MTG Rocks

The original Ravnica block, released across 2005 and 2006, was a watershed period for Magic. Not only did it introduce one of the game’s most beloved planes and the 10 iconic guilds, but it also brought a bunch of banger card designs, to boot. Experiment Kraj is one of the very best of these, and still stands as a unique and powerful MTG Commander even two decades after its release.

Unsurprisingly, given the source material and its name, heroes and villains are at the core of Marvel Super Heroes. Beyond just having tons of named characters appear in the main set, each of these typal archetypes also got its own precon. As good as these precons are out of the box, as always, they can be pushed even further with upgrades. If you’re looking to upgrade the Doom Prevails precon, there are several different routes you can go down.

In the course of its 33-year lifespan, Magic: The Gathering has explored a staggering range of card game design space. Naturally, not every innovation becomes part of the regular MTG wheelhouse, which leaves one-offs like Wheel of Sun and Moon as interesting historical novelties. While we haven’t seen anything else like this since 2008, it’s still a card well worth considering for Commander.

While there were some expectations going into June 29th’s MTG ban announcement, only one of the eight bans was expected. The dreaded Pauper two-card combo using Hawkeye’s Bow left the format, allowing a new deck to become viable. With a top-eight appearance in a 100-player event and a 5-0 league finish, this new Pauper lifegain combo might be the most boring way to win a game of MTG. This new Abzan deck is a unique take on the Nomads En-Kor combo decks that occasionally appear in Pauper.

While there’s no one best mechanic in MTG, if there ever were a competition, Landfall would definitely be up there. By turning the game’s fundamental resource into a value engine, this mechanic eliminates bad draws in the late game. Since the number of lands you can play is capped, too, many of these cards have absurd and abuseable abilities. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that Commanders like Phylath, World Sculptor can cause some serious shenanigans.

After players have had plenty of time to figure it out, Marvel Super Heroes Limited is shaping up to be a much worse format than expected. Bizarrely, current results for the set are comparable to those of terrible sets like Spider-Man. On top of some extremely poor color imbalance, Marvel Super Heroes has some of the most egregious unbeatable bombs we’ve ever seen.

Since their introduction at the very dawn of Magic, +1/+1 counter decks have been a consistently popular part of the game. Through these counters even the humblest of tokens can become a legitimate threat, to say nothing of the many combo lines they enable. If you want to build around +1/+1 counters in Commander, there’s a dizzying range of legends that allow you to do so. To help narrow down these overwhelming options, we’ve assembled the best +1/+1 Counter Commanders MTG has to offer.

Back on Monday, June 29th, Wizards made the interesting decision to ban Seeker of Skybreak in Pauper. Despite the fact that the Seeker+Bow combo was legal for such a short period of time, its immediate dominance and problematic potential caused it to get axed. Yet, Hawkeye’s Bow is still here, and it appears that players are already finding other ways to abuse it. At its core, this Temur shell that just 5-0d a Pauper League is looking to assemble a new two-card combo.

While Commander can easily become a slow grindfest, some higher bracket tables tend to hit the ground running. Fast mana and cheaper Commanders are hugely important here, establishing your engines while your opponents are still in the setup phase. Despite this, some Commanders with fast potential, like Rona, Herald of Invasion, remain underplayed. Acting as a card selection machine, a beater, and a win condition, this Commander has everything you need to succeed.

Technically, Marvel Super Heroes was officially released last Friday. While this big official release date did happen, this time around, it hasn’t been as effective. Thanks to some production snafus, we’ve not seen the usual tidal wave of supply cause a dramatic price crash. This, in turn, has allowed some cards, like Black Widow, Agile Avenger, to sell for $25 right now. On the surface, Black Widow, Agile Avenger is a very simple, yet effective, MTG card.