Friday, March 20th – After writing here for so long, I think the only topic that I wanted to cover, but never got around to, was etiquette in Magic. At least my take on it. This never came to fruition because after getting about a page in the subject would basically put me on tilt and I could never finish without lambasting a bunch of people in the community…
Friday, March 13th – This week’s article will be on Standard and how all of your favorite decks suck, much in the vein of Mike Flores article on the subject from years ago. This means the article will be basically half sarcastic and mocking and generally mean, even though a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek. So I expect maybe 30% of you to read this and not flame me about the tone
Wednesday, March 4th – I played a PTQ this past weekend. I showed up with Naya Burn, went 5-1-1, and missed Top 8 on breakers. Virtual Top 8s are the worst kind. Today’s article will be in two sections. The first will be a quick tournament report and some thoughts on the deck I played. The second will the details of the deck and boarding plans in various matches.
Wednesday, February 25th – Every Counterbalance strategy is basically just the same 24 core cards, along with a varying land count of 18-24 and some window dressing to make them seem like completely different decks. Shocking, I know… decks that are based around the same strong card are really the same despite five variations of it existing? Blasphemy!
Wednesday, February 18th – With the StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open mere days away, Josh Silvestri looks at the strong contenders in the post-Conflux metagame, starting with the pundit’s beatdown choice: Blightning Aggro.
Wednesday, February 11th – This week we’re back on the Extended trail, and instead of the usual trickiness or midrange decks I tend to cover, we’ll be going with the beatdown. I’ll be talking about RGW Zoo and some of the advantages it has in the current metagame, as well as some brief thoughts on TEPS updates and a quick shot on Knight of the Reliquary decks.
Wednesday, February 4th – This past weekend, I attended our local big Conflux Prerelease, although I didn’t actually play in it since the flight was going to end long after I had to be at work. This week, I’ll again be discussing Standard and the additions Conflux brings to the table, in more detail now that we’ve had some time to go over what makes the set tick.
Tuesday, January 27th – Taking a break from Extended for the week while the results from Grand Prix: LA settle and the metagame adjusts, I’ll be looking at the exciting follow-up to Shards of Alara, Conflux, and its potential applications for the Standard metagame. Personally, I think this set is a big bust for any non-Standard format, but it absolutely reshapes the landscape of the current Standard metagame with a variety of hosers, unique playables, and niche cards that could power up unutilized archetypes. Warning: Contains Spoilers.
Thursday, January 22nd – I’m back from the Grand Prix and I had a pretty fun time, even though the actual Magic part of the main event was miserable. I had decided on G/B Loam Dredge, in which I had some input, but it was originally designed by Matt Nass. The deck was stone-cold terrible, but Death Cloud, Faeries, and non-TEPS combo are infinitely in your favor, which is about half of the popular decks I expected at the GP.
Wednesday, January 14th – Over the past few weeks, I’ve written about the decks I’m considering taking to the Grand Prix. Instead of writing about my deck of choice (since I don’t actually know yet), or the best choice for the field, I’m going to share what I personally learned from testing, and some of my predictions / insights into the format.
Wednesday, January 7th – I’m rather excited about the current Extended format. Instead of being dominated by Elves, Dredge, or Counterbalance decks, we now have a format with legitimate options everywhere on the metagame clock, and where the current top decks all have legitimate weaknesses.
Tuesday, December 30th – In the current Extended, the metagame has seemingly switched only twice, once from Berlin and again after seeing the Worlds decks and the introduction of Mono Blue Control into the mix. However, the supposed metagame for Grand Prix: Los Angeles seems to be shaping up into three camps: MUC, Zoo, and everything else.
Tuesday, December 23rd – Now that Worlds has ended we have a solid grasp of what the new Extended format is shaping up to be. Let’s start by looking at the breakdown of decks that went 4-2 or better on Day 3… and heck, let’s add in the top eight of the Worlds PTQ.
Tuesday, December 2nd – If you’re going to the StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open in Philly this upcoming weekend and want to play a well-tested, powerful, and proven machine, go ahead and play Faeries. If you want to take a shot at the metagame from a crazy angle that, unfortunately, hasn’t been fully tested yet… you’ve come to the right place!
Tuesday, November 25th – When looking through a format for edges, or outlier decks that have an absurd match against an existing metagame, sometimes it pays to go through each significant strategy and how it’s currently being used. Even if all this does is tell you something you already know, it serves as a reminder of what’s important and what isn’t.
