MTG: Rivals of Ixalan ‘Review’

I try to work in advance when it comes to blog posts. I like making sure that I have a backlog and that gives me some flexibility to slot more current ideas up in ahead, and make sure to the blog doesn’t just repeat the same type of content endlessly. Sometimes it’ll be a short little snippet of a deck I’m enjoying, sometimes a long slow process of building one whole deck, and so on.

Still if there’s ever a kind of free content in MTG it’s the set review. A giant pile of things to look at, and the things in that set you’re expected to have an opinion on. I remember back in the day set reviews used to be both comprehensive and awful, and also tended to weave back and forth between trying to consider cards for multiple different formats, without any clear signalling. We were awful at it.

My plan with Rivals of Ixalan, then, was to use the set as a set review video fodder. Just make a very rudimentary video showing what I thought of each card and having some fun with that. I thought I’d surely get a bunch of cards out of that set that way, and maybe then I’ll learn how to make a good video out of that.

And y’know what?

I just don’t.

The thing that’s most remarkable to me about Rivals of Ixalan is how modest it feels. I know there are some cards I want to play with – [mtg_card]Tendershoot Dryad[/mtg_card] is exactly the kind of card I love to muck around with, for example – but  was there a whole video’s worth of content? I recorded my thoughts on every single card in the set I had anything to say about, and with an introduction, it all wound up at about nine minutes.

I’m not trying to run the set down. I am sure when I get to play with the cards and put them into decks and learn about them, I’ll have a lot more fun with them and know what they’re good for. Maybe I’ll play more Standard this time and find fun decks there rather than keep going back to the Commander 1v1 format for my kicks. I do kind of wonder how much a set review has value any more – even other set reviews I’ve watched have failed to inspire the same spark. There haven’t been moments of ‘oo, I hadn’t considered that.’ Everyone has more or less the same things to say, the same comparisons to make.

I like the Forerunners. I like the [mtg_card]Ravenous Chupacabra[/mtg_card] (and I have words about that Opinion That’s Being Widely Repeated). I really like [mtg_card]Tetzimoc[/mtg_card] (who won’t work in Commander the way I want), and the [mtg_card]Thrashing Brontodon[/mtg_card] is a rare card that slots into my [mtg_card]Death Cloud[/mtg_card] Rock, dead as it is.

But that’s pretty much all I got to say about the set. Or rather, the main thing I have to say about the set is that I don’t have much to say about the set compared to just having an interest in some individual cards.