Lumeria: The Great Divide
Last year, our Product Design team embarked on an ambitious new project: to curate a draftable “set” from existing Magic cards. We called it a Designer Draft, and it was incredibly successful — boxes of Lumeria: The Infinite City sold out the weekend of release, and we’ve received positive feedback about the product from the Magic community at large. This ... Read More...
Modern and Pioneer Metagame Update
As the end of 2019 approaches, we’ve seen a lot in Magic over the year in Modern, and a brand-new format emerge in Pioneer. We were lucky enough to get a bevy of events this last weekend to pull data from: the StarCityGames Invitational, a Modern MTGO PTQ, a Modern MTGO Challenge, two Modern PTQs at GP Sao Paulo, a ... Read More...
Oko Banned in Standard
Oko, Thief of Crowns? Out. Once Upon a Time? Not anytime soon. Veil of Summer? So last season. With Monday’s Banned and Restricted announcement, some of the biggest players in Standard have been overthrown, opening up a wide world of deck-building possibilities. Artifacts and powerful creatures that Oko has turned into elk are viable again; more aggressive strategies can better ... Read More...
In Defense of Three-Mana Planeswalkers
Oko, Thief of Crowns appeared in 69% of decks at Mythic Championship VI. Simic-based Food was the obvious best deck going into the high-stakes event, so the elite field of competitors were highly incentivized to beat Oko any way they could. (In the end, an unprecedented majority chose to join him instead.) The Oko build of Urza combo is arguably ... Read More...
My Mythic Championship VI Experience
Walking around the tournament halls at MagicFest Richmond last weekend, I heard people talking about the Mythic Championship happening next door like it was some distant event. A number of players have only seen the Mythic Championship on stream, or maybe they’ve taken a stroll through the tournament hall between rounds at a Grand Prix. Today, I’m here to share my ... Read More...
Best Lands in Magic
Choosing lands is one of the hardest steps in building a multicolored deck. Each cycle of multicolored lands comes with different benefits and drawbacks, and evaluating them against each other can be a challenge. In this post, we’ll walk through the multicolored lands available in some popular formats and assess how useful they are. Our goal here is to provide ... Read More...
How to Play An Aggro Deck
How many ways are there to count to twenty? Aggressive decks in Magic and similar card games are often characterized as simpler and less skill-intensive than others. The idea is that playing a reactive midrange or control deck forces you to adapt to each opponent. But to excel with aggro is to play predictively – you need to anticipate how ... Read More...