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There are a handful of staples that are worth keeping in your collection or picking up for future usage. A good barometer to see if a card has Pioneer potential is to look at its performance in Standard. If it’s good for Standard, it’s likely to be good in Pioneer too. While there are so […]

All Standard-legal sets from Return to Ravnica forward are legal in Pioneer. That means if you your old Standard deck was legal at any time after September 27th 2013, it’s legal in Pioneer, unless any of its cards are on the Pioneer ban list. The current ban list is as follows: Balustrade SpyBloodstained MireExpressive IterationFelidar […]

For new players, Standard is the easiest way to jump into the game due to its narrow card pool: only cards printed in the last two years are legal. As a result, it offers a smooth path into the game since it allows you to focus on fundamentals. Standard rotates every year to keep the […]

In late 2019, Wizards of the Coast announced the creation of a new format called Pioneer. Pioneer took inspiration from the player-created format Frontier, which was designed as a cheap and convenient format for players who wanted to use their rotated Standard cards. Frontier encompassed sets between Magic 2015 and onward, using the M15 frame […]

Magic: the Gathering Online. The original way to play Magic online is still a fantastic way to play. Magic Online is generally preferred by seasoned players, as it mimics the paper format nearly one-to-one. SpellTable. Part of WotC, SpellTable is an all-in-one solution for playing paper Magic remotely. It has a lot of impressive features […]

There are a number of ways to play Commander—other than with friends or your local playgroup. Whether the desire is to play casually or competitively, the following platforms provide the arena: Local Game Store. Tried and true, the best way to play outside a group of friends is at your local game store. Magic Arena. […]

This is a subformat of Commander that has grown in popularity along with the overall format. cEDH shares the same ban list as Commander, and has no separate official rules from WotC. cEDH can be played 1v1 or in a group of four. cEDH games are much faster than Commander games. Not every cEDH deck […]

Once I begin building a Commander deck, I find it most helpful to start a decklist in a Word or Google document. I start by adding the card types: creatures, sorcery, instant, planeswalkers, etc. When I find a card I want to include: I add it to my deck list along with the number of […]

This category will be narrow or broad, depending on who you ask. For this article, Commander staples are those cards that every deck should consider including (regardless of win-con or strategy). It’s not important to include all of these in a Commander deck. However, these staples are so helpful that you’ll want to include at […]

There are many places to start when building a Commander deck. Up to this point, I’ve provided a lot of different jumping-off points that have hopefully helped you decide: How you want your deck to win; and,What strategy or commander you’ll use to do so.If you haven’t already chosen a commander, it’s important to do […]