War of the Spark is "the most ambitious Magic: The Gathering card set ever," coming to both the physical version of the game and Magic: The Gathering Arena, the digital release that went into open beta last year. Wizards of the Coast has been sharing the new cards with the world this month, and we've got the exclusive reveal of one of them, a potentially powerful card-drawer called Finale of Revelation.
Finale of Revelation is played for 2 blue mana plus whatever you want to throw down for X, which determines the number of cards you'll draw. Make that X 10 mana or more and the effect changes. If X is 10 or more, you'll first shuffle your graveyard—that is, your discard pile—into your deck, then draw X number of cards, untap up to five lands, and then have no maximum size limit on your hand for the rest of the game. Finale of Revelation itself is strictly a one-shot, however: It's exiled—removed from the game, rather than discarded—after it's played.
It's a relatively unremarkable card during the early stages of the game, but becomes much more powerful later on if you've got the mana to fuel it—not just for the number of cards it potentially adds to your hand, but because it enables you to hang on to them, rather than having to cut your hand back to the normal max at the end of your turn.
There's lore attached to the card too, which you'd expect from Magic: The Gathering, although how much sense it makes (if any) will depend entirely on whether you've been following along: The card depicts Ugin's discovery of the Gem of Becoming in the Meditation Realm of Nicol Bolas, the key to his consciousness, and to finally ending his reign of terror.
(Crash course, courtesy of Wizards of the Coast: Nicol Bolas is the youngest and most powerful of the Elder Dragons to have survived the Elder Dragon War, filled with rage, envy, and a boundless capacity for violence; Ugin is his twin brother and bitter rival. Nicol Bolas has twice defeated Ugin in battle, but the Gem of Becoming, which Wizards of the Coast added in the Magic 2013 core set, may finally enable his undoing.)
War of the Spark is slated to go live in Magic: The Gathering Arena on April 25. Find out more at magic.wizards.com.
