Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Standard”
It’s the season when we as writers often take a step back and review the most exciting beats of the year just gone. But from a Standard perspective, it feels like most of the year was just a buildup to the excitement of the last few months. The first rotation in years has been exactly the kind of watershed players …
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. …
The announcement that Universes Beyond sets will be legal in all formats – including Standard – beginning with new sets in 2025 came as something of a shock to the Magic community. Is it actually a good move? You might have been lucky enough to attend MagicCon Vegas this weekend. You might also, like me, have been at home, refreshing …
MagicCon Las Vegas happened this past weekend, and with it came a presentation from Wizards of the Coast breaking down what we have to look forward to from Magic in 2025. We’ve gathered that information here for you – so without further ado, prepare for THE FUTURE! Ahem. Anyway, the future starts with a look to the past: Innistrad Remastered – …
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 …
Standard is in a really interesting place right now – and not least because it’s not the one I or many other people expected. The post-Bloomburrow format has begun to settle after its long-awaited rotation, and while GB Midrange and Atraxa Ramp remain top contenders, they are surrounded on all sides by hyper-aggressive aggro decks! It’s true that aggro is …
Standard is in a chaotic place right now. Even if Bloomburrow had zero cards in it, it still would have been the most impactful set since 2022 – purely because it triggered the first proper rotation of the 3-year Standard era. Many of the cards and decks which had calcified in place at the top of the metagame are now …
