The new year is upon us, and Fate Reforged is on the horizon. This week the Gathering Magic team reflects on their holiday experiences, some of the big Magic happenings of the year, and talk about Fate Reforged excitement. The topics range from Vorthos to Spike, and from Magic to family; these are our last picks for 2014.

Picks of the Week: December 28, 2014

Adam Styborski is Content Manager for Gathering Magic, writer of Command Tower for magicthegathering.com, text coverage reporter at Grand Prix and Pro Tours for Wizards, a Pauper Cube developer, and known curmudgeon.You can find him sharing things on Twitter as @the_stybs.

You Could Put ‘Frozen’ on Anything and it Would Sell?

Kids love presents. The holidays (and birthdays) are as reasonable as an excuse to find things to give them as any,. Thanks to some shenanigans with Target’s inventory systems, I was able to snag a present that warmed even my cold, dark heart when I saw her reaction.

I mean, how often do you get to literally ask “Do you want to build a snowman?” and get a squeal in reply?

How Fetching

It’s been a quiet few weeks for Magic. With Worlds and other year-end tournaments wrapped, all eyes are looking forward to Fate Reforged previews just around the corner. While Wizards dropped the (real, official) Ugin bomb on us for a holiday gift, it was the other bonus article that got my attention.

There aren’t many events and weeks that go by where I don’t get pulled into some reprint discussion. Everything from Commander staples, custom cube products, Reserved List-breaking booster packs and more get thrown out there because, in a general sense, many players feel like there aren’t enough of a card available.

The fact is that there are plenty of cards out there. Several of my local game stores alone have enough dual lands for dozens of Legacy decks, enough shock lands to build multiple versions of the best Modern decks, and so many fetch lands that they aren’t buying them aggressively from Khans of Tarkir.

Slipping a few more fetch lands out in Fate Reforged won’t change how accessible a format like Modern is, but it will feel amazing for players to open what they perceive is fantastic value (even if it’s not that great for mana fixing in Limited). The gift Wizards is giving us with the next set is two-fold:

• Wizards is serious about promoting accessibility to formats like Modern and Commander.
• Wizards is actively, and aggressively, reprinting cards players clamor for most.

I can’t wait to see what’s been crammed into Modern Masters (2015 Edition) if they’re willing to keep putting fetch lands into packs like this.

Holiday Snacks are Awesome

I don’t get to listen to podcasts all the time, mainly because my commute changed from a 7.5 mile, forty minute (each way) drag to a 30 second round trip walk to the kitchen (to grab coffee) down to my office. When I find a cast that pulls on me to make time to listen anyway I get on board quick.

Snack Time, the baby of Mike Linnemann and Ant Tessitore, is full of discussion of art, flavor, and love for the creative creators of the game. Last week they hooked Ethan Fleischer in and covered the flavor and process of holiday cards. Fleischer, one of the flavor leaders coming into Theros block and winner of the Great Designer Search 2, shared a rare look into Magic design that wasn’t through the lens of Mark Rosewater and covered the merits of using “eat some food” as rules text.

The audio for the show has improved from the early episodes, and the gimmicks and flow are solid. Four episodes in and I’m hooked. If you wanted a place to start I recommend this one.

Alex Ullman is Associate Editor for Gathering Magic, a renowned Pauper (cube and Constructed) player, and member of the victorious 2009 Magic Online Community Cup team.You can find him on Twitter as @nerdtothecore.

The year is drawing to a close and as such it is a natural time of reflection. My picks this week are about looking back on 2014 and forward to the year to come.

Rule of Law: Don’t Let Cheaters Back In - Matt Sperling

Matt Sperling is a divisive writer. I admire his wit and blunt approach to difficult topics. While I may not always agree with Sperling’s stances I admire the cojones it takes to put forth opinions that don’t always coincide with popular opinion. This is not one of those times.

For better or worse 2014 was a year with multiple high profile cheaters doing their thing and getting caught. Those trying to game the system have always been around and recent history has shown that these actions will not be tolerated. Sperling takes this a step further and posits a solution wherein certain offenders are not just taking a vacation from the game but instead they are asked to never return.

I am not sure I agree with Matt Sperling’s position, but I can’t say I am against it. Don’t Let Cheaters Back In is one of my picks this week because it asks the hard questions about the current system: is it working? It is easy to look at certain repeat offenders and say no, but we don’t hear nearly as many stories of people asked to leave the game and then return with clean records.

In the world of Twitter and instant status updates it can often be easy to forget about the hot button issues of last month and last week. Sperling doesn’t want us to forget and we shouldn't. His answers may not be our own but his words serve as a reminder: we have a problem and we should explore all possible solutions.

Making Worlds a Better Tournament - Eric Froehlich

I love watching Magic. The recent Worlds Week meant in increase in the amount of time I stared at a screen and a decrease in all other productivity. After years of “Old” Worlds, I am starting to fall in love with the current format. There is something wonderful about watching the best of the best battle it out. Like many others I love the national pride and new stars born from the World Magic Cup. It is the perfect execution of an All-Star Game (this time it counts) combined with an Olympic style event (can we get team singlets next year?). But just because it’s great doesn’t mean it can’t improve.

Eric Froehlich explores options in his piece on Channel Fireball. Froehlich takes some very reasonable stances to improve the quality of play in the World Championships and discusses some ideas to allow for better talent in the World Magic Cup - the idea of multiple American teams is not his alone.

Like the Sperling piece this article merits discussion. What are the goals of these two events? Are we trying to showcase the best of the best? If so, perhaps the invitation slots for the World Championships need to be adjusted. Do we want the countries to put forth their best talent? Maybe only two people should qualify via World Magic Cup Qualifiers and the other two should be the top Pro Point earners. While this would take away some great stories like that of the 2013 Canadian team, it would allow for an increase in talent in the larger tournament.

Let’s not forget that these events are designed to market the game. For some, the best way to appeal is to show the creme de la creme. Another reasonable stance to take is to show the masses that they are not that far away from the big time.

No matter what I am already counting down the days to Worlds Week 2015.

Holiday Snacks are Awesome

Carlos Gutierrez is an Associate Editor for Gathering Magic, an engineer-in-training, and a Commander and Pauper enthusiast. By day, he works as a STEM educator, but he spends his weekends hitting all his land drops and trying new board games, puzzles, and video games. You can find all of him sharing Commander craziness, baked goods on Twitter, and complaints about graduate school at @cag5383.

All Ugin, All the Time

I cannot express how excited I was upon seeing what Ugin, the Spirit Dragon looked like. The question is not if I’ll be jamming this into a bunch of Commander decks. The question is how many cards I have to change to make sure I can ultimate Ugin on a regular basis. Let’s be serious, that’s the most exciting part of the card by a lot. I’m more than willing to admit that the first thing I imagined was drawing seven and dropping seven awesome lands into play, but I guess you could do Planeswalkers or giant creatures too if that’s your jam.

It’s not like his ultimate is that far out of range either. We’re only talking about two turns or three loyalty counters. That’s nothing! Whether we’re talking about using sweepers like Angel of the Dire Hour and Cyclonic Rift, land-based defenses like Glacial Chasm and Maze of Ith, or even just going big the turn you cast him with Viral Drake and Inexorable Tide, there are a myriad of ways to get this done with reasonable regularity. I positively cannot wait to start drawing seven, putting a pile of utility lands into play and using the extra life and mana to bury my opponents in powerful spells. What are you going to do with your Ugin ultimate?

Making Worlds a Better Tournament - Eric Froehlic

I don’t think I’ve read many things by Eric Froehlich. He writes the occasional tournament report for decks like his Black-Red take on Devotion last year and keeps us up-to-date on his deck selection and performance at Pro Tours, but beyond that Eric hasn’t written much in the last two years. After reading his thoughts on how Worlds Week could be made better, I hope he starts writing more.

Although I’m sure that several of his ideas about the World Magic Cup and World Championship invitations will be hotly contended, Eric comes from a place of genuine interest in making the event better and more exciting, and provides an interesting perspective that I, as a viewer, don’t get many other opportunities to understand? What are the real advantages and disadvantages of a pod structure? What are other reasonable possibilities for Worlds invites? What are the consequences of Worlds matches having pro points on the line?

Whether you like his proposals or not, Eric does a great job of identifying many of the decisions that have been made, for better or for worse, and talking about why they might be good or bad for the game. I think it’s interesting to see things from a player’s perspective instead of a viewer’s, and that this is an important dialogue to have. What is it that we want these events to be, and how do we make them the best they can possibly be at that specific goal?

There are plenty of people in the Magic community who can present ideas as intelligently and passionately. There are not nearly as many who can present controversial ideas without being unreasonable or inflammatory. Eric manages to accomplish both. Consequently, I can't wait to read whatever comes next.

Home for the Holidays

For the first time in many years, my grandmom was able to make the trek to scenic South Jersey for the holiday season. My mom’s side of the family is an eclectic crew who have spread out across the country - literally from New York City to Los Angeles. It’s exceedingly rare that we get this many of them together, and I am incredibly grateful that my grandmom was able to come.

Despite their varied backgrounds, the Anderson family is a clan of bakers, and Christmas weekend is rife with classic recipes and new favorites with many leftovers being traded before family members head back their corner of the country. Everyone has their specialties that are fantastic, but no one has ever been able to keep up with grandmom. After so many years of housekeeping and baking while raising a rowdy family of five kids, she knows the recipe book back to front, and it’s always a joy to watch her in action and learn something.

This year, she taught me how to make shortbread cookies; one of my absolute favorite kinds of holiday cookies. The problem is that her method doesn’t involve measuring anything except the butter. She knows what she’s looking for by look and by feel and trusts what she sees far more than any scale. Fortunately, after we’d spent an afternoon of experimenting and populating several cookie trays with my “not quite right” batches, we were able to hash out a recipe that I thought I’d share.