Can Tomik Assemble The Titans? (And is he good for Magic overall?) 

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The topic of mechanically distinct promo cards reminds me of the whole nexus of fates debacle. The card only being available as a box promo, while being one of the engine cards inside the top standard deck was concerning to say the least. I hoped Wotc learned from its mistakes. Anyway, thanks for the cool video!

I think the mechanically unique cards exclusive to pre-release like this are bad. I agree that an exclusive alternate art would have been much better. As for gameplay of this deck, I would absolutely love to see some!

Tomic and his partner should get partner cards I think that would be cute

This list is pretty spicy, I'd love to see it in action. As for these sort of exclusive promos, I don't understand why they aren't at least possible to get in Collector Boosters. Set and Collector Boosters in the past had those handful of Commander cards that were exclusive to them (such as Avacyn's Memorial) and I'm not sure why these three cards were excluded from Collector Boosters at the very least.

I love the deck idea! Assemble the Titans is just one of those cards that is super fun to build around. As far as... the question... goes, I thought it made sense to do the exclusive legendaries in March of the Machine because it felt like a celebration of Magic history. Now, it feels like another way to create exclusive products when there is already so much premium stuff already

I was also confused, why they packed these cards into the Prerelase packs, my guess is that these were legends planned as Set Booster exclusives, which they had to use otherwise with Set Boosters gone (but to defend WotC a little bit: they did this in MoM too, with three legends teams in the prerealse packs, which covered the three color pairings not represented anywhere in the set or the commander decks)

There should have been two changes to these bonus cards: • Have them be available in collector boosters if they weren't (to increase the singles supply) • Package them in a separate envelope that notes they aren't legal for pre-release

After Nexus of Fate you'd think they'd have learned their fucking lesson, but corpos are always dumber than you think.

Don't worry, I'm sure wizards will stick them in a secret lair down the road. In case it isn't clear, this is both very likely and delivered with scathing sarcasm on my part.

I would be fine if they were still in the collectors boosters or special art of cards in the set. Brings me back to when people were buying Core boxes just for the box topper because it was the best card in standard.

1) When I heard you say that initially, I was happy for my friends who went to the prerelease. I thought it was a good way to support in-person standard and LGS's. But I think you make a good point about the health of the game. After that it'll be Magic-Cons. 2) I would love to see you play these decks!

I think they're perfectly fine as long as they're included somewhere else that's easier to get, also I would love to see some videos about your commander decks and decklists!

videos about breaking bulk rares? I love these!

This seems like a sweet deck to see in play I have an Xavier Sal deck with only planeswalkers who only make tokens and it’s really synergistic and fun

I would like to see this as a full deck list.

The promos should also be available in collector boosters lr something. They did this exact same thing with march of machines. Theg had 3 promo legendary creatures in the prerelease kit that you couldnt use, but they were also in collector boosterss. I dont know why wotc is such a fan of arbitrarily changing things for no apparent reason.

*looking at the 5 Meleks that my partner and I pulled from our 5 combined prerelease boxes* that feels pretty damn bad ngl

I feel as you do Ryan!

Dope deck!

First, I like your deck concept and would love to see it in action. Second, I think the idea of that style of promotional card is just another way they’re (Hasbro/WotC) adding Artificial Scarcity. As a standard promotion or something to win at prerelease I think it’s viable but in a prerelease pack it’s just a gacha/loot box.

i thought we learned the lesson with nexus of fate....

Unique individual cards that can only be gotten from one key event are not overall healthy for the game if gameplay and tournament play are what we want for the game. Nexus of Fate is the most egregious example of what happens when you have a card that can only be got one way in a limited supply. However unique treatment of a card you can only get one way but you can get the normal version of a card another is fine. The reason for me is then players have the option of blinging out their deck with the unique card but are not stopped from picking it up. This is tricky once you have to account for rarity "Looking at you Shelodred, and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy* and the common version is so expensive it becomes difficult to obtain for play that I also have a problem with. At this time I can't think of a good solution outside of the limited-numbered cards that Wotc has also been doing. It is incredibly difficult to appease all players of the game and how they interact with it. I am a firm believer though of having cards in the set to be pulled and not be limited in how a player should be able to get the base version of a card.

I personally think its fine because 1 you can buy pre release kits after the pre release and 2 because there aren’t too many promo slots and because they weren’t godly overpowered like a tutor.

I think these cards should be available to everyone at somepoint

At least in the UK, these cards are going for around £5 so as a player who exclusively plays constructed formats I don't think it's an issue. That being said, I can see why it may have been a bit frustrating during the prerelease.

i think its good. from past experiences where they gave cosmetic uniques or.. stamped cards, they aren't unique enough and people do value their "exclusivity". in other words, it feels like junk. if this can make people go a bit fomo about not attending pre-release or at least snap up the pre-release box, its one more thing pushing people to play at their LGS. the events are generally well priced before even considering the value of such exclusive cards. especially since its 100% to get one of them better than anything involving collector boosters. also better than how they handled jumpstart WOE cards

As someone who almost exclusively plays on arena, I couldn’t care less about pre-release exclusives. We didn’t get Mana crypt on Arena last set, as well as many many other cards paper players get access to, but it is what it is. One thing I do think is weird though is that they made them legal in Standard, idk if I agree with that decision, if they are going to keep them exclusive.

The promotional cards being exclusive, and not announced as such, is infuriating.... I hate that I am always working on the weekends when they have these. I hate that wizards is trying to fomo their actual players out of the game. And yes, I (like many players) am bitter to these foolish, choices by wizards/hasbro.

I think mechanically unique uber exclusive cards are a bad thing. The secondary market is already nuts sometimes, and this is going to exacerbate it further.. Fancy super exclusive alternate arts would have been a better way to go.

Website looked interesting, but I can't get it to work for decks in the slightest. I import a deck list and it just kind of sits there, showing me the cards i imported but not letting me save it as a deck

Definitely think these exclusive promos should not exist. We already had a relatively similar-ish situation back in the early 90s with Nalathni Dragon, a card that was exclusively given out to DragonCon attendees, and was not found anywhere in booster packs, until people got so angry that WotC included copies in the Duelist magazine. While I can potentially see the counterpoint of 'but DragonCon wasn't an explicit MtG event,' at the same time, I think with this very early example from the beginning of Magic's history, WotC should have already learned its lesson about printing exclusive promos that cannot be found in any other products. I guess money printer go brr.

Nexus of fate:

No, I do not think such exclusivity is good for the game. Yes I would love to see more super friends like decks. I think it would be fun!

To answer the question. I think no these exclusive does not improve the game I'm remembering back to nexus of fate Era magic and how silly that was and don't want to experience it ever again. Also would be interested in that deck game play vid

I think its neat

This sounds like Nexus of Fate 2.0.

For starters, I'm not a fan of any card being in a pre-release pack that can't be played in your deck, unless there's something to make it obvious (like, making it an oversized card or giving it a weird back). I'm also just not a fan of them printing any card that isn't available in a booster pack somewhere, even if it's a different art or a version of the Godzilla stuff they did with Ikoria. If they are going to be legal in any format, and they aren't available in a quantity to make them reasonably available for players who need them (I'm not just talking pricewise, but actually enough copies of the cards to go around in general), that just creates an unhealthy situation, in my opinion (I feel the same about mechanically unique cards that appear in the UB commander decks; if it never appeared in a booster pack, it should not be legal in any competitive format).

Personally I loved these promos. Yes, WoTC should’ve communicated better about them but they were easyly accesible to everyone that went to the prerelease, and not something like a GP or buy a box promo

I’d love to see this deck in action. Also. This was such a terrible way for wotc to handle promos.

I greatly disagree with exclusive promo cards that you can only get from events

I wonder if Wizards will ever listen to the players when they say that exclusive, unique, limited time cards aren't a good idea. It's only happened like, 3 times now?

This is just the Negan headache all over again, it wasn't healthy then either

Nexus of Fate and Kenrith were worst than this, but it's not good over all.

I agree that making these mechanically unique cards only available in prerelease is a bad idea. It's just so expensive to either a) buy multiple prerelease packs and hope to pull the exact ones you want, or b) buy the singles individually for an inflated price because of their scarcity. As for the deck, I would love to see it in action! Superfriends is one of my favorite archetypes to begin with, so Tomik and UAtT make my heart happy.

I completely agree with and and would even go further: a pre-release collection should always have something special. Maybe cosmetic or maybe a theme / side-quest - something that can't be bought on the secondary market. Printing mechanically unique cards in such a limited environment is a poor decision though. And yes, please play the deck :)

I wish the game i love wasn't used by speculative investors to gamble on and more importantly I wish wizards would stop encouraging and profiting from it

Just buy whatever precon the OP mechanically unique promo creature belongs in- toss out a basic land. Crush your enemies and hear the lamenting of their women. Which they may not have because they play games.

I do not like the Exclusive cards in the prerelease boxes.

Yeah… having special promos that players can’t even use? That seems like a huge mess and a total joke. Because Hasbro says all actions must lead to way more money, and killing everything else.

WotC has learned nothing from the Nexus of Fate fiasco.

I'm sure his husband can answer that question 😌

to answer your question... No.

No.

No. It is not. I detest this kind of marketing

these kinds of cash grabs are the biggest reason i haven't given wotc money in over a decade. disgusting