Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Strategy”
Commander players love firing off removal, but removal has a finite supply. Kristen is here this week to argue that there’s a simple solution: playing more blockers. Most points of contention in a game of Commander center around what to do with removal. “Why did you target X, instead of Y?” “If you didn’t remove, X, you would have had …
Escalate appears on Instants and Sorceries. Specifically, modal instants and sorceries, where you have a choice of several possible effects when you cast the spell. When you cast a spell with the mechanic, you chose a mode for its normal cost. You could then choose additional modes by paying the Escalate cost, adding another effect each time you paid that …
Emerge is an alternate cost that appears (so far) on large colorless creatures (I mean, Eldrazi) from Shadows Over Innistrad. To pay the emerge cost for a creature (which was always a discount, but included colored mana where the normal cost did not), you sacrifice a creature and pay an amount of mana equal to the emerge cost minus generic …
Commander is about self-expression; playing with your favorite cards and mechanics with the best possible support from across Magic history. But what if your favorite cards in Commander are combat tricks? Single-target creature pump spells can be gamewinners in Limited or 1v1 Constructed, but it takes some special effort to help them scale up to the 40 life multiplayer metagame. …
Surge can appear on any non-land card, and represents an alternate casting cost that you can use if you or a teammate has already cast a spell that turn – the spell is cheaper if you’ve already cast something else. As you may be able to tell from the word teammate there, this is a mechanic that can function quite …
If you’re looking to build a white Commander deck, you can’t miss our rundown of 20 essential white cards. These are the most flexible and often best cards in their class, and will fit into pretty much any strategy or archetype. They’re perfect to add to your collection. White is a great color to play with in Commander, and it’s …
Skulk is a evasion ability that appears on creatures, and any creature with it can’t be blocked by creatures with greater power than the skulk creature. And this one is truly simple as that’s really it. The power restriction is determined as blockers are being declared, and multiple instances of it are redundant, and there’s really not too much more …
A few weeks ago I wrote about what I thought was the Modern best card from each color in Phyrexia: All Will Be One. I pegged Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler as the multicolor card, and while Tyvar has seen play so far, it appears I missed the mark. Atraxa, Grand Unifier is the card proving to be relevant — not only …
Undaunted, from Commander 2016, is a cost-reduction mechanic that gets better the more opponents you have. Any spell with the mechanic costs 1 generic mana less for each opponent you currently have. Yup. That’s it. I mean, here’s a few notes, but it’s pretty simple. While Undaunted does technically function in a game of one-on-one Magic, the spells with it …
For Mirrodin is a hyper-specifically named Equipment mechanic from Phyrexia: All Will Be One. When an Equipment with For Mirrodin! on it enters the battlefield, you create a 2/2 red Rebel creature token and attach the equipment to it. And that’s it! Pretty simple, only a couple of notes here: So here’s the thing: we’ve seen this before in Magic, …
