New Spellings

Wizards and warriors, rejoice. The first batch of downloadable content for Magic: The Gathering™—Battlegroundsis available, for free, to all Xbox Live™ subscribers. All you need is a valid Gamertag, a copy of the game, and your Xbox®. Each of the game’s five colors gets two spells, one creature, and one sorcery, and each requires a lot of mana to cast (ranging from six to nine), but the creatures are so large and the spells so powerful that they’re worth the wait.

Breaking out in Hives.

Green gets Living Hive, a beefy 6/6 creature with Trample that looks like some monstrous alien insect. If this heavyweight isn’t enough for you, it also comes with the special ability to create a 1/1 insect creature for every point of damage it takes. The nature lovers also get the green sorcery Biorhythm, which resets your life total to the number of creatures you control. Now you have a great way to stay alive in the late game, especially if you’ve already cast Living Hive and are cranking out the insect creatures.

White also benefits from a powerful life-gain sorcery, called Blessed Wind, which costs eight mana but resets your life total to twenty. This spell also works well with white’s new creature, the Serra Avatar, whose power and toughness are always equal to your life total. If you have the mana, you can use these cards in quick succession to bring you back up to full health and create a 20/20 monster for your opponent to deal with, or perish.

An ill (Plague) Wind.

Red’s new spells are slightly more complicated in terms of card ability, but once you figure out how to use them you won’t ever want to stop. Tephraderm is a solid 4/5 creature who passes along damage—if a creature or spell damages Tephraderm, the source of the damage takes an equal hit. The phrase, “This hurts me as much as it hurts you” is entirely accurate in Tephraderm’s case. Red also gets to mess up the playing field with the new sorcery Insurrection, which gives you control of all creatures on the board, grants them haste, and forces them to attack your opponent. Imagine the look on that green mage’s face when all his Defiant Elves suddenly turn on him in force!

Black gets one of the strongest pairs of new cards with Reiver Demon, a 6/6 brute with flying who destroys all non-black creatures when it comes into play (including your own non-black creatures, so be careful). And, if you want to destroy all your opponent’s creatures without regard to their color, use the powerful sorcery Plague Wind, which kills all your enemy’s creatures dead, period, end of discussion.

The Tephraderm Trio.

Perhaps the best cards in the new download are the blue spells, Time Stretch and Tidal Kraken. The Kraken is a 6/6 juggernaut who will not even bother with enemy creatures—he’s only going to attack the other duelist. Time Stretch illustrates one of blue magic’s strongest characteristics, the ability to mess with the basic rules of engagement. Once you cast this nine-mana sorcery, your opponent freezes for ten seconds. This doesn’t mean he or she can’t move, it means no movement, no mana production, and no new spells. They can’t even finish casting the spell they were in the middle of when you cast Time Stretch—every aspect of their game plan is put on hold and they just have to sit there and take it until the spell effect expires.

It’s worth downloading these cards even if you’ve already built the perfect deck, just to see the new creatures and sorceries in action. Stage your next contest in the new Glacial Vale arena, and you’ll be dueling in style.

By Scott McGough