168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering's latest preview season has officially begun, with more information about the reprint-focused Double Masters 2022 being revealed. A reprint set with a higher number of powerful rare or mythic cards than normal, and puts two in each booster pack, we've already seen 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dockside Extortionist is making its long-overdue reappearance after its debut printi🥃ng in Commander🐓 2019.

As Double Masters 2022 is almost wholly reprints, the debut ditched the usual debut features like introducing new mechanics and story spots. Instead, it focused on the gameplay specifics, including draft archetypes, the selection process behind each card's inclusion, and even introduced a single, brand-new land with interesting consequences for drafting.

RELATED: Everything You Need To Know About Magic: The Gathering's Double Masters 2022 Preview Season

, marks the start of a week-long preview season for the set, with new cards being revealed all day, every day until Friday, June 24. Double Masters 2022 launches exclusively in English for tabletop play on July 8.

Cryptic Spires

Double Masters 2022 has a three-colour-matters focus, which means many of the cards and all of its draft archetypes have three different colours. However, Double Masters 2022 is doing something we've not often seen, and is using all ten three-colour combinations. Both wedges (three allied colours) and shards (💧two allied and one enemy) will be represented here, meaning mana fixing and ensuring you have the lands n🦄eeded is vital.

For that, the one new card in this set is Cryptic Spires, a land that asks you to physically draw on the card when constructing your deck. It's essentially a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:do-it-yourself tapland, as you can decide which two colours it is, but it enterꦓs the battlefield tapped. This is the first time in Magic any card has ever asked you to physically mark the card, whichౠ opens up a lot of potential design space for future sets.

However, it's also not a particularly great land, which means it fills a similar role to the Prismatic Piper or the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Faceless One from the two Commander Legends sets. It's designed to give unlucky drafters a way to get into the colours they want to play, instead of basing their decks purely on the lands they've otherwise pulled.

Cryptic Spires will also be legal in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Commander, VIntage, Pauper, Legacy, though why you'd use it over the two-colour lands you actually want in a constructed format is anybody's guess.

Draft Archetypes

As mentioned, Double Masters 2022 is a 𓆉three-colours-matter set, with ten set archetypes based on each of the three-colour combinations.

Though some of the archetypes are exactly what you would expect, such as Esper (white/blue/black) being about flickering cards (exiling them, then returning them to the battlefield) and Sultai (black/green/blue) being a graveyard-matters strategy, others delve into more obscure mechanics and play design spaces. For instance, Naya (red/green/white) revisits Theros' heroic mechanic and chꦆallenges꧅ you to target your creatures with as many spells as you can for profit.

Though we don't know every card for the set so far, we do know the ten archetypes:

Part of the set's design involves having common and uncommon cards be as flexible as possible, meaning many cards will be applicable for numerous archetypes.

An example given was Settle Beyond Reality, a sorcery that can exile an opponent's creature and blink one of your own. In the Esper archetype, it is being used as a value engine that's meant to be repeated numerous times, whereas in Bant it is a one-off to flicker a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:ramping creature like Elvish Rejuvenator.

New Art Treatments

Though we'd already heard about the etched foiling and new 'textured foil' from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the sneak preview stream last month, the de🍎but also ꦇrevealed that cards of all rarities will be getting borderless, alternative art.

Whereas other sets often limit such styles to their rares, this set gives "beloved cards" that see a lot of play the fancy versions, regardless of their rarity. For example, Mulldrifter is an uncommon staple of all 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:flicker decks thanks to its card drawing capabilities. In Double Masters 2022, it's receiving both its original art by Eric Fortune, and a new, borderless style by Geoff Miracola.

Other cards have also had their alt-art revealed, such as the commons Seeker of the Way, Unearth and Rampant Growth, allowing Pauper players to bling up their decks a bit. Of course, the big pulls are also getting alt-arts, as can be seen in a reprint of a card not seen since 1999's Portal: Three Kingdoms, Imperial Seal.

Rarity Downshifts

Though Double Masters 2022 is focused on having lots of rares and mythic rares, it is bumping a few cards down to the lower rarities as well (known as a "downshift"). For most formats, this isn't particularly important, but this means huge things for the commons-only 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pauper format.

So far, two downshifts have been revealed: Dark-Dweller Oracle, which was reprinted as a rare as recently as last year's Adventures in the Forgotten Realms precon decks, and Experiment One, which is going from uncommon to common. It was hinted that at least one more card will be downshifted to common, though it wasn't confirmed which card that would be.

Keep in mind that Pauper is one of the few formats to have its card legality changed by Double Masters 2022. A card being printed in this set doesn't automatically mean it is now legal in formats like Pioneer, Modern, or Standard. NEXT: MTG's $55 Double Masters 2022 Collector's Booster Packs Are Silly, But Not The End Of The World