Friday, May 21st – Can I really be that guy, the one who’s playing Jund? I recognize a desire to be different, to want someone to come look at my new Brew and laud me for my creativity, my creation. I want that. But I want to win more.
Friday, May 21st – If you’re like me, you’ve been drafting Rise of Eldrazi like there’s no tomorrow, or at least picking over the set for cards to give your Standard deck more umph! I’ve head judged a couple of Standard tournaments already and have seen some situations that are very likely to become staple judge calls for the summer.
Friday, May 21st – Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we’re going to be talking about Grand Prix: Washington D.C. (that I’ll be attending, live and in person), and the decks I expect to be everywhere at the event. Let’s go!
Friday, May 21st – Inspired by his own article last week, Dave avoided the five-hundred-dollar decks and played a deck that cost under a hundred bucks at his Nationals Qualifier. How did he do? And is the deck viable going forward?
Friday, May 21st – The Grand Prix: Washington D.C. metagame is shaping up to be wide open, and Cedric Phillips is here to help! He believes there are eleven distinct archetypes that have a viable chance at winning the whole thing, and he shares optimal lists for each of these strategies today!
Friday, May 21st – Some of us were trying pretty hard to get a solid list together for Warp World, a deck I wrote about some weeks back. A funny thing happened when we first tried it out—it curb-stomped Jund like nobody’s business, over and over and over again. That’s a pretty good start for a rogue strategy!
Friday, May 21st – With Grand Prix: Washington D.C. this coming weekend, the hunt is on for the best Standard options available. Adrian Sullivan examines three such options: Mythic, Red, and a fresh take on Jund. Could one of these decks take home the main prize come Sunday? Read on to find out!
Thursday, May 20th – I was judging at the National Qualifying tournament in Wisconsin last weekend. I was – but only for the first few rounds. Ingrid and I were part of a six-judge crew, headed by Jason Lemahieu, which was a ridiculous judge staff for a 105-player tournament. Attendance was far below expected, and that was true across the country. Last fall, attendance at The2009s (a.k.a. States) was nuts – what has changed? What went wrong?
Thursday, May 20th – Patrick Chapin famously pointed out that “tight technical play decides more games of Magic than all other factors combined.†Given this, how does waiting until the very last minute to pick a deck make any kind of sense? Playing a good deck well will get you much farther than playing the ‘best’ deck sloppily.
Thursday, May 20th – Deck building maestro Gerry T has done it again! Fresh of breaking the Extended PTQ format with his Dark Depths / Thopter Combo hybrid, he’s returned to a viable yet underplayed strategy and created a deck that powered a selection of players to a Nationals Qualification slot. Today, he talks about both Jund and his new creation: Vengevine Naya.
Thursday, May 20th – The day started out well enough at 2-0, wrecking Mythic and Grixis with Geopede Jund, but then in round 3, I ended up being paired against an old acquaintance of mine, Joel Allen. He was running some strange mono-White creation – I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it initially. Emeria, the Sky Ruin? Kor Cartographer? What in the name of Hazezon Tamar was going on here?
Thursday, May 20th – In today’s edition of The Wescoe Connection, Craig discusses the Rise of the Eldrazi Draft format, highlighting a selection of interesting archetypes that every serious spellcaster should consider. As a bonus, he provides tales from his Top 4 PTQ performance with Polymorph!
Thursday, May 20th – Grand Prix: Washington is this weekend, and the Standard metagame is ready! The recent Nationals Qualifiers threw up a collection of interesting decks to shape the format, and Brian Kibler has had to think on his feet now his deck of choice appears badly positioned. He shares his thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses in Standard today!
Thursday, May 20th – Sometimes a card is adopted by one deck, and it takes some time before other uses of the card are fully explored. It may seem that, at first, the card works best in that one deck, and there is no reason to try and place the card in another deck. While such a card may work well in its original setting, there may be other uses for it, uses which may improve the decks that choose to add this card to their designs.
Wednesday, May 19th – The results from U.S. Nationals Qualifiers are trickling in, and Sam Black is here to crunch some numbers. He looks at the Top 8 results from eleven tournaments, breaks down the archetypes, and suggests the future of the Standard metagame for Washington this weekend!
