned about doing so, because I got some neat cards, to include a few I want to eventually jam into a Commander Deck or two.  That is the allure of packs, though, the rush from opening one, the sound of the foil tearing, the smell of the ink, and the crush of disappointment as you realize the Rare or Mythic is shitty draft chaff or worse.  Sometimes, though, you win the lottery and open a card that has actual value of $5 or more.  For me, that was one card out of the ten in the bundle.

Mordenkainen.

I know - Mordenkainen is a staple of the Greyhawk universe (as his biography attests).  Yet WotC brought him to a new generation of gamers (but not his Disjunction, that needs to be houseruled back into games - and it should be), first in the adventure Curse of Strahd in 2016, and then with the hardback Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes in 2018.  

So it was inevitable that he end up in the Forgotten Realms.  Maybe next set will take us back to Greyhawk, with Mordenkainen leading the way.  I doubt it, but a man can dream.

A card that had to be included in this set, given its title.

Modal spells (cards that provide options, like above) are a big deal in Magic the Gathering, especially when you are trying to keep your deck to the minimum allowed amount of cards due to math.  There are several modal spells in this set, of which I ended up with five: You Come to the Gnoll Camp, You See a Guard Approach, You Find the Villain's Lair, You Find a Cursed Idol, and You Happen on a Glade.  These card titles suggest demand some means to turn them into a random events table, kind of like random encounters, but instead of dicing for them, you shuffle up and draw one.  The biggest hurdle is how few there are -11, if my math is right.

I would need to buy the others, which is easily done, but they are so cheap that I would inevitably buy other cards from the set, if only to get a reasonable order of $20 or so. It will be simple, as WotC did a fine job in choosing which DnDisms to place in the set.  

Chiefly, though, I would buy Froghemoth, because Froghemoth.  Plus, I am a firm believer in keeping opposing graveyards empty, and Froghemoth lends itself to this belief.  

Inevitably, I will play MtG again, but I really can't say when, or if I will be bothered to actually use any of these cards in the decks.