The Commander format has one really fundamental problem: it’s explosive. And it’s only getting worse as time ticks on. I don’t just mean that the community discourse is liable to blow up at the slightest provocation (although, true). I mean that multiplayer Magic, especially with the card pool and ruleset present in this format, naturally trends toward explosive play patterns ... Read More...

The weekend of Jan. 13 brought us the most competitive Modern tournaments than we’ve seen in a long time. SCG Con New Jersey had both $20,000 and $5,000 tournaments while the LMS Open Qualifier took place in Trieste and the NRG Champs closed things out. Naturally, each high level Modern tournament offers worthwhile results to parse through.  Modern is in ... Read More...

Phyrexia: All Will Be One is right around the corner. It’s exciting to visit New Phyrexia again, and this visit also brings us two Commander precons. Whether you’re into Rebellion Rising’s Boros Equipment or the Corrupting Influence of an Abzan Toxic deck, these are two great choices for new and experienced players alike.  But what are the best cards to ... Read More...

One interesting part of non-rotating formats in Magic is that players learn how the wide array of cards start to work together in new and exciting ways over time, which allows for strategies to crop up using cards that have been available for a long time. This doesn’t happen often, but players have recently discovered a handful of new, viable ... Read More...

Up until now, the word “toxic” in Magic referred to behavior that made people not want to play with you anymore. With Phyrexia: All Will Be One, we now have the Toxic mechanic, meaning I can title this article “How to Be Toxic” and mean it without suddenly becoming a terrible person of one sort or another.   But as we’ve ... Read More...

As Magic players, most of us primarily care about how the game actually plays. However, so much more goes into a set than the cards themselves — from worldbuilding, to characters and the places they intersect. Often, these qualities outside of gameplay are called flavor, and they help sets taste different even if they are similar in some ways to ... Read More...

Awaken is an ability that appears on Instants and Sorceries, and gives an alternative casting cost for the spell. Whichever cost you pay, you get the normal effect of the spell. If you pay the Awaken cost, you then put a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the awaken number of that spell onto a land you control, and that ... Read More...