Planechase 2012 comes out today, and that makes me really excited. I really love those oversized planes, and I’ve been waiting for this day to come for a while (placing far after the birth of my first child, which has come. Everyone’s doing great). As I’ve been reading on the interwebs, it seems that players have been divided into two groups: those who like Planechase and those who think that Wizards of the Coast has screwed them over. If you’re in the first group, feel free to skip down some number of paragraphs if you wish; this is for the second group.

But alas, WotC decided to not do anything of the sort, and now you’re pissed. You weren’t going to buy it in the first place—because you don’t play Planechase—but now you’re really not going to buy it. You felt lied to, cheated, and, dare I say, entitled to get some reprints that would be great to acquire more copies of. If not that, some great cards that you could run in Legacy. Commander has Flusterstorm and Scavenging Ooze, so it’s been done before. Instead, they give you practically nothing, and the decks aren’t even all that great. You’re slamming your fists on the table and wondering where you product is. Casual players get Planechase and Commander and Duel Decks and Intro Decks.

You know what your product is? It’s called “every set” and you get new toys every three months.

WotC knows that most people will end up taking apart the decks that come with the planes, but they still want to give something people to play, something that goes along with the planes. Could the decklists have been improved? Of course; I am tired of seeing Dark Hatchling again especially after we saw it in two separate Commander decks last year. I get upset when the product fails to live up to its intentions. I didn’t feel any of the reprinted cards in the From the Vault: Legends were actually very legendary when we had seen most of them in the past few years. But when the focus of this product is the planes, expecting these decks to be fully powered, or even have some power is truly silly.

Look at the Commander deck: Counterpunch.

This is a product to get people interested into Commander, and it sells for $65. Why? Scavenging Ooze is $40. This one card makes up almost two thirds of the price in a hundred-card deck. This is the only place you can get it, and it’s a Legacy staple card. So, speculators went out and bought up as many of these decks just for one card. If I find one at MSRP, I will snap it up.

Scavenging Ooze started out at $18 and finally shot up to $40 in March, months after the release. And this was an unknown card (though assumed to be good). I argued when Commander came around why certain cards weren’t put in the decks even though they were the perfect spot for them. Of course, all of that was theory, and Counterpunch is that theory in action. Now imagine that WotC put out Tournament Decks, which contained those cards you want reprinted; how expensive would those decks be? Even if every one of these Planechase decks had a Ravnica dual land, and it’s MSRPing at $20, what do you think the StarCityGames and local game store price of those decks are going to be?

• Chaos Reigns – U/R/G (Stomping Ground/Steam Vents/Breeding Pool)
• Night of the Ninja – U/B (Watery Grave)
• Primordial Hunger – B/R/G (Stomping Ground, Blood Crypt/Overgrown Tomb)
• Savage Auras – G/W (Temple Garden)

Plus, this isn’t even enough time to put anything Modern-reprint-viable in here. Planechase was probably getting near the stages of being done right around this time last year, and Modern wasn’t even a format. You have to give WotC a little more time than that to reprint more Modern staples.

Then, let’s take a look at the new cards. WotC found that people like having new cards in these types of products last year, so why not create new ones again? Of course, the people complaining are wondering why not more Legacy-playable cards since that’s obviously the focus of the set. He believes that Illusory Angel might be a great candidate. Some think Sakashima's Student, Baleful Strix, and Shardless Agent all have possible Legacy applications. (Again, since they’re all blue, it gives them a leg up.) But the real beauty of these new cards is the way the decks are laid out.

Each of the decks has a focus, and each of them has a returning keyword:

• Chaos Reigns – Cascade
• Night of the Ninja – Ninjutsu
• Primordial Hunger – Devour
• Savage Aura – Totem armor

None of these keywords has a high chance of being brought back due to flavor or lack of being able to grow (devour being the only exception). Yes, even fan-favorite ninjutsu had a poor chance of ever coming back due to nobody liking Kamigawa block. From products such as Planechase, this represents a new second life that these mechanics can have a new home, all while generating new cards.

A cascading Minotaur that you can return to your hand to recast? A totem armor Aura that you can move around between your creatures saving you from direct damage? A Ninja that lets you steal cards from an opponent’s hand? A creature with super-Devour? None of these were possible if WotC didn’t want to go back and revisit mechanics.

Last, to the people who don’t feel the decks are worth the MSRP of $20: I want to know how much you think the Planes are worth. If they’re $1 a piece (and Planechase 1’s planes were that price until recently), the deck should be around $10. Does that make the decks look and seem a little better? Hopefully?

Now back to the good part.

We get thirty-two new planes and eight new phenomena, which is pretty cool. Since we’ve had planes before, I’ll start with the phenomena. I was worried when WotC first started previewing them that we were going to get a majority of them like Interplanar Tunnel. Now, some of these type of effects are cool when they’re not done in high quantities; if a majority of the phenomena had, “Draw and select your next plane,” I would be very disappointed. This would take away the randomness that I—and what I believe is a good number of players—enjoy about Planechase. Luckily, that wasn’t the case, and a bullet was dodged.

With the phenomena, it drastically changes the tide of the game and forces people to think differently. Again, I believe that this is the variance that people love with the format. These phenomenon cards will create the most memorable moments that players are going to be telling for a while. I’m really happy and excited about this new change.

Each of the planes play differently and if you build your own planar deck, you can totally open up the customizations of how you want it to work. For my own small Vorthos reason, I like to play with one giant planar deck, as I can’t fathom a battle between me in Seattle and my opponent on Mars. Go, Craw Wurm, shoot through space and attack!

I’ll be shuffling this up with Planechase 1’s planes and the promo cards to create a big, giant planar deck. This is why I’m not looking at each of the decks and planes separately: I’m getting them all. Yes, I’m super-geeked.

But we can’t end this conversation without looking at the commanders, since that’s the format I talk about on here. Each deck receives a new commander, which loosely or majorly ties into the mechanics of the deck. All of them enable different decks, but we’re only going to talk about one. See, here’s how I believe the popularity of the decks will be based on the decks with their respective commanders:

• Night of the Ninja – Vela the Night-Clad
• Chaos Reigns – Maelstrom Wanderer
• Savage Auras – Krond the Dawn-Clad
• Primordial Hunger – Thromok the Insatiable

For those who aren’t buying all four decks for the planes, this is how I think it will go. Poor, poor Thromok. What did he do to deserve this? By not having the most exciting deck? Don’t worry; I’ll help you out, big boy.

"Suggested Starting Place for Thromok the Insatiable"

• Commander (1)
• 1 Thromok the Instaible

• Creatures (34)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Bloodbraid Elf
• 1 Bramblewood Paragon
• 1 Chancellor of the Forge
• 1 Dragonlair Spider
• 1 Elvish Soultiller
• 1 Essence Warden
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Fauna Shaman
• 1 Forgotten Ancient
• 1 Hissing Iguanar
• 1 Immaculate Magistrate
• 1 Keeper of Progenitus
• 1 Liege of the Hollows
• 1 Magmaw
• 1 Mitotic Slime
• 1 Mycoloth
• 1 Nissa's Chosen
• 1 Nullmage Shepherd
• 1 Regal Force
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Skullmulcher
• 1 Sylvan Ranger
• 1 Taurean Mauler
• 1 Terastodon
• 1 Vigor
• 1 Viridian Emissary
• 1 Wall of Blossoms
• 1 Woodfall Primus
• 1 Psychosis Crawler
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Ulasht, the Hate Seed

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
• 1 Nissa Revane

• Spells (27)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Fling
• 1 Fresh Meat
• 1 Beacon of Creation
• 1 Green Sun's Zenith
• 1 Saproling Symbiosis
• 1 Soul's Majesty
• 1 Soul's Might
• 1 Spontaneous Generation
• 1 Curse of Stalked Prey
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Fecundity
• 1 Feed the Pack
• 1 Fires of Yavimaya
• 1 Greater Good
• 1 Ion Storm
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Pyrohemia
• 1 Rite of Passage
• 1 Vicious Shadows
• 1 Warstorm Surge
• 1 Words of Wilding
• 1 Blade of the Bloodchief
• 1 Blasting Station
• 1 Elsewhere Flask
• 1 Mage Slayer
• 1 Voyager Staff

• Lands (36)
• 14 Forest
• 6 Mountain
• 1 Grasslands
• 1 Kazandu Refuge
• 1 Khalni Garden
• 1 Llanowar Reborn
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Mountain Valley
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 1 Shivan Oasis
• 1 Slippery Karst
• 1 Smoldering Crater
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Tranquil Thicket
• 1 Highland Weald
• 1 Kher Keep

Buy This Deck

This is just a first draft, as I’ll probably need more utility cards. But here’s the basic setup. Remember that with Thromok, his devour X means you square the number of creatures you sacrifice.

Sample Table:

I remember my fourth-grade teacher had us see how many simple multiplication (1–12) we could do in five minutes. We had papers of a hundred problems and worked our way up from there. There were kids doing five hundred problems in five minutes (4 × 6, 5 × 9, and so on). So squaring numbers isn’t that hard to do as long as it’s 12 or under (but at 144, you’re just gloating anyway). If you notice, all it takes is sacrificing five creatures at the same time to deal lethal commander damage, so you don’t need to run the table out there in order to make it work.

The deck has another cute trick: Nissa and her Elves. You can keep sacrificing Nissa's Chosen to something to keep bringing it back to help with the ultimate, with which you can completely take advantage of Elves that enter play. There’s the Beacon of Creation/Blasting Station combo in there with plenty of card-draw that triggers off those token creatures (I’m thinking I may need to up my Forests, but this is something I need to tinker with).

In case you’re curious, here are all the cards that I considered with this deck in a first pass:

"Extra Thromok Cards"

• Creatures (41)
• 1 Arbor Elf
• 1 Avalanche Riders
• 1 Caller of the Claw
• 1 Champion of Lambholt
• 1 Deranged Hermit
• 1 Elvish Archdruid
• 1 Elvish Harbinger
• 1 Elvish Vanguard
• 1 Elvish Visionary
• 1 Fungal Behemoth
• 1 Hamletback Goliath
• 1 Imperious Perfect
• 1 Ingot Chewer
• 1 Jade Mage
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Joraga Warcaller
• 1 Magma Phoenix
• 1 Masked Admirers
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Plaguemaw Beast
• 1 Predator Ooze
• 1 Primal Forcemage
• 1 Rage Forger
• 1 Ravenous Baboons
• 1 Seedguide Ash
• 1 Soul of the Harvest
• 1 Spitebellows
• 1 Stag Beetle
• 1 Symbiotic Wurm
• 1 Ulvenwald Tracker
• 1 Viridian Zealot
• 1 Voice of the Woods
• 1 Wirewood Channeler
• 1 Wirewood Herald
• 1 Wirewood Hivemaster
• 1 Wolfbriar Elemental
• 1 Yavimaya Elder
• 1 Zealous Conscripts
• 1 Sundering Titan
• 1 Kaysa
• 1 Verdeloth the Ancient

• Spells (20)
• 1 Berserk
• 1 Decree of Savagery
• 1 Forge Armor
• 1 Sprout Swarm
• 1 Strength of the Tajuru
• 1 Not of This World
• 1 Blessings of Nature
• 1 Edge of Autumn
• 1 Natural Order
• 1 Rupture
• 1 Elvish Promenade
• 1 Hunting Triad
• 1 Elemental Mastery
• 1 Mana Echoes
• 1 Mass Mutiny
• 1 Mighty Emergence
• 1 Perilous Forays
• 1 Birthing Pod
• 1 Power Conduit
• 1 Sylvok Lifestaff

Buy This Deck

In all, I hope you try out some Planechase, as it’s a pretty fun format to play along with Commander. Have plenty of dice, and don’t be afraid to roll; sometimes, the excitement is not knowing what happens next.