First off, a brief history of my own experience playing magic. For those of you familiar with the game, this will make sense. For those of you who aren't familiar, skip this paragraph since you'll just be confused. I started with the Weatherlight cycle, played for a while and eventually took a break from the game until high school, where I really started again with the Invasion block and that's when I really got into the game. I loved Odyssey, and starting with it, I bought a booster box of each set with its release (My stepdad was friendly with the owner of a local comic store, so I was usually able to get a box when it arrived, a few days before the official release. Naturally this made me the cool kid among my group of players at school). My last of these boxes was Mirrodin, which really killed the love I had for the game. Onslaught had started the trend, but it wasn't too bad. Mirrodin was overkill. It had a theme that was all-too-obvious and forced you to create decks based around it. Deckbuilding is my favorite aspect of the game, and the metal plane set didn't allow you any freedom if you didn't want to use artifacts. This coincided with the frame change, which isn't that big of a deal, but it caused a lot of the "Magic's dead" panic. I also graduated from high school around the same time, so I stopped playing for a couple of years. I started up again late in the Ravnica block, and really got back into the game with Time Spiral, two blocks that really brought back the spirit of the game for me. Lorwyn just killed it again, going a little overboard on the creature type theme. In fact, I often say that Lorwyn feels like a combination of Onslaught and Mirrodin. Going with that, I didn't have high hopes for Shadowmoor. The other day I couldn't help myself, and took a gander at the previews for the new set. And by golly, if Lorwyn is Onslaught and Mirrodin, Shadowmoor looks like Ravnica and Time Spiral. Hell, that sounds good to me.