Caerwyn Esquire -

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In the future, please remember to hit the green "Mark as Answer" button to indicate your question has been resolved. Since this question has been answered for several days, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.

I would avoid the Planeswalker precons - they’re full of bad cards, tend to lack a cohesive focus, and really provide no room for upgrades. They’re fine if you want to keep them intact so you have a few starter decks to teach new players the game, but, beyond that, they are a waste of money.

Omniscience_is_life - A perfect example of why one should read the card before commenting! I had the number 6 in my mind as the CMC, not the generic mana component, then didn't bother to double-check on that before running off my mouth.

Whoops! My apologies Argy!

Argy - I am curious, why do you think Wrath is better than Vanquish? You are unlikely to want to use a bordwipe with only a singular creature on the field. That situation can occur, but using a board wipe to spot remove a solitary creature is not a common occurrence.

With two creatures on the field, Wrath and Vanquish are equivalently costed. With three or more, Vanquish will cost less to cast.

The prohibition on regeneration is a little more meta-specific, but, if I were going to an LGS or other new meta, I probably would not expect regeneration to prevalent enough to run Wrath over Vanquish (assuming I had to choose between the two for a deck slot).

I think it will become a staple. Wrath of God has near-staple status and I think Vanquish the Horde is a better card. Vanquish is better than Wrath in most situations you want to bordwipe - only beaten in the rare instances you have to use a bordwipe against a single creature or when Regenerate is at play.

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In the future, please remember to hit the green "Mark as Answer" button to indicate your question has been resolved. Since this thread has been answered for several days, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.

In the future, please remember to hit the green "Mark as Answer" button to indicate your question has been resolved. Since you indicated your question was answered and did not have any follow-up questions, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.

In the future, please remember to hit the green "Mark as Answer" button to indicate your question has been resolved. Since this thread has been answered for several days, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.

1. Sticking with the Arabian Nights facts, originally Arabian nights was going to be a stand-alone product, where you only had to buy Arabian Nights packs to play. When they changed it to a booster set, they decided to remove all basic lands from the set. But they forgot to remove Mountain, which means Mountain is the only basic to appear in one more set than all the others.

2. Originally Magic was called Mana Clash, but during development, they called it “Magic” for short. They decided they liked that name better, so renamed the game to simply Magic. “Magic: The Gathering” was the name of the first set, since it was gathering players together. Subsequent sets would be known as “Magic: The Arabian Nights” or “Magic: Ice Age”.

3. This idea died on the first trip to their lawyer’s office. The lawyer said “Magic” was a weak trademark and encouraged them to name the game “Magic: The Gathering” instead.

4. The back of the Magic card is the only place the original trademark, with blue lettering, is still used. At the time of initial publication, they had not registered their trademark, which is why the backs of Magic cards say “TM” instead of “®” as all other instances of the logo display.

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1. Nameless Race is the creature with the fewest creature subtypes - it has none.

2. Every Magic card has the word “deckmaster” on the back. This is because they were going to have other games in the “deckmaster” series, such as a cyberpunk game. However, none of these games came to fruition, so Magic is the only card game bearing the logo.

3. The Deckmaster logo has a few errant marks on it - these are not amti-counterfeit measures, as some might assume, but rather errant pen marks that they forgot to remove before sending it to the printer.

4. Time Walk’s original text did not provide you an extra turn, it caused an opponent to skip a turn. However, they ambiguously wrote that target player “loses their next turn.” It wasn’t until late in the development, when they introduced the game to a play tester outside their core group, that someone pointed out that it read like the person loses the game when their next turn comes around.

Niko9 - I will confess to over-simplifying the nuance of legal obligations for the sake of a lay person audience.

DemonDragonJ - I would not call the above a defense, but rather a statement of reality. Hasbro, and, as an extension, Wizards, is a publicly traded company and thus has a legal duty to maximise the profits of its shareholders. Your point is a moral one, and when morality and legality come in conflict, the corporation is required to take the legal course of action or risk a lawsuit by its own shareholders.

From a purely legal stance, Secret Lairs allow Wizards to bring morality and legality to greater harmony. By offering a direct alternative to the secondary market, SLs allow shareholders to profit and players to obtain highly sought after cards for far less than the secondary market cost.

Because of their legal obligations, the choice is not between SLs and more reprints, but SLs and the pre-SL status quo, with its much more restrictive use of reprints. Given the true choice, I will take SLs over the alternative—nothing.

DemonDragonJ - It does not cost Wizards the same amount to print a $0.25 card as it does a $100.00 card. Yes, it costs them the same in paper, labor, ink, and other direct manufacturing costs, but those are not the only costs that matter when running a business with Wizards' model.

The relevant figure is known as "reprint equity"--how much value that card has to you if reprinted. Valuable cards drive sales--you look at some of the best-selling sets and they have high-cost cards that individuals want to open. A reprint of a known-powerful card will drive sales of the set, but will also diminish the "reprint equity" in that card. After all, if a card like Rhystic Study is reprinted in a typical product, its value is going to drop, which means its effectiveness as a "chase" card is diminished for future sets. That diminishment in its value as a "chase" card is a lowering of its "reprint equity".

This reduction in reprint equity has a real cost to Wizards, though it cannot be measured as easily as ink and printing supplies. Every time they reprint a $100.00 card, they are losing something.

Secret Lairs allow them to bypass this problem to a degree. Most of the folks who buy the card are buying for themselves, so the effect on the secondary market is minimized as compared to folks cracking packs and selling off any cards they do not personally need. Further, the cost and limited availability of the product ensure that, even if reprint equity in the card diminishes, the equity does not fall below a threshold that would render said card useless as a chase card.

This is not a secret lair that I am interested in--I am not hip enough to know anything about League of Legends other than the fact of its existence. That said, I am glad they are reprinting a Rhystic Study without Terese Nielsen's art--I have a lot of friends who are trying to purge her from their collection on account of her blatant racism and transphobia and they are all rather excited about finally receiving an alternative for this critical card (other than the rather pricy judge foil).

As for the anger over high-value cards being reprinted in SLs, it really does not bother me all that much. The simple fact is these cards were unlikely to be printed in any regular product anytime soon. Any reprint--even one that is a clear cash grab--is going to be better than nothing.

I will also point out that the Arcane Secret Lair is great value. As of the time of posting, the Rhystic Study alone is priced higher than the entire SL ($33 vs $30, or $85 vs $40 for foil). Path is $4, Seize the Day is $7, Thran Dynamo is $3, and then three more cards that are worth a little less than a dollar each (foils for each of these are about a dollar or two more than the regular printing).

You're looking at $45 worth of non-foils for $30 or about $110 worth of foils for $40. Not a bad deal, if you are willing to have League of Legends cards in your Magic deck.

And the Arcane SL is not alone in that regard--the Extra Life Secret Lairs have both had secondary values far exceeding their price point (and gave money to charity). The Dracula SL far outstrips its value, due to the $35 price point of Exquisite Blood ($80 for foil), $19 price point of Phyrexian Tower ($60 foil), and $5 Night's Whisper ($6 foil).

Evil Twin is not legal with Zirda as a companion - though its replacement effect confers an activated ability, the card itself doesn’t have an activated ability.

I have a few additions to the above response--it answered your main question, but I wanted to make sure your question of "what exactly is a creature type?" was fully explained as well.

"Creature Types" are the subtypes relevant to Creatures and Tribal Cards (ex. Elvish Promenade). The 261 (as of the time of writing) different types of creature type are defined by Rule 205.3m, which is fairly lengthy so I have covered it by the spoiler block below.

As noted in the above answer, each of these exist independently from one another, so a creature that "Creature - Elf Warrior" is both an Elf and Warrior.

However, there are a few points I think are also worth mentioning:

1. If your Winnower Patrol gains a creature type, such as with Angelic Destiny, then it will be a Creature - Elf Warrior Angel, and any of those three creature types could implicate Kinship. Or if it loses creature types, such as with Darksteel Mutation, it will only have the relevant creature types (Insect in this example).

2. As noted above, Tribal cards also have creature type. Winnower Patrol's kinship ability will "see" Elvish Promenade because Promenade shares the Elf creature type, even though it is not a creature.

3. Changeling is a characteristic defining ability that means the card has all creature types. Kinship will see a card with changeling, such as Woodland Changeling or Crib Swap.