Our Favorite Cards of 2024

Arnaud Gompez

This has been a hard one. There are a lot of legendaries in Outlaws of Thunder Junction that have struck my eye to the point of building a deck out of them. In the end, though, the toad takes the win. I love how that saddle mechanic has been embedded, and it opens the way to playing cards deemed either rubbish or too weird to be played elsewhere.

I mean, I finally found a home for Daemogoth Titan, Daemogoth Woe-Eater, Hunted Horror, and Rotting Regisaur. Gisa, the Hellraiser and Obeka, Splitter of Seconds came extremely close, but the Frog is just a tiny step ahead. This is the kind of deck where I don't care if I win or lose, as long as I do spectacular things.

This may come as a surprise, but as card design goes, this is chef's kiss. This card's creator has managed to make what comes down to the perfect blue Scute Swarm. It scales quick if left unchecked, but it's not unfair and costs a smidge more than the Insect. In the right deck (and there are a lot of them out there able to pull it off), this will go from a single creature the turn you cast it to 16 after a full rotation. It's not the most effective spell published in 2024, but it's one that will tell tales of its own.

Beth, Queen of Cardboard

Soldiers have historically been primarily mono-white, but this year there were two shake-ups with Commander Mustard and Caesar, Legion's Emperor, expanding Soldiers into Boros and Mardu. Caesar hits so many favorites for me: he's inexpensive, he's got a decent power and toughness, and with a little sacrifice, he becomes a problem quickly while doing everything that Soldiers wants to do, make more Soldiers and deal damage.

If you're looking to play Soldier kindred, Caesar really makes you consider whether or not you need Darien in the command zone or if he'd be better off sitting in the 99. Caesar leans into making a lot of little creatures fast taking advantage of Anim Pakal, Myrel, and tried and true Darien and really showcases on black's desire for sacrifice and red's need for Burn. I don't think there's a better showcasing for a Mardu commander printed last year.

It's been my personal goal to showcase just how powerful white can be since the release of Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate and I first laid on cards like Lulu, Loyal Hollyphant and Ellyn Harbreeze, Busybody. That being said, I wasn't the only one to be excited about new Flares with the release of Modern Horizons 3, and I'm in love with the white representation, Flare of Fortitude.

Not only does this card work perfectly for my favorite commander, Caesar, and my other favorite Mardu man, Negan, the Cold-Blooded, but it also overcomes my least favorite wincons, those that ping your life total outside of combat.

While this card is great, I've been finding more joy in the design process of the cards printed this year, especially the often overlooked flavor text. Flare of Fortitude's flavor text reads, "I call on a power greater than myself." which for me has a special meaning because I'm constantly surrounded by the community that helps lift me up and guides me even in the most difficult of times.

Ciel Collins

My personal Commander pick for the year is Eris, Roar of the Storm. No other legend has held my attention in quite the same way. Casting two spells per turn has been a fun itch to scratch ever since seeing it in the Kaldheim limited format, and I enjoy how it feels and plays. Using it to churn out a dragon is nothing short of great.

Spellslingers can run the problem of lacking a wincon, but Eris being a beater who makes beaters helps us in no short supply. Her cost-reduction mechanic also ensures players don't homogenize the builds too quickly, which is fantastic. Also, Foundations just brought out a few new cards which help tie dragons and spellslinger, which has given me the urge to rebuild Eris as a full-on dragon deck.

My favorite non-Commander card of the year is Dazzling Theater // Prop Room. First, I love enchantments in general and I was floored by this utterly unique innovation in the card type that played heavily to its strengths. Rooms (like Battles before them) are definitely a headache for being in landscape orientation, but the design space is worth it! It's genuinely awesome that this game can pull out showstopper moments after thirty years.

Second, this card in particular is so cool. This gives white a unique ramp option beyond the "catch-up" ramp, and I'm excited to put it into a ton of decks. Convoke is such a white way to power out spells, and the untapping helps keep you from going shields down. (There are some crazy W/x options for Commander that make use of Flash, as well.)

Harvey McGuinness 

Easily my favourite commander this year - and tied for my favourite commander of all time - is Duskmourn: House of Horrors' very own The Master of Keys. This Esper enchantment creature is an incredibly potent package, representing an infinite mana outlet, the ability to serve as a static Underworld Breach for enchantments while in play, and - best of all - can be built a half dozen different ways, meaning that you're never quite sure what kind of deck you're facing down at your cEDH tables. 

My personal favourite? The fast and flexible build, complete with Hedron Crab and Ad Nauseam. Yowza.

As far as non-commanders go, my favourite card from the year overall is Psychic Frog. Before you ask, no, I don't play Modern or Legacy. Instead, I simply adore the versatility this little Frog brings with it: a discard outlet for Abdel loops in my The Master of Keys deck, an extra card each turn thanks to how open combat tends to be these days, plus the ability to dodge damage-based removal thanks to its ability to rapidly grow.

I'm sorry it broke Legacy, but boy, oh boy, am I grateful for the incremental boost my not-so-niche cEDH deck received. 

Jeff Girten

My 2025 commander of the year is Duskana, the Rage Mother, narrowly beating out my runners up: Vannifar, Evolved Enigma and Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot. Duskana exemplifies exactly the type of commander that I love to build around personally and frequently feature on Plot Twist: it rewards you for playing lots of creatures and implies a specific direction to build your deck toward while still leaving plenty of room for innovation.

She wants us to control creatures with base power and toughness of two, but leaves the rest up to you: you could build a Bears kindred deck, a stax-y hate bears version, lean into morph, go completely creatureless like I did, or even have her helm a Slivers brew. There's simply so much room to explore with Duskana, the Rage Mother, and I hope we see more legends like her in 2025.

Shadowy Backstreet is my pick for card of the year, standing in for the cycle of surveil lands from Murders at Karlov Manor. (I know, I know, it's a bit of a cop-out to pick a cycle for card of the year, so I picked the one that I've personally played the most in my Karador Cycling- Reanimator deck). I think Shadowy Backstreet and company are such an elegant design.

Surveil seems similar to scry on its surface, but rewards you for running cards that care about the graveyard. Because the surveil lands have basic land types, you can grab them with fetch lands or cards like Claim Jumper which makes them viable in just about every format. Lastly, they come into play tapped, which is a significant enough cost to prevent you from running only surveil lands and tends to reward decks that develop at a more casual pace in my experience.

They do so many little things that all add up to an amazing cycle of lands that I'm looking forward to playing for years to come.

Josh Nelson

I've quite enjoyed piloting my Coram, the Undertaker build this year. While I can say there are other decks I've also greatly enjoyed, Coram is a wonderful learning experience for me personally. I don't often play Aggro decks, let alone such overtly Aggro decks as Coram. The Undertaker allows me to deliver some really strong games while shoring up a glaring weakness in my Commander strategy suite.

Beyond that, I don't often play Jund decks, so playing using Coram is a nice way to dredge up many cool cards not often utilized from my collection (in more ways than one). Granted, Reanimator strategies are very firmly in my wheelhouse, so in many ways, the deck is also extremely forgiving for someone who isn't well-versed in aggressive strategies.

One of my favorite things to do with my list is mill myself to the point where a card like Lord of Extinction enters my graveyard, then cast Coram. Ideally, by that point, I would've also milled Anger or had a different haste enabler on the battlefield. Then, I can simply go to town with the deck.

As an important final point, I'm known in my local metagames as a player who often broadcasts very little until I can get a win from behind. My poker face isn't too shabby, I suppose. Coram allows me to be way more direct in my approach to victory, like the Jund color-pie philosophy often implies. It's not an approach I often take, but when I do, I only get better and better at the art of not needing subtlety. For all the reasons listed above, Coram, the Undertaker is my top Commander pick for 2024.

Landon Crispens

My choice for the best 2024 commander is Universes Beyond: Fallout's Dogmeat, Ever Loyal. Paying for a 3/3 that mills five cards and returns any Aura or Equipment from your graveyard to your hand is excellent. Also, Dogmeat, Ever Loyal produces a Junk artifact token whenever a creature you control that is enchanted or equipped attacks. Junk tokens act as alternative card drawing since sacrificing them exiles the top card of your library to play until the end of your turn at sorcery speed.

Dogmeat, Ever Loyal's tri-color identity and abilities make it an ideal choice to lead Aura- and Equipment-themed Commander decks. You can include amazing Aura cards, like Mantle of the Ancients, All That Glitters, and Bear Umbra. Many of the best Equipment cards, such as Thran Power Suit and The Reaver Cleaver, are also possible additions. Moreover, you can slot in plenty of potent creature threats and spells to support them. Attacking an opponent with a 30/30 legendary creature possessing trample, double strike, and lifelink is not unusual in a Commander game with Dogmeat, Ever Loyal.

The best Commander-playable card printed in 2024 is arguably Untimely Malfunction. A two-mana instant-speed modal spell offering one of three valuable effects is incredible. Destroying an artifact is relevant to Commander as Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Swiftfoot Boots appear in practically every deck. Furthermore, changing the target of a spell or ability with a single target is helpful in several scenarios.

Besides saving a creature from targeted removal, switching the target player of Time Warp or Time Stretch to you is fantastic. Untimely Malfunction may prevent a game loss by redirecting abilities from Mindslaver or Flamewave Invoker. Preventing one or two creatures from blocking during a turn is likely the least selected effect of Untimely Malfunction. However, removing blockers can make combat disadvantageous for an opponent or create an opening to get damage through. Untimely Malfunction is a spell worth playing if you have not yet slotted it in a deck.

Michael Celani

Did it finally happen? Did Magic finally jump the shark? Well, like saying OJ is guilty, nobody can prove it, but most people are pretty sure.

I'm not losing hope, though. Thankfully, I actually *like* detectives, cowboys, assassins, haunted houses, mutants, and furries, especially if they're all in the same place at the same time. But we're not here to talk about my quinceañera; we're here to talk about my favorite card from 2024, which is unequivocally Untimely Malfunction.

Red is meant to be a proactive color, but the problem is that making waves is heavily discouraged in a format with three opponents. You need to chew through one hundred and twenty life before you can claim victory, and to do that, you'll have to struggle through thrice the removal. The two ways around this are to either be so fast and so dominant that you overwhelm the table before anyone can mount a response -- an inconsistent strategy at best -- or you fill your deck with enough protection and recursion that you can survive long enough to exploit an opening.

The real reason red has long felt like an incomplete color in Commander is that it never really had many tools if you wanted to travel that second route. It's why you don't often see grindy mono-red value engines, like Anep, Vizier of Hazoret, Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest or Norin, Swift Survivalist, helming decks.

To elaborate, red's removal is tied for the worst with green (who struggles slightly more with creatures but can handle enchantments), their protection is limited in scope, and their advantage states are often ephemeral bursts of power instead of game-spanning engines. If you want to win with red, you have to win fast, and ideally out of nowhere.

To fix this problem without betraying the color's principals, red needs to have more options for reactive plays on the stack. Those reactive cards need to have proactive elements, so that there's a real decision you can make instead of feeling like you're being forced to wait (which would be very un-red).

Untimely Malfunction fits the bill. All three of its modes are strong: destroying an artifact is always good, and paralyzing blockers can help get damage through; not only in combats you're a part of, but also when your opponents are squabbling amongst themselves. The third, ostensibly protective mode is most useful at negating removal, but it can also be played offensively to swipe powerful combat tricks and Auras. Imagine playing an Untimely Malfunction to steal a Tamiyo's Safekeeping in response to a removal spell.

Reactivity doesn't necessarily mean preparation: you can frame it as opportunistic, in the way that more villains should just be shot while monologuing. Untimely Malfunction is likely strongest as a reactive spell, but it still has utility outside that small window of time, and that's why I want to see more like it in the future.

Mike Carrozza

I have built a few more commanders this year than I normally do and I'm eying more. So many legends were incredibly cool with fresh takes on themes I'd already implemented or simply a twist on a thing I already have built and love playing. With Fallout and a bunch of surprises in-universe, I feel inspired!

While Shilly and Rak presented new challenges for me while leaning into sacrifice strategies (I know who I am and what I love), Teysa has been the most versatile and challenging to pilot. It's very satisfying to build an engine for Teysa to call shots from. Not to mention, as someone who was invested in the story of Murders at Karlov Manor, seeing one of my favorite characters return was pretty hype. I look forward to her next card, most likely as a Spirit.

I have been extremely vocal about Phyrexian Altar being my favorite card since I was a kid. Warren Soultrader is the closest we'll get to Altar on a creature for a while I'd have to guess. Downside? Lose on life. Upside? Make a Treasure token. You can bank your mana, you can use token-doublers. That downside is often mitigated by a drain effect you've got online anyway.

This has been a great year for Magic. Plenty of inspiring cards. Some extremely power crept, but others just cool and interesting in a new way. All in all, I have never felt so engaged with the game and I think that's sweet! I hope you feel the same!

Nick Wolf

According to Scryfall, there were 321 new legendary creatures printed in 2024. That's a lot by any metric, but it's not the most in a calendar year. Both 2022 and 2023 had more.

That's not to say this choice was any easier than it was in those years. Even out of the 1,071 legendary creatures printed between 2022 and 2024, they still haven't given me a Jund -1/-1 counters commander, so Wizards of the Coast and I are no longer on speaking terms.

Anyway, here's my pick for favorite, after combing through the many, many Scryfall pages:

I'm a Timmy at heart, so any creature that has a power and toughness equating to 20 is an automatic hit. Normally, I'd avoid blue, but despite Koma's overall wetness, it's a green creature through and through. It's simple, and it does what it says on the tin. Hit hard, make ribbons. It's a strict upgrade over the original version from Kaldheim, in the sense that it's probably a worse card but it's way cooler. Isn't that all we really care about?

As for the favorite noncommander card, it's this:

I'm on record as loving Sunbird's Invocation more than most of my family. Don't think that's some revelation: they know it, too.

Powerbalance checks off all the relevant boxes for me: it's a callback to an awesome card from years past, it forces interaction (in other words, makes me have to pay attention to the game), it gives you free stuff, and it allows for fun top-deck manipulation. I haven't quite found the perfect home for it yet. Maybe Johann, Apprentice Sorcerer? Svella, Ice Shaper? The Jund -1/-1 commander that is definitely, without a doubt coming in 2025?

Travis Stanley

I may be a bit biased for picking Olivia, Opulent Outlaw as my favorite creature from 2024, but I have good reasons! Truth be told, she was definitely overshadowed by Stella Lee, Wild Card and that powerhouse of a deck, but Olivia is still strong in her own right. She gives Treasures when you deal combat damage with creature types that love dealing combat damage. She can then turn those Treasures into game finishing buffs.

Not only that, she gives another option for those tired of seeing Edgar Markov across the table from them as another Mardu Vampire commander option, which I think is the biggest boon. I was so incredibly grateful to get to "preview" and do a little deck tech on Olivia, as she is one of my favourite characters in Magic. This Vampire holds a special place in my heart, seeing as Olivia Voldaren was one of the first Commander decks I built, and now will continue to do so.

Seeing the creature that I picked it should be fairly obvious why I chose Banner of Kinship as my favorite noncreature spell of 2024. This is a great finisher for all kindred decks that love going wide like Faeries, Elves, Goblins, and heck, even Vampires. This can easily be a five-mana Craterhoof Behemoth-esque effect for kindred decks that are not in green, even if they are in green, this is still a solid anthem effect.

Even if your deck doesn't go wide usually, this can still provide a solid buff, mix that in with any proliferate effects and now you're cooking with gas. Another reason I love this card is because both arts for it are absolutely gorgeous, and would make a fine edition to any collection. I know I am going to get multiple copies of this for my myriad of kindred decks.

Tyler Bucks

Unsummoned Skull

2024 saw a tremendous influx of cards into Magic: The Gathering, with some sets adding amazing locales to Magic's existing IP, like Bloomburrow, some sets expanding the IPs in Magic, like Fallout, and some blending the two, like Duskmourn: House of Horror. Magic's gone from the ridiculous complexity of Modern Horizons 3 to the return to comfort and fundamentals in Foundations. I've written about a variety of commanders, such as an ode to my favorite novel series growing up, Redwall, several Rube Goldberg combo commanders, and even "an Unsummon-loving waifu". In terms of my favorite card and commander of the year, however, they tend to be overlooked.

My card of the year is an Overabundance on a stick, Barbflare Gremlin. My favorite decks involve multiplication: multiplying damage, mana, cards drawn...any way to create explosive and memorable turns. Duskmourn added a damage-multiplier, which I gushed about in my Red Set Review, but the Commander Deck one-upped it by adding a hasty, first-striking mana-doubler on a stick that damages players for tapping lands.

This card is going to fuel Fireballs in my Rosheen Meanderer deck, increase Targ Nar, Demon-Fang Gnoll's power and toughness exponentially, and pour even more mana into Zacama, Primal Calamity's abilities!

I don't think I've ever built a deck as quickly as I built The Mindskinner. Given that Duskmourn wasn't my favorite set, that really says something. But something about its combination of abilities, an immediate connection to a Pokemon for a Pokedeck collaboration with FoxNoctom, and bit of beautiful inspiration led the deck to becoming a favorite of mine.

The deck uses Voltron Equipment to add to The Mindskinner's already incredible power, haste-enablers to get it to hit the ground running, and Unsummons, the late addition, to protect the commander from removal and ourselves from attacks. In terms of the Poke Alter? That would be Veluza, with the deck being called "Psychic Fangs".