Monday, May 31st – Vintage Champs 2010 is two months away, so this seems like a reasonable time to catch up with the current state of the format. I get a lot of emails about various decks; most of my time playing and testing Vintage lately has had to do with Noble Fish, MUD, Oath of Druids, and Dredge, so I’m going to give you some updated versions of all of those decks today.
Monday, May 31st – In this reflective article, Stephen Menendian examines the future of our great game, and considers the average age of a Magic player in particular. While the current push is towards Player Recruitment, is that the best way to ensure Magic’s long-term success?
Monday, May 31st – The first of many questions that may arise when one looks at my list is “No Siege-Gang Commander?†While Siege-Gang may be the five-drop of choice for any deck packing a significant amount of Red, I’m not really convinced that it is head and shoulders above the Malakir Bloodwitch which is taking its place now.
Friday, May 28th – If the case to include Entomb is overwhelming, then the only decision left is what it should replace in any given list. As mentioned earlier, this is not a simple decision, but the number of cards that can be considered is incredibly small, as much of the deck needs to remain intact for it to work as designed.
Friday, May 28th – Time to fill in the big hole from last week’s recap of my day at the Virginia Nationals Qualifier—what deck I actually played. It’s quite interesting in retrospect that I waited a week to talk about it, considering the role two particular Green mythic rares played in my story, and in the current story of Standard writ large.
Friday, May 28th – Brian Kibler rocked into Washington with a Blue/White Control deck, but after seeing Patrick Chapin’s Next Level Bant deck in action, he audibled into the archetype… and it served him well. Today, he shares stories and strategy from the tournament floor, and presents his most recent build of the deck!
Friday, May 28th – Pro Tour: San Juan starts this weekend, and Cedric Phillips is prepared! Today, he takes a look at a handful of Block Constructed strategies he believes will come to define the PT metagame. If you’re a fan of Standard, you’ll find a lot of familiar faces here… but there’s no Jund to be seen, so it’s time to rejoice!
Friday, May 28th – Tired of all the talk about mythics being about how much they cost? Dave tries to get back to the “heart” of the mythic rarity, and digs up some forgotten treasures. Treasures, arr!
Friday, May 28th – Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we’re live and in person at Grand Prix: D.C. where I finished in the Top 100 and still had some time to chat with some of today’s biggest names. Inside we talk about the cost of Standard decks rising, ROE versus ZEN Limited, the power of Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund and much more. Let’s go!
Friday, May 28th – While a collection of top pros opted for Next Level Bant, courtesy of Patrick Chapin, at the recent Grand Prix in Washington, Raphael Levy teamed up with Kazuya Mitamura to create a solid non-Conscription Mythic Bant build. Raph supplies strategy, advice, an sideboarding options today!
Thursday, May 27th – I registered a Jund list for the first grinder that was much like my Regionals list but featured more Sarkhans and more removal in the sideboard (Mythic was everywhere in the grinders). My first round mirror match went to a third game, but his deck had Lotus Cobra and by the time I was able to play my first spell he already had four creatures in play. Not surprisingly, I lost that one and packed it up.
Thursday, May 27th – Craig Wescoe piloted the popular Polymorph deck into Day 2 of Grand Prix: Washington, but further results were less than kind. Today, he recaps his tournament experience, talks about the strength of the deck going forward, and shares the fun times he had on the trip!
Thursday, May 27th – After defining the Extended format with Thopter Depth, Gerry Thompson set his sights on Standard. He took the successful Naya strategy, and tooled it to wreck the metagame for the Nationals Qualifiers, and then rocked a 10th place finish with the deck at Grand Prix: Washington! Today, he reveals the design process behind the deck, and suggests strategies and sideboarding against the major matchups.
Thursday, May 27th – Control Mages appear to be on top of the heap in Standard, but Manuel Bucher believes that the New Control ain’t like the Old Control. He discusses the archetype today, and shares his thoughts on the under-appreciated Sarkhan the Mad, a card he feels is screaming to be built around.
Thursday, May 27th – It seems as though every few weeks someone goes on a brief rant about mythic rarity, and how the high prices of chase mythics is killing Magic. I wish to address that claim. In this article, I briefly summarize the literature that has been published concerning literature up to now. Then I address the primary complaints about mythics: that some cards are printed at mythic without “feeling” mythic, and that the secondary market value of some mythics is too high.
