Magic: The Gathering - Foundations Review
A truly comprehensive suite of beginner products sold at an attractive price point should be an absolute no-brainer for any big gaming hobby. Wizards of the Coast figured out how to do this pretty well with Dungeons & Dragons years ago; you sell a clearly labelled starter set at a low price point that features simple mechanics to acclimate newcomers. That set then leads logically to some slightly more pricey core products, and they then lead to getting as carried away as the customer wishes across the entire breadth of the hobby.
A tiered system like this is smart because it’s not just easy for potential players to understand, it’s also effortless for retailers to communicate to them. Given how Wizards’ other juggernaut Magic: The Gathering carries with it a similar degree of perceived complexity and impenetrability as D&D, it’s frankly astonishing to me that they have struggled for so long to establish a similarly welcoming suite of pathway products.
There have been plenty of ‘Starter Kit’ releases before now that feature a pair of decks and a basic rulebook, but they’ve never been good at all at gently guiding a player through from the absolute outside all the way to the obsessive heights of where a Magic habit can go.
As a card set and as a product range, Magic: The Gathering – Foundations has been designed expressly to teach absolute trading-card game beginners not just how to play the game, but also how to get into and engage with the TCG hobby in general. It is the single best, smartest, and most genuinely necessary suite of products that the venerable game system has seen in years.
Your starting point is the Beginner Box. It features two ready-to-play starter decks each with an accompanying quick start guide, two folding playmats made of thick cardstock, two D20’s for life tracking, a small number of cardboard buff counters, eight Jumpstart packs, and a rulebook. Everything included is pre-set with no randomization, so no Beginner Box will have power variation whatsoever with any other.
The intent is that to begin with each player will take one of the starter decks along with its accompanying book. These decks are designed specifically to NOT be shuffled as each of their books instructs the player very clearly as to what they are supposed to do on each of their first six turns using the specific cards it knows will be drawn. After that initial game is complete, each player can graduate to making Jumpstart decks by smashing together any two of the eight packs included, introducing them to more freedom and experimentation as they do. It’s incredibly clever in its step-by-step simplicity, made more so by the fact that none of the cards featured within the Foundations set feature particularly complex interactions or keywords.
At an RRP of $54.99AUD the Beginner Box strains against the ceiling of what could realistically be called an impulse purchase. A lot of retailers do appear to be selling it closer to the $40AUD mark which feels more appropriate though. I wish that Wizards themselves were willing to price it as more of a loss-leader, but regardless, it’s still a brilliantly designed package.
From there player’s can progress to the Starter Collection box. At $129.95AUD it feels like a significant leap to make, but its structure is such that it’s pretty perfect as a thing to 50/50 split with a friend.
For the money you get a short but informative deck-builder’s guidebook and a pre-determined selection of over 300 cards consisting of uncomplicated creatures, spells, tokens, and lands. The included collection is designed to be as broadly useful as possible for deck building and features a surprising number of great rares and mythics throughout. Three Foundations Play Boosters are thrown in to introduce some variation, plus a new click-wheel life counter that doubles as the most satisfying fidget toy you’ll ever own. It’s an absolute brick of a package that will keep budding Planeswalkers busy for some time.
The set includes Play Boosters as I mentioned, along with prerelease packs, bundles, and collector boosters. The prerelease and bundles are fine but feel unnecessary given the purpose of the set, and I do majorly question the inclusion of pricey collectors boosters here for that same reason. Wizards has promised that Foundations will remain fully tournament legal and won’t rotate out until at least 2029, but frankly it wouldn’t shock me to see all but the core Beginner Box, Starter Collection, and Play Boosters melt away much sooner. It’s a product line that’s screaming to be sold at the Kmart’s of the world as much as the card stores, and I really hope that Wizards do see fit to push it in such places.
As an experienced Magic-er I’ve found it tremendously refreshing playing games where neither competitor has to worry about cards hitting the table that bear multiple-paragraph long slabs of rules or keywords from old sets that require looking up. There’s nothing in the set that really bogs-down a turn or bloats the battlefield; Foundations strips everything back to Magic’s basics and there’s tremendous joy to be found in that.
I never expected it going in, but Foundations has turned out to be my favourite Magic: The Gathering release of the year. It’s not only the best starting point ever for newcomers but also a stark reminder to veterans that when 30 years of expansion bloat are peeled back, the game is still very good at its core.
Magic: The Gathering – Foundations was reviewed using products kindly provided by Wizards of the Coast.
