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Everybody Loves Draco

It’s not often that you get to go behind the scenes during a deck’s development, but that’s exactly what Quentin Martin delivers today. The “Top Deck” as it was so named, received more coverage than any other new deck at Grand Prix: Eindhoven and in this article Quentin shows you how the deck came about, what changes they made in testing, and what the deck looks like now that eight of Europe’s best players put the deck to the work against over a thousand other players at Grand Prix: Eindhoven!

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One Last Final Last Pro Tour

What do the secrets of Team Limited, swords of meat, the decline of American Magic, Wake Forest, and I Blame Bung have in common? They are all covered in Zvi’s lastest article documenting his thoughts on what is likely his last Pro Tour.

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Sullivan Library: Grinder Times – Standing Out in an Information Rich Time

As I write this, people all over the world are looking at all of the available decklists from this weekend (and previous weekends) that are available at Wizards of the Coast’s website. Whether by stick or carrot, Wizards has managed (at least in theory) to get all of the tournament organizers out there to provide their Top 8 lists. As Mike Flores has already said, we haven’t seen this kind of depth of information available since the days of the Dojo.
But really, it is much more than that. We’re living in the middle of the longest Grinder of all time.

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As Much Info As You Can Handle – The Jan-Feb Vintage Metagame Report

Whether or not you like B&R list debates in Type One, this last one was more like hammer to the forebrain than a regular old discussion. Since this debate was arguably at least as intense as November 2003, lots of people were flailing around looking for support for their contentions. Unlike that past incident, which happened before I started my articles, this time there was a concentrated supply of data besides morphling.de’s deck database. I got cited all over the place and learned a great deal about what sort of information you folks want and need to see. As a result, I’ve tried to overhaul my presentation to give you as much information as you can handle.

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Burning Questions About Extended

Today Mike takes a look at some of the more intriguing questions to come out of this Extended season. Will we ever see another format like this one? Is this the greatest Constructed format of all time? How in the world do you choose a deck when there are thirty viable decks out there and more being discovered all the time? Flores knows…

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The Betrayers of Kamigawa Limited Review – Green

A lot of people have said that Green is the deepest color in Betrayers Limited and noted pundits like Tim Aten put Matsu-Tribe Sniper at the top of the commons heap. Nick respectfully disagrees with both sentiments today, but to find out what the best common, uncommon, and rares are in Green, you’ll have to check inside.

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I Blame My Pajamas: 28 Men’s (and 3 Women’s) Opinions on Betrayers White

It’s Pro Tour week for Mr. Aten, so what does he do? That’s right, that lazy sack of meat farmed out the entire article to his friends and made them write the review of Betrayers of Kamigawa White. So why should you still be interested in this article? Because Tim has friends with names you might have heard of like Nassif, Parker, Kibler and Krouner, that’s why!

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The Dan Paskins Seal of Approval

Mike explains his fascination with decks that bear the Dan Paskins Seal of Approval, and offers up a most teched out decklist of the most popular deck this Extended Season. People will be playing this decklist at your local qualifiers, so the only way to get a drop on the competition is to read this article.

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Weak Among the Strong: Threats and Execution

The threat is stronger than the execution. I first read this strategic insight during a past life in which I played and studied Chess instead of Magic. Some Chess strategies simply don’t apply to Magic – Chess is a game of perfect information in which identical forces contest with all pieces beginning on the board. Magic involves imperfect information and each draw can radically change the balance of force available to each player. Nevertheless, many strategic truths apply as powerfully to Magic as to Chess… and this may be one of them.

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Top Deck at Grand Prix: Eindhoven

Hi, my name is Ruud Warmenhoven and I have finished in the Top 16 at every Extended pro-level tournament I have ever entered. In all these events I played a weird deck that most people would call rogue and wouldn’t include in their testing. I have been seen casting such hits as Battlefield Scrounger, Constant Mists, Lightning Angel and now Sensei’s Divining Top and won games with them. The story of how I ended up playing the Top at Eindhoven involves the English, a drunken bar fight, and a man named Draco…

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The Beautiful Struggle: Weird Science for CCB Draft

Funny things start happening after you get a few drafts under your belt with a new set. New avenues seem available. It’s easy to convince yourself that you are privy to the real tech, that some cards which everyone else thinks are crap are super-playable, and other heavily-hyped cards seem not so good. It’s too early to say whether every strange draft idea I have seen in the CCB format will prove itself worthy. But there are a couple of decks that I have drafted, or seen drafted, that really fascinate me and have proven to be at least playable if not good. This article is dedicated to those new draft ideas including one I like to call… Ninjank!

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Two Extended Formats, Two GPs

Today Zvi muses on the best versions of the best decks to come out of the last two Grand Prix weekends, including Tsuyoshi Fujita’s incredible Sneak Attack deck. Still think the deck is a fluke? Here’s a preview of Zvi’s analysis which includes an optimized decklist: “I love this deck. It goldfishes better than any other deck in the format…”

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The Magic Jerk – Nosce Te Ipsum

The most interesting matches of my season so far came back to back at last week’s PTQ in Milford. I was playing Aluren, and my first opponent was Jonathan Ward of Team MYR. We were both 3-0 at this point and he begins the game with something like Duress, Birds of Paradise, Cabal Therapy and I assume he’s playing Rock, so I Cabal Therapy him back on Vampiric Tutor. He shows me a hand of Worship, and Academy Rector. What the hell? If your PTQ season has gone at all like mine, I’m sure you’ve had more than a few of these strange moments and can share my pain.

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Deconstructing U/W in Betrayers Limited Part 2 – The Betrayers Pick Order

When Ken messaged me last week to tell me he thought he had written one of his best Limited articles ever, I was skeptical. He’s been semi-retired for some time, so I didn’t know what to expect. Friday’s article proved his case however, and part 2 just continues it by delivering the complete common-through-rares pick order for Betrayers in this powerful archetype.

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Functional Breakdown of Vintage Cards From Dec-Jan

Phil Stanton’s articles are almost impossible to explain in short blurbs, but they always include numbers, they are always about Vintage, and they always give you crucial information about some part of the Vintage metagame. This time Phil takes a look at the different compositions of card types in Vintage Top 8s, including how many land/mana sources each deck runs, the amount of countermagic and disruption seeing play, and how much potential most Vintage decks have to damage themselves. If I haven’t explained that this article is really really cool then I have failed, but don’t let that stop you from reading this article, as it should be an enormous boon to every Vintage deckbuilder that reads it.

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