Magic: The Gathering Unveils First Look at Two New ‘Foundations’ Cards (EXCLUSIVE)

Magic: the Gathering has unveiled two new cards from its upcoming “Foundations” set and Variety has the exclusive first look at the preview images from Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast.

Releasing Nov. 15, Magic: the Gathering Foundations is a set primarily intended to make the long-running tabletop card game accessible to new audiences, even as MTG continues to expand its universe of new content through partnerships with Marvel, “Lord of the Rings” and other popular IP, as well as in a TV series adaptation at Netflix.

Per Wizards’ description for the new “Foundations” offering: “Your favorite legends and Planeswalkers are here with quintessential Magic from across the Multiverse. This set was made for past, present, and future Magic players.”

In the first of Variety‘s exclusive preview cards from Foundations, fresh off her fright on Duskmourn, everyone’s favorite Simic smarty is back with Zimone, Paradox Sculptor:

Breaking from her usual landfall theming, Zimone is getting back to her Quandrix roots by focusing on counters and doubling them.

Zimone, Paradox Sculptor is reminiscent of Vorel of the Hull Clade, but what you lose in having a higher mana value and its inability to double counters on lands, you gain in the immediate and repeated value its brings by distributing two +1/+1 every combat, and getting to double the counters on two targets when you activate its ability.

Notably, although her triggered ability passes around +1/+1 counters, her activated ability doubles any type of counters like Vorel; which makes Zimone, Paradox Sculptor poised to replace Vorel as an upgrade at the helm of a commander deck. In addition to replacing Vorel or helming a more a +1/+1 counter focused version of the deck, Zimone, Paradox Sculptor slots well into the 99 of other +1/+1 counter commanders as she both sets up +1/+1 counters and is a pay off for them.

Variety’s next preview card is Blasphemous Edict:

Calling back to all-star red board wipe Blasphemous Act, and the classic instant Diabolic Edict, which spawned the term “edict” being used to describe cards that force players to sacrifice a creature, Blasphemous Edict does justice to each.

Like Blasphemous Act, Blasphemous Edict can reduce its cost to a one mana board wipe if there are enough creatures around, and like all ‘edicts’ makes players sacrifice creatures. The number 13 is also a nice reference to the amount of damage dealt by Blasphemous Act.

Unlike its predecessor however, Blasphemous Edict’s cost reduction is all or nothing, and requires a more crowded board to be an option. However, getting to 13 creatures across all four players in a commander game is hardly impossible. In the emergency situation where there aren’t 13 creatures on the board, at 5 mana value Blasphemous Edict hardly breaks the bank, and is guaranteed to be a literal wrath. Although Blasphemous Edict won’t be able to clear the board against the most extreme go-wide decks (where wraths are often the most needed), being a sacrifice effect gets around annoying protection like Indestructible.

Despite its drawbacks, any card that can get up to 52 creatures in a commander game for as little as one black mana is going to get attention, and it’s expected Blasphemous Edict will be no different.