Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we’re going to be taking a hard look at Standard and Time Spiral Block play. Both of them are front and center this weekend, as the BlueGrassMagic $3,300 Kentucky Open gives us the first major Tenth Edition Standard event with a PTQ following it the next day. Want to know the best kept secret in this new Standard? Let’s go!
Today, Doug digs through recent tournament results and explores several breakout decks that you’ll be seeing at your next Legacy event. Find out what cards are heating up on the tournament scene and which are just hype. Join in for discussion on everyone’s favorite 1G creature, hot card stock tips, and musings on the difficulties of metagaming for Legacy events!
After last week’s barnstorming matchup article pitching Blue/Black
Teachings versus Green/White Goyf, Tiago returns to the testing table and
throws the best deck in the format against the newest, and most poisonous
offering out there — Poison Slivers! This quick, brutal tribal deck was
created in response to the power of U/B Teachings… does it have the stones
to take down the big guns? Read on to find out!
Perceived wisdom tells us that if a card is super-duper-good, it requires four slots in your deck. It also tells us that if you’re planning on the long game, a singleton copy of a game-breaker is also the way to go. Thus, if we have a deck packed with two- and three-of copies, aren’t we simply being wishy-washy, and diluting our chances at success? Adrian sets us on the right path, and also debunks the old chestnut that 60 cards is best…
Richard rounds out his triple-whammy of Block Constructed U/B Teachings articles with a play-by-play rundown of the Poison Slivers and U/G Tempo matches. He brings us his current incarnation of the U/B Behemoth, and proves once more that the metagame should fear the Teachings decks like no other. With the Block PTQ season proceeding apace, it’s time to get with the cool kids and just Play. This. Deck.
You all know the drill by now… Rich Hoaen, Canada’s finest and grumpiest draft export, takes us by the hand and drags us through the rollercoaster ride of an 8-4 TPF Draft on Magic Online. From pick 1 to pick 45, Rich shares them all, and his final deck and draft performance are analyzed in the article, the forums, and beyond. Come join in the fun!
I got an interesting e-mail a couple of weeks ago. The writer wanted to know if we could come up with a U/R Time Spiral Block Constructed deck whose only rare was Aeon Chronicler. Also, even though Time Spiral Block has two of the best counterspells around right now (Cancel and Delay), we couldn’t use any countermagic…
Lots of people got excited about the four- and five-color strategy with the reprinting of Whispers of the Muse and Gaea’s Blessing in Time Spiral, but it didn’t quite work out; during our testing at the Time Spiral prerelease, Mike Flores was concerned about tapping low for a Whispers and having the opponent respond with Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. However, Block Constructed has shown the way…
Today I want to reopen an old article and discuss some cards from Three Kingdoms. I will give you all new stories on the cards, and occasionally critique how well the card captured the story. I hope you will enjoy it, and hopefully it will give you a taste of the characters of Three Kingdoms.
Stephen is a firm believer that, with the unrestriction of Gush, the GroAtog deck is the most powerful — and most versatile — deck in the current Vintage metagame. Today’s So Many Insane Plays sees the Vintage mastermind take us through an exciting five-step plan of GroAtog deck design, a plan that is designed to optimize your chances at winning any specific Vintage tournament. This is a wonderful article, and the five-step plan is fine advice for Vintage and non-Vintage players alike…
With Nationals fast approaching, and Tenth Edition making a major impact on the Standard metagame, Benjamin Peebles-Mundy takes us through the probably changes that will be made to the powerhouse Gruul Aggro deck now that Kird Ape has hit the showers. With U.S. Grinders consisting of a largely aggro field, you’ll need to beat this deck if you’re aiming for success…
You all know the drill by now… Rich Hoaen, Canada’s finest and grumpiest draft export, takes us by the hand and drags us through the rollercoaster ride of an 8-4 TPF Draft on Magic Online. From pick 1 to pick 45, Rich shares them all, and his final deck and draft performance are analyzed in the article, the forums, and beyond. Come join in the fun!
Today, Zac takes us through the changes made to Billy Moreno’s Mono-Red-splash-Korlash list for Block Constructed, a deck he thinks is particularly absurd in the current metagame. He also addresses a couple of exciting changes that Tenth Edition brings to the Standard scene. If you’re looking for tips going into either PTQS or Nationals, then maybe Zac has the answers for you!
I have finally got some time to do some serious block playtesting. Some of that is done with paper, where Darksteel Ingots can do a fine job pretending to be Coalition Relics. However, much of that playtesting also occurs on MTGO, where you need the real cards. I had to choose the rares on which I’d blow my budget — Korlash, Tarmogoyf, Relics or some lands. I chose the green Lhurgoyf. I chose unwisely.
In case you missed part one, here’s the overview: I’d like to organize this set review by looking at how certain cards in Ninth have been obviously replaced by a particular card in Tenth, and what those selections might tell us about what R&D might have been thinking about when making those choices.
