Green is like chicken pox. You know it won’t help, but it is so hard to resist scratching. Those little sores are an irritation that you just can’t ignore. Even knowing that scratching actually makes things worse, nothing short of boxing gloves could make me leave them alone. So, because Mike Flores and Bennie Smith were talking about Green recently – scratch, scratch, scratch.
At Grand Prix: Columbus, there was an amazing double-header – I teamed up with artist and fellow Magicthegathering.com writer Matt Cavotta to create a PTQ Team practically guaranteed to embarrass the hell out of Wizards. And so we have a tourney report that talks about Matt’s incredibly twisted casual Magic deck, what famous people the Ferrett has met, incredibly awful plays decided by a botched democracy, and more!
It’s official: Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa is no fan of Eternal formats. Still, this didn’t stop him rocking up to Grand Prix: Columbus with a supercharged sixty and a strong will to win. He finished a creditable 24th with a Flash deck of his own devising… and even though the current format is now largely dead, it’s interesting to hear his thoughts on the future of Legacy and the Flash deck itself.
Grand Prix: Strasbourg helped set the metagame for the approaching Block Constructed PTQ season. Mono Red and U/B/x control seem to be the order of the day. Today’s Limited Lessons forgoes the 40-card piles in favor of a sixty-card setup that has a fair matchup against both of the format’s main contenders. Looking for the latest tech? Look no further!
With Grand Prix: Columbus not consigned to the history books, and folk across the globe wondering What Now For Flash, Stephen takes a look at the aftermath from the latest Legacy GP from both a personal and analytical standpoint. HE questions the very nature of why we play — the Fun Factor — and then proposes some healthy ideas under which the Legacy format can continue to grow. All this, and talk of unbannings too!
It’s time for another one of those challenges that puts your knowledge of the rules to the test. How well do you understand the stack? Six people still have a perfect score to protect, but so far this competition no actual Magic rules knowledge has been necessary. Will all six stand up to the challenge, or will others overtake them?
As I mentioned last week, it’s a quiet time for the Online Magic community. I’ll admit, I’ve been entering eight-man Constructed queues and running through the odd TTP draft. I’m not alone, of course — hell, there’s at least seven other guys who’s had the same idea every time I play. So how do I drive away the doldrums? By playing Vanguard!
Mike continues his exploration of the B/U/R Control deck in Standard, and reveals that this is the deck he is currently planning to take to Regionals. Today’s Flores Friday sees Mike throw the deck against the format’s behemoth, Dragonstorm. Ten games, ten results, and a favorable matchup overall. If that’s not enough, he also brings us a powerful Mono-Blue Control build, both with and without Future Sight!
After two Constructed performances that, under examination, can’t be described as successful, Craig “The Professor” Jones is taking stock. While he made Day 2 at Grand Prix: Columbus with a strange hybrid Fish Flash deck, he admits he fell prey to the deadly curse of Fancy Deck Syndrome. Today’s From The Lab sees Prof offer up some sage advice on how to avoid such a perilous fate.
On the 20th, I played in a Future Sight-legal Standard tournament… which was won by a U/B speed Dredge deck, previously unseen on the online tournament circuit but apparently popular on bulletin boards everywhere. It used Blue dredge enablers like Magus of the Bazaar and mana acceleration effects to play them turn 1. It’s currently known as “Under The Bridge,” and it’s the deck of choice today.
Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. You ready for a whole weekend’s worth of video compressed into just twenty minutes? But that’s not all – I have full deck tech rundowns from U.S. National Champ Paul Cheon’s “Bigger Fish”, Zac Hill and Richard Feldman’s B/G Skyshroud Poacher deck, and the Grand Prix champ Steve Sadin’s Billy Moreno-designed Flash Counterbalance deck!
When a new set release hits the streets, people invariably go gaga over the new tools. “Look at Aven Mindcensor,” they’ll say. “It totally hoses Dragonstorm! And Yixlid Jailer spells death for the Dredge strategy!” However, while such cards do have obvious applications in the metagame, they come with a considerable amount of baggage. Are these hidden costs worthwhile? Chad is keen to find out…
The Standard metagame has crystallized around three Tier 1 decks: Dragonstorm, Gruul, and Dralnu du Louvre. Of late, it appears that the decks with Red have eclipsed the Control deck… but lately, the counterspells have been fighting back! Benjamin takes the Blue/Black masterpiece and updates it for a Brave New Metagame, just in time for Regionals!
I was not the only person who believed that the existence of Flash was good for the metagame. It set a very clear bar that all rogue decks had to be able to beat, and it weeded out many of the more random combo decks both by virtue of being “better” in the abstract and because of the necessity to try and hate it out. After Future Sight it probably gets ridiculous, but in Columbus it was simply a very good but very vulnerable combo deck that defined the metagame without unhealthily warping it.
One of the core problems with Future Sight, going in, is that “the future” isn’t just a vague theme, it’s a stupid theme. The future is unbound, featuring possibility all over the place… and they’re going to print cards that supposedly fit from these potential futures that offer us both a view of the future mechanically, and that give us a view of the future with flavor as well?
