Well, here we are.
Today is sort of an auspicious article posting because it happens to coincide with several overlapping moments in the importance of this series, and to some degree, here at the CR as a whole. It’s a period that’s left me feeling rather pensive and reflective…but optimistic for the future too. Still, sometimes to be able to properly look towards the future, to see where the next mile in the journey may take us, it can be rather helpful to occasionally glance over one’s shoulder and see where you started from.
Today’s article marks the 350th Commander Spotlight piece. While there assuredly have been more Monday Magic pieces written over the years, from a deck construction diary, to a rundown of EDH-worthy cards of specific sets, to various one-off soapbox pieces, the core of this weekly series has always resided with these short and sweet card highlights. Since the very beginning, the focus of these little (and sometimes not so little) articles have carried with them a trifold mission. The first is to ever celebrate Commander’s intended casual nature. By its very existence as an Eternal format Commander decks have access to over 99% of all Magic cards across its more than 27 year history. People have the flexibility and freedom therefore to craft decks however they see fit, from the obscure and eccentric to the wacky but effective. Powerful cards and powerful decks are fine to a point, but the end goal is not to thrash your opponent in 20 minutes – as is the common intent with typical dueling. No, Commander’s driving purpose, it’s entire ethos, is to have fun with others at the table. And contrary to the thoughts of some, fun for most is not inherently synonymous with totally dominating your opponent. The whole format was quite literally created by several tournament judges as an escape from the grind of the typical tourney atmosphere. That fact should never be lost on its adherents. However, sometimes folks now and then need a reminder. This series was me adding one more voice, one more vote, towards championing that mentality.
The second and third focal points tie directly into the first. If Commander is to be a fun, casual, and accessible format, then two other facts are likewise salient. That is, not every deck need look remotely like one another, and people should not need to drop tons of money in a 100 card singleton format in order to participate in the festivities. In pragmatic terms, this meant that every card chosen to write about could be acquired for under $5 – with the majority coming in at less than half that. (The price at the time, at least. As I alluded to back in September, there are definitely a couple dozen cards chosen that used to be quite affordable to the lay player but over the years have skyrocketed in price.)
Moreover, it meant that not everyone needs to play with the same cards. If everyone is using the same handful of EDH staples, things become more homogenous and less entertaining. I tackled this by specifically trying to focus on cards that were more than a couple years old (as to downplay the ease of the New Hotness factor), to restrict myself to normal sets (as supplemental products often come with a higher price tag, lower accessibility, or both), and to actively choose cards that were perhaps overlooked, forgotten about, or tended to play second fiddle to a similar but more popular card.
Nowhere was the intent to attempt to upsell ‘bad’ cards as better than they are – with perhaps one or two exceptions that I stand by. Instead it was, it has always been, and always will be, the intent of working against the mentality that a generic Commander deck must have specific cards for it to be considered worthy. That somehow if you don’t run a Sol Ring your deck is suddenly suspect and your status as a player diminished. Monday Magic was founded with the direct intent of countering the notion of “staple” cards.
That hasn’t really changed since its first posting – on November 12th, 2012.
This therefore also means that in addition to being the 350th Spotlight pick for a format that has since become the dominant shape of casual Magic, its appearance this week coincides with the series’ 9th anniversary. Given that its inaugural post went up only a week or so after the site’s launch in general, this also means a milestone writ large at CR HQ.
All of this is entirely coincidental. Monday Magic took a few weeks off to focus on our Gen Con 2021 recap coverage, but this was admittedly just due to the fact that having not done a major convention in nearly 2 years due to the pandemic we were a bit rusty on the time management portion of content creation. It wasn’t a deliberate holdout to get these milestones to intersect. Instead, it just proved to be a wonderfully happy accident.
Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I started wondering which card I would want to use for the 350th pick. Instead of just the next in my queue, I wanted to pick a card that had both a worthiness as an EDH card along all the aforementioned criteria but also one that held a personal significance. A card that often didn’t make a lot of headlines but had some history to it. A card that spoke to the tenure of this article series and to my own supremely long tenure with the game. Most of all, I wanted to pick a card that I have great fondness towards.
The more I thought about it, the more one card in particular came rushing into focus.
Today we have: Mishra’s Factory
Name: Mishra’s Factory
Edition: Antiquities / Fourth Edition / Elspeth v Tezzeret / Eternal Masters / Masters 25 / Double Masters / Modern Horizons 2
Rarity: Uncommon
Focus: Land Animation
Highlights: Even at the time of this column’s inception, Mishra’s Factory was already an old card. Which only reinforces that in a lot of ways Mishra’s Factory is sort of an oddity in the grand pantheon of Magic: the Gathering. On the one hand, it has the distinction of being the very first of the landfolk cards – often called ‘manlands’. While many such cards have come along in the game since in a host of colors, sizes, and flavors, for a time this one was the only such card in town. And rather remarkably, it still can hold its own in sheer versatility.
Heck, ask anyone who has ever played the old Microprose Magic game and they’ll tell you just how potent this unassuming land can be.
At the same time, Mishra’s Factory has an equally (if sometimes perplexing) trait of getting easier to obtain over time due to a series of anthology set reprints. Although the original four Mishra’s Factory card variations from Antiquities, each depicting a different season, fetch well over $100 (the winter variant being particularly wallet-breaking), nearly every other mass printing of it goes for under $1. It’s silly easy to find nowadays. Which is the polar opposite of its super similarly named sibling from the same set, Mishra’s Workshop.
Yet despite the fact that it is accessible, affordable, and useful, Mishra’s Factory’s acclaim has dwindled over the years due to competition from other land animators. Still, while a number of them may be more powerful thanks to colored mana options or more targeted to a specific deck purpose, Mishra’s Factory is a workhorse card that can still hold its own after all these years.
As you’d expect for a landfolk card, Mishra’s Factory is very straightforward, with three built-in abilities. First, as a standard land, it allows you to tap for a single colorless mana – without needing to enter the battlefield tapped. Secondly, by paying 1 mana, Mishra’s Factory becomes a 2/2 artifact creature for the turn. As with most temporary land animators, this affords you flexibility to attack with for potshot damage if the opportunity presents itself, or it can serve as a surprise sacrificial blocker should someone attack you and forget it’s on your battlefield. Additionally, since they cease being creatures at the end of the turn, animators such as Mishra’s Factory can be tricky to get rid of outside of combat. They have a knack for surviving board wipes, and most players generally don’t want to waste spot removal on a rather generic 2/2 – perhaps aside from the satisfaction that doing so also destroys one of your lands. This subset of cards is particularly handy in EDH generally. Being colorless, Mishra’s Factory has the bonus that it can end up in practically any Commander deck that feels it could make use of it.
All while only taking up a land slot in the deck.
Finally, there is its often-overlooked pump ability: Mishra’s Factory can be tapped to give another Assembly-Worker creature +1/+1 until end of turn. While this can aid cards like Self-Assembler, the aptly-named Assembly-Worker, the wonderfully synergistic Urza’s Factory, or basically any Changeling, the vast majority of the time if you’re going to use this ability it’s in relation to Mishra’s Factory itself. Conceptually this was for buffing another Factory, but you technically can use it defensively on itself to keep itself alive against a similarly matched creature. Simply animate it as a creature, block as normal, and then activate its boost effect, turning it into a tapped 3/3. In the old days this was a tricky stall move to keep your land alive against another 2/2 without being able to damage it back, as prior to Sixth Edition tapped artifacts didn’t deal damage. With that restriction long gone, however, Mishra’s Factory (at least on defense) has effectively become more powerful than it was originally – only further adding to its legacy.
As someone who started Magic: the Gathering with Antiquities, Mishra’s Factory has been a stalwart deck companion for decades, and I can fondly say it has a place in at least two of my active Commander decks to this day. It’s easy to overlook when making a deck, sure, but on the battlefield that blindness can also work to your opponent’s detriment. It certainly has saved my hide on more than one occasion over the years. It’s not flashy, explosive, or game-changing. But it’s a sturdy, useful card with a miniscule price tag that does what it does particularly well. And I can’t think of a better choice to celebrate both 350 Spotlight cards and 9 years writing about casual Commander than that.
Thank you folks for reading along. I hope you’ve found the subjects useful, curious, or insightful, and that, perhaps a few of the cards mentioned have ended up in a deck or two of your own.
But if not, how about a chance to make that happen? Right…now.
350th Showcase Celebration!
In honor of these accomplishments, and as an appreciation being part of it after all this time, I’m raffling off a pair of fun prizes to one lucky winner:
- A $25 store credit to TCGPlayer.com to let you get some all new (or old) cards for your own Commander decks.
- A copy of the latest webcomic book by Cardboard Crack – giving you something to do if you’re still not able to play Commander as often as you’d like these days.
All you have to do to enter is fill out the form below and tell us a little bit about some of your own Magic favorites:
The contest will run through the rest of November, so don’t miss out on a chance to enter. Thanks again, and good luck!
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