Wizards of the Coast has announced it’s bringing back Magic Game Night, a box of five Magic: The Gathering decks intended to introduce new players to the TCG. It looks to be closely following the pattern established by the original Game Night product from 2018 – a set of five monocolor, simple decks intended for casual multiplayer games. The main difference is that this time each deck also has a unique legendary creature you can bring over to EDH.
The new MTG Game Night box was revealed in Wizards’ official announcement stream on Thursday. Just like the previous version, most of the cards in this product will be reprints. However, five are new legendary creatures that can’t be found anywhere else. These will be legal in eternal formats like Legacy – which means they can indeed be your commander.
Let’s briefly go over the five cards. First up, we’ve got Imaryll, Elfhame Elite, perhaps the most powerful of the bunch, this green card gains power and toughness for the number of elves you control, and can deal its damage as if unblocked. There are tons of fantastic MTG elves cards already, so this may not cut the mustard – but elf tribal players, you’ve got another option.
In the red corner, there’s Nogi, Draco-Zealot, a friendly kobold that makes dragons cheaper and can then become a dragon. And in black we have Vogar, Necropolis Tyrant, a giant zombie that gets stronger when things die and draws you cards when it dies.
The blue creature Maeve, Insidious Singer has a very silly name, and uses Wizards’ new favourite Commander mechanic, goad. And the white angel gives equipped creatures indestructible on your turn – she’s called Zamriel, Seraph of Steel.
A set of four new Pioneer Challenger decks were also announced on the Weekly MTG stream. This is the second year Wizards has released these products, preconstructed decks intended to be somewhat competitive in friendly Pioneer games.
The four Pioneer Challenger decks for 2022 are: Izzet Phoenix, Orzhov Humans, Gruul Stompy, and Dimir Control. Of these, Izzet Phoenix is the clear standout – though this powerful archetype got nerfed pretty hard when Expressive Iteration got placed on the banlist. Dimir Control takes second place, and the remaining two decks have little place in the Pioneer meta.
No official release date was given in the video, but Wizards Play Network gives a release date of October 14. That puts these releases in an already crowded month, with both delayed products – Unfinity and the MTG Warhammer 40k crossover decks, releasing on October 7.