Is it almost October already? It's that time of the year again when a new expansion block is coming. A new expansion block means new abilities to learn, new cards to be acquainted to, and even a new card type to look out for. (Yes, they're giving Tarmogoyf one more point of power and toughness and be bigger but what can you do about it? Terror.) Though I'm not going to say goodbye to the Ravnica abilities yet because I'm not in the proper context and it's really not yet the proper time to do so, help me to say a warm "Hello!" to the English (or British, if you prefer) fantasy feel of Lorwyn.

With the lack of ability to generate a proper pool of cards for a sealed deck simulation, I'm not writing a sealed draft walkthrough here.This time, I'll "evaluate" and enumerate the new things to be expected from Lorwyn as indicated in the Lorwyn Rules Primer with reference to the full spoiler from MTGSalvation.com.

Planeswalkers

Speculated as early as Future Sight, the Planeswalker card type is probably one of the biggest additions to come by Magic in recent years. Clearly spelled out in Tarmogoyf's reminder text, the word Planeswalker has had players around the world excited over its existence. Future Sight supposedly was looking forward towards the future and the "timeshifted" cards would somehow resemble cards in future prints as well as mentioning hints what the future is supposed to be for Magic. Some probably scoffed at the Planeswalker word as something that might not happen at all.

It's been almost more than a month now that the existence of Planeswalkers has been confirmed. So there's no need to speculate anymore. Planeswalkers are here to stay and we should be expecting more Planeswalkers in future expansion sets.

There are 5 Planeswalkers in Lorwyn, one for each color. To somehow sum up the Planeswalkers: it's a permanent, it's got 3 abilities (each good and usable enough in a deck), any of the abilities can be used only once and in your turn only. It should be noted that the Planeswalker is not a creature thus it can not be enchanted by an Aura that says Enchant Creature. Nor can the Planeswalker attack.Thus, when thinking about it in Lorwyn sealed, the Planeswalker is more of a sorcery rather than a Creature.

Is a Planeswalker card a must play in sealed? Why not? Honestly, I will let myself be attracted to the color of the Planeswalker that I'll be getting. Considering that there are only 5 Planeswalkers out of the 301 cards in Lorwyn, a player would be lucky to open and get one Planeswalker. Having 2 Planeswalkers in the pool is already so wicked!

The Neutral Grounds forum has long been debating on who is the best Planeswalker. In a poll, Jace Beleren (the blue Planeswalker) comes out on top but barely with Chandra Nalaar (red Planeswalker) and Liliana Vess (black Planeswalker) closely behind. Garruk Wildspeaker (green Planeswalker) is not that far behind while Ajani Goldmane (white Planeswalker) continues to get no love over his "gay"-ness.

In a pinch, here is a rundown on each Planeswalker (with additional comments obtained from the Planeswalker thread in NG forums):

1. Jace Beleren so far is the Planeswalker with lots of fans. He's the cheapest of the 5 and has every control player's favorite ability: card drawing. Card drawing can be harmless if compared to the abilities of the other Planeswalkers but, as has always been what Magic is, more cards in hand means card advantage for the win. Incidentally, the Jace's third ability is to mill a whopping 20 cards from a player's library. Here's what I thought up for limited:

   - if Jace Beleren is played on the third turn, the opponent might have already drawn 10 cards from the library (7 cards from opening draw, 1 card each drawn per turn – that is if the player didn't mulligan). Activate Jace loyalty pump (loyalty count: 5, cards drawn: 11). Keep this up for 3 more turns and Jace will end up with 11 loyalty counters and the opponent will have drawn 17 cards. By the 7th turn of the game, he will have drawn his 18th card and then mill for 20(minus 10 loyalty counters and still one remaining on Jace)! That's a total of 38 cards already out of the library. By this time, the opponent only has one more turn left to try and win the game. Well, all this depends on whether Jace's controller survives the whole time or if Jace's loyalty counters are left untouched. Also, the library milling could be sped up if the Merfolk tribe is being played which incidentally is under the color blue.

2. Chandra Nalaar is a close second to Jace and why not? Chandra is exactly what red is supposed to be: pure damage. If played on the 5th turn, Chandra will be able to blow up for 10 damage on the 7th turn. Well, it could be a bit of an overkill already considering that red can be faster than that. Anyway in limited, any damage is worth it.

3. Liliana Vess, a play on the word villainess, came from behind Garruk to take 3rd place. Liliana's abilities are very usable in limited but she's more likely to turn out to be a late game tutor. It's kind of risky that the card goes on top of the library rather than the hand but Liliana could very well turn the tide of the game with the searched card.

4. In the NG Planeswalker poll, I voted for Garruk Wildspeaker. My reasoning was that, on its own, Garruk would be able to generate as much as 3 3/3 creatures continuously. I realized too late that Chandra could inflict more damage than Garruk could.Anyway, creature generation is never bad. And if there's no need to generate the creatures because they are plentiful, it's always nice to give the critters +3/+3 and trample. Talk about an Overrun when there's supposed to be non printed in Lorwyn.

5. And finally we have Ajani. Last and voted as the least is the gay Ajani Goldmane. Well, gaining life isn't all that crappy. I guess the aim with Ajani is to get to the point where the X/X Avatar token can come into play. The X/X Avatar is a big doozy. The first ability allows for the gaining of life and it pumps up the loyalty counters while the third and big ability generates the X/X Avatar token. What's X? Oh, it's just the life total of the controller of Ajani, which should turn out to be a big number after gaining all those life points from the first ability.

   Here are some comments about Ajani, just to sum it all up on how he's loved:

   • activeplayer on September 18 (asked on whether nobody wanted Ajani): "Wala. Kahit Wizards ayaw sa puti." (None. Even Wizards don't like the color white)

   • Edgewalker on September 20 (ranking all 5 Planeswalkers): "Ajani, ayoko din sa kanya" (I don't like it.)

   • activeplayer again on September 24: "next na thread siguro why wizards always give gay cards to white mages... sayang si Ajani. dami sanang magandang abilities from white. kya lang pinahina nila with the gayness churva!!" (The next thread would be why Wizards always gives gay cards to white mages. Too bad for Ajani. There are supposedly a lot of good abilities from white. But they slowed it down with the gayness!!)

That should pretty much sum up some stuff about the Planeswalkers.

Clash

What's with Clash? It's a new keyword action for Lorwyn that allows additional effects if the spell caster wins the "clashing". To clash is to reveal the top card of the library (the opponent does so also). The spell caster wins the clash if he/she reveals a card with the higher casting cost. There's no losing the clash here. It's either the clash was won by the spell caster or not. And the opponent is not going to get the additional effect upon not losing the clash. One might notice that I'm not using the phrase, "f opponent wins the clash". That's because the opponent will never get the chance to win in a clash. It's either the opponent loses or not lose.

Most of the spells that have the clash keyword adds to the spell's ability. For creatures, winning the clash provides an add-on to the creature.

Having not read the reminder text more thoroughly before, I thought that Clashing would be a waste because the top card would be placed in the bottom. There actually IS an option to put the revealed card on top or the bottom of the library. In a pinch, clash is also a Scry 1 ability. Unfortunately, the opponent also gets that same ability. But what the heck, Clash is usable enough for limited. Go ahead and use it.

Changelings

Mistform Ultimus meet your counterpart.

To sum up on the Changelings, they are objects of any creature type. Take note, objects and not just creatures, which means to say that there are Changeling instants or sorceries out there.

If well supported, the Changelings might turn out to be this expansion's Slivers. Since in Lorwyn there's a need to think about the creature types in figuring out what cards to play, Changeling ability allows for the insertion of this creature (or object) types and still not skip a beat with the tribe that's chosen for the sealed deck.

It seems to me that the rest of the featured details are plain and simple enough. Here are final words to ponder upon before I end my article. Play the rare Champion creatures. So far, they are bombs. The same goes for the Incarnations. The Incarnations are so far difficult to cast because of the mana requirements but all of them are certainly worth it once they get to be played.

Have fun in the Lorwyn prerelease! I'll be playing in the Cebu prerelease and will once again chase after the bus trip back home to Dumaguete once the day is done.