Over the past couple years, one of my friends finally convinced me to check out Magic: The Gathering… and my wallet has been cursing him ever since. One of my weekly rituals is to listen to the EDHrec podcast, which recently had an episode about their favourite cards of the year. This got me thinking about what my favourite cards of the year were as well, which eventually lead to me sitting down and writing a full-on article about this.
Instant
I love modular cards like Archdruid’s Charm. Such a flexible and useful card. Does just about anything you would want it to. 
I always love a good, free protection spell. Most of my white decks will have some creature I can sac to pay this, if I’m in a life-or-death situation, I’d gladly sacrifice my commander to cast this. 
Really cool and, again, FLEXIBLE card for a low cost. Gets rid of all those pesky tokens, or you can cycle it away for cheap if you don’t need it. 
Again: this card does everything I could want it to without costing a premium. Incredible utility piece. 
A strictly better version of Relentless Assault, and by A LOT. I find myself throwing in a couple extra mana all the time casting this, the upsides are always worth it.
Sorcery
Glimpse the Impossible is an insanely good card for being a common. It’s the best of impulse draw and self-mill combined. Impulse draw for three cards is great already, but then having them go to the graveyard and refund themselves with an Eldrazi Spawn token is just incredible for three mana. I’ve already got this in a couple of wildly different decks, it’s just got a ton of decks it works in. 
This card is a no-brainer inclusion for me in pretty much any red deck from now on. I would pay this card’s mana cost just to be unblockable, but also making it a land-hate card is a cherry on top. The fact that it’s also a land makes Sundering Eruption an incredible card. 
Prisoner’s Dilemma is one of the funnest cards I’ve ever seen, effectively capturing the essence of its titular inspiration. 
Another very flexible card, Insatiable Avarice is a great tutor, or it can also be a good draw spell, or it can be both. A great card to have in hand, and it never feels bad to cast. 
Tempt with Bunnies is mostly just a funny card, but it is a legitimate powerhouse in a token deck, and a decent draw spell for white.
Enchantment
Innkeeper’s Talent is a stupidly good card for any deck already running Hardened Scales. Just puts a stupid amount of +1/+1 counters out and protects your creatures while it’s at it. 
This card is so fun! You give all your opponents a gift, but your creatures get a benefit from then on for it. The potential for politicking with it is also cool. 
First of all, I LOVE the art for this card. Secondly, I love the whole “Enduring” enchantment creature cycle, having them come back after death makes them so reliable! 
Charitable Levy is a great little piece of light Stax and provides some ramp while it’s at it. 
I’ve heard Ripples of Undeath described as the Sylvan Library of black, and I cannot disagree. It’s incredible, providing early-game graveyard fuel, while also allowing you to get back any particularly important cards.
Artifact
Smoke Bomb is such a good utility piece. You can use it to protect your creature, screw over an opponent from targeting their own creatures, and then, when your turn rolls around, you can make one of your creatures unblockable for colourless mana. Probably my favourite card from the Assassin’s Creed set. 
The Swords cycle are just generically good cards and Sword of Wealth and Power has to be one of the best of the bunch. Fit into pretty much any aggro and/or spell slinger deck. 
A mana rock with a tribal anthem tacked on? Yes please! 
Twitching Doll’s a super interesting mana dork for any token deck. I have a Jinnie Fay deck, so this thing comes in on-curve and is ready to passively produce a bunch of tokens later in the game. 
I have a vehicle deck and Brotherhood Vertibird is BUSTED at 3 mana, easily hitting for 10+ evasive damage every turn.
Creature
The Infamous Cruelclaw is such a wild card for only three mana, easily able to cheat in big threats to put on the pressure early. It’s even evasive! 
I LOVE Darkstar Augur’s design. Gambling with life is my favourite thing to do in Magic, to the point where I went and built an entire Standard deck around this card and the concept. Hell, the first and only time I’ve ever won a draft was using this card as my centerpiece. LOVE it to bits. 
Marionette Apprentice is a wildly efficient and useful card in any token/aristocrats deck. 
Crime Novelist is just stupidly busted in any deck that wants it. If you’re making any number of Treasures, it quickly spirals out of control, becoming tall and netting you free mana – all on a lowly uncommon! Absolutely busted card. 
Another token/aristocrats piece, Kambal is really cool for allowing you to clone opponents’ tokens to produce extra value for yourself, while also pinging your opponents for their trouble. So many decks are running tokens that you don’t even need to build a strategy around it, he’ll just passively work in pretty much any pod.
Lands
Basically Cabal Coffers for tribal decks, Three Tree City can be a massive payoff in the right deck, while offering just enough counterplay to not feel completely busted. 
The Verge cycle of lands are very flexible dual lands with a very reasonable restriction which makes them very reliable. 
Urza’s Cave is a great utility piece, effectively giving you a second copy of your best land for three mana. 
The Surveil Lands straight-up caused me to re-evaluate surveil as a mechanic, and the power of tapped lands. I used to write off any “enters tapped” land from my decks, because they couldn’t wait the extra turn to get that mana. I figured that they might be good in a graveyard focused deck, but once I tried them out and found myself using their ability to filter the next card, I fell in love. Plus they’re basically an auto-pick when you cast an “enters tapped” ramp source! 
The MH3 MDFC lands are great – a lot of them have solid effects, but the fact that they’re stapled to a land that can come in untapped if you want to just makes them no-brainer includes in nearly any deck.
(Note: in the EDHrec podcast, Planeswalker was the next category. I have only two of the Planeswalkers released this year, Sorin of House Markov and Kaito, Bane of Nightmares. Really not enough variety to even have a valid opinion, but if I had to pick, it would be Kaito.)
Mechanic
Expend is such a simple but cool mechanic that it’s shocking that we haven’t seen it before. Having abilities trigger once a certain amount of mana is spent is a cool little mechanic which gives you plenty of freedom to decide how to go about it and how you want it to payoff. The Enduring cycle of cards have such a unique and creative way of making a card powerful and difficult to remove without giving it by making its ability overpowered or Hexproof or Ward. Like I’ve said, I LOVE a flexible card, and Spree takes everything good about modular cards and just makes it better. Several Spree cards have become staples in my decks just due to how much choice they give you. Offspring is such a cool ability, allowing you to pay a cost to make a 1/1 token copy of the creature when it enters the battlefield. You’re generally incentivized to do so, and Offspring’s a huge part of why Darkstar Augur was my favourite creature of the year. 
Plot’s definitely the most “out there” mechanic on the list today, but once I got to play with it, it’s actually super useful: cast the card now, but have it go off at a later time. Especially good in the early game, when mana may be at a premium.
Commander
This category is solely made up of the commanders I built this year. There may very well be better commanders from 2024, but it would be wrong of me to say that the ones I built weren’t the best, wouldn’t you agree?
I’ve said it many times – you put a cute fox in front of me and I’ll throw money at you. Literally bought the Bumbleflower precon just to get ahold of him. Beyond being adorable, I also really like how Mr. Foxglove’s ability doesn’t lock you into any specific buildpath, you can build whatever kind of deck you want. Mine is +1/+1 counters and poison themed deck! 
Masked Bandits is one of my all-time favourite MTG arts and, when I saw the factions in Bloomburrow, I knew that I wanted to make a raccoon tribal deck. There are, unfortunately, no Jund raccoon commanders, so Masked Bandits ironically didn’t make the cut, but I found myself surprised by just how much I enjoyed the Expend mechanic on Muerra. It makes every turn into a little mini-game, trying to get the most out of your mana to trigger the ability as many times as possible. The passive 3 life gained per turn also really adds up over the course of a game. 
So I have never played a game with Ms. Bumbleflower as the deck’s commander, I have put her in the 99 and I really appreciate how unique her ability is for a precon commander. The group hug and politicking that she enables are surprisingly powerful tools, which make for a really fun card all-round. 
I am an absolute sucker for Orzhov aristocrats decks. Around the time Modern Horizons 3 released, I was thinking of making an angels deck… but when Shilgengar introduced me to the idea of a aristocrats/reanimator angel deck where you’re saccing your angels for a big blood ritual… AHHHH, it’s so damn cool! In practice, Shilgengar plays like a power, old-school battlecruiser deck, where it struggles to get going, but can absolutely destroy the board if that mass resurrection occurs. 
My second ever deck was Olivia, Crimson Bride, so when I saw that they were releasing a new precon with her as the commander, I immediately pre-ordered it (I probably shouldn’t have, I cut about 2/3 of the precon out and probably would have saved money if I just looked at the decklist and ordered the singles). Her ability basically turns her into a Professional Face-Breaker, which is very powerful in its own right. Her main issue is that she quickly becomes archenemy, so be sure that you’re ready to take the heat.
And that’s the end! I hope you enjoyed this impromptu dive into the world of Magic: The Gathering! I don’t know if I’m going to make this an annual thing or not, but this certainly was a fun project for me.
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