Each color in Magic: The Gathering‘s color pie excels at certain tasks, performing them far better than any other. For example, green is the best at mana ramp, black is the best at tutoring, blue has the best countermagic, red gets the best burn spells, and white is the best at mass removal (also referred …
Artifacts and enchantments are often the underappreciated heroes of Commander games. Ramping mana, providing utility, and changing the rules of the game to better suit their owners’ needs, it’s easy to forget that removal for these types of cards is as important as removal for dangerous creatures. Sometimes, even more so. When playing against decks …
Mana and tempo go hand in hand when playing a game of Magic: the Gathering (MTG). The more mana you have, the more spells you can play during a turn cycle to prevent threats from hitting the table, taking them off the battlefield, or simply stealing them for yourself. Unfortunately, blue really gets the short …
Mana is the foundation for all forms of gameplay in Magic: The Gathering (MTG). Whether you’re playing with powerful mana rocks like Mox Ruby in Vintage, tapping a mana dork like Llanowar Elves in Modern, or searching for extra lands in Standard with a ramp spell like Cultivate, mana ramp is the method many decks …
Creatures that have a cool ability that triggers when they enter the battlefield (ETB) can be found as far back in Magic: The Gathering‘s (MTG) history as Alliances, but Visions, released in 1997, was the first MTG set to truly lean into this area of card design. Powerful spells like Unsummon and Terror were stapled …
Cards with strong abilities that activate simply for entering the battlefield are often beloved by Magic: The Gathering (MTG) players, regardless of your favorite way to play the game. When you think about it, this makes total sense. The ability for a creature to do its cool thing, even if it eats an immediate removal …
Sometimes, a board state is simply too complicated for its own good. The token deck has a huge swarm of creatures, but is being held in check by a pillow fort deck that taxes attackers with mana payments. An artifact combo deck watches this balance with interest, looking for an opportunity to combo off and …
In a singleton format like Commander, where you’re only allowed to play 1 copy of any card that isn’t a basic land instead of 4, you’re often forced to look for alternate means of redundancy when tuning your deck to help it run more consistently. Periodically, you’ll be able to run 2 functionally identical cards …
