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Magic Monday Got a Wedgie and Sharded Itself (7/7/23)

Hello all, and welcome to Magic Monday, where Avocados can magically gather and talk about Magic: The Gathering. Each week I’ll talk about something Magic-related that’s on my mind, highlight a card related to those thoughts, and offer a prompt for commenting. This week’s column is courtesy of the red, white, and blue.

This past weekend, America celebrated its birthday by opening a concentration camp in Florida grilling tube meat, blowing up fireworks, and draping itself in a traditionally greater-than-usual volume of the red, white, and blue of the American flag. But in the world of Magic, that flag’s particular trio of colors means something different—and it’s an ensemble that’s got some members of the Magic community in a minor tizzy.

Since the reveal of Kilo, Apogee Mind, one of the precon face commanders1 in the upcoming Edge of Eternities set, I’ve seen a handful of complaints that Wizards is printing too many Jeskai commanders too quickly and that they need to pump the brakes on that for a while. Jeskai, the red/white/blue color identity, is one of the five wedges, which is the name for those three-color combinations in Magic that consist of one main color and its two enemy colors on the color pie. (All is explained in the image below.) I myself was able to recall more than a few from recent memory off the top of my head, so I did a little digging, and sure enough, of the 42 Jeskai creatures that can be your commander, a whopping 23—more than half!—had their first printing in 2023 or later.

The colored dots that appear on the back of every Magic card comprise what is known as the color pie. Colors that are directly adjacent to each other on the color pie are called allied colors, and as such, often have aligned goals and interests sympathetic to each other. Any colors that are separated from another by at least one other color are known as enemy colors. A combination of three allied colors (represented by the green circles) is called a shard. A wedge consists of one main color plus its two enemy colors. In this case, the yellow circles indicate blue as the main color, and green and red as its enemy colors.

Unsurprisingly, some of this can be pinned on Universes Beyond, since it’s responsible for nine of those 23. But you can’t lay the entire blame at its feet. It’s more likely the double whammy of Wizards printing so much product and gearing a lot of that product toward its current most popular format. They’re just throwing a lot of things at the wall, and a lot of characters’ flavor happens to fit the Jeskai profile. I haven’t broken down other color combinations in the same way, but I’d bet a lot of them have experienced a similar uptick in possible commanders simply due to the glut of product being pushed.

I’ve had quite a bit of success with varying permutations of these colors in the past. My Jeska/Ishai partner deck was a swift and brutal machine that got the closest I’ve ever come to getting a deck banned in my friend pod, and I once ran a Breeches/Malcolm pirate deck that won an 8-player game by causing everybody to scoop out of boredom with triggers. But I’m choosing my favorite commander to run in these colors, owing partly to my love of Walls and partly to my love of control shenanigans, for my Card of the Week.

Card of the Week: This week’s Card of the Week is Pramikon, Sky Rampart, a 1/5 legendary Wall with flying and defender that restricts your attacking exclusively to the opponent on either your right or left.

Blue and white are the primary colors of an archetype known as stax, which is a very controlling, locked-down style of play that essentially amounts to telling your opponent “no” at every turn. Toss in red for an aggro element, maybe some decent damage doublers (or even triplers), and you can really go ham on the poor sap unfortunate enough to be sitting next to you. And if you play a Mystic Barrier and name the opposite direction you named with Pramikon, no one can attack at all. Good, clean Magic, everybody!

COTW Value: Each week, the Card of the Week is rated on a scale of one to five dollar signs (see footnote for values).2 People tend not to think much of wall creatures, and even less of cards that enforce restrictions on smooth play, so Pramikon is never going to enter the value stratosphere. Still, as of this writing, it’s the most expensive I’ve ever seen it, currently sitting at $1.82. It’s only been printed once, as a backup commander in the Mystic Intellect deck from Commander 2019, which is kind of astounding. That one printing is a fairly washed out–looking foil, so it needs some reprint love to bring out its dazzling light show. I was kind of surprised when it didn’t show up in the Planeswalker Party deck from Commander Masters, a deck that plays great right out of the box and is fun enough to ease the sting of not being able to afford Eldrazi. $

Prompt: What is your favorite wedge or shard (3-color combo) to build/play around in?

Mine’s probably Jund (black, red, green). It does everything I like doing in Magic: it ramps, it tinkers with the graveyard, and it hits like a truck. Jund is very likely to get an article from me sometime in the future.

Bonus Prompt: Is there a color combination you think Wizards favors too much? If so, which, and why?