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Today Ken details the risks and rewards of intentional drawing in the later rounds of PTQs.

Overconfidence is a killer. Overconfidence tells me that I can take on that whole biker gang by myself because I just saw a Jet Li movie, or because I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Overconfidence makes you think that you’re invulnerable, that you can’t be beat. Even when you stink. You know what happens to people like that, doncha? Uh, yeah. They lose. A lot.

I was reading through some old Sideboard Magazines recently and found some awful advice from top Pros about playing Sealed decks. So how do I reconcile this”Pro” advice with my standard methods for playing Sealed? Should I drop all my own assertions and force myself into using their tips, regardless of the consequences? Should I ignore them completely, claiming that they’re a bunch of hacks and I could just as easily be on the Pro Tour and beating these guys out myself – if only I was as lucky as they were? Or should I do as I recommend everyone do when they scour these websites for tidbits of advice from any of the authors?

You may have noticed that every single card in the deck is currently from the Mirrodin block (that is, Mirrodin, Darksteel, or Fifth Dawn). This isn’t hugely surprising since the deck is based around the cog mechanic, a mechanic first seen in Fifth Dawn with most of the usable cogs either in that set or in the form of Mirrodin’s Spellbombs. However, it bugs me that no other Standard-legal cards have thus far made it into the deck. Can it really be true that nothing from Eighth Edition, Onslaught, Legions, or Scourge is worth including?

Hey R&D! Ben has a hot new tip about how to change Magic for the better. It involves…..the Legends Rule!

I understand that some times people make one sided trades in order to get certain cards that they need or especially want, but when you are dealing with kids who do not know any better, should morals come into play?

The previous changes I’ve made to the deck have been about focusing it on the cog theme and away from the weenie-equipment theme. The focusing stage is over. We have ourselves a relatively focused deck, and one that I’ve hopefully shown is capable of playing some incredibly wacky games. Now we move onto testing, swapping various cards in and out to see what I like best given the deck’s focus. This testing stage is where I’ll be trying out a lot of the suggestions in the Forums, discarding most of them but hopefully finding some hidden gems for the deck on my way to a stable decklist.

After failing to get any TOGIT teammates this year and after attempting but failing to qualify with another team, there was only one PTQ left that I could conceivably play in. I didn’t have a team or many good prospects until the Monday before the PTQ… the end result is the following:

Me: (6:53:44 PM): and when we win
Me: (6:53:47 PM): will you go to Seattle?
Chris Pikula: (6:53:49 PM): yes

Today means we finally get into Fifth Dawn. When the set first came out, I was tasked with writing about the two colors I am writing about today. You will no doubt notice some difference in my card valuations as I have many more draft matches under my belt. I will say one thing. I am still not sure it is the best deck, but Blue/White is again one of the best decks in the format with all three sets released.

This week I will talk about one of the decks that is sweeping the metagame. Tooth and Nail has been one of the most popular archetypes for some time, but now it has evolved into something better. No longer is the powerhouse confined to Mono-Green… it has allied with Blue and the fifth-best counterspell ever printed (contrary to my previous claim of fourth, I forgot about Forbid). Condescend is even more powerful when you are powering it off of the plentiful mana that Cloudpost provides.

I am putting some of the most disgusting cheats out there for you to absorb. This is an Up, Up, Down, Down, B, A, Start quality cheat sheet. In one sense I think it might be a bad article to write because I am empowering people to cheat in a more sophisticated fashion, but I think that kind of damage is probably going to be minimal. Nothing you read in this article will transform you from an honest player into a cheater, even if it does help people who were going to cheat anyway to cheat more effectively. On the other hand, I think that a guide like this one will mostly be helpful, because if you don’t know about them, cheaters will abuse you savagely.

I’m not going to bother with foreshadowing. I won the PTQ, got the girl, and saved the day. By that of course I mean, I won the PTQ with the deck that my teammates and I worked on, tweaked, and felt was the best deck since day one, and my preparation was rewarded with a dominating day that included four total game losses on the way to a 9-0-2 record and qualification for Pro Tour: Columbus. If you’re still searching for the best deck in Mirrodin Block Constructed, Joey Bags is here for you. He will tell you about the deck, all the matchups, and why he’s playing Ouphe Vandals in the main.

It’s still early days for the MD5 metagame, and I’m a bit short of decklists. However, I can give you the breakdown of the results so far. I will also do a card by card count for Mono-Green T8 decks, and do a very short report/analysis on the Mono-Green I took to T4 in a thirty-eight-player GPT last weekend.