The best cards in The Foundations Starter Set

Key foods

• The Starter in Foundations set offers interesting cards and a mix of rarities that make it appealing to Magic veterans.

• Golden Lotus, while not efficient, provides a quick mana boost to help advance the board.

• Dread Summon is a powerful card that pummels opponents and overwhelms your board while setting up your graveyard for synergies and combos.

Foundations is a solid way to get into Magic: The Gathering, with a healthy mix of simple cards to learn how to play, and more complex cards to show what's next. And one of the most exciting things released alongside Foundations is the Starter Kit.

This box contains three Foundations booster packs along with 361 preset cards in all rarities. Many of these items can only be found in this set, making it a worthwhile pick even if you're already a Magic veteran.

10

golden lotus

Big and expensive mana stone

Gilded Lotus may pale in comparison to more efficient mana gems like Sol Ring or Arcane Signet, but it's still a quick way to get ahead in mana.

The Sol Ring and Arcane Signet are both included in the box, as part of a special mini-pack that also introduces Command Tower to you along with Command.

The general wisdom about Golden Lotus is that, if you can do something to spin it with the mana you can hit, it's a worthwhile play. Following it up with a Tauren Mauler or Predator Ooze will turn it from a five-mana artifact that destroys immediately into a two-mana gem that can hit for much more.

9

The end of the maze

Your first alternate winning bet

Maze decks are often one of the first alternative ways to win a game that a new Magic player discovers. Collect two different gates before starting Maze's End and it's easy to figure out to win the whole thing, but it's also impressive.

With the many gates that have been printed in recent years, Maze's End is much more interesting now than it was when it first appeared. In Standard, you won't have as many gates to work with as elsewhere, making Maze decks harder to assemble. But if you're having fun in Commander, you also have Baldur's Seven Gates, Gateway Plaza, and one-off gates like the Talon Gates of Madara and the Thran Portal.

8

Killing the tumor

Punish token players

Foundations is full of cards that make a lot of small tokens and is one of the prominent white themes in the set. If you have an opponent that keeps going around with a bunch of cats or goblins, dropping a Massacre Wurm can be a game changer.

It costs a lot at six mana, but the chance to clear the board and kill an opponent through Massacre Wurm's life loss makes it one of the scariest cards in the Starter set. And after all that, you still have a 6/5 carrier, which is nothing to sniff at.

7

Summons fear

All we want to do is eat your brains

Dread Summon is the kind of big, punchy card that new players love, and anyone who has a zombie deck knows how exciting it can be. Paying X to grind everyone before making 2/2 zombie tokens can quickly turn the game in your favor.

Not only do you crush your opponents, but you also do it to yourself. It's a great way to set up your graveyard for returns, descents, thresholds and dozens of other graveyard-centric mechanics. Meanwhile, if you have a Champion of the Perished on the battlefield, be prepared to show up big time.

6

Halim coach

As good as it gets for the white card draw

White is one of the worst colors for drawing cards. Most effects limit you to only doing it once per turn, or let your opponents play with you, making it hard to catch up. Mentor of the Meek is one of those rare examples of a white card draw that actually helps you get ahead.

You'll have to play small creatures, and pay a mana to do so, but in any deck that runs a lot of “junkies” it can help keep you together. Foundation is full of cryptic strategies, so bringing in a few cats or bunnies can easily help fill your hand.

5

Basil collar

Give anything Deathtouch

Basilisk Collar re-entered Standard with Foundations for the first time since Worldwake in 2010, bringing a terrifying way to permanently grant creature death. While that alone is enough to make it an attractive card for new players, veterans know how death can happen on the right creature.

Anything trample can boil through blockers like they're nothing, combat spells become instant removal, and with Fynn the Fangbearer in the deck as well, poison wins are much more viable. Remove the creature and the Basilisk Collar will remain, ready to be retooled into something else and continue its reign of terror.

4

Boros Enchantment

Lay traps for your opponents

The Boros Charm is one of the most powerful flexibles in the Starter set, and it's still uncommon years after it was first printed. With just two mana you can make your permanents invulnerable to save them from board wipe, or you can double hit them to win through combat.

There is a third option to deal four damage to a player or planeswalker, but it pales in comparison to the other two. Every red/white deck is going to want Boros Charm.

3

Pyromancer glasses

Two for the price of one

Like Gilded Lotus, Pyromancer's Goggles is generally considered a very expensive mana stone at five general mana. But the payoff is huge, as it copies it for free for you by tapping it for red mana and using it to pay an instant or sorcery.

Duplicating an X-cost spell also copies the X amount you paid into the original.

In Foundations, this allows you to build a bunch of Goblins with Goblin Negotiation, give all your creatures a 6+6/6 buff with Overrun, or gain control of two creatures with Involuntary Recruit. To make it even better, you can do this every time you tap the Pyromancer's Goggles, and it will give you an unusual value each time you activate it.

2

Rites of repetition

Why have one copy when you can have five?

Rite of Replication is such a fun card. It's a slightly expensive way to copy a target creature if you pick it regularly, but kicking it to make five copies instead of nine mana is incredibly explosive.

The best part is that nowhere in Rite of Replication does it say that the creature you copy must be yours. If the opponent pulls out a Massacre Wurm, or something scarier like a Bloodthirsty Conqueror, or even something with a useful effect like Bigfin Bouncer, Rite of Replication suddenly becomes a big problem for your opponent.

1

Colossus Dark Steel

Big box robot

Every episode of Darksteel Colossus is scary in its own right: 11/11 would be bad enough, but it has a kick. A stomping 11/11 is bad enough, but it's also indestructible. 11/11 is terrible with being trampled and indestructible, and instead of dying, it just returns to your deck.

Difficult to get rid of without banishing, and difficult to block due to its size, Darksteel Colossus is also easy to train and trick due to being an artifact. Plus it comes in the same box as Rite of Replication, which is just extreme.