What’s a powerful card that should go in every deck, was originally limited to only 1,000 copies and was recently reprinted as a 2nd Edition promo? Cryptid Nation! Okay I kid, but technically that answer would be right too. This time, however, we’ll be discussing the actual answer I’m looking for – a card considered by some to have such a high strength level that it’s predicted to be the first banned card in MetaZoo – New Year’s New Beginnings!
With 2022 just beginning, I couldn’t think of a better time to discuss this powerhouse of a page along with a comparison to its less-carbonated cousins, New Beginnings and New Year’s Celebrations. Because of the reasons I mentioned previously, NYNB is one of the cards in MetaZoo that started off on the pricey end before the game exploded. This is because of its reference to its predecessor in Magic: the Gathering known as Wheel of Fortune – a card considered so overpowered it had to be permanently banned in almost every format of the game. But why is a card that simply draws you and your opponent a fresh hand considered to have such a crazy power level?
Well that’s because it can do more than just draw cards. The true nature of its strength lies in the combination of that plus destroying your opponents’ entire hand for only one Aura of any type with practically no downside.
Some example scenarios are:
- If your opponent draws a hand in the first round of the game that they decide they want to keep and you draw a hand that either forces you to mulligan down or is missing a couple key components. Even if you have to mulligan down to three cards, if one of them happens to be NYNB, you can now force your opponent to get rid of their perfect hand while allowing you to redraw a full, seven-card one. On your very first turn.
- If your opponent has just tutored for a specific card to set up their combo, you can force them to get rid of it and possibly their whole combo without having to choose a specific card in their hand.
And in MetaZoo, once cards hit the cemetery, there aren’t very many opportunities for them to come back unless you happen to be playing a specific type like Dark or Spirit. And even those types have limits on what they can do because of their wording; for example, cards that let you bring back a beastie from your afterlife or limbo won’t let you rescue a beastie from your cemetery. This is what makes NYNB the better choice over the more widely available New Beginnings – a card which on the surface appears to do the same job for cheaper secondary market cost, but on closer inspection seems to have taken shortcuts.
Shuffling a bad hand into your deck runs the risk of drawing the same cards you don’t need all over again. And causing your opponent to shuffle a good hand into their deck risks them drawing the same great hand – or an even better one. Sending these cards to the Cemetery erases both risks and even if your opponent draws a good hand/you draw a bad one, at least you got some cards out of the way that hopefully won’t be popping up again when you really don’t want them to.
However, at the end of the day, if NYNB is out of your budget, NB is a fine substitution that will definitely do more favors for you than the recently released holiday promo: New Year’s Celebrations.
This is because NYC gives your opponent the option to save their hand/best cards – something we definitely don’t want! On the plus side though, NYC features an adorable Loveland Frogman in New Year’s attire which more than makes up for the cards’ downsides.
Do you think New Year’s New Beginnings is as strong as it’s hyped up to be? Let me know your thoughts below! If you’d like to help support my writing and decide to add any of these cards to your decks (or purchase any other TCG products through ChannelFireball) feel free to use my code “GHOSTBEAR” at checkout.
