No-Show Monday: The After-Holiday Blues
January 6, 2020
Spoiler season, why aren’t you more exciting?
I’m actually more excited about spoiler season than her Majesty’s scowl might suggest, but I’m not over the moon about this new set yet. By way of explanation, let us consider some of the new commanders we’re getting this spoiler season:
No-Show Monday: Should I Care About Secret Lair? edition
December 2, 2019
My face, while reading the article linked below
“Why is this a thing?” is my first, honest reaction to the news that WotC will be offering little packs of alternate art cards in the form of timed daily drops over the course of the next week, titled Secret Lair for… reasons?
No-Show Monday: Our Recording Shit the Bed edition
September 30, 2019
In honor of International Podcast Day today, our recording software decided to celebrate by totally and irrevocably cocking up our audio for this episode. It’s rare that I can blame something besides my own incompetence for missing a week, but thankfully irony stepped in to help me out.
We should be back to normal next week. My apologies for making you all wait.
–Mark
No-Show Monday: Other things for your ears edition
August 26, 2019
We all need something to listen to as we’re sleeving up some precons, but unfortunately that won’t be CommanderCast this week. It’s too bad because I have definite opinions on butter coffee and The Boys to share, but those will just have to slide onto the back burner for now.
To hold you over until then, here are some goodies for your ear canals to help you through the week.
No-Show Monday: M20 Spoilers Inbound
June 17, 2019
The golden age of M20 spoilers is upon us, friends. There’s just something about the way this season of cards has hit one after the other – and has been neatly & judiciously spread out – that just warms my heart (and fuels my Magic addiction). I’m not always WotC’s biggest fan, but sometimes you just need to give credit where it’s due: these folks have put together some sweet sets lately.
No-Show Monday: Dragon’s Maze Revisited
May 6, 2019
This is the only time I’ve actually liked a fake Reddit spoiler card
If you’re a Ravnica set without any shock lands, you’ve got a tough road to hoe in my book. I’ve been pretty down on War of the Spark lately and even though that set falls squarely in the “no-shocks” category I’ve come around a bit in recent days now that I’ve gotten a chance to play with some of the actual cards. I still don’t think it’s a great set, but for me the logical point of comparison for WotS was the other infamous “no-shock” Ravnica set: Dragon’s Maze.
Dragon’s Maze gets a lot of shit as a set and it’s not entirely undeserved. I can tell you from experience that playing that set in limited was trash and it didn’t make a huge splash in EDH at the time either. If I can set the dial on the wayback machine to six years ago when it released on May 3, 2013, I think it’s fair to say that most of us were unimpressed. Overall, Dragon’s Maze just left me waiting for the next round of spoilers to wash the bad taste out of my mouth. (Thankfully, the first Modern Masters set came out the next month and collectively blew our damn minds, so I didn’t have to wait long.)
This whole War of the Terribly Named Set / grumpy-old-man-thing I’ve been going through lately has led me to go back and take a second look at the last Ravnican stepchild with a fresh perspective. And you know what? It’s actually better than I remember.