M15 spoilers officially begin today, and I must say that I am more excited than usual. Core sets to me used to be the “new-kid” sets, for the people who are just starting out with Magic and a simple way to explain the rules. I’ve recently gained a new respect for core sets as a whole as bringing in new players is indeed important, and the appeal to veteran players is indeed there even if it is somewhat disguised.

But I figured that since a new set is coming out, I’d take some time to share my opinions on Theros block, both the positives and the negatives.

So what did Theros do right? I would say that flavor undoubtedly was a major success. Which is no surprise, considering that the block was a riff on Greek and Roman mythology, but there were even certain little details that Wizards did that I found rather clever. For example, the fact that one god cannot kill another was a rather neat touch, in addition to the fact that even when gods have not fully manifested themselves they are still gracing the battlefield with their presence, with every god having a static effect.

A lot of the other flavor was rather self-explanatory(although Hundred-Handed One is one of my favorite cards from the block despite it’s blatant flavor), but still effective nonetheless. It was really fun to recognize what cards like Chained to the Rocks, Rescue From the Underworld, King Macar, and Athreos were going for, and that definitely made the entire set entertaining.

But it wasn’t just the mythology flavor that hit home in Theros. Other cards such as God’s Willing and Deicide brilliantly demonstrated the story arc of Elspeth through Theros block, both through artwork and flavor text. The card did a nice job with demonstrating the overall story of Theros while simultaneously allowing for one to research the story in a more in-depth fashion.

Mechanically, however, I felt that Theros block was all across the board. When Theros came out, the abilities looked promising. Heroic was a diverse ability that played into the “aura matter” theme of the set, and allowed for both aggro and combo to be practiced. One issue that I noticed though was that when one would enchant a heroic creature in an aggro deck, they were quickly two-for-one’d with the immense amount of removal in the format(albeit sometimes extremely expensive to cast). While it did add an amount of strategy as to when to trigger heroic, it sometimes made the enchantments less favorable to cards like God’s Willing and Coordinated Assault, which although powerful, were cards that were both hard to acquire and hard to use occasionally. Although I must admit that the dilemma of amounts of heroic enablers vs. heroic creatures was a rather thought-provoking one that added a lot of strategy to sealed that I had not seen in a while.

Devotion was done really well as a mechanic that sort of rewarded you for just playing, and it was done nicely both flavor-wise with the gods and as a mechanic with cards such as Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Master of Waves. It never felt extremely overpowered due to the fact that it could be shut down by getting rid of any opposing permanents, but it still proved to be and is still proving to be a threat in both competitive and casual play. Overall, though I was initially disappointing with a mechanic that was basically Chroma with slightly cleaner wording, I grew to really appreciate the mechanic flavorfully and competitively.

A quick aside about the gods though; some of them were just annoying. Karametra was simply bad, and Phenax just reinforced the stereotype that Blue/Black are the “mill colors”. I felt like there was a lot of lost potential with these gods, and I truly wish that more thought had been put into their abilities(Phenax more so than Karametra).

Bestow tied in nicely with the heroic theme, but sometimes it felt to me like it was too much of a Limited ability. The bestow costs were really expensive, and although they were swingy in Limited, I never really felt an incentive to use them outside of Sealed play. There were better heroic enablers in the set, and I usually found that I was only using Heroic in an aggressive deck, so the game would be decided by the time I would want to bestow the creatures. The only exceptions to this that I can think of are Nighthowler and Eidolon of Countless Battles, creatures that are actually very viable both in Limited and Constructed play.

Monstrosity was fun, especially with the effects that triggered when you made a creature monstrous. One of the things that can be irritating in MTG is when you’re stuck in a situation where you simply have to draw your card for the turn and then pass the turn. Monstrosity really helped remedy that a bit, and made it feel like you consistently had a card in your hand that you could play and not have countered(at instant speed, no less!). It was a nice touch to some nice creatures, and I really can’t fault it.

Inspired was really fun in a block where combat was a major deal. When your opponent attacked you with a creature with some sort of inspired ability, you had to wonder if they had some sort of combat trick to kill your creature if you blocked, whether they’d just untap their creature at instant speed with cards such as Crypsis, or whether they were simply bluffing. It also has a lot of combo potential that I think still hasn’t been fully discovered, so I’m pretty happy with inspired.

Tribute was bad. That’s all.

…

Okay, maybe I should expand on that.

In MTG, giving choices to your opponent is generally bad, as they will always choose what is better for them. The only reason that Vexing Devil were so powerful was because both options were so good that it was usually a lose-lose situation for your opponent. But the options on creatures with tribute are all rather mediocre. Because the creatures have a rather high mana cost, your opponent is generally able to better evaluate the board state and figure out what’s best for them. I found that my opponents would routinely pay tribute, only to kill my creature as soon as they untapped their mana. Whenever they did decline to pay tribute, it usually didn’t matter, and I wound up with an overcosted effect. It was bad, it is bad, and I was very happy to not see it in Journey into Nyx.

Constellation is awesome. To cast an enchantment and have a myriad of effect occur by doing so just feels so good, and it only gets better when you have repeatable enchantment generators such as Heliod or Pharika. Not much to say about this one, just that it’s a blast to play with and I wish it had been in more sets.

Strive was cool, and it tied into Heroic well. A lot of the cards with strive felt really unique, and tapping out is always fun for me. I kinda feel like this mechanic completely made bestow obsolete due to it’s less expensive nature, but maybe it’s just me. Not much to this one either, other than that if you use Omniscience with strive you deserve to spend eternity with Erebos.

Overall, I really liked Theros block. While some of the abilities were rather cumbersome and a few gods were just irritating in their own ways, I was really happy with how the rest of the block shaped up. It was clever flavorfully, the abilities were nice, and drafting was simply immaculate. All in all, I would not be upset in any way if Wizards decided to return to Theros someday.

~Jasper Egge

P.S. I am aware that this would be easier to read with hyperlinks. I am currently searching for ways to implement easy card viewing without images clogging up the page, but if you know of anything that would work feel free to comment. Thank you!