Oil on gessoboard, 10” x 24”
Made for Arena

I mainly play drafts in 2 different locations in my town. But both have a different policy regarding rules and rewards.

The first one allows you to keep whatever you pick during the draft. Then one promo pack is given at the end of the night (2 for the winner)

The second one asks for all rare and mythic cards to be put in common at the end of the night, and the winner picks one, then the second etc until no more rare or mythic card is available. We also get a promo pack in addition to these.

As I lose a lot during these nights I prefer most of the time to play at the first ship I mentioned. Which shop would be your pick and why ?

I saw in the last time a few b3 edh tornament posts and was reminded that most of them were quite bad.

I was wondering why the most important part of edh was not taken into consideration.

How much fun everyone had.

So like e.g. winner gets 3 points, 2nd 2, third 1, last 0.

Then everyone gives 1 point to the deck he felt was the most fun/creative/pleasant to play against.

I feel thats the only way to somewhat do bracket 3 tournaments is treat them more like D&D where the main goal is for everyone at the table to have fun.

Morning. I have a question about colourless mana generated by Horizon Stone. Does the mana stay floating for me and banked until I spend it on X.Y.Z or do I lose it at the end of my turn as with mana in general?

I’ve added the card to my newest deck and want to make sure I’ve understood it

TIA

I’m coming back after years away from the game, and was talking at work about trying to find a commander deck that won’t break the bank. One of my coworkers suggested I buy the precon called ‘Counter Intelligence’ not use the commander, and use the one I recently got in a pack called Vraska Soul of Stone. Is this valid? I don’t know enough about commander and that deck to know if this is sound advice. What does everything think?

How would the order resolve:

I played Brotherhood Outcast, having no declared which ability I would use.

My opponent then plays Vigorwood Bloom to fight a creature that is not my Brotherhood Outcast, I then decide to put the shield counter on the creature he is going to fight.

Is this the correct order or would he fight the creature first and that creature dies or can I put my shield counter on the creature he chose to fight?

I think that it's a unique redirect effect and niche enough to be free interaction in low brackets.

I have been optimising for synergy with my Marneus deck for a while now, taking the advice from many a YouTuber. But currently the deck just doesn’t function and I have no idea why so I’m very tempted to just jam like a cyc rift or tutors or just other generically good cards into this Marneus tokens deck to make it better as I don’t see why my deck isn’t functioning, it either just draws into nothing, interaction when I don’t need it or lands when I’m already flooded, or draws things like Akroma’s memorial when I’ve no token generators… anyway here is the list https://archidekt.com/decks/15416645/warhammer_20

She was one of my favorite characters in ff14, and finally got around to getting the precon. While she seems decent out of the box, there's definitely a good bit of cards I want to replace, and with her being esper, I feel like there's a lot of options and I can't decide. Do I annoy my pod and go full blown stax since I'm in the colors(even tho she's not the best commander for it)? Do I add more control with blue and more life drain/gain with black and white? Do I just protect her and sling spells from my hand and the graveyard? Idk. One thing I do know is I have thrown in the exquisite blood/sanguine bond infinite combo. Love to hear what y'all have done and what advice y'all have.

Hey all! I’m very new to Magic and I’m looking for a chill, welcoming commander pod in Fort Worth or the DFW area. I’m playing slightly modified precons and I’m still learning the jargon and some mechanics. I’ve played several 1v1 or “duel” games with a buddy of mine, but I want to experience a 4 player battle. If anyone is willing please reach out! I appreciate it!

Recently found out about Shuri and she seems genuinely insane, but Da Vinki seems to have a more forward and easier to build around ability. Which one of them would you choose as an artifact/thopters commander?

Can a creature be goaded by player A and player B, leaving it only able to target player C?

Or is it only able to be goaded by a single player?

I was randomly looking at scryfall and realized that command tower is legal in modern. I know it doesn't tap for anything since you have no commander. It got me curious though. What is the most useless 60 card deck I could bring to a modern FNM to meme with?

I was locked out of my work account yesterday so I thought I'd make a graph I'd been thinking about for a while.

One way to think about power creep is that, if you want to win and have access to the entire history of cards, you're going to be more likely to play recent cards, since they are power crept. Formats like Legacy and Pauper, where the outsized mistakes of early cards like the power 9 are not legal, should tilt recent. I don't have a general impression that this is true, though, so I wanted to see. I took mtgtop8 data from top 8 decks at competitive events (including sideboards, including MTGO) in April-September 2026 and graphed what I saw by the *original printing year* of the cards included.

We *do* see that there are way more copies of cards from recent years in the included decks. The top-left graph, which shows the total number of copies of cards from a given year played per deck has gone up since 2020, with 2024 (Modern Horizons 3) as a high watermark.

However, part of this is that they print way more cards per year than they used to. If we take things relative to the number of printed cards, it gets way more flat! 2024 is still a bit of a peak, but now the early years are the years with the top playrates, and the recent bump looks pretty similar to 2002-2003 (Mirrodin era) and 2010-2012 (Worldwake-Return to Ravnica). (note, banned cards are excluded from the denominator but if you track the share of cards that are banned by printing year it's fairly flat outside of 93/94 so this doesn't explain much).

Shifting to what share of cards saw *any* play (which reduces the impact of a single super-powerful card from an otherwise unimpressive year) or saw 10+ copies across all the submitted decks (which is similar but avoids random things like how yes someone did register a single Glasses of Urza in a top 8 pauper deck in 2026) also looks mostly flat, with perhaps a slight bump post-2020. All the graphs do show a big fallow period from roughly 2013-2019 where those cards don't get played much. Comparing pre-fallow period to post-fallow period, in Pauper 7.1% of all valid (ie common, non-Un) cards pre-2013 saw 10+ copies, while it's 9.3% in 2020+. In Legacy that's 2.1% pre-2013 and 1.9% (lower!) in 2020+.

Interesting takeaways:
- It's obvious to anyone comparing standard or limited formats across time that cards are way more powerful now than before. The floor is higher. But this analysis is about the ceiling - cards good enough to compete against *all* other cards in an eternal format. The ceiling is surprisingly *not* that much higher, with early (pre-2013) and recent Magic sending a fairly similar share of cards to the competitive level in eternal formats.
- 2013-2019 appears to be butts for eternal formats. I'm surprised how low 2025 is too (2026 is also low but keep in mind the data starts in April 2026 so not all the 2026 cards were legal as of this graph).
- It's really shocking what a high share of pauper-legal cards see play in pauper. In most years between 5-10% of all newly printed commons show up in modern Pauper decks in at least 10 copies. Granted there are like 4k Pauper decks and so 300,000 slots available to put those 10 copies in, but to me that's still a very high number. Brewer's paradise indeed!
- While I focused on the share of cards to try to get at power level, the top-left graph which doesn't adjust for number of cards printed is worth something too, as it tracks a bit more closely to "what share of the cards that you see are recent" which it looks like is going to be quite high simply due to more cards being printed, even if the per-card hit rate isn't that much higher.

Me and my roomate picked out commanders for each other and he gave me this one, I love its mechanic and its super fun but I want to hear other opinions!

I tried to build it going wide with the goal of making tokens with equipment rather than voltron, but the last time I played with it I managed to stack all my equipment onto [[Ratonhnhakè:ton]] and get a win with a [[Ramses, Assassin Lord]] Trigger.

I have lots of blink effects so that I can refresh the unlockable and hexproof effects on the commander but I wanted to know if anyone knew of better ways to make the commander stronger? Ideally I think I need more things like connive and surveil to get more equipment into the graveyard and follow that up with ways to accelerate my commanders effect.

I dont think my colors have many easy extra turn effects so I tried to build double strike but all the equipment with that keyword feels to clunky to use especially when its put on the 1/1 with menace so its hard to find a balance between making the commanders ability strong while still having strong equipments for the tokens.

Any constructive criticism or card swap reccomendations would be super appreciated! I quite enjoy this decks gimmick and would like to make it more consistent and powerful, thanks!

I'm realizing all of my commander decks are just pre-cons, or modified pre-cons. Anytime I start building a deck, I find a cool commander, start adding cool cards, and then burn out before it becomes playable. How do I actually start the process of deckbuilding from scratch?

I generally dont do alot of pre-release events because i tend to have very simiular experiences and i dont get alot outa them fun-wise... For contex im a tournament grinder, i dont play commander at all and almost all my mtg play is online or comp real life events..

So my brother talked me into goin to a reality fracture pre release so we went, i had a really good pull in all fairness and the turnout was good (40ppl) despite me not knowing more than 2 or 3 ppl in the entire room... My issue comes to the gameplay, every one of my opponets were casual commander players who didnt play 60 card at all and in every single round i had my opponets ask to take plays back, try to do things at illegal times, 1 of the guys was trying to soft cheat over and over again (maybe he didnt know the rules, but based on how he was playing i felt he knew exactly what he was doin)...

None of my opponets were mean or unpleasant and the banter was perfectly fine, but one of them got really salty i wouldnt let him take an attack back after i blew him out in combat with a flash enchantment after blockers were declaired (he used the line "my playgroup would let me do that" to justify asking) And they all got a little flustered that i was making them play the game correctly. (Like giving me time to respond, saying the phase ect) Is this a common experience for other players at pre release events? Ive had fairly simiular experiences several times now and at least for me it makes the event not very enjoyable.

Continuing my spooky commander deck techs with Ingris from Reality Fracture :)

I know a lot of new players may not know about Eternal Weekend, so i want to share the link. It's more than just a legacy & vintage tournament. There's pre-modern, cEDH, pauper, and more in the side events. It's also a great place to get your cards signed and/or buy older and rarer cards from international vendors!

If I have a Blood Artist and an Enduring Tenacity in its creature form on the battlefield and my opponent casts a board wipe that destroys all creatures, can I lay the death triggers of Blood Artist and Enduring Tenacity how I like, so Enduring Tenacity as an enchantment deals the extra damage from the life gain of Blood Artist to my opponent?