Graveyard decks have always been a huge part of Magic, ever since the first Animate Dead was used to cheat out the first Lord of the Pit or Shivan Dragon. But if you broaden your definition beyond simple reanimation, almost every deck has some way to get value out of the yard – and if yours doesn’t, you’re probably not …
Up the Beanstalk in Older Formats
If the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk has a lesson, it’s that drawing cards in older formats is good. This is the reason players are trying to see how high Up the Beanstalk can go in formats like Pioneer, Modern and Legacy — right? OK, that may not be the lesson from Jack and the Beanstalk, but the part …
Banned and Restricted Update: August 2023
This week, Wizards of the Coast announced their last Banned and Restricted update before switching to a new, yearly cadence in October. But while conversation in the community was blowing up about targets for Modern and Pioneer, every possible option escaped the hammer. Instead, Wizards of the Coast actually unbanned two cards, one in Modern and one in Legacy. The …
Is the Ring Tempts You the New Initiative?
The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth brings us the newest Magic mechanic “The Ring Tempts You.” Naturally, once players saw the ring tempts you in stages on a track that exists outside the game, comparisons to the Initiative mechanic started flowing. Is being tempted by the ring going to be as format defining in Modern as taking the …
Fringe Format: 7-Point Highlander
Despite the online grumbling, Eternal Magic is a lot of fun! With the widest pool of cards legal to play, you can sleeve up the idealized version of your favorite strategy from the game’s entire 30-year history and take on the world. Of course, while sitting down to play doesn’t always work out quite as advertised, the 7-Point Highlander format …
Fringe Magic Format: Heritage
Often here on Fringe Format, we’re covering ways of playing that have been around for a while, even if they haven’t received much attention outside a small circle of players. This time, we’re getting in on the ground floor with Heritage, a brand-new, community-driven Magic format that just had its first relatively major event this past weekend. But before we …
Magic Banned and Restricted assessment: October 2022
Wizards of the Coast updated the Banned and Restricted list on Monday, which naturally led to the kind of discussion that always comes up when this happens — whether the update hit everything players wanted. Naturally, some players ended up happy while others wondered if this approach was enough. Many players expected bans across Pioneer and Legacy, too, with additional …
Assessing Unfinity in Legacy: Part 2
One of the most contentious sets in Magic history releases on Friday: Unfinity! While un-sets are historically just full of fun joke cards with cool basic lands thrown in, Unfinity is something more. The reason? About 40% of the cards in Unfinity are legal in Legacy and Commander! This is unprecedented, and it has caused a lot of hand wringing about …
Assessing Unfinity in Legacy
Unfinity, the latest Un-set, has been fully previewed, and it brings black borders to the Un-iverse for the first time (outside of basic lands, of course). Like all supplemental sets that don’t have Modern in the title, any Unfinity card that doesn’t have an acorn logo in the stamp spot is technically legal in Legacy, Vintage and Commander. Commander has …
Combo Crash-Course: Cephalid Breakfast
This week’s combo breakdown tackles one of the longest-lived archetypes in Magic history — and one of its weirdest names (and there’s some stiff competition for that crown). It’s almost always combo decks that garner the most esoteric monikers among the community. I blame the need to find distinct shorthand references for tons of specific strategies combined with their creators’ …
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