Games Gazette Online

MAGIC the GATHERING: DRAGONS of TARKIR
EVENT DECK: LANDSLIDE CHARGE
rrp £19.95 (found on the internet for £15.95)

A pre-determined 60 card deck with an also pre-determined 15 card sidebar (not a booster pack) and a large D20 die

Description:

The 15 card Sideboard is made up of 6 Red cards, 5 Blue cards and 4 Green cards whereas the Main deck is predominantly Red and Green, with just one Blue "Instant" and a solitary Island Land card. If you are playing using the Sideboard then your game play may well depend on you getting the Island into play quickly - every Blue card in the Sideboard requires a single Blue card plus A.N.Other (any colour) mana.

This is a pretty aggressive Main deck which includes ten Rare cards and 8 special Lands - 4 Frontier Bivouac which adds Red, Blue or Green mana as required and 4 Evolving Wilds which allows you to search your deck for a Basic Land card. The Red cards are mainly direct-damage dealing, particularly hurting creatures that do not have the flying ability.

The LANDSLIDE CHARGE Event Deck comes in a specially prepared box, created and designed specifically to hold the die, the basic rules sheet and both the Deck and the Sideboard which are kept separate by a larger card. This box then slides neatly into a sleeve, ensuring that all the cards and the box itself are fairly well protected from outside damage.

This pack is designed for the MtG format called Standard, which are as you may have surmised, is the most popular type of tournament. "Events" are held regularly around the World plus there are weekly "Friday Night games" for which there are rules and lists of cards that are allowed in Standard Events. A Standard Event uses Constructed Decks, which are decks made by the players using cards from the allowed decks and boosters - allowed by the MtG OP rules. You can make legal Event decks for Standard Events by pooling cards from different sets of Magic the Gathering and selecting the cards required.

SIDEBOARDS are a set of 15 cards that players can use in Events and Tournaments after having played an opponent once while using their first choice deck. If the opponent has a good selection of cards that cause it to be too powerful for your deck then after the first game you are allowed to revise your Main deck using your Sideboard. Before playing the next opponent however, you must put your deck back to its original format - all players have to register their decks before playing Events and Tournaments to ensure fair play all round; Sideboards may only be used after playing at least one game versus each opponent.

With a recommended retail price (and even a discounted online price) slightly higher than the cost of a regular Intro pack - which actually also contains a pre-determined 60 card deck plus 2 x 15 card Booster packs - you are paying for the thought and experience of the Magic player who put the pack together, taking therefore, more time for the building of both the deck and the sideboard.

There is another "of Tarkir" Event deck, which is good news because playing them against each other is necessary for holding "sealed deck" events/tournaments. Naturally you do not have to only play "of Tarkir" decks against each other, you can have tournaments using most Event Decks, at least from the most recent sets.

The example below shows the cards from the Khans of Tarkir Event Deck:

As you can see from the few cards selected from the Khans of Tarkir Event deck (above) this is a strong White/Black assortment.