![]() ![]() I think it’s one of the pinnacles of Magic design. Simple, immediately accessible, and tournament-playable, Young Pyromancer has seen play in every format where it’s legal. We ended the year with a trip to Theros, but it was the usually-unassuming summer Core Set that had the highlight of the year: Young Pyromancer. Ravnica’s return continued apace, with the Extort-tastic Gatecrash and the letdown that was the final set Dragon’s Maze featured no actual Dragons and only barely a maze, but it did have Cluestones in pack-clogging abundance. Return to Ravnica was also notable for producing one of the most absurd Limited cards in Pack Rat, but it’s the Shaman that defined Return to Ravnica for me: intriguing on the page, domineering on the table. Fabled Passage isn’t enough, but we may see it as a pillar of Pioneer at one point. Part Birds of Paradise, part Scavenging Ooze, part Grim Lavamancer, the Shaman was banned in Modern and Legacy but never broke into Standard or Pioneer, although a critical mass of pseudo-fetchlands will eventually push it into playability. While we wouldn’t have the full block until 2013, Return to Ravnica brought powerful new tools ( Abrupt Decay, Sphinx’s Revelation, Cyclonic Rift, Rest in Peace, Dreadbore) and one unassuming but eventually problematic megaguildmage/one-mana “planeswalker” in Deathrite Shaman. ![]() Shocklands were cemented as a “Ravnica thing” (ironically, since they were given plane-agnostic names to make them easily reprintable outside Ravnican contexts) and the post-aughts Commander boom meant players were excited for a new round of guild legends. ![]() We hadn’t seen Ravnica since 2006’s Dissension, and expectations were high. ![]() We’ve covered a lot of ground in the last decade-too much to be captured by a handful of snapshots-but I wanted to revisit the ten cards that have the capacity to stand the test of time: When reflecting on the last decade, I remember the weddings and the deaths, the infrequent snows and consistent thunderstorms, and the brutal Prerelease losses and victories snatched by cards that became lasting favorites or temporary nemeses. I still feel like the Theros Prerelease was a couple of years ago, instead of the better part of a decade, and I still feel like the same person I was in 2010 or 2016, even though all the circumstances of my life have changed completely. One thing I’ve learned in those three and half decades, paradoxically, is that the more time you experience, the less it weighs. I just turned thirty-six this month, at the halfway point of my three-score and change I’ll get if I’m lucky. A decade later, we’re married with a 30-year mortgage on the house we first met in, our first child on the way, and several career shifts. In those ten years, a lot can happen: back in 2012, I had just started a new career and was a year into a relationship. Years pass by so quickly, especially as you get older, and ten years is a nice, round number. Everyone only gets a handful, but they’re long enough spans of time to be reasonable as foundational units. Decades make a lot of sense as the delineations of a human life. ![]()
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