Image courtesy of Scryfall.com
Silver borders, parody sets, and a timeless tricksster’s lyre
If you’ve been around the table long enough, you know the thrill of a silver border card sneaking into a casual commander game and turning a match on a dime 🧙♂️🔥. Silver-border sets—think Unglued and Unhinged—began as playful counterpoints to the serious business of mana curves and competitive archetypes. They warned you that not every spell needed to be solved with flawless math; some things were meant to be enjoyed, teased, and collected as part of a bigger MTG culture. Parody sets use that metallic outline as a wink to players: yes, the card might be powerful, but it’s also a nod to the whimsy of the game’s multiverse. That wink can shape how you value a card’s design, its rarity, and its place in the broader story. 💎
Enter Entrancing Lyre, a small, unassuming artifact from Theros Beyond Death that becomes a convenient bridge between the seriousness of competitive play and the cheeky nostalgia of parody-era thinking. While THB itself is very much a modern, fully bordered set, the Lyre’s flavor text—“Its strings are wayward threads of fate.”—hints at a kind of meta-magic: fate, chance, and control all play a part in shaping who wins and who gets to untap. The artifact’s colorless identity means it can slot into almost any deck, a nod to how parody sets once invited players to bend the rules without breaking the game. 🎲
Entrancing Lyre: the card at a glance
The Lyre costs three mana and is an artifact. Its power is subtle but deceptively potent: You may choose not to untap this artifact during your untap step. Then, for {X}, {T}, you can tap a target creature with power X or less. That creature won’t untap during its controller’s untap step for as long as Entrancing Lyre remains tapped.
“You may choose not to untap this artifact during your untap step. {X}, {T}: Tap target creature with power X or less. It doesn't untap during its controller's untap step for as long as this artifact remains tapped.”
In practice, the Lyre is a versatile tempo tool. It’s playable in Historic, Modern, and Legacy, and its colorless identity means it can be slotted into a wide array of shells—from control middlegames to stax-adjacent setups. The ability to lock down a small but pesky creature for multiple turns can buy you time to untap with a favorable board state, or to set up a win condition with a purring sense of inevitability. And that flavor text? It’s a little romance with fate, a reminder that even the most carefully crafted plan can be unraveled by the strings of chance. 🧙♂️⚔️
Mechanics and design philosophy: why this card endures
Entrancing Lyre is an artifact with a clearly defined, repeatable effect: the tap-and-lock mechanic taps a creature of chosen power, and the untap restriction persists while the Lyre remains tapped. The “untap step” clause is a classic tempo lever—your opponent must decide whether to risk their board by leaving a creature tapped, or accept the temporary loss of that blocker or attacker. The flexibility of choosing X means you can tailor the lock to the nastiest blockable targets or to a set of three power creatures you’re worried about in a swarm. The card’s flavor text and provenance in Theros Beyond Death give it a mythic-movie aura, even though its rarity sits at uncommon. The result is a tidy, flavorful tool that can shine in a wide swath of formats. 🎨
In the context of silver-border symbolism, Entrancing Lyre reads as a bridge card: it embodies the era’s retro flavor while sitting neatly in modern play spaces. It’s not a joke card, but it embraces a playful philosophy: sometimes games are decided by the moment you decide to press the pause button. The Lyre’s design respects that truth while offering a practical means to enforce it. 💎
Flavor, art, and collector sensibilities
Artist Yeong-Hao Han brings a compact, elegant aesthetic to Entrancing Lyre, with the artifact’s clean geometry and a sense of quiet, almost ritual motion. Its border is the classic black frame of the 2015 frame, signaling a grounded return to normal legality in most formats—though its foil status and print run in THB’s line give collectors something to chase. The card’s unearthed value in nonfoil and foil variants is modest (typical for an uncommon in a recent set), but it carries intangible appeal: it’s a neat, aspirational piece for folks who appreciate the marriage of mythic storytelling and modular, mechanical design. In a world where some cards become investment-grade collectibles, Lyre’s charm lies in its practicality and its playful spark. 🧙♂️🔥
Flavor-driven collectors will also enjoy the juxtaposition: silver-border parody sets leaned into humor and self-awareness, while this artifact leans into fate and control. It’s a reminder that the MTG ecosystem thrives on both the solemn and the silly, and that a single artifact can anchor a deck’s tempo while nodding to a broader cultural conversation about how we remember the game’s history. ⚔️
Deck-building notes: where Entrancing Lyre shines
- Colorless hardware: Works in almost any color combination thanks to its colorless identity.
- Tempo denial: Locking a small attacker or blocker creates precious windows to swing for damage or stabilize a board.
- Compatibilities: Pairs with other untap-related effects or stax-style lock conditions to maximize value over several turns.
- Commander-friendly: In EDH, you can slot it into a variety of artifact-friendly or control-oriented builds, keeping a steady tempo while you assemble value.
- Price and collectability: Its uncommon status keeps you grounded, with foil packs offering a shiny incentive for completionists. The current market prices reflect its niche appeal rather than a meteoric rise, which makes it a thoughtful addition for players who want function and flair. 💎
Meanwhile, the product-driven crossover mention here—if you’re organizing your desk space or your play area for long sessions, a PU Leather Mouse Mat can keep your setup as stylish as a well-placed Lyre counterfan, with a sustainable wink to modern manufacturing. Check out the offering here: PU Leather Mouse Mat - Non-Slip, Vegan Leather, Sustainable Ink — a small but meaningful companion to long nights of drafting decks and trading stories. 🧙♂️🎲
For players who want to dive deeper into Entrancing Lyre’s practical value, head to the card’s official entries and price guides, or explore cross-promotional content that highlights modern play patterns and the art of collecting. The journey through silver borders, parody sets, and timeless artifacts like this Lyre is a reminder that MTG remains a living museum of ideas, laughter, and strategic elegance. 🔥