Swapsies YET AGAIN.

I know, this is nuts to do so often, but this is going to continue being my Magic weblog, and the other one is going to continue being my Time 100 Novels blog. It didn't make sense to start two blogs and swap them both. If that doesn't make any sense to you, ignore it all.

Now how am I magically lately? I have a lot of notes from my trip to Victoria for GP Melbourne, which I must organise and send off to good games so they can have another article out of me, and me another lot of store credit off of them.

Lately I get asked questions about how much they tell me what to write, and what I get for my efforts. When I tell the imput received is 'nothing' and the amount gained is 20 credit my friends are usually unimpressed but figure hey, it's better than nothing. Not only that, but I'm growingly the most consistently writer for Good Games seeing no one else writes any form of regular article for the place. In fact I'd imagine that very few people read it, but I still like magic, and writing, so I'm not about to stop and it's still going to appear for whoever wants to read it.

Having said that, Avacyn Restored previews have just started, and I can't believe how happy I am to not be judging this year. A quick review of the mechanics:

Miracle
NO. When are there going to be problems with this mechanic? Constantly. I draw it, yay! but keep it for later. Or forget to reveal straight away, drawing it into my hand before revealing it. What's to keep you from saying there's no proof?

The precident for this was the top card of your library causing life loss, thanks to Dark Confidant. PLENTY of players drew the card, drew for the turn and then went Hang on, and called a judge. We had to pick a card to reveal and make them lose that much life, and it was quite clear what counted as a drawn card. If it met your hand, it was drawn. Even if you drew all your cards to the left side of your grip, it was still possible for the truly card-shark skilled amongst us to slide cards around. If that's the case you could keep a land in hand, draw a card and Ooops, I reveal this [Land] and suffer no life loss, while you really drew that Cruel Ultimatum.

The same applies here. This is just headaches. Plus there'll be plenty of people doing this wrong, at the wrong time, and just never ever well. I hate what Wizards have decided to do here. I understand the coolness of the idea, but it's too much headache to play with, no one has to agree to an "honour system" when they sit down to a game of magic.

Online however this will never cause a real problem. Also, instant drawing a card in your opponents turn will still allow Miracle to apply.

UNDYING

Same as last time, I just expect more creatures with more tricky abilities. So far we've seen a Wolf who can't be blocked by creatures who don't match it's power. That's great, because it can trade and then smash face for plenty. That's just one card though, I imagine plenty of fun here.

PAIRING*

This scared me initially, because I was expecting an updated keyword mechanic of Banding. This is NOT the case. You just choose another target creature and both of them get a bonus. A bit like the creatures of old who could attack and give someone else flying, only this bonus is constant and is always tracked.

It's also not that difficult to track, seeing most people will just pile their normal creature with their PAIRED creature. This sounds like it'll be fun, because paying U for the flying/pairing guy is good and cheap for a big fat flying fatty, but better than that is the instant speeding "falling outta the sky" that can happen when you plink their little 1/1. This will allow for some very unfortunate combat steps, which is GREAT.

* No, it's actually called "Soulbound." Which sounds a little too "Super friends" for my liking. Imagine super man. "Paired creature gets flying and indestructible."

"Loner"

This is just a load of creatures who're better alone. Go ahead, build a deck of them. This seems like it'll be mostly undercosted aggressive creatures who eat or otherwise hurt you for having more than one creature.

I like the flavour here, seeing evil is having a harder time and as evil is totally without morals there's no longer any "easy kills", so it's kill or be killed from every direction -- so naturally the evil creatures are keeping their distance from everyone.

"Blinking"

This is exiling a creature and then returning it to play instantly. This does a LOT rules wise, but basically it "refreshes" a creature of yours. No counters, no enchantments, no damage, not attacking or blocking, no damage marked on it, nothing. If it had a leaves the battlefield or enters the battlefield ability then they will trigger (so brush off your Sundering Titans).

This next point deserves it's own paragraph.
A creature remains blocked even if it's b