A brand-new Core Set was just announced and it does quite a few things differently. Wizards are showering us with different products hoping to please player both old and new, and their ongoing quest to promote Magic: The Gathering Arena reaches new grounds - a starter product.
Core 2021 is almost here, and we even saw a couple of the cards already. It’s too early to see if the set will have anything meta-shattering, or a needed reprint of an old card, but two familiar faces showed up - planeswalkers Liliana and Teferi.
The new expansion comes with a whole bunch of products - some exclusive to paper, some to MTGA, and one interestingly combining the two.
Boxes
Wizards aren’t messing around. Your normal draft booster are back and the buy-a-box promo is one of the cutest cards we’ve ever seen - an inseparable dog and cat! How great is that!?
But this is only the beginning. Wizards are also introducing Welcome Boosters - free product given to players in local game stores containing some cool Magic cards and tips on playing them. Great!
But wait, there’s more. Collector boosters. That’s right, now even the Core Sets get these. We have some very mixed feelings on this one. In any case, for players with more cash than sense, these shiny silver boxes with Ugin on the cover will bring all of this:
Finally, there are also Prerelease packs and Bundles. These remain unchanged and contain exactly the same stuff as you’d expect.
Pixels
Magic Arena is also blessed with a ton of offerings. Most notably, there are two bundles containing some cards, an exclusive card back and sleeve. Following the tradition from the past few sets, if you purchase both, you’ll also receive a cute little pet to grace your side of the Battlefield. This is what the two bundles look like:
Both!
And with their powers combined, paper Magic and MTGA bring you… a starter kit? Queue the sad trombone, wump-wupm.
What this is is essentially the so-called Spellslinger set with two underwhelming decks and life spindowns, but this time around instead of a booklet with the rules, the players will be given 2 codes to unlock their decks inside MTGA so they can learn the rules there and then play with the cards. For brand new players, especially kids, this offering is quite alright. For the rest of us, this holds nothing of interest.
So, yeah. Coronavirus or not, Magic’s at full swing. Luckily, unlike the troubled Ikoria launch, this time we’ll be able to go to a local store and play with the physical cards, as well as Arena - and looks like Wizards really want us to do both.
As always, for more Magic and MTGA coverage, keep it here at EarlyGame.
