2020 In Review: Magic: The Gathering

2020 was a long year. With a pandemic and endless lockdowns, there wasn’t a whole lot to do but sit inside and distract ourselves with some good ol’ Magic: the Gathering. Fortunately, Wizards of the Coast knocked it out of the park, and provided us with a calendar full of interesting and creative new ways to play.

The first set of 2020 was a return to the Greek-inspired plane of Theros in Theros: Beyond Death. Following a war between the gods themselves, it’s a set full of enchantments and brought back Devotion, which buffs creatures depending on how many cards of the same colour you play. You just know any set with Theros is going to be bursting with Greek flavour, and Beyond Death didn’t disappoint.

Next, we went to Ikoria, an entirely new setting for the game full of big monsters to cause havoc with. This set brought us two big new mechanics: companions, which lets you bring an ally from outside the game into play if your deck meets its requirements, and mutation. Mutation is my favourite new mechanic of the year, letting you graft new abilities and properties onto any non-human creature. A small, weak creature can become a monstrous beast and turn the tide of any match, and it’s fantastic to pull it off when your opponent thinks they have you beat.

July saw the release of Core Set 2021, the best-selling Core set in the game’s history. Core sets are a perfect way to begin playing Magic, as they stick to basic mechanics and aren’t bogged down by any ongoing story.

Another set that was great for newcomers was Jumpstart. Released in October (after a hefty delay, thanks Covid), Jumpstart challenges you to open two booster packs, each containing half of a deck. With themes ranging from dinosaurs to unicorns, it was a quick way to make ready-to-rumble decks.

And how can we forget Double Masters? Each pack includes two rares or mythic rares and two foil cards, while the impressive VIP edition offers foil borderless showcase cards exclusive to it. For collectors, there was really no better set this year. For drafters, it had double the amount of powerful cards to play with!

The final big expansion set of the year, Zendikar Rising, introduced us to the party mechanic, where you’d receive better benefits the more of the four party classes (cleric, wizard, rogue, and warrior) you had out in play. It also brought back landfall, which triggers abilities with each land you play, and powered my favourite combo of the year, Scute Swarm and Ancient Greenwarden. Building up a hundreds-strong bug army in a mono-green ramp deck is fantastic, and guaranteed to infuriate your opponent.

While Zendikar Rising was the last major set of the year, November did give us one more treat in the form of Commander Legends. The very first draftable set for Commander, Commander Legends is full of exciting new creatures. Whether you play them in draft, or build a bigger deck around them, Commander Legends is by far the most radically different, exciting, and dare I say best set of the year. It’s still an incredibly new set, but with cards like Archelos, Abomination of Llanowar, and everyone’s favourite Lhurgoyf survivor Hans Eriksson, your next game of Commander is going to be very different indeed.

Of course, the new sets are just a small part of the radical change to Magic this year. Local play events stopped and local card shops closed, but, fortunately, the Magic community has found ways to keep people close through gaming even when they’re far apart. A huge part of this has been thanks to sites like Spelltable.com, which provides a way to play paper Magic over the internet with a webcam, with plenty of tweaks such as life tracking and a full HD card identifier to make things easier. Things like Spelltable really show the creativity of Magic players, and the lengths we will go to continue playing the game we love.

The great thing about Spelltable is that you don’t need a fancy camera setup to enjoy it. One of the best ideas of the year has been to slightly modify a humble booster bundle box into a stand to point your phone’s camera at the table. It’s something you’ve likely got lying around anyway, meaning there’s zero excuse to not hop on camera with your friends and carry on your weekly play sessions throughout lockdown!

Between inventive new sets from Wizards, and the community rallying around the game during this global emergency, Magic had an excellent year. With this year giving us Vikings in Kaldheim, the Strixhaven wizarding school, the long-awaited D&D crossover, and a return to Innistrad, 2021 is shaping up to be just as exciting!