This Week in Magic: Friday, January 10

Posted on January 10, 2025

Innistrad Remastered Fully Previewed

Following a brief first look at the set last month prior to the holidays, this week finally kicked off the full rundown of the next remastered set, Innistrad Remastered. Things began with small previews from Mark Rosewater before leading into a larger Weekly MTG stream Tuesday that showed off the majority of big previews. Further cards were shown off on Wednesday with Good Time Society before the entirety of the set was finally shown off on Thursday.

You can check out all the cards in the full card image gallery right here. The set releases on January 24 with preview events (slightly different from prerelease events) begin next Friday, January 17 if you'd like to have a shot at drafting it a little bit early. Make sure you check your local game store for further details, or check out the Innistrad Remastered page right here on CoolStuffInc.com for all your spooky gaming needs.

Final Universes Beyond Set of 2025 Possibly Revealed?

Throughout the past week, the MTG Arena team has lightly teased several of the upcoming sets, showcasing card styles themed around the year's releases. These included various vehicles (Aetherdrift), legendary three color dragons (Tarkir Dragonstorm), Final Flare and various crystals (Final Fantasy), several cards with "star" in their name (Edge of Eternities), and a bunch of spiders (Spider-Man). What really got the attention of players was what the day after the Spider-Man nods revealed: a possible tease at an Avatar: the Last Airbender set.

If you can't tell from the image, the cards listed above include:

Into the Fire

Waterknot

Earth-Cult Elemental

Airdrop Aeronauts

Distended Mindbender

Oswald Fiddlebender

These appear to be referencing the four elements of the series (water, earth, fire, and air) as well as the elemental "benders" that make up the series' characters. No official statement has been made one way or the other, however this has caused nonstop speculation and renewed anticipation for a possible release centered around this iconic property.

Canadian Highlander Point Changes

Canadian Highlander Update, January 7th, 2025:

Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes from 0 to 1
Psychic Frog from 0 to 1
Reanimate from 0 to 1
Urza's Saga from 0 to 1
White Plume Adventurer from 0 to 1

Sol Ring from 4 to 3
Spellseeker from 1 to 0
Survival of the Fittest from 1 to 0
— Benjamin Wheeler (@wheeler.bsky.social) January 6, 2025 at 12:03 PM

The latest round of Canadian Highlander updates were revealed by Ben Wheeler earlier this week, with several cards seeing point changes. Further explanation was not directly provided visibly despite Ben noting the change explanations could be found on the official Canadian Highlander website. If you'd like to know more about the rationale behind these changes, check out the official Discord server for the format here. If you're looking to learn more about Canadian Highlander, I recommend checking out some details here.

Decklist of the Week

Gruul Aggro | FDN Standard | Nick Odenheimer, 1st Place Spotlight Series Atlanta

Enchantments (4)
4 Leyline of Resonance

Buy This Deck Export text Export Arena

The first Spotlight Series event is in the books and we're officially back with the modern day interpretation of grand prix events once again. The winner of the event was Nick Odenheimer, rocking the popular Gruul Aggro deck utilizing the less-played Leyline of Resonance variant on his road to victory! Speaking personally for a moment, I used to play against Nick and his family at local shops in Florida many years ago, and it's awesome to see him come so far since then. A huge congratulations to Nick on the win!

Paige Smith

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