Before Future Sight was released, rumours of it being a set of ‘more than 50 keywords’, new card frames and textless cards seems to be more interesting than the cards itself. And even card previews in magicthegathering.com didn’t really interest anyone, well, except for Pact of Intervention, which i did rise an eyebrow at that.
Let’s take a look at the hits and misses of Future Sight:
Firstly, i must applaud WoTC for taking a risk on creating the new card frame and citing them to be ‘future-shifted’. We all know that WoTC is just testing the waters with something like this. In fact, i would think that Future Sight is all about testing the waters. First off, 50 (or less…or more..i don’t care) over keywords and most of them are pretty unimpressive. Being a player for almost 10 years, i miss the good old days of ‘can’t be affected by summoning sickness’ instead of haste. So i didn’t quite understand why they have to create an entirely new keyword (a very unimpressive Shroud, by the way) for ‘can’t be target of spells and abilities’ So what will the keyword for ‘can’t be target of spells and abilities opponent control’? Shroud Them? Or what about ‘can’t be the target of spells and abilities you control’? Shroud You? I was wondering why Imperial Mask didn’t have that Shroud keyword. Was it because they didn’t want it to be named as…Shroud Player? Or ‘You gain Shroud.’ Or ‘You are Shrouded’. Well, you get the drill.
While I do agree that keywords like Reach (can block creatures with flying) does clear up the rules a little, especially for newbies, they should really just implement it in the core sets. With other keywords that only appear in one or a few cards, like Transfigure, Delve, Fateseal, Absorb and a very uncreative Life Link, one can only imagine how bleak and unoriginal the future of Magic will be like.
What i do like about Future Sight…hmm, i do think that the Grandeur is a nice touch to the legends cycle, it encourages players to include 2 or more copies of the same card. I hope this is one ability that will be reappearing in the future. I’m also interested to see how the new cycle of rare lands will play out in block. It would be nice to see a separate cycle of the individual land in the upcoming expansions.
We all have our share of crap rares…Moonlace…Mudhole…But imagine this, you open your first pack of booster and excitedly reveal part of your last card. It’s a red rare! Could it be Tarox Bladewing?! And then you reveal the entire card and realised that it’s Steamflogger Boss. Oh man. That’s just a bad decision on WoTC’s part. It’s an unimpressive 3R for a 3/3 that grants what? Riggers? +1/+1 and what was that? Contracep…Contraptions? Simply useless. I’m not sure which is worse, Force of Savagery or Steamflogger Boss.
I’m not exactly giddy with the prospect of the future sets, but i’m glad that WoTC took a proactive
-Jar
