Bans And Unbans In Modern
With the next Banned and Restricted announcement just a week away, Magic Pro Tour veteran Alexander West returns to give his thoughts on the format’s immediate past and future!
Grand Prix Seattle Report
Alex West got tenth at Grand Prix Seattle. Read his report about his Sealed and Draft decks in order to prepare for Grand Prix Nashville and Draft Opens at StarCityGames.com Open: Sacramento.
Faithless In Hawaii
Alex West talks about the evolution of his Pro Tour deck, from UWR Burning Vengeance to a more Reanimator style with Elesh Norn, Unburial Rites, and of course…Faithless Looting. Try it out at the Charlotte Open this weekend!
Azorius Fae For Overextended
Alex West has built a winning Overextended decklist, so if you want to try your hand at Gavin Verhey’s Tuesday Magic Online tournaments, check this out, and expect it to become a real part of the metagame!
Thoughts After Finishing 12th In Kansas City
Alex considered himself a Constructed specialist, but realized he needed to learn Limited to be the best. He discusses some of the biggest lessons he’s learned: drafting an archetype, experimenting, staying open, and more.
PT Nagoya: Developing Izzet Control?
Alex West and his team full of Pro Tour mainstays went into overdrive preparing for Pro Tour Nagoya. For some deep insight into testing for Pro Tours, check out their process and the evolution of Alex’s Izzet (U/R) Control deck.
Best of the West – Greatness at Any Cost
Thursday, August 19th – Inspired by the Columbus DQ controversy, the discussion over whether Saito should make the Hall of Fame, and some of my own experiences, I’d like to talk about all sorts of out of the box play, the will to win, and the ethics of competition.
Best of the West – Preparing for San Juan, Part 2
Thursday, June 10th – At the end of last week’s article, I was in Madison, WI at the home of Brian Kowal and we had just begun to crack the draft format, and had Mono-Red and Summoning Trap as archetypes we thought were viable in the Block Constructed format.
Best of the West – Preparing for San Juan, Part 1
Thursday, June 3rd – I desperately want to get to Level 4 this year. You could call me a man on a mission. With 8 points so far for the season from two GP top 12s, I decided the best plan of attack was to go on a swing of Grand Prix: Washington D.C., Pro Tour: San Juan, Grand Prix: Sendai, and Grand Prix: Manila.
Best of the West – Manabases in Action
Thursday, May 13th – In the last week hanging out with Zvi Mowshowitz, he said something that struck me: approximately, ‘I don’t build decks the way most people build them. First I look at the mana and what I can do with it, and then build everything else on top of that.’ This didn’t come as too much of a surprise to me since land selection is the first step of every deck design in my process, but I had been overlooking the fact that most people do not do this.
Best of the West – Tearing the Aeons in New England
Wednesday, May 5th – This week I am in New York in anticipation of working on Block Constructed with Zvi Mowshowitz, Gaudenis Vidugiris, Jacob Van Lunen, Jamie Parke, Matt Ferrando, and Chris Calcano. I decided the best way to spend my first weekend in the city would be to finish tuning up the Polymorph deck with cards from Rise of the Eldrazi and hit the local PTQs.
Best of the West – Polymorphing With Rise of the Eldrazi
Wednesday, April 28th – I asked Patrick the question, “Would it be greedy to play only one copy of your win condition?” His respose, “I don’t think it would be greedy, I think it would be foolish.” We went on to discuss that See Beyond, the card which enables you to eject your win condition from your hand back into your deck, makes it less bad to draw a copy of your win condition.
Best of the West – Shaping Standard With Simic Polymorph
Thursday, April 22nd – The week before Grand Prix: Houston, I was scanning articles on The Starkington Post and saw one that intrigued me: “UK Nats Qualifier *1st* With Polymorph.” Even more interesting was another article immediately afterwards: “UK Nats Qualifier *3rd* With Polymorph.”
Best of the West – Eldrazi Rising: A Peek At Sealed To Come
Thursday, April 15th – Every morning for the last week I have been very excited about waking up. I throw off the covers, jog down to the computer, and open up the spoiler for Rise of the Eldrazi. There’s something fun about seeing each new card and thinking about whether it will be playable, how it will be good, and what it will do to the formats it can be played in.
Best of the West – Play The Game, See The World: Kuala Lumpur
Friday, April 9th – The day before leaving I woke up to the following Facebook status: “Brian Kowal is in Kuala Lumpur. As far as I can tell, it’s just a big mall.” I chuckled, after all the tournament site was part of one of Malaysia’s largest megamalls, and during a tournament there is little time or incentive to get out and see anything else. Leave it to Mr. Kowal to make the best tongue-in-cheek quip about any situation.