You might have noticed friends or other players talking about how their Commander deck has a “Secret Commander”. Let’s dig into what a “Secret Commander” is, why people have them, and the art of building your deck to take advantage of playing a “Secret Commander”. WHAT IS A SECRET COMMANDER When you build a Commander deck, you build it around …
How Many Spider-Men Are Too Many Spider-Mans?
How many Spider-Men are too many Spider-Man? It’s a question I find myself asking as we head into Universes Beyond: Marvel’s Spider-Man season. As of the writing of this article, when you search “Spider-Man” on Scryfall, you get 13 different cards. That’s not including the additional “technically” Spider-Man creatures like Iron Spider, SP//dr, Piloted by Peni, or Spider-Ham, Peter Porker. …
Only 90’s Kids Understand: Are Old-School Mechanics Still Useful?
Magic’s long and unbroken history of development makes it truly unique among strategy games – three decades of evolution and expansion, stretching back towards Antiquities. The constant churn of new cards and new mechanics keeps Magic fresh and current. It also creates something akin to “generations” in its audience. We each discover and learn the Magic of our own time, …
How Hard Is it To Cast Anti-Venom?
Marvel’s Spider-Man is the next Standard-release set. You can preorder the set now, and it releases on September 26th. We’ve already seen a huge chunk of the set, and there’s one card in particular that caught my eye because of it’s eye-popping casting cost. Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer is the first-ever card to cost “WWWWW,” and only the 7th card in …
The Best Counterspells in MTG (Since the Last List)
Counterspells are a core building block of Magic: one of the fundamental effects that make up its periodic table. By this point in history we’ve seen literally hundreds of variations on the original Counterspell, and you can still rely on at least one or two new ones appearing in every set. Of course, not all counter-magic is created equal. In …
Your Old Cards Are Secretly OP Now
The power level of Magic cards is not static. This is because new cards are created all the time, creating a brand-new context for your cards every time that happens. This often leads to cards that were once viewed as useless or uninteresting suddenly getting a major upgrade, sometimes decades after originally being printed. So, get out your shoe boxes …
Edge of Eternities Draft Guide
It might be weird to say I feel sympathy for a Magic set. But Edge of Eternities really got a raw deal: not only was its debut slotted between huge Universes Beyond sets like Final Fantasy and Marvel’s Spider-Man, but it also had the challenge of launching the game’s first “space fantasy” setting. Could this one release manage to make …
Untapped Synergies For Tapping Creatures
Do you ever see a new mechanic get spoiled and start rubbing your hands gleefully, or even remark aloud something like “they made this just for me!” I’ve been thrilled by almost everything Wizards have revealed from Edge of Eternities so far, as it all seems to lean into my pre-existing playstyle preferences. But the station mechanic I find particularly …
Edge of Eternities Prerelease Guide
I’m not sure whether this counts as a hot take, but I think prereleases are by far the best event on the Magic calendar. They’re not just hype incubators for new sets like Edge of Eternities: I could go on and on with this kind of praise. But I assume that most of you like prereleases – or at least …
Mechanics of the Eternities
Magic is diverting power to its main thrusters, and preparing to boldly go into a new frontier of genre fiction… space opera! While we’ve had glimpses of advanced tech like robots and rocket launchers since 1994’s Antiquities, and Unfinity added some explicitly interstellar aesthetics to the game, Edge of Eternities is the first time we’ll be exploring the design space …










