Foundations is bringing Core Sets back to Magic (again), and so far it seems to have been a really good idea. I’ve seen many players celebrate that there’s some hard-to-define “classic” feeling to how the set plays, even extending to the parts of the set that aren’t reprints. Part of that might be the power of branding, but Core Sets …
If we’re only to judge by the historical facts, Magic isn’t really sure if it likes having core sets. Nevertheless, it’s about to try and have one again for the first time in several years. Foundations is different in some ways from the classic core sets. It’s got more new cards than reprints, and looks to be a lot more …
For almost 20 years now, Planeswalkers have been central to Magic’s identity as a game. The Gatewatch (along with other notables like Sarkhan, Ral, Vraska and Sorin) established a recurring central cast for the game’s storyline. They created marketable, consistent mascots for their respective color combinations and home planes. By these business-centric measures, Planeswalker cards have been an unmitigated success. …
I touched on this last week, but isn’t it crazy to think back to a time when white decks could legitimately complain about not getting good cards? While we were in the middle of that era it felt truly interminable, but now it already feels like the distant past. Yet even back in that before-time, there were still some fringe …
Caretaker’s Talent has been taking hold in multiple formats, becoming a cornerstone of multiple decks that Tom dives deep into here! The cycle of rare Talents have been frontrunners for Bloomburrow’s best constructed cards right out of the blocks. In the first week after the set released, I wrote about a string of upstart Standard decks that were already emerging …
Graveyard decks have always been a huge part of Magic, ever since the first Animate Dead was used to cheat out the first Lord of the Pit or Shivan Dragon. But if you broaden your definition beyond simple reanimation, almost every deck has some way to get value out of the yard – and if yours doesn’t, you’re probably not …
Duskmourn: House of Horror represents a departure from previous Magic design in many ways, setting new expectations for lore, aesthetics, mechanics, and color pie divisions. So of course, the Limited environment you’ll find within the shifting walls of this insidious House is just as strange and daunting as everything else about it! It would be all too easy to stumble …
The Commander precons for Duskmourn: House of Horror were always going to be an exciting prospect just for the powerful new cards and scary movie flavor. But Wizards had an extra–sneaky jump scare in store for us with these decks: a revival of the 1v3 Archenemy format! Archenemy is one of the more exciting ideas Wizards has put together for …
We’re counting down to the release of Duskmourn, an expansion that seems to pack as many thrills and unexpected turns as the horror movies which inspired it. The set’s mechanics, its color pie, its arch-villain, even the modern-day aesthetic all feel new and uncertain, and the spoiler season has hit us with more than a few jump scares… Now, the …
The unveiling of new set mechanics is always my favorite part of spoiler season, since their quality has a huge impact on how we perceive that expansion. The new rules need enough flavor and novelty value to turn heads, but also to be balanced, and offer interesting play patterns that can hold up over the next 2-3 years of Standard. …
