Magic the Gathering: Nicol Bolas Game Pack Review

Magic the Gathering is one of the greats. Offering deep game play with a healthy dash of luck, a robust tournament scene, and countless game modes and ways to enjoy its patented blend of mathy gameplay and unique fantastical setting, Magic has earned its spot atop the heap of collectible card games. This new set pitches itself as a way to play Magic with a few friends right away, without having to spread thousands of cards across your kitchen table as you build that elusive perfect deck.

Archenemy was introduced as a new one vs. all multiplayer format some years back, and it’s making a return in the form of this standalone box set that allows four players to duke it out from the word go. Featuring three pre0constructed decks for the Gatewatch planeswalkers and one for the villainous Nicol Bolas player, the set lets you experience Archenemy without any tweaking, customization, or other purchases. It’s a noble goal and one that the set mostly accomplishes.

Nicol Bolas about to straight go to town on those Gatewatch fools.

The core Archenemy format itself is a blast. One player is beefed up through the use of oversized Scheme cards with powerful effects that trigger once per turn. He also starts with more life, and his deck is tuned with the express purpose of laying the smack down on multiple opponents at once. His goal is to beat all three of the other players, whose goal is to take his life down to zero before that happens.

The implementation here is excellent, and I do think it’s superior to the individual Archenemy sets that introduced the format. It’s convenient to have four balanced decks that work well with and against one another. It also conveys the ongoing Magic the Gathering narrative very effectively: playing as Nicol Bolas feels appropriately dastardly, while playing on the side of the Gatewatch feels appropriately desperate. Players will be coordinating attacks, buffing each other’s creatures, and making big sacrificial moves like keeping a teammate in the game for one more turn by blocking with one of your creatures to stave off defeat. Nissa’s green deck is pumping out lands and creatures like nobody’s business, fiery Chandra’s torching Bolas with damage spells, and Gideon’s white deck is replete with flying creatures and support abilities to help the team succeed.

As for Nicol Bolas’ deck, it’s a wild, multicolor deck that, when coupled with the included Scheme deck, is just downright nasty. He’s able to summon massive creatures early and often and keep the board clear of opposing beasties with plenty of destruction spells. It almost felt a little too powerful at times, though I’m sure with some experience and more familiarity with the decks, the Gatewatch team can pull off a win.

Schemes are ultra-powerful and very nasty.

The strange part about this set is that it’s not really a great buy for hardcore, tournament-level Magic players, since the cards included aren’t worth the sticker price (at least, not to my knowledge, being a long-out-of-the-loop MTG player). But it’s also not a great starting point for an MTG newcomer. This is because it doesn’t include any rules in the box for playing base Magic, only a few short paragraphs with vague instructions for playing Archenemy and a blurb about an updated blocking rule from the earlier Archenemy products. A rule sheet is much needed here too, since some of the more difficult keywords and the rule-heavy Planeswalker card types are present in each of the decks. And as with most Magic products, there’s no way to track the set’s various counters and life points, aside from an ornate life point tracker for the Bolas player. These seem like strange oversights, since this would have been an excellent standalone set to woo board gamers who aren’t interested in deck building, at least not yet.

So I don’t ultimately think it’s a great place to start if you haven’t played Magic at all before. But it does have a sweet spot: if you’re a casual Magic player with a few interested buddies, there’s probably no better prepackaged set to sink your teeth into.

With a good, experienced Magic the Gathering teacher, then, this set becomes something special for a few players looking to get their feet wet with the best TCG of them all. While the package is a little bit of a misfire and a missed opportunity, if you’re willing to Google the bizarre card interactions and obscure keywords that come up in just about every MTG match ever, this is a great way to experience Magic with some friends.