Only 90’s Kids Understand: Are Old-School Mechanics Still Useful?

Tom AndersonCommander, Products, Strategy

Magic’s long and unbroken history of development makes it truly unique among strategy games – three decades of evolution and expansion, stretching back towards Antiquities. The constant churn of new cards and new mechanics keeps Magic fresh and current. It also creates something akin to “generations” in its audience. We each discover and learn the Magic of our own time, …

Mechanics of the Eternities

Tom AndersonStrategy

Magic is diverting power to its main thrusters, and preparing to boldly go into a new frontier of genre fiction… space opera! While we’ve had glimpses of advanced tech like robots and rocket launchers since 1994’s Antiquities, and Unfinity added some explicitly interstellar aesthetics to the game, Edge of Eternities is the first time we’ll be exploring the design space …

The Most Impactful Mechanics of 2023

The Most Impactful New Mechanics of 2023

Tom AndersonDesign

During previews and release windows of new Magic expansions, we tend to focus on the impact of their strongest individual cards. But over time, as those cards become familiar parts of the broader metagame, it’s the unique mechanics which come to define that set in the collective memory. Taking the Limited perspective, these mechanics essentially ARE the set – you …