Chandler – Homelands
Date Reviewed: July 10, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed:
Casual:
Limited:
Multiplayer:
Commander [EDH]:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Homelands was not a very exciting set from a gameplay point of view. If you’re used to the kind of sets we get now, where basically every card is designed to get you thinking about how you might want to play with it, you probably shouldn’t look through the Homelands card file. It would hurt. But you have to give the set credit for creating some characters with personality, and Chandler does have that. People over the years have tried to make theme decks that could use him, and he is definitely hard to use in anything but the most dedicated theme deck. While there are opponents that would theoretically get wiped out by the ability to destroy an artifact creature every turn, the costs involved are just too high for his controller to keep up. He’ll always have his place in Magic’s history and lore, though, and that’s not nothing.
Constructed: 1
Casual: 3 (sometimes it’s fun to play inefficient cards)
Limited: 2.5 (Homelands wasn’t designed for draft as we understand it now, and I believe you’d play basically anything that could attack for damage)
Multiplayer: 2
Commander [EDH]: 2.5 (see comment for Casual!)
An old-school legend who’s never come back since Homelands, Chandler forms a sort of mirrored pair with Joven. Both blow up artifacts repeatably (and expensively)…but Chandler, I’d argue, gets the short end of the stick. Not to say either of them is good, but there are far more noncreature artifacts you want to nuke (in my experience), and there are also plenty of ways to kill creatures. It’s not abjectly worthless, but Chandler is slow, clunky, and not particularly efficient…there is room for fun, sure, but Chandler should not be your first choice if you’re hoping to prevail.
Constructed: 1
Casual: 3
Limited: N/A (he’s never been in a draft environment, and his score would vary very wildly based on the cards that were there)
Multiplayer: 2.5
Commander [EDH]: 2.75 (you might be able to do worse…but you also can do a lot better)
Thijs
My favorite character on the show Friends was Chandler. He is also the only Friends character with a card with the same name (there is a Phoebe in an Un-set, but she couldn’t be further from the Phoebe from the show), so I thought it would be nice to pick this one as our throwback.
True, it’s not a very exciting card. But it’s part of Magic’s history, both in the game and in the lore. It’s a 3/3 for 5 mana, with an activated ability that lets you destroy an artifact creature. So, if you were to pair it with a Gorilla Shaman (which only destroys noncreature artifacts), technically you could destroy all your opponents’ artifacts. In theory.
Of course, this card isn’t played anymore, it hardly ever was. All I could find was a record from Pro Tour Los Angeles in 1996 where Darwin Kastle had one in his draft deck.
The character of Chandler was from Ulgrotha and played a part in the Homelands storyline. He apparently was a con man that stole artifacts. So the card stayed true to the story, just how I like it.
In 2023 there were some playtest stickers made and one of them was “Joven and Chandler”.
Wonderful lore, wonderful history, precisely why I love this game so much.
Constructed: 2
Casual: 3 (why not, right?)
Limited: 2
Multiplayer: 2
Commander [EDH]: 2
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