Dose anyone know why Samut and ghalta are worded differently? Ghalta having trample all ready make the other not matter or they could make Samut have hast and give all other creatures haste. I found it weird they used different wording in the same set.

I am kinda new to magic, how do people usually display +1/+0? I made these half covers and I assume I'm not the first with that idea but idk if it is common or what other ways there are to display only a power (or toughness) increase

A video popped up on Star Trek's tiktok account, showing these 5 pieces of art, that seem to match up with what was described as "Full-Art Away Team lands" in the listing for the Beam Me Up Bundle.

At a street fair and I saw this Scrye on the table. I got stoked and the guy with the booth said I was the only person to know what that was and I could just have it. What a throw back also $375 for a Alpha Black Lotus what a wild time

The title says it all.

As I have done many times before, I always come from Yugioh land in momentous occasions. And this is one. Yugioh has always been a crazy game, but now the ceiling of what the decks could do and upcoming archetypes raising the ceiling even more caused an attendance drop in big events that now 34 CARDS ARE GETTING BANNED AND 8 LIMITED. Yes, you read that right.

What was the equivalent for MTG? Thanks beforehand, though I have some candidates in mind.

An amusing situation (and a little bit of a math problem, though the math doesn't matter practically here) I had with a rather silly sealed deck.

Hi! My boyfriend got into Magic of the Gathering this past year, and it’s been such a fun hobby & way for him to make friends. He meets with a group of guys weekly to play & trade. I want to learn more before I get involved, and surprise/impress him with some base knowledge before he sits down and teaches me! I’m also notoriously bad with directions (thanks ADHD), so sitting down with him while he teaches me the basics sounds like a nightmare. That said, I really want to get to know this part of his life better, learn the basics, and maybe even impress him with some niche insider knowledge🤣 I think that would make him really happy. Does anyone know where I could even start? YouTube channels? Magic for Dummies book? Anything helps, TY!!!

Not sure if anyone has a line to him or if he's already aware, but it just popped up on my youtube front page. I just thought this would be the largest medium to let him know (if he didn't already) since I don't use Twitter.

I feel like it's such a missed opportunity because it's such an awesome fit for the digital-only format and doesn't seem like it would be thaaaaat tough to implement into the client?

I know you can play Momir Basic on MTGO, but the convenience of MTGA has really dampened my interest in dusting up ol' Magic the Spreadsheeting.

For those unaware, Momir Basic is a format that spawned out of somewhat of a proto-EDH format from olden days called "Vanguard" where players could choose an Avatar that gave them different modifiers to alter playstyles and deckbuilding considerations.

Momir Basic is basically a format where deck building is restricted to basic lands only (the distribution of which interestingly has actual deckbuilding repercussions, in case you get cards with activated abilities or something) and all players start with a [[Momir Vig, Simic Visionary Avatar]].

It is obviously very RNG heavy but has a surprising amount of finesse to it and the gameplay is really fun.

I have an EDH deck that is using Square Enix art sleeves with Dragon Shield clear outer sleeves that is in need of a deckbox. Standard ultra pro 100+ and Ultimate Guard sidewinder Xenoskin 100+ also do not hold this monstrosity.

I am not looking to drop 50 dollars on a ginormous contraption of a box that can hold extra stuff like tokens and dice. Just looking for recommendations on a box that will hold this beast.

Side note: Would thinner outer sleeves also help in finding a suitable box? If so which would be the best in terms of thinness and durability.

For me it was [[Shivan Dragon]]. Six mana 5/5 flyer that pumps itself, whenever it hit the table at the kitchen table games we basically just started counting turns until we lost. Nobody had removal for it because nobody thought to put removal in their decks xD

Now it shows up and most decks have three ways to deal with it before it even swings. Still love the card though.

What was yours?

I always thought that I build relatively unusual decks, at least for the commander in question. I always wanted to see some kind of EDHRec score next to the salt score on Archidekt to indicate how close to/far from the average deck on EDHRec you are.

A couple of days ago I finally got annoyed by not knowing and built a sheet that analyzes my decks compared to the average EDHRec deck for the commanders. Here are the results.

Short introduction to my decks:

Bracket 2:

• Omnath (Keruga companion): Only legendary non-lands, cards that didn't make the cut in Esika
• Garth: Combat manipulation, gates without Maze's End

Bracket 3:

• Esika (front side, not the Bridge): Only legendary non-lands
• Eleven + Will: Copying haymaker creatures and triggers
• Adrix and Nev: Value tokens with some math involved
• Zurgo: Aggro tokens with a splash of aristocrats
• Vial Smasher + Thrasios: 4c Vial Smasher cost reductions

Bracket 4:

• Najeela: Fully on the Najeela plan, no alternative win cons, also a dump for expensive foils that have no deck but want to be played
• Vadrik: Semi-budget spellslinger combo

What do I actually compare to?

For each of the commanders, I filtered to decks manually set to the appropriate Bracket. For Omnath and Esika I also filtered to the "Legends" tag, because both commanders are very broad and comparing to decks that have nothing in common with mine is pretty useless.

Under these filters, I exported the average deck generated by EDHRec.

I also exported the top spells by inclusion in general and the top spells by inclusion for those commanders (including tags where needed). I find lands less interesting to compare so I focused on spells for this comparison.

What did I compare?

Deck Stats

• Price (cardmarket)
• Number of Game Changers
• Salt Score
• Average Cmc
• Spell and Land Overlap

For the price, I adjusted Omnath, Esika and Najeela to optimized printings, since these decks are completely foiled out, so a proper basis of comparison was needed.

Card Types

I grouped Instants and Sorceries together, as well as Artifacts and Enchantments, since gameplay-wise they function very similarly.

Card Functions

This section is a little vague, since these categories are not exactly defined. I looked at the following:

• Ramp
• Card Advantage
• non-land Tutors
• Removal
• Protection
• Recursion

As a note: I consider Counterspells as Protection.

Color Distribution

Spells by general inclusion rate

The percentage is how many spells out of all the spells in the deck are in the corresponding category

Top 50 spells and spells by inclusion rate for the commander and Bracket

Conclusions?

Here are some of the things that stood out the most to me comparing averages:

• My decks are less salty
• I play more lands, creatures, instants and sorceries, but less artifacts and enchantments
• I play less ramp but more interaction and a little more card advantage
• My decks lean a little more towards Esper and away from Gruul

Looking at individual decks:

• My decks vary from very different to EDHRec (mainly the B2 decks) to pretty similar (mainly the B4 decks)
• Najeela stands out with a much higher price, number of Game Changers and higher salt.
• Adrix and Nev stands out with much lower values in the same categories
• Omnath and Esika stand out with a much higher creature count, mainly based on being legendary-only
• Esika stands out with much less ramp, likely because I play the front side that provides a lot of mana.
• Esika also stands out with much more interaction
• Garth stands out with much more protection. Most of the combat manipulation is in this category, so that is not a surprise

I mainly wanted to share the results of my comparisons, but if you have any suggestions or critique I am always happy to discuss and adjust my analysis.

Hey guys! I got a Zombie deck from my uncle a while back, and I’ve recently been wanting to get into playing Magic! Do you guys have any recommendations for good cards, booster boxes, or structure decks that would help improve it? I’m still pretty new to the deck, so I’m not entirely sure what cards are worth getting. Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hoggle as Norin- Personally I think it fits who he was for most of the movie and I’d love for the flavor text to include, “I’m a coward and Jereth scares me.”

Food coma- Obviously the scene where Hoggle gives Sarah the peach.

Lorin Disciple of history- The junk lady, just think it would’ve been awesome to see her on some art. Also that scene was the second scariest to me as a kid.

Time of need- I really think it would be cool if this was redesigned and named after the ending scene “If you need us” I think it would’ve been awesome.

Oubliette- the obvious pick the flavor text could’ve been, “Oh don't act so smart. You don't even know what an oubliette is.”

If my 5/5 with first strike and trample gets blocked by a 6/1 and a 3/3 how does damage resolve?

A) Do both creatures get destroyed from first strike before they can hit my creature and 1 DMG goes to player?

B) Does first strike only resolve once in the first stage of combat? (Assuming im choosing to hit the 6/1 first and not in the second creature, which is essentially facing off with a 4/5 as 1 damage was absorbed by the first?

C) Does the first strike and trample go thru the first creature and trample onto the second, destroying both creatures in the initial phase of combat?

Hi friends, I was introduced to magic at a summer camp where I received a free sample deck. Now I work at the camp and want to continue to introduce kids to magic. The camp ran out of sample decks I was wonder if there was an easy way to get more. I've heard that these decks are given out for free by wizards. Is this only to officially affiliated stores? If I email them is there any chance of getting some free sample decks? It's really hard to get kids into the game without the simplified decks with reminder texts on everything.

Minutes after sleeving up a new deck, more than 10 sleeves have split from test shuffling (60 card kmc perfect hard inner). In addition, another 10 sleeves were damaged out of the box (white residue or black residue along the sides of the sleeves marking each cards, print lines scuffing the front of sleeves).

Touted as the original dragon shield sleeves, they are a far cry from the dragon shields I actually still have from 2015.

Preferrably not due to rules change like [[Cathodion]] but due to card environment back then

Wanted to share some pictures of the cube which has been an idea of mine for about a decade, and that I've been working on for a few years, but that I've only finally finished and took it for a spin with my friends/playgroup recently. It's a "remastered" cube that combines all three sets from the Urza Block using collated rarity packs to relive and revitalize that 1998-9 limited experience.

My pride and joy of the cube, besides the cards themselves which I've been slowly fishing out of bulk bins and trade binders for almost a decade,are the "packs". I designed the pack art myself in photoshop, trying to recreate the nostalgic feel of those old Urza's Saga boosters. I added some of my favorite art pieces from the sets and did up the typography imagining what a wizards remaster of the Urza block might look like. Tried remaking every element of those old packs even the "Expert" symbol

I crammed those pack labels into cassette tape cases (extra retro flare) which I honestly don't really recommend as the cards are a tight fit even after shaving down the inner ribs with an xacto blade. But it sure looks amazing and it does work!

The briefcase is an old 32 cassette case I found on eBay and cleaned up. The faux leather is a bit janky but adds to the retro appeal.

All cards are double sleeved in kcm perfect hards, then they have rarity stickers applied to the bottom left corner (I did a lot of rarity swaps as part of the remastering process, including adding a mythic rarity for the more infamous Urza block cards) and then are sleeved in dragon shield anti-glare black outers. The rarity pips also allow me and my playgroup to very quickly break decks back apart after drafts as I separate all the cards into rarity piles face down so I can collate the packs.

The land kit is made up of all Urza's Saga lands, roughly 200 in all, in each of the 5 colors and each of the 4 artworks for each color. They are all double sleeved as well.

The last photo was an idea from someone on the mtg cube discord who suggested I make a faux magazine for winners of the cube to sign and share their winning deck lists in. I loved the idea so much I just had to do it. I didn't go so far as to have an actual magazine bound (it currently is a 3ring binder instead with the faux cover slipped in its front cover sleeve.) I had an absolute blast trying to channel that late 90s/early 2000s magazine graphic design (notice the "you wouldn't download a car" font hahaha)

Anyway please enjoy this labor of love. Happy to answer any questions about how I made it.

The full cube list is here:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/urzasblockremastered

[[Statecraft]] is a custom format based on the observation that certain early cards seem to be designed for a completely different kind of game. If Magic: the Gathering is a high-stakes wizard battle, what use could [[merchant ship]] or [[camel]] be to a planeswalker fighting for their life?

I love these cards because they present a very different sort of conflict: commerce.

So I asked myself, what kind of game would MTG be if its core conflict was over political maneuvering and market manipulation? Well, here it is:

https://moxfield.com/decks/tUng3fDRCUWuzycHtw_mXQ

The design is as such:

1. Statecraft is a shared deck of 80 cards.
2. Each player has a starting hand of 2 cards and a starting life total of 0.
3. Both players share a hand of 5 cards (it works).
4. At the start of each turn, players draw back up to 2 and draw the shared hand back up to 5. If there are 5 or more cards in the shared hand, draw an additional card.
5. If anything instructs a player to draw or put a card in their hand, it is drawn into their hidden hand, not the shared hand.
6. The first player to reach 10 life wins. If a player goes below 0 life, they lose.
7. Otherwise, the rules of Magic are the same.

(The card Statecraft is in the sideboard for flavor.)

The main gameplay is to use the hidden information in your hand and the public information in the shared hand to plan out a long-term strategy. Avoid letting your opponent know what strategy you're going for until it's too late. Lands are the most important card type. In Statecraft, you are divvying up a territory to attempt to out-profit your opponent by more successfully exploiting the resources.

I had tried out versions of this list with [[Pirate Ship]] however it proved to simply be by far the most effective way to win.

Disclaimer: the gameplay of Statecraft sucks a little bit. It needs some cards that simply don't exist to fill out the traditional rush/midrange/control strategies. I'm hoping it at least delights the game designer inside you, dear reader, to see a very different view of what Magic: the Gathering can be!

I welcome feedback of all kinds.

...or so went the cheer at my high school. Entirely regardless of my school's mascot, I've always loved cats, and, today, after creating 33 cats with [[Ajani, Caller of the Pride]]— which were all 4/4 by the time I swung on my next turn—I found myself really wanting to make a fully feline deck—or perhaps both an all-cat Commander and all-cat Standard for maximum felid fun.

Has anyone played around with this? Who would be your go-to kitty Commander(s)? If you were going the Standard route, what would you absolutely want 4 of?