Just before the Mystery Booster 2 reveals began, it was announced that Mardu Outrider, a card previously only available in MTG Arena, would be physically printed in the set. While the card itself isn’t exciting in terms of power level, the precedent it sets certainly is. If an Alchemy card can appear on paper, why not more? Aside from Oracle of the Alpha, which was also announced as a reprint but has the dreaded acorn symbol, what other Alchemy cards could we see in Mystery Booster 2? As more cards are revealed, the community has been pondering this question.
Please, sir, I want more
In a Reddit thread today, user Vedney expressed his desire to see a few other Arena cards in Mystery Booster 2. His list totaled eight cards, all of which would work perfectly on paper. Take Tin Street Cadet, for example. This is a simple 1/1 Goblin that creates a 1/1 Goblin token when blocked. Nothing unheard of or fancy, and he would likely be included in both Mono-Red and Goblins lists in some formats.
Vedney’s list also included Compound Fracture, a removal spell in the style of Muscle Burst, and Accumulated Knowledge. A modern Kindle card, as they’re sometimes called. While tracking cards like this is a bit easier digitally, it’s not much of a problem on paper either. Baloth Packhunter is similar, but only cares about other Packhunters in play, so would be even easier to track physically.
Along with some other straightforward requests like First Little Pig and Soulhunter Rakshasa, Vedney has also tried out some of the more complex Alchemy cards. Inchblade Companion creates very special tokens with its ability, which pushes the boundaries of physical play. However, we just got Offspring tokens in Bloomburrow that work very similarly, so I could see this card printing just fine.
Tasha, Unholy Archmage, the Alchemy version of Tasha, the Witch Queen, was also on the list. This card also brings a lot of potential tracking issues. Her -1/-1 counter, placing the Aura effect, and her permanent granting of Ward 2 could be difficult to represent. Perhaps this card will have to wait until Ward gets its own keyword counter, but that’s not miles away. This Tasha is certainly much more powerful than the one we actually have in paper Magic.
The outcry of the community
Of course, Vedney wasn’t the only one with ideas about which Alchemy or Arena cards should make it into Mystery Booster 2. Many players in the thread were quick to offer their own suggestions. X_The_Walrus started off with a bang: “My faint hope of seeing Inspiring Commander in paper is renewed.” This has always been one of the cards that players have been hoping to use to bridge the digital divide. It may be a 1/4 for six mana, but it’s a damn good card draw machine for white decks in Commander.
superdave100 went in a slightly different direction. “Wickerwing Effigy please” was their simple request. This is one of the more interesting Alchemy-exclusive cards out there. A colorless Future Sight effect that lets you cast creatures from above, with the caveat that they become 1/1 Flying Birds in the process. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, making it an outstanding design overall.
Another card that received a surprising amount of love in this thread was Arms Scavenger. SteampunkElephantGuy noted its strength in Boros Equipment decks and the_subrosian agreed. The latter even suggested a streamlined design similar to Garth One-Eye to replace the Alchemy Spellbook system, which is a very interesting idea in itself. Creating tokenized versions of cards is slowly becoming more common in MTG, so we could see something like this sooner rather than later.
Threads like this highlight the demand for digital cards in physical formats. These designs are often excellent and the kind of cards that players would love to sleeve in Commander if they could. Hopefully WotC adds a few more of these into the set.
Read more: Mystery Booster 2 playtest mechanics could appear on real cards
