CategoryMagic The Gathering

Abe Sargent, Casual Writer supreme, took on Pro Tour Champ Jeroen Remie… and nearly took the crown! Piloting a deck of Jeroen’s design, he put up a fair fight. Read his match report here!

Jeroen stood tall against an Abe-ified deck of his own design… and lived to tell the tale. The match was close, but the relentless march of the elephants proved too much for Abe in the end. Jeoren supplies a detailed match breakdown… congratulations Jeroen!

With the advent of Ravnica block, making a good multicolor deck has become a lot harder to me. Other, more fiscal writers can afford to start a decklist with Hand of Cruelty and Paladin En-Vec, knowing their manabase will support it. Without that reliance, you look for other, more readily available ways to improve your chances.

We are going to look at the control decks of the format today. I feel that these decks are going to have a huge part of the Champs environment (when has control been weak?). We get many solid cards from Time Spiral for the control strategies, and these decks are where I have spent the bulk of my testing time. I am a control player at heart, and I feel that I know this style a lot better than I know the aggressive decks or the tempo decks.

Evan Erwin was on-site when the new Solar Pox deck won the StarCityGames.com $1,500 Standard Open – and he got it all on video! Today’s article sees this incredible deck face off against opponents in Round 7, and both the quarter- and semi-finals! Thinking of playing this deck at Champs this weekend, and wanting to learn how to play the deck from first-hand successes? Come look and see!

It is in the mind of almost every single rogue (“bad”) deck designer to one day discover an archetype, to be the man with their name in lights, and the one who gets to bequeath a stupid name upon a deck and hear people recite it whenever they chat about matchups. It’s a pipe-dream, of course, since enthusiasm and a lust for glory only make up a small fraction of good deck design, with hard work, skill, and an ability to play the game as well as build for it make up the majority of the rest.

Not all Champs competitions are held this weekend… some have been and gone. Blisterguy, the winner of his 2005 Champs tournament, posted an incredibly similar result this year. The top 3 decklists are within, alongside the usual plethora of Magic Online Premier Event statistics and card ticket prices…

Evan Erwin was on-site when the new Solar Pox deck won the StarCityGames.com $1,500 Standard Open – and he got it all on video! Watch interviews with Ken Adams, the deck’s creator, as well as a complete video of both games of the finals! You want to see how Solar Pox rebounds from having one of two Haakons Castigated out of the game, then having the rest of his hand Persecuted? Watch and see!