Some decks combine this strategy with cards that punish your opponent each time your creatures die (such as Blood Artist), and this has seen lots of success in winning decks
The colors of Alpha and Beta cards could be muted, which is to the detriment of black cards, specifically, but that fade, coupled with the three dimensional beveling around the art and the text box, gives red cards, specifically, just a really nice pop in that thicker Beta frame
The History of Flanking in MTG The first set to ever contain flanking creatures was Mirage back in 1996
In general, I like the extended borders, especially with the collector boosters relegating set foils to trash tier status
If you do control your commander, then you get to put a +1/+1 counter on each Creature you control at the beginning of your combat step