Magic: The Gathering’s latest set gives you a good excuse to dig out those old cards

You’d think a card game with as many expansions as Magic: The Gathering would have done something as poker-adjacent as a Western set before now, but it’s taken until its 100th expansion for Magic to cowboy up. Outlaws of Thunder Junction explores a new plane full of arcane trains to rob and cactus-spider monsters to shoot—called cactarantulas, naturally—but it’s interesting how much this brand new set’s mechanics have made me want to go trawling through older cards.

For starters, there’s Crime now. Several cards improve or trigger abilities if you committed a Crime that turn, where Crime is defined as “Targeting an opponent, anything that opponent controls, and/or any cards in an opponent’s graveyard”. That covers quite a lot of ways you can mess with other players, but doesn’t include basic attacking. When you take a swing at an opponent in the combat phase, you’re not targeting anything specific, which I like to imagine as all your creatures marching forward windmilling their arms like Bart Simpson. Nothing criminal about that. 

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