Ahoy mateys! Sometimes, even pirates need to stop fighting and talk their way out of a battle. That’s when they call for parley. At least in Magic, everybody gets something good to take home from this negotiation, and you may walk away with...
Read moreA throne isn’t supposed to be shared. Anyone wishing to sit on it needs to remove the person that’s already there. Dethrone is a mechanic designed to do exactly that: to give your minions an edge when you decide the current ruler shouldn’t...
Read moreKeyword counters are a fascinating way to make some spells stronger and provide permanent buffs that don’t rely on +1/+1 counters. Not only are they fun, they’re also intensely flavorful, which is a winning combination in my book.
Read moreImprint is the complicated older cousin of cipher, which is itself a pretty complicated mechanic. It’s one of Mark Rosewater’s “all-time favorite mechanics,” but it has thus far topped out at a couple dozen cards, which means its overall...
Read moreIn the ever-evolving world of Magic: The Gathering, new mechanics frequently reshape gameplay and strategy. One intriguing addition is the forage keyword action, introduced in the Bloomburrow Magic set.
Read moreThere are many thresholds in life and MTG, like what you’d pay for a deck, or the number of energy drinks before you can no longer function properly. All these thresholds exist, but let’s take a closer look at the threshold ability word in...
Read moreMagic has plenty of forever mechanics, the evergreen abilities you see in every Magic set and recognize at a glance. Then it has its objectively bad mechanics, like daybound/nightbound and ante. But there’s a third category of mechanics that lies...
Read moreThe best part of any story is its villains, and boy does Magic have its share. The best villain that Magic has had in its almost 30-year history is without a doubt Phyrexia.
Read moreAdapt is different from evolve, which is different from mutate in MTG. They’re also different in real life, but in the fantasy gaming space, they all sort of point towards the same thing: the idea that the creature in play can change for the...
Read moreThe Eldrazi have always been the MTG equivalent of a strange alien threat, and although they have some pretty memorable mechanics like annihilator, nothing quite evokes the horror of their strangeness like emerge does.
Read moreLet’s grab our Gold Pan and spade for a bit of gold-digging and learn about how Gold works in MTG; there are very few cards that generate Gold tokens, but as we’ll see, Gold led to a very similar mechanic that’s everywhere.
Read moreThe stack. You’ve probably had your fair share of interesting interactions with other players using the stack. You might even be the one who knows your way around it the most in your playgroup. Or, hey, you might be newer to the game and still...
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