#Urza’s Destiny

[beatsandskies]

The Duelist 40: Preconstructed Destiny

I can’t believe that I missed this: after the Big Bang of Tempest the theme deck content in The Duelist dropped right down to something not really worth a post. But here there’s probably two, if not three posts from this issue alone. Let’s say three: since I feel that I normally try to squeeze too much into each thing I do and why? So keep your eyes peeled. Hit that follow button or email…

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Carnival of Souls

"'Davvol, blast those elves.' 'Davvol, transport those troops.' No one cares that today is my birthday."

Artist: Brian Snõddy TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[incorrect-mtg]

Flavor Text Highlights - Urza's Destiny

<- Previous Set | Next Set ->

Cool - Phyrexian Negator

They exist to cease.

Funny - Carnival of Souls

“‘Davvol, blast those elves.’ ‘Davvol, transport those troops.’ No one cares that today is my birthday.”

Worldbuilding - Extruder

As the invasion drew closer, Urza’s means began to resemble Phyrexia’s end.

Emotional - Tormented Angel

Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact.

<- Previous Set | Next Set ->

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Brine Seer by Donato Giancola

[menuthegathering]

Soul Feast {3}{B}{B}

Sorcery

Target player loses 4 life and you gain 4 life.

As no one has ever accepted a second invitation to Davvol’s table, the evincar often dines alone.

Illustrated by Ray Lago

1999

[overgrown-estate]

[aquamarine-oceanfront]

AJ DiSpirito, a composer who's scored or contributed music to many of Glitch Productions' shows (most recently Murder Drones), has run into an issue regarding his work's availability. On YouTube, direct links to the official, automatically-generated uploads for each song (different from the videos AJ himself posted, which are one per album) will lead to this error:

What's worse is that this is not confined to a single website or composer - it appears to have affected nearly every single streaming platform that previously hosted his work, as well as other Glitch soundtracks:

I did some investigating myself, and I can say two things with utmost certainty. The first is that, as he says in the above tweet, The Amazing Digital Circus's soundtracks were both pulled from YouTube in the same manner as his work on Murder Drones:

The second is that every single Glitch-related release on Qobuz - including their other shows, Meta Runner, Sunset Paradise, and SMG4 - has been delisted.

(The reason I highlight Qobuz specifically was simply because I had been meaning to buy Murder Drones' soundtrack there in the future, since it is the only place I know of where it can be purchased instead of just streamed.)

Finally, as mentioned at the very start of this post, this is likely tied to what appears to be a copyright troll reuploading DiSpirito's music for Glitch on YouTube and Amazon Music (among other places). "Urza's Destiny Beats" uses different names and (AI-generated) artwork for their uploads, but the actual music is undeniably stolen. Just a few examples:

"Festering Wound" is actually "Eternal Dream"

"Barrin, Master Wizard" is actually "The Knife Dance"

"Trumpet Blast" is actually "Solver Uzi"

In short, this is a pretty open and shut case. Considering both that and the many different artists who've been impacted, I'm hoping DistroKid (and/or any other relevant authorities) correct the problem soon - though I haven't heard great things about their track record for responsiveness.

Update #1: All Glitch music has been delisted from Spotify. Gooseworx (creator and co-composer of TADC) and the Lerdwichagul brothers (co-founders and heads of Glitch itself) are aware of the situation.

Update #2 (June 5th, 2024): The affected music is beginning to reappear! It's back up on YouTube and Apple Music, with other services likely to follow.

[markrosewater]

Mark-appreciation post here. Flickering is a really clever mechanic that really showcases lenticular design in my opinion, especially at instant speed. What was the inspiration behind it?

When I was working on Mirage development, I designed a bunch of cards that could phased themselves as a defense mechanisim. I then tweaked that idea when I designed Urza's Destiny. Originally, it was a vertical cycle in white (in common, uncommon, and rare). The uncommon and rare got removed in development, and the common was moved to rare, changed to a sorcery, and got made as Flicker.

[francoyovich]

Last but not least: Repercussion

Very excited to see WotC reprint a card that hasn't been reprinted in a set since Urza's Destiny!

Well that's it, these are the 4 cards I made for Wilds of Eldraine: Enchanting Tales!

I should make a post with all four of them in the next few days.

[magicwithclass]

Yawgmoth's Bargain

Yawgmoth's Bargain is banned in commander and legacy. This would be a completely different conversation if this card was legal in those formats. The card is absurdly powerful, but is it good enough to banned alongside the power nine? Is yawgmoth's bargain as good as a mox or a black lotus? Most people would argue that while Yawgmoth's Bargain is an extremely broken card it is not quite in the same tier as many other cards banned in legacy or commander. I should note that while there are many cards on the reserved list that are banned, very few are banned because they are simply too good to be played. Some reserved list cards are banned because they reference ante while other cards have issues in tournament play. For instance, dexterity cards and cards that trigger a subgame are banned because they cause headaches and confusion in official tournaments. Yawgmoth's Bargain does not have this issue so why can't you play it? Surely, newer cards like dockside extortionist or jeska's will are just as powerful so why does the bargain sit on the banned list while my goblin makes me 20 treasures? Undoubtedly, yawgmoth's bargain is potent. One card for one life has always been an exchange that I would pay all day everyday. Yet many cards offer that rate. Necropotence is not banned in commander and even the new necrodominance offers a similar effect for modern. Both of those cards only cost 3 mana while Yawgmoth's bargain costs double that! Six mana is a huge investment and a player really needs to be able to cast the bargain early. You can not drop this on turn six and then just pass, even with a fresh grip of cards. However, this card has always benefited from combos and synergy. You can bury the opponents in card advantage but you are more likely to combo out using this reserved list card to find your combos. Getting access to the cards immediately is a major upside and should not be underestimated. The one life payment is negligible but ensures you can not just draw your entire deck without another combo piece. Otherwise, you could just play this, draw your deck, and cast thassa's oracle. Speaking of the oracle, is yawgmoth's bargain really stronger than the demonic consultation/oracle combo? I do think that yawgmoth's bargain has a legitimate chance of getting unbanned one day. The game has evolved since the card first landed on the ban list. The card would still see a tremendous amount of play but I do not see it warping formats. Black decks might run it as a generic staple draw spell but how much better is it than phrexian arena if you are using it purely as a draw engine. Even as a combo piece, this card is 6 mana. The skipping your draw step is also not really a drawback when you can draw at anytime for one life. In fact, the card gets around nekusar and sheoldred. Currently, the card is around ten dollars in price. That is actually quite a lot for a card that can not be played in most formats. There has always been speculation surrounding this card, though, as everyone always believes this card is about to get unbanned. The card was over 5 dollars even in 2017, so this card was not bulk even before the reserved list buyouts of 2018 and 2021. Even so, the card was below 2 bucks before 2017. Of course, the card has been banned long before significant price data was calculated. In 2021, the card did go to almost fifty dollars but a banned card just can not keep that price tag. What are you playing it in? Albeit, some reserved list cards have a high price due to scarcity and not playability but I can still put those cards in decks even if they are not very good. Today, you can get the card for about 10 dollars. I have a few copies that I got in 2015 for very little and I will hold those cards until the day the card finally is liberated off of the banned list. On that day, the price of this card will rocket to the moon. I should also note that this card is one of the few reserved list cards with a foil version. The foil version is about 150 dollars which is a big discrepancy between foil and nonfoil.

[cherrysandcats]

k this is gonna be IMPORTANT

so a channel by the name of "Urza's Destiny Beats" has falsely copyright claimed and taken down the Murder Drones soundtrack

it is now on their channel.

report them.

alright, murder drones fandom on tumblr, i believe in y'all.

[beatsandskies]

Theme Deck Review Compendium: Urza’s Destiny “Enchanter”

Enchanter A white blue deck with an Aura theme. Official product information webpage (archived) Screenshot circa 2013 This deck does best if it gets out fast and gets some damage in early. If the game goes on long you’ll have to rely on Confiscate or Opportunity for enough advantage to deliver the final blow. As with most control decks, though, the key to playing “Enchanter” is to be patient…

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Cinder Seer

Artist: Donato Giancola TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[incorrect-mtg]

Flavor Text Highlights

So, one thing that I did two years ago (and have kept updated since) on twitter was my flavor text thread, where I went through each set in Magic history and picked the top 4 (or, for some exceptional cases, 8) best pieces of flavor text in my opinion.

Since then, I have regreted some choices and very much dislike the fact I can't edit the original tweets to reflect changes on the rules I followed for card selection... So I might as well use Tumblr as the place to correct all that.

Every day from now on, I will re-post a set from the list until I catch up to it, then eventually update it as new magic sets come out. The rules for selection can be seen after the linebreak below (as well as a full list of sets I've already gone through, with links). The first one can be found here.

1- Categorization

I will always try to select a diverse list of cards so as to fill the following 4 categories of flavor text types:

Cool - Boasts and descriptions that serve to make the subject matter of the card seem powerful and/or interesting.

Funny - Dialogue, descriptions or epigrams meant to get a laugh out of you

Worldbuilding - Flavor text whose biggest strength comes not from what it says on its own, but how it helps build upon either the world the set takes place in or the story of the set in question

Emotional - This one could conceivably be separated in two whole categories, but it encompasses cards that would fill the same niche as the "Cool" category but with a specific focus on either sadness or horror.

However, there will be situations where there might be a number of good flavor texts within a certain category while another is found lacking of any truly great options. In such scenarios, I will simply remove one (and in rare cases more) of the categories and repeat one of the remaining options. For an extreme example, the first Un-sets barely had any non-Funny options, so when picking cards from those sets most/all of the picks will be from the Funny category.

2- Card Selection

Cards will be reviewed only if they have new flavor text (using scryfall's "new:flavor" filter) and only if it's original flavor text (aka no real world references or quotes from literature) while sets will either be reviewed alone or grouped up depending on the amount of eligible cards in the set. Although I don't have a hard cut-off point for how many new flavor texts a set needs to be reviewed alone, the general range is around 150.

For sets that don't reach that number, they will either be bundled with an associated set (i.e. reviewing Commander precons with their associated Standard set) or bundled with a lot of other smaller products until a suitable number is reached (i.e. bundling all early Masters sets and Duel Decks together, since the amount of new flavor texts in those products is very low).

2.1 - Cycles

For some sets, a collection of cards (usually a cycle) will have flavor texts that work together, expand on each other or combine into a single theme. If said interaction is particularly good or if there isn't already a good flavor text that can stand up on its own, a cycle might be picked for a specific entry. Below, I will try to set up a list of every post for this, in order:

Alpha/Beta/Unlimited

Antiquities

Legends

The Dark

Fallen Empires

Ice Age | Homelands | Alliances

Mirage | Visions | Weatherlight

Portal

Tempest | Stronghold | Exodus

Portal Second Age

Unhinged + Unglued

Urza's Saga | Urza's Legacy | Urza's Destiny

Mercadian Masques | Nemesis | Prophecy

Invasion | Planeshift | Apocalypse

Odyssey | Torment | Judgment

Onslaught | Legions | Scourge

Mirrodin | Darksteel | Fifth Dawn

Champions of Kamigawa | Betrayers of Kamigawa | Saviors of Kamigawa

Core Sets (4th Edition - 10th Edition)

Ravnica: City of Guilds | Guildpact | Dissension

Coldsnap

Time Spiral | Planar Chaos | Future Sight

Lorwyn | Morningtide | Shadowmoor | Eventide

Duel Decks

Shards of Alara | Conflux | Alara Reborn

Magic 2010

Zendikar | Worldwake | Rise of the Eldrazi

Magic 2011

Scars of Mirrodin | Mirrodin Besieged | New Phyrexia

Commander Precons (Commander 2011 - Commander 2019)

Magic 2012

Innistrad | Dark Ascension | Avacyn Restored

Magic 2013

Return to Ravnica | Gatecrash | Dragon's Maze

Masters Sets

Magic 2014

Theros | Born of the Gods | Journey into Nyx

Conspiracy + Conspiracy: Take the Crown

Magic 2015

Khans of Tarkir | Fate Reforged | Dragons of Tarkir

Magic Origins

Battle for Zendikar | Oath of the Gatewatch

Shadows Over Innistrad | Eldritch Moon

Kaladesh | Aether Revolt

Amonkhet | Hour of Devastation

Ixalan | Rivals of Ixalan

Unstable + Unsanctioned

Dominaria

Battlebond

Magic 2019

Guilds of Ravnica | Ravnica Allegiance | War of the Spark

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Nightshade Seer by Donato Giancola

[thecornwall]

Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #920: Multani's Decree

If I had a nickel for every common enchantment wrath I've come across doing this thing, I would have two coins I can't spend. But it's weird that it happened tice.

Multani's Decree is a common from Urza's Destiny. Now, you might not know, but Urza's block was meant to be an enchantment block. This is apparently evident in limited and nowhere else, since all the broken artifacts overshadowed the enchantments. That said, having an enchantment wrath at common seems like a really bad idea. It's RELEVANT enough to be common, sure, but do you WANT players being able to bomb the enchantments of this set back to the stone age? Seems a bit much. Imagine if there was an artifact wrath at common in Mirrodin, you'd have a much harder time convincing players to play into the theme.