After Temur Energy’s outstanding performance at the World Championships, many would-be National Champions sleeved up strategies to stand in the way of the new Best Deck. From Heart of Kiran and Toolcraft Exemplar to God-Pharaoh’s Gift and The Scarab God, main decks and sideboards were diverse in their game plans to stop thopters and Glorybringer alike, but with three of …
This week, two great baseball teams – the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers – will face off in the World Series. Now, you may be asking, what does any of this have to do with Magic: the Gathering? Aren’t most gamers not really all that into sports? Well, first of all, there are many of us out there …
The best quality you can have in any community is inspiration. The ability to inspire others is infectious, challenging your community to create for the sake of excitement and bettering what we can accomplish. In Commander, I’ve found inspiration is the best quality amongst the playgroups I’ve seen or participated in. Developing a close-knit group that encourages you to bring …
Judges are some of the hardest-working members of the Magic community. They build and maintain healthy communities at local game stores, set and enforce equitable tournament policy, and make sure Magic‘s largest events run smoothly. Over the years, I’ve been especially impressed by the judges I know who regularly travel to Grand Prix, where they spend long days overseeing events, …
Two years ago, we launched our in-house product line with Battle Decks: a series of casual 60-card decks. Battle Decks were created for enfranchised players looking to play some fun games of Magic on a budget, and we soon realized that there was a need for a separate, beginner-friendly product. We wanted to create a teaching tool for new and …
As I mentioned in last week’s article, Ixalan has done a lot to change the way Magic players approach creature tribes. This week, we’re going to explore not only the power of our new Pirates, but the possibilities of combining them with additional tribal support as we look at the emergence of an up-and-coming Commander archetype, “Creature Type Matters.” WHY …
APNAP (Active Player/Non-Active Player) is one of those little rules things underpinning Magic that serves to hold everything together without drawing too much attention to itself. It’s one of the many bits that lets the game function without becoming a tangled mess of unclear priority passes, garbled timing, and…The Batch. For anyone who played prior to the Sixth Edition rules …
Somewhere in Ixalan’s never-ending, Neverland-esque Pirate-Dinosaur skirmish, our imagination, childhood, and hearts were smitten with the possibilities of some of the most refreshing designs to date. And boy, they didn’t disappoint! While most have been taken with the overabundance of new creature types, the biggest win for me is a long-standing theory I’ve held about creatures and the color pie: …
My goodness, this preview season has been a doozy! And with the first rotation in what feels like years pushing the Battle for Zendikar and Shadows over Innistrad blocks out of Standard, it looks like there’s a wide open metagame just waiting for dinosaurs and pirates to invade. Between new cards and reprints, there’s definitely more than a few cards …
To call Hour of Devastation Standard a success for the Red Deck would be quite the understatement. Over the past three months, loyal red mages got to see their deck vault into the top tier, culminating in Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa’s convincing win (amidst a Top 8 with six other red aggressive decks). The additions of Earthshaker Khenra, Abrade, …
