Wizards of the Coast will occasionally create fun events for Local Game Stores, or LGS, to hold for players. These events usually offer a set of rules that shift away from traditional Magic, allowing players to experience unique gameplay that won’t present itself in other situations.
One of the most popular events in this manner was 2024’s Commander Pride event. This event, essentially, is a normal game of Commander with one exception: every Commander has Partner. This means that you can combine any two Commanders together to create a truly unique deck.
To sweeten the deal further, this year, competitors even receive a unique promo!
Chromatic Lantern
For participating in an incredibly fun event, players get to walk away with this Chromatic Lantern promo featuring never-before-seen artwork. This card has an absurd amount of reprints – 28 different variants according to Scryfall, but considering how popular it is in the Commander format, this makes sense.
Manabases can be incredibly expensive to optimize. For budget three-or-more colored decks, finding all of your colors promptly can be somewhat challenging. Chromatic Lantern is a great way for budget players to fix this problem. On top of adding one mana of any color, Chromatic Lantern also makes your lands tap for any color.
Back in the day, Chromatic Lantern was considered one of the better mana rocks in the entire format. Now, the Commander format’s speed has increased to the point that Chromatic Lantern is too slow for many tables. While this remains an excellent way for cheaper decks to fix mana, it is no longer considered a strong card to include in any deck.
Despite its myriad reprints, Chromatic Lantern still commands a secondary market price of about $3. This is a great free promotional card attached to an event that many players may already be interested in.
Magic Presents: Pride Dates
If you want to try some Partner Commander for yourself, Local Game Stores are scheduled to host Magic Presents: Pride events on the June 27th – 29th weekend. Notably, Final Fantasy will have recently hit store shelves at this point, meaning that players can try out all of the fancy tools that appear in the set.
Notably, the Chromatic Lantern will only be available while supplies last. You may want to contact your Local Game Store ahead of time if you’re interested in acquiring this Chromatic Lantern to inquire about how exactly they will be celebrating the event.
You can find more details about Magic Presents: Pride here.
Considering that this event already seems like a fun experiment, I expect many Commander pods will make the trip out to celebrate Pride and collect this incredible Chromatic Lantern.