Wizards of the Coast may have delivered on its quota of new expansions for Magic: The Gathering‘s Standard format, but 2020 is far from a done deal for the collectible card game as a whole.
For the first time ever, next month will see the arrival of Commander’s first draft booster box product, enabling a group of players to open sealed packs and construct a deck from the cards they pull directly. For Standard, of course, this poses little issue, but in order to accommodate the singleton rules that govern Commander, Wizards has had to come up with a novel solution to a potentially game-breaking problem. As fans of the format will know, decks must contain a Legendary Creature as their so-called commander and can be played multiple times per match for an increased casting cost each time they’re destroyed or removed. All 99 remaining cards must either be colorless or of the same color as their respective leader.
The issue, then, lies in the fact that, up until now, all Legendary Creatures have been either rare or Mythic, meaning you could potentially open several draft boosters and not receive one. To circumvent this, The Prismatic Piper was created.
As explained by senior designer Gavin Verhey in the latest episode of Good Morning Magic, Prismatic Piper, unlike other Legendary Creatures, is common-rarity and is seeded in packs at a 1:6 ratio. Its purpose, then, is to act as a fail-safe in the event that players get remarkably unlucky during the drafting process. It’s also worth noting that, as is the case with basic lands, Prismatic Piper can be slotted into a deck from your existing collection, so once you have a copy, it’ll always be an option in future drafts.
Magic: The Gathering – Commander Legends is out November 20th for tabletop and Magic Online. See here for more details.
