The Big News from the San Diego Comic Con

It's that time of year again. We did this last year, and hopefully we can do it for several years more.

This year, we have a ton of new details from From the Vault, Duel Decks: Speed vs. Cunning, Khans of Tarkir, and even the newly announced Commander 2014 products.


First and foremost, let's look at what promotional Magic product could be purchased from SDCC:

For $120, you could buy this NERF Garruk axe and six promo black-on-black Planeswalkers. Which are these:

But I digress... Let's move on to everything you want to know...

  

  

These are the four previews for From the Vault: Annihilation. We have Armageddon, Cataclysm, Living Death, and Rolling Earthquake.

Next up is the latest in Duel Decks, Speed vs. Cunning!

A better look at the two creatures in the front:

  

Arcanis the Omnipotent is a reprint from Onslaught and Tenth Edition. It has new art and the foil version at the time of this article is around $25 based on Star City Games prices.

Zurgo is a new creature from Khans of Tarkir and is the Khan of Mardu Horde, but more on that later.

There are 82 unique cards in the set and is split into two 60 card decks.

In Khans of Tarkir, there will be elements of time travel (likely the sets will go from present to past given that the name "Dragons of Tarkir" is trademarked, and supposedly based on information from Sarkhan's back story, there are no more dragons on Tarkir.

Anyway, we have five Clans:

• The Azban Houses (Azban)
• White/Black/Green (centered around White)
• Represented by the scale of the dragon
• Aspect is Endurance
• Khan: Anafenza
• The Jeskai Way (Jeskai)
• Blue/Red/White (centered around Blue)
• Represented by the eye of the dragon
• Aspect is Cunning
• Khan: Narset
• The Sultai Brood (Sultai)
• Black/Green/Blue (centered around Black)
• Represented by the fang of the dragon
• Aspect is Ruthlessness
• Khan: Sidisi
• The Mardu Horde (Mardu)
• Red/White/Black (centered around Red)
• Represented by the wing of the dragon
• Aspect is Speed
• Khan: Zurgo Helmsmasher
• The Temur Fronteir (Temur)
• Green/Blue/Red (centered around Green)
• Represented by the claw of the dragon
• Aspect is Savagery
• Khan: Surrak Dragonclaw

You can find some art from the set here.

Other things we know are that this set will focus on Wedges but others will not. Additionally, Morph is back as a returning mechanic and we will have a mechanic for each Clan. Additionally, just like how Bant, Esper, etc. are the names adopted for the allied (shard) tri-color groups, Wizards has adopted Azban, Jeskai, Sultai, Mardu, and Temur as the official names for the enemy (wedge) tri-color groups.

Once again, we get commander decks. This time, they will be monocolored with... Planeswalker commanders and legendary creatures based on previous stories but without actual cards as the "backup/secondary" commanders. A quick peek...

And now for a closer look and the other revealed card...

  

Teferi is a brand new planeswalker. Story-wise, we gave up his planeswalker spark to seal a rift during the Time Spiral block storyline. This is before he lost his spark, so we might see old Planeswalkers...

And Gisa is the secondary commander for the black deck (obviously, given that in monocolored decks, you can't put her anywhere else) and is from Innistrad story-wise...

Expect these in Novemeber. And the last bit...

Reprints in the new card frame of the first four duel decks. So that is...

• Elves vs. Goblins
• Jace vs. Chandra
• Divine vs. Demonic
• Garruk vs. Liliana

This will be great, but if only they included Elspeth vs. Tezeret. Then I could get all 5 I'm missing, but I'll hold out hope for the future. Either way, I'm really looking forward to the future with all these great products coming out.

And, since I did these last year, I present to you the updated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book titles as cards... I love the series, so why not?

    
  

I wanted to invent all new cards from last year and adjust power levels Art is pretty much the same except for So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, but hey, I think power levels are much better and I kind of like these versions better. Old versions are a little down the page here. Who knows, I may even make a set using the new ones...