Popverse's top stories

• Wizards of the Coast has a secret rule for MTG against wizards in pointy hats
• “Acting is a contact sport”: Actor/director Bryce Dallas Howard on stunts, safety, and chasing adrenaline
• 2026 is the year of 'Avengers: Really Bad Thing' in comics AND movies as Marvel’s flagship team gets a new focus

When you learn how to play Magic: The Gathering, you learn the various phases that make up a single turn in the game. The second part of the beginning phase of your turn is called upkeep, and you would be forgiven (by me at least) if you admitted that you forget about it sometimes. 

Folks who have been playing Magic since the game's early days have a more solid understanding of it because older sets of the game featured more cards that had abilities that were triggered specifically during upkeep. That isn't to say that upkeep is completely gone from newer Magic sets, as the upcoming Lorwyn Eclipsed set's Bitterbloom Bearer card can attest to, but it's a phase that Magic: The Gathering designers have consciously been moving away from in recent years. 

The head of game design at Magic: The Gathering, Mark Rosewater, revealed on his Tumblr blog that the game's Research & Design department (commonly abbreviated as "R&D") "has decided start of first main phase is just a better place to have a trigger than upkeep. If we started Magic over, I don't even know if the game would have upkeep. I might do a podcast on the topic." Please create a podcast episode about this, MaRo. 

Case in point: I was playing Magic: The Gathering this weekend with the Avatar: The Last Airbender Beginner Box, a bundle designed to be as newcomer-friendly as possible. I don't remember upkeep factoring into any of the matches I played with my buddy, but take my memory with a grain of salt. I just flipped through the cards I got from two Avatar collector's packs, and none of them featured an upkeep trigger. So there is that. 

Obviously, given that Lorwyn Eclipsed will have at least one card with an upkeep trigger, the step in the beginning phase isn't going to vanish immediately from the game in the near future at this point in time. But perhaps it will slowly fade away into obscurity, like many other things that were invented in the 1990s. 

Whether you are a Commander player, a regular at your local game shop's FNM event, or simply love collecting Magic: The Gathering cards, you've landed in the right place. From Universes Beyond to the furthest reaches of the Magic Multiverse, we've got you covered here at Popverse. 

• Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering upcoming release schedule
• Magic: The Gathering and Marvel are planning "multiple sets" and Commander Decks - thanks to Thanos' Infinity Stones
• Magic: The Gathering taps into nostalgia two ways with new 2026 sets featuring Lorwyn and Strixhaven
• Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy crossover is already the top-selling set in Wizards of the Coast’s history, before it’s even come out