In Magic you’ll find yourself mana-flooded a fair amount, and buyback gives you a way to sink that extra mana into spells that can bury your opponent. There are also other means of paying buyback besides just extra mana, so let’s delve into this...
Read moreOne turn they’re here, and then poof they’re gone! Magic’s vanishing mechanic puts a time limit on your permanents and forces you to use time as a resource. But what makes vanishing unique, and how did it come about?
Read moreEvery time we return to Ravnica, it seems like one of the guilds gets the short end of the stick, as far as effective and thematic mechanics go. Forecast isn’t bad, per se. It just lacks a certain splashy-ness that other mechanics have, and...
Read moreSoulbond is a keyword that caused a bit too much confusion, taking its place alongside abilities like flanking or banding. What is soulbond, how does it work, and are any of the cards worth playing still? Let’s take a look at the mechanic, its...
Read moreOffering lets you cast big bad creatures at flash speed… but, as it turned out, it wasn’t exactly a smash-hit of a mechanic, and there are only about half a dozen cards with offering. It’s a cool keyword ability, so let’s find...
Read moreUniverses Beyond allows WotC to introduce different franchises to MTG. With The Brothers’ War and its artifact theme, the Transformers IP got its own Beyond treatment on 13 new cards.
Read moreMagic is well-known for designing creatures that fall into one of two camps: either the weaker, more expensive card with a great ability, or the cheaper, over-statted creature with a drawback. Decayed falls into that latter category...
Read moreRecover probably belongs to that group of Magic: The Gathering mechanics that sounded better in the designers’ minds. It’s still a quintessentially Magic-al mechanic, though, since it’s all about using your graveyard as a resource.
Read moreWith the Odyssey block, of which Torment is the second set, Wizards of the Coast tried to break new ground in many ways, from the game mechanics to a new focus for the storyline.
Read moreIf you ask an MTG player if the liked a random MTG set or not, chances are that they’ll tell you about the set’s mechanics. “Sure, I remember Ravnica. Populate was cool, and cipher was total garbage.” In this example, cipher is a keyword ability...
Read moreAmonkhet block is home to such cool Egyptian-themed world-building and serves as the backdrop to one of the most important story arcs in Magic: The Bolas Arc. The setting is brought to life by the awesome mechanics in both Amonkhet and Hour of...
Read moreCost reduction mechanics like delve and affinity are usually very exploitable and devastating to competitive MTG, often leading to cards and decks being banned. Undaunted is one of those mechanics, but it has a clear limit to cost reduction: the...
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