Dominaria Archives - 2 Generations Gaming Present: Spring into Gaming 2025

Note: This is now part 5 of a 6 part series. I have decided to make Return to Ravnica it’s own article.

Introduction

Welcome to part 5 (of 6 now) of my retrospective on Magic the Gathering since Scars of Mirrodin. It’s been a fun trip for me to look back at all of the sets and it reminded me why I love the game so much. Not that I needed the reminder, but familiarity breeds complacency. Every now and then, it’s appropriate to reminisce on the good times that you’ve had.

Relationship advice from your Friendly Neighborhood Noob of All Trades.

Noob’s History with Magic the Gathering

I’ve probably mentioned this several times, both on the web page and in the podcast, but I wasn’t initially impressed with Dominaria. Chris sent me a text with a link. The link was an early and unauthorized leak for the set. After making the joke that someone was definitely going to lose a job over this, I clicked the link. Before I tell you my initial impressions (Spoiler Alert: I already did in the first sentence of this paragraph), let me set the scene.

I’ve been playing Magic the Gathering since the beginning. I don’t have any cool Alpha or Beta collecting stories to tell, but I got into the game when I met someone in college who played the game. When I left school the next year because I met my future wife and moved to be near her, I tried to teach her the game. It wasn’t something that interested her and I didn’t find anyone else who played the game. When combined with the fact that I hadn’t fully developed my commitment to collecting, I moved on to other interests.

I miss my Ice Age cards. Hopefully someone gave them a loving home.

I won’t go into the whole story of how I got back into the game. Just know that it involved an initial missed connection at Wal*Mart, a sheepish admission, and 2 other dudes. Let your imagination chew on that one for a while. Once you’re ready, I’ll continue. Back with me? Okay, let’s continue the story.

As someone who played the game from the beginning, but took a nearly 20 year break from the game, I was excited to be going back to the beginning of the game. It gave me a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new ones. When I finally saw some of what we were getting, it was uninspiring.

Dominaria First Impresssions

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is the set that was supposed to take us back to the beginning of Magic the Gathering. We were supposed to be transported back 25 years to our college, teenage, or even childhood years to reminisce about all of those games of Magic the Gathering we played against friends and family. Instead, after clicking the link to the spoilers, I was transported to just another mediocre Magic the Gathering set. Where was the history? What about the recognizable names? Why not even a reference to Black Lotus?

Heck, I’d even take a Grizzly Bear for old time’s sake.

I should have known better. Any time I take Wizards of the Coast literally in their descriptions, I end up letting myself down. I can’t blame them directly. They are in the business of advertising. As a result, they are doing everything they can to sell their product. It’s not their fault that I fall for it every time and over hype myself.

It happened with Masters 25. It could be any card from Magic the Gathering’s 25 year history. With that one simple statement, off my imagination went. What could possibly be in that box that I’m (or Chris and me together) are going to buy? They recently unbanned Jace. Could it be a defective box containing only Jace the Mind Sculptor, allowing me to live out my dream of retiring on sales of Magic the Gathering cards? It could be literally anything! (Disclaimer: It cannot be any card on the reserved list.)

Both early spoilers and comments from the community cured my hype. One comment in particular stuck with me. “Remember,” the person wrote, “Island is a card that was printed in Magic the Gathering over the last 25 years.” That brought me crashing back to earth. Sure, there are great cards, but there are also not so great cards and even terrible cards, too. I braced myself for Dominaria being another let down.

Final Verdict on Dominaria

The one card that became my focus of the set was the new Karn. Karn Liberated is one of the best cards ever printed in the history of the game. Along with Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, It is the backbone of Modern control decks, not that any of them exist anymore. Karn, Scion of Urza might be a good card and I’ve never argued that it isn’t, but it’s a shadow of his former self, in my humble opinion.

Aside from that card, nothing jumped out at me from that initial spoiler reveal. As a result, I wasn’t looking forward to Dominaria. It wasn’t until Chris started to look closer at the set through the remainder of the spoiler season that I started to see the potential of the set. He made the point that as the set filled out, it started to look and feel like classic Magic the Gathering.

Mox Amber quickly became one of his favorite cards, though he had to explain his thinking to me about it’s potential power level.

In addition to getting a new Mox for the first time since Scars of Mirrodin, the set gave us a potential Tron/Storm killer in Damping Sphere. The also introduced saga enchantments (Phyrexian Scriptures hasn’t proven to be as popular as I hoped, but it’s still my favorite) and as a result, a mechanic known as historic. In a set that lives for flavor, that’s quite possibly my favorite inclusion.

Initially underwhelming, overall Dominaria is a great set. Chris and I have gone back and forth a few times on whether it is the best set in the history of the game. Obviously, having missed a great deal of the game’s history, I can’t make that claim. What I can say is that it is probably my favorite set since coming back to Magic the Gathering. That’s it for now. Join me, hopefully tomorrow, as I finally (for real this time!) wrap up this series with the Return to Ravnica block.

Introduction

Chris and I got together this weekend via Skype to record the podcast. We discussed many things current Magic the Gathering. Our two main topics were our thoughts about the Masters 25 set and a preview of Dominaria, the set coming out next month. I already talked about my thoughts on Masters 25 and the dilemma I was facing regarding the set.Spoiler Alert: I didn’t buy a box of Masters 25. I bought an XBox One instead.

Without stepping too much on our discussion, I did want to do a companion preview piece for Dominaria. One of the things that we didn’t touch on too much in the podcast is that the reason we can discuss the set is that there was a huge leak that came out of Wizards of the Coast. Initially, we thought that it was all of the cards from the set. Now, though, we realize that it is about 150.

If you’re thinking that we aren’t usually ones to speculate knowing only a bit more than half of the cards from the set, you are correct! So, what did we talk about for over half an hour? Guess you’ll just have to tune into the show to hear it all.

New Format! (Brawl)

One of the most popular formats in the game is Commander. If you don’t know what commander is, you choose a legendary creature that becomes your commander. You then must build a deck with 99 additional cards. The stipulations are that you can have only one copy of each card and all cards must be the same color identity as your commander.

The format is fan created and not officially sanctioned as a competitive format by Wizards. Additionally, at least one off shot called Tiny Leaders had grown out of the format. These two statements have come to a head with the recent announcement that Wizards is sanctioning a commander type format that was inspired by this set.

The format is called Brawl. Similar to commander, you may choose a legendary, your deck can only contain one copy of each card, and the cards must follow your planeswalker color identity. Unlike Commander, the cards must be standard legal. That adds an interesting new angle to the format that will hopefully bring new players into the game. One of the problems with eternal formats is that they are expensive and intimidating for new players. By limiting the cards, Wizards is giving players a chance to try something without having to make a huge time and money commitment.

Mechanics

So far, there haven’t been any new mechanics introduced in the set. As with most sets, there are recycled mechanics. Also, there have been modifications to other keywords and card types that may change the game in new and interesting ways. Let’s take a look at both of these in turn.

Kicker – This is an old keyword that allows for an extra effect for more mana. Some of my favorite cards in the cube drafts that I’ve done have had kicker and I really enjoy this keyword. It makes your opponent have to think more and plan around the additional possibility presented by the kicker. In some cases, it is almost like being able to cast two cards but only having to use one card slot in your deck.

For one more mana, you get a more powerful Ball Lightning. For two more mana, you get a permanent Ball Lighting. Still dies to lightning bolt, though.

Hexproof (from quality): Normally, hexproof just gives your creature protection from all spells or abilities controlled by your opponent. This new variation simply gives your creature hexproof from a something specific. The two cards that I first noticed with this on them had Hexproof from a color, which I found interesting because in the past, it has been protection from color, which also prevented you from casting those spells on your creature.

Haha, your opponent can’t dismember him. You can. I mean, if killing your own creatures is your thing.

Legendary Sorceries: Legendary has been a keyword in the game since the beginning. Traditionally, it has been there to give creatures a special quality, namely that only one of them was allowed to be on the battlefield at one time. That birthed the EDH, or Commander, format in which players build decks that are made up of only one copy each card in their deck. Now, if you have a legendary creature on the board, you can cast a legendary sorcery, which could potentially have a profound effect.

Or, it could be a weird perversion of an older (and IMO much better) card.

Saga Enchantments:Another introduction to the Magic universe with this set is Saga enchantments. Like the old cards that leveled up with mana, the card becomes more powerful as the game progresses. Unlike those cards, these enchantments level up automatically during your turn. I’ve always liked the idea of being able to change a card during the game while it’s on the battlefield or in your hand.

Morph, flip cards, split cards, and kicker are always mechanics that get me excited about the possibilities. Leveling cards take all of this to a new, uh, level (sorry about that). It brings one of the things that I enjoy about playing role playing games and brings it into Magic the Gathering. It also gives me something to do in my cube drafts when I’m flooding out. Nothing but a Joraga Treespeaker and forests in my hand? Use that mana to make more mana!

May be wrong, but this seems like it could become a modern or legacy sideboard possibility. (Is that enough qualifiers?)

As a result, I like the idea of Saga cards. Just like the legendary sorceries, I have no idea how many (if any) of them are going to be good. But, and this is more important to me personally, it looks like some of them will be fun. Being mythic, I doubt I’ll pull them from a pack. If I do, though, Chris better watch out because I’m going to try to build a deck around it.

The Planeswalkers

Each new set also brings with it new planeswalkers. In keeping with the theme of history with this set, we are getting some names that are familiar but that we maybe haven’t thought about for a few years. One of them, in particular, is well known and loved.

Jaya Ballard

It’s a red planeswalker that does red things. It’s almost as if Wizards wanted to do a Chandra card for this set, but didn’t want to do a Chandra card for this set. So, they made this card, named it Jaya instead of Chandra, and called it a day. Honestly, though, I’m not the best judge of red cards. I just can’t get into that mindset at all.

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria

Now, this is more like it. As a blue mage through and through, this card speaks to me. It draws cards and untaps lands. It messes with the opponent’s tempo by removing things but not making it easy to recast them. I really like this card and I’d love to build a commander or Brawl deck based around him.

Karn, Scion of Urza

This is the name that I was talking about earlier that was well known and well loved. Karn is a modern staple in Tron. Personally, this is the first card after having gotten back into the game that I was truly impressed by seeing it played and the powerful effects that it can have on a game. Poor, poor Karn. As I said to Chris, they couldn’t just reprint the old card, but it feels like they nerfed this poor guy into the ground similar to how Blizzard deals with problematic cards. I mean, it’s not terrible. Compared with the old card, though, I’m starting to see now how old MtG mages feel when they see updates to older cards.

See You In April!

When Chris first sent me the link to the spoilers for the set, I was a bit underwhelmed. Similar to my reaction to M25, I had put big expectations into this set. We were going back to the beginning of Magic the Gathering. What could that possibly mean? Apparently, it means that we are going to be disappointed. At least at first glance. Then, when I looked at the set again and got to see it through Chris’s eyes, I started to see more potential from the set. I’m sufficiently excited. I want to draft this set. I want to build several Brawl decks. And, I want to buy and open some product. Come on April!