Quick Links
There are few mechanics inMagic: The Gatheringquite as rare as frenzy. Having only appeared on two cards, and one of them being silver-bordered, it’s hard to imagine in what game you’d ever even consider seeing it in action.
And yet, frenzy is something you need to keep an eye out for. Thanks to just one of those cards, you could be dealing with it a lot more than you’d expect, and knowing its ins and outs is important.
What Is Frenzy?
Frenzy is a triggered ability that was one of manyone-off mechanics introduced in Future Sight.Whenever a creature with frenzy attacks,if it isn’t blocked, it gets an additional +X/+0, where X is the number listed next to the frenzy keyword.
For instance, if a creature has frenzy 1, it’ll get +1/+0 when it isn’t blocked. This is meant to push you ropponents into blocking, to avoid taking more damage than they anticipated.
Future Sight’s whole theme was imagining how Magic would develop in the future, with mechanics like toxic (as ‘poisonous’, but it’s the same thing), devoid, and even landfall all making appearances here years before their formal introduction. Frenzy wasn’t quite as lucky, andhas yet to make a full comebackin Magic since its debut.
How To Use Frenzy?
There’s only really one way you may use frenzy, because the only eternal-legal card with the mechanic is found on Future Sight’s Frenzy Sliver. Because of that, you’ll likely be using it as another keyword to throw into the keyword soup that is yourregular Sliver deck.
Slivers’ abilities tend to buff every Sliver you control, and Frenzy Sliver gives all of them frenzy 1. Combine that with Slivers that give other keywords, like trample, flying, or unblockable, and you could be fishing out a lot of damage very quickly.
Keep in mind that frenzyis not an attack trigger. It requires your creature to attack, but it actually triggers after the declare blockers step. You won’t be doubling frenzy with a card like Isshin, Two Heavens As One.
The only other way you’ll be using frenzy is in silver-border cards, which are legal for casual play, but not in organised or competitive environments. Garbage Elemental has frenzy 2 – the highest seen on a card so far – and can’t be blocked by ‘wordy’ creatures with more than four or more lines of rules text.
Also found in Unstable is Modular Monstrosity, which can pick up frenzy from Garbage Elemental, but by default doesn’t have the keyword.
Will Frenzy Ever Get More Cards?
It’sunlikely that frenzy will be found on more cardsany time soon, but not impossible.
The problem with frenzy is that it doesn’t promote fun play patterns. All a creature with frenzy is good for is swinging, and it will force your opponents to block, turning games intoa grindy slugfestwhere you hold creatures open to block for the sake of answering a small frenzy buff.
That being said,old mechanics pop up all the time, and often are fixed from their earlier iterations,like hideaway. We could see frenzy turn up in a Commander deck, for example, if it’s something that serves the rest of the deck.
For now, though, you’re stuck with it just being a fun little extra toy for Sliver decks.
