Magic Challenge Deck review..."Face the Hydra"

I was sooo excited to see the Hydra deck for sale last Friday!  I snatched that thing up as soon as I could!

The Hydra is a challenge.  He is hard to beat.  The way this works is you get however many heads you want to slay out, and then shuffle his deck.  He uses no mana.  He gets to play whatever card he draws.  (That is why it is a self running deck.)  You on the other hand are restricted to the rules of magic, except that discard and mill spells don't work against the Hydra.

And when you kill a Hydra head, he gets to draw two cards...And if they are Hydra heads, you guessed it...You put them on the battlefield immediately.

The Hydra is no chump either...He can burn you with cards like "Unified Lunge" (See below), and there is not hardly anything you can do about it.  Furthermore, he swings every turn unless you can tap his heads.  I predicted that a white and blue azorius type deck would beat him easily, because that kind of deck can tap things.  I was correct to a point.  It depends on how lucky the hydra is..and how early he is lucky!  (I guess this is true of all Magic playing, isn't it.)

I have played the Hydra with my boys several times...It is a good thing to play Magic a different way...In a teamwork kind of way.

And the Hydra deck makes a great game of Magic Solitaire...In fact, this is something Magic has been sorely lacking...Sure there are a few rules for a Solitaire game floating around out there, but those games aren't that good.  The Hydra is a good option if you don't have a playing opponent.

The Challenge Deck is a new kind of deck, and more are promised in the future.  That said, I'm not sure how to rate it.  I Really Like It!  But it COULD have better art, I suppose.  Some of the Hydra heads look kind of "cartoony".  On the other hand, I love the back of the cards...They look cool...It makes me wish that sometimes MTG cards had a different back, but I guess the "deck master" back is a consistent choice that promotes a variety of formats.

So I'm going to rate the deck with 4/5.  The point was lost for the cartoony heads.  Otherwise, this is an awesome product, and every Magic fan should get one!

Enjoy pictures of my Hydra deck below!

Dragon's Maze, Magic the Gathering Trading Card Game Review

I got my pre-order in for a Fat Pack of Magic The Gathering Dragon's Maze cards on Wednesday at Mad Max's Comics and Games, and picked it up after work on Friday, as I was permitted.  I also bought the pre-made Azorius deck that goes with Dragon Maze.  Me and my two boys played "Booster Draft" with the included 9 booster packs from the Fat Pack.  Last night I tweaked that Azorius deck.  Here are my thoughts.

Booster Drafting was kind of hard....we only had two "mythic rare" cards.  Also the "rare" cards were also scant.  Each pack come with a guild gate, and it seems that each of our packs also came with at least one "cluestone."  (Similar to the "keyrunes" in the previous two sets.  Basically throwaway cards.)
But after we got going, and pulled the cards we wanted, I can kind of see what is happening here.

You see, "Dragon's Maze" is a kind of set meant to overturn the applecart of the previous two sets.  For instance, in my experience, Azorius was kind of weak.  Detain was great, until, you couldn't detain.  Then you were screwed.  The creatures tend to be smaller and detain tends to trigger only when the creatures enter the battlefield.  So people playing against Azorius kind of knew what to expect.  So the Dragon Maze comes along, and adds more detain, and gives a few more larger creatures to play.  BAM.  Forget that janky three-color mess.  Azorius is strong enough on its on.

For Simic, evolve never really took off.  It was OK to add to your already working green deck, but didn't seem to be a strategy that worked on its own.  Dragon's maze is set to fix that.

Boros was too strong.  So in Dragon's Maze, most of the cards that are worth anything seem to be more expensive to cast.  Hence, a way that some other guilds might be able to get out front.

How about some other things of note....I believe the new "Maze's End" legendary land is rediculus.  Come on.  Really?  Control 10 gates with different names, you win the game.  Did anyone try and play "Hellkite Tyrant" in Gatecrash?  So you load your deck up with keyrunes and other artifacts, you might be able to build up to 20 if the other players play artifacts.  When you control 20 artifacts, you win the game.  Maybe this card will work in Commander?  Otherwise, there is just no way.  And that is my feeling with Maze's End, except that there are no legendary's (in my knowledge) that are five color.

So this card is there just so you can say you have one, I guess.

Also, this time each guild gets a legendary creature to run the maze.  We pulled exactly two of these out of the booster packs.  One kid got the Gruul one.  The other got the Izzet.  Neither seemed that great to me.  Maybe time will give a different answer.  Since I bought the Azorius deck, I have the foil Azorius legendary.  She detains creatures of four converted mana cost or less.  By the time you are on turn 5, which is the minimum for casting her, an opponent likely has a fatty out. So, it works good against the weak cards.....not the endgame cards.  At least she has protection from red!

Fuse is another different idea.  Now you can cast a split card as a single play.  "Turn" and "Burn" for instance.

I like it so far.  Of the three, "Return to Ravnica" "Gatecrash" and "Dragon's Maze," I would say that "Gatecrash" was the best.  It got me thinking more aggressively about the game, with Boros and the "battalion" ability finding synergy with "exalted" and "haste," and Grull with it's crazy aggro "bloodrush" ability.  I suppose "Dragon Maze" is so far my least favorite of the block.

"Chronic Flooding"  (It has rained gallons lately!)