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2024 has been quite a year for Magic: The Gathering.
For the first time in a very long time, Magic has released a fantastic starter product aimed at bringing in new players and recapturing lapsed players. We've seen crazy stories on the Pro Tour, as well as our second ever two-time World Champion, and (for better or worse) the most unique Magic cards ever printed in a calendar year.
However, Magic has always been about the cards, so today let's look at the top five Magic cards of 2024!
The Top Five Magic Cards of 2024
#5 - Kozilek's Command
Coming in at number five is Kozilek's Command.
There are certainly more powerful cards in Modern Horizons 3, and set that has completely turned Modern and even Legacy sideways, but Kozilek's Command in particular really emphasizes one of the stated goals of the Modern Horizons sets-- to power up and give new tools to certain archetypes that have fallen behind. Well, Kozilek's Command has certainly done that!
Colorless/Eldrazi decks have been on and off players in Legacy and Modern for years, but Kozilek's Command has not only powered them up but also fundamentally changed what they are capable of. Most Colorless decks previously were more of blunt objects than anything else. Play this big dumb thing on turn two or play this lock piece and hope it works out. Aside from just being very powerful, Kozilek's Command is a nimble and flexible card, two things these decks have never done well.
It's not often that one card can come along and change the entire texture of an archetype in multiple formats, but that's exactly what Kozilek's Command has done.
#4 - Vein Ripper
One of the most exciting prospects in Magic is building an awesome and unexpected deck and taking everyone by surprise with it.
Unfortunately, in the extremely connected digital age we live in now, where tens of thousands of games and results are recorded and tracked on the first day of a set's release and hundreds of content creators are always trying to be the one to show the hot new tech, this doesn't happen very often any more. It's just too hard to take a big event by surprise.
That's why Seth Manfield's win at Pro Tour Murders of Karlov Manor earlier this year is so special.
This was the first event in quite a while where a pro team (the team I am on, Team CFB & Friends) actually broke the format. Our Rakdos Vampires deck, featuring the newly printed Vein Ripper alongside Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, was the breakout deck of the event. We had the highest Constructed win rate of any major deck in the tournament, the whole team made day two, and we put two players in top 8 and won the whole thing. Our deck was so good that it would eventually lead to the banning of Sorin.
Rakdos Vampires | Pioneer | Seth Manfield | Pro Tour MKM 1st place
- Creatures (14)
- 1 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
- 2 Dusk Legion Zealot
- 3 Preacher of the Schism
- 4 Bloodtithe Harvester
- 4 Vein Ripper
- Planeswalkers (4)
- 4 Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord
- Instants (5)
- 1 Bitter Triumph
- 4 Fatal Push
- Sorceries (6)
- 2 Duress
- 4 Thoughtseize
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
- Artifacts (2)
- 2 Smuggler's Copter
When it comes to high level Magic, there's nothing better.
#3 - Nadu, Winged Wisdom
Speaking of cards that defined a Pro Tour and a format, albeit in a very different way, our next card hit Modern like a ton of bricks and wouldn't let up until its eventual banning - Nadu, Winged Wisdom.
In a game as complex as Magic: The Gathering, especially in sets that are designed for older formats and really pushing the power level limits, design mistakes are bound to happen, and Nadu is about as big of a blunder as you can get.
It is almost surreal that Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 happened, let alone Nadu being a legal card for so long, but it did! Ten years from now we will speak of Nadu in hushed tones like Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis or Eldrazi Summer, and there's no doubt it is one of the most memorable cards of 2024.
#2 - Unholy Annex
Our number two card was quite the sleeper when Duskmourn first came out.
Rooms were obviously a new mechanic, as the game has never seen split cards before that were permanents. This is eventful in and of itself, but Unholy Annex is a card that was widely glossed over when it was first released. Neither a worse Phyrexian Arena or a French vanilla 6/6 for five mana are particularly exciting, and as such myself and many other players overlooked the card as nothing more than a nice Limited card.
We were very wrong.
Unholy Annex has ended up being the most powerful room in Duskmourn, and perhaps one of the most powerful cards in the whole set, making waves in both Standard and Pioneer. In Pioneer it gains access to Mutavault as an additional low-cost demon, as well as all the awesome Black cards like Thoughtseize and Fatal Push, but with Standard being a slower and less powerful format, the card really has more time to shine and the 6/6 token is more relevant.
Dimir Demons | DSK Standard | Javier Dominguez | World Championship 2024 1st place
- Creatures (12)
- 2 Caustic Bronco
- 2 Doomsday Excruciator
- 4 Archfiend of the Dross
- 4 Faerie Mastermind
- Planeswalkers (2)
- 2 Jace, the Perfected Mind
- Instants (12)
- 1 Cut Down
- 2 Shoot the Sheriff
- 2 Spell Stutter
- 3 Anoint with Affliction
- 4 Go for the Throat
- Sorceries (4)
- 4 Duress
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber
- Lands (26)
- 8 Swamp
- 1 Undercity Sewers
- 2 Fountainport
- 3 Darkslick Shores
- 4 Gloomlake Verge
- 4 Restless Reef
- 4 Underground River
Export Arena
While the deck hasn't been much of a player since the event, Unholy Annex actually also won this year's World Championship in the hands of Javier Dominguez and his Dimir Demons deck.
#1 - Llanowar Elves
Hey wait, that card wasn't first printed in 2024, it was printed in 1993!
Listen, you ain't wrong, but when it comes down to looking at Magic's 2024, the most important thing to happen was the release of Foundations.
Magic has been so focused on Commander, Universes Beyond, and selling secret lairs in recent years that it had seemingly forgotten about actually acquiring new players (and reacquiring lapsed players). There hasn't been a product in a long time that has spoken to that goal, which makes Foundations all the more exciting.
Foundations has been an absolute home run, and with Llanowar Elves as the marquee card front and center it deserves to be recognized as such. Obviously Llanowar Elves is an incredible card, but it goes beyond that. Llanowar Elves is iconic, exciting, and powerful, while also being fairly simple to understand.
This exemplifies what has made Foundations such an excellent product.
The set is fun. It's full of great reprints, while also keeping the complexity down. It also just hits a lot of the right buttons when it comes to flavor and themes, hitting that perfect sweet spot between being great for new players and fun for enfranchised players.
It also, perhaps more importantly in the grand scheme of things, brings a focus back onto Standard as a format. Standard is supremely important to the success of the game long term, as we've seen what happens when you try to bypass Standard all the time with sets that go straight into Commander or Modern.
This has been very successful, as we're seeing serious Standard play in paper again for the first time in a long time. The world is healing, and it's in big part due to Foundations.
Honorable Mentions
There are of course plenty of honorable mentions for the year, as it was a quite a year for Red aggressive decks with the mouse trio of Heartfire Hero, Emberheart Challenger, and Manifold Mouse. Caretaker's Talent revitalized White control in Standard, while Writhing Chrysalis was the best draft common we've seen in a decade. And of course, Modern Horizons 3 provided a ton of heavy hitters like the recently banned in Legacy Psychic Frog and the new energy package.
With 6 full sets planned for next year, paper Magic and Standard on the rise again, and a bigger dive into Universes Beyond properties, 2025 is likely to be even more wild!
Cube4Charity
This weekend will be the 6th annual Cube4Charity event, brought to you in part by CoolStuffInc.com!
It's a 48 hour Vintage Cube trophy race raising money for some great causes, hope to see you there! More info is here.
