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...

While Commander’s grassroots origins make it different from many other Magic formats, it still has a ban list like the rest of them. However, since Commander is not a competitive format with tournament data to back up banning certain cards, some players are unsure why certain offenders end up on the list. Today, we’re going to take a look at ... Read More...

Kristen lends a few thoughts on how to navigate a game of casual Commander based on what seat you’re in. I’ve been thinking, lately, about how useful data can be when reviewing games of Commander. A lot of theory and observations on the format skew toward subjectivity and anecdote, and as we all know, that’s not the most reliable type ... Read More...