This is a new updated release of an earlier special edition of Magic: The Gathering, using special rules for a three versus one multiplayer game within the narrative of the Gatewatch story arc. The Planeswalkers Gideon, Nissa, and Chandra are allied against Nicol Bolas, an ancient dragon planeswalker with sinister intentions for the entire multiverse. According to the fictional background surrounding the card game, Nicol Bolas won decisively, but can you alter the course of this fictional history?
Upon opening the box, I found everything inside nicely packaged with cardboard spacers to keep everything in place, and a white envelope on top containing several flattened cardboard deck boxes. Since I intend to sleeve these decks, the deck boxes may not get used. There is also a rather nice plastic life counter with rotating dials.
There are several cellophane-wrapped card packs inside. Four are preconstructed decks, one is a set of token cards for various in-game effects, and one contains special oversized scheme cards for the Archenemy game format and a fold-out rules sheet. Due to the format of the game, several special rules apply.
Short version of the rules: The Archenemy plays the Nicol Bolas deck, starts with 40 life, plays a scheme card as a bonus on each turn, and wins by defeating the Gatewatch team. The Gatewatch team plays using the Gideon, Chandra, and Nissa decks in an effort to defeat Nicol Bolas, and all three win if any one of them defeats the Archenemy, even if the other members have been defeated. The Gatewatch members all play their turns at the same time, and are encouraged to coordinate their gameplay. They can also use their own creatures to block attacks against the others.
The decks are all quite good, and clearly a lot of effort went into designing everything to fit thematically and competitively. I did note that there were very few 4-card playsets in any of these decks. There were a lot of pairs, and a lot of one-off special cards. Compared to other preconstructed decks, these seemed to have a lot of uncommon and rare cards. The Nicol Bolas deck was almost entirely so aside from basic lands, in fact!
All of the uncommon (left & center) and rare (right) cards from the Nicol Bolas deck!
My only complaints about the game as a product are the deck boxes that don't appear to fit sleeved cards and the lack of spindown dice for the Planeswalkers. This would have been a great opportunity to add color-coordinated dice from their existing product line for each player at almost zero extra cost. Those quibbles aside, I thought the product as a whole offers a good variety of cards for people building their own decks, and what looks like a solid 4-player game if you leave the preconstructed decks alone. Note that in the image above, the cards are all sleeved. Keep an eye out for an upcoming post about card sleeves and my impressions from actually playing two rounds as the Archenemy! Will it meet my expectations?
Spoiler: Yes.
