We Review: Magic The Gathering: Dragon’s Maze

Magic the Gathering is one of the longest-running collectible card games out there, and for those who still play, the latest set in the current block has just been released. I take a peek at some of the new Dragon’s Maze cards and game mechanics to see what it is all about.

If you’ve been an avid Magic player recently, you’ll be aware of the current storyline involving Ravnica, the city of guilds. If you’ve not been following the story, the basic plot rundown is thus: the city of Ravnica (which covers an entire planet!) is ruled by ten guilds, each of which encompasses two of five colours. The Ravnica story is covered by two blocks of Magic cards: the Ravnica block (Ravnica, Guildpact, and Dissention), and Return to Ravnica (Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, and Dragon’s Maze). The basic premise here is that the guilds are fighting to control the entirety of Ravnica, and the Dragon’s Maze promises the means to do just that.

It’s interesting to try and infer an entire game set from a part of the whole, but that’s what I’m going to attempt to do here. I was provided with an Intro Pack for Dragon’s Maze, which includes a precontructed deck and two booster packs. Courtesy of Freeform Communications, I had the opportunity to review the Orzhov’s Power preconstructed set, a white/back deck. The Intro packs are supposed to be the beginner’s intro to Magic the Gathering, and contains just enough to pique a new player’s interest. You’ll still need at least two Intro packs to play, though: one for each player. I’ll discuss the other preconstructed decks a bit later, based on what I played against at an informal tournament event.

Since the guilds are all two-colour sets, there are a fair number of gold, multicolour cards in the sets. The split dual-colour cards also make a return, with an ability called Fuse that allows you to play both sides of the split cards. All this multicolourness can take a heavy toll on your mana pool, so it’s useful that dual lands—in the form of “Gates”—also make a return. In fact, like other types of special land, cards in the block activate additional abilities if you control a Gate.

According to the game’s story, a woman called Teysa Karlov rules the Orzhov Syndicate, and her basic strategy is to pick apart the enemy and bring them back to fight for the Orzhov. Teysa herself is a fairly powerful card ( 4/4 creature, Vigilance and protection from creatures) who, by the time she arrived, came just in time to turn the tide of battle against my opponent by putting a small army of annoying 1/1 black/white flying tokens into play. Until then, I was pretty much biding my time with smaller creatures and staying alive with Lifelink abilities (every time a creature with Lifelink does damage, the caster gains that much life).

The biggest problem I found with the Orzhov’s Power preconstructed deck is that it’s a slow deck to start with, and things only start getting interesting around the fourth round. I tried playing it fresh from the pack and found that the heavy casting costs of the deck undid me against faster  and  decks—there simply wasn’t enough time to put a decent defence together while I waited for interesting cards to appear. One opponent who played a  deck pretty much wiped the floor with me thanks to a plethora of cheap blue and green creatures, and the early appearance of Phytoburst ( Sorcery, target creature gets +5/+5 until end of turn). The second time I played, I had a better time with some of the smaller cards appearing earlier, but the balance is very odd, and will probably take me a while longer to find my comfort in playing this set. Once I’d substituted a few cards in from the Gatecrash set, though, things became a little more interesting, and suited my faster play style. I still took a heavy knock early on, but it gave me time to put my strategy together.

I examined a few of the other cards from the Dragon’s Maze set, and I was quite impressed by the overall set. The other preconstructed decks are Simic Domination (), Rakdos Revelry (), Gruul Siege (), and Azorius Authority (). The story completes the Return the Ravnica block quite nicely, and I’m looking forward to the eventual books. The block is fun to play, and there’s a guild here to suit just about any play style. A word of advice, though: the blue cards are murderous. If you decide to oppose them, make sure to keep some tricks in your library.

Final Score: 9 non-basic prawns out of 10

Detailed Information:
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Format: Collectible Card Game
Website: http://www.wizards.com/magic/…/dragonsmaze