So this past weekend was GP Vancouver as well as Brisbane, both of which were Modern; some of the first high level events to happen since the bans. The first thing worth noticing is that Death’s Shadow is not dead, in fact, the deck took 3 of the top 8 slots in Vancouver. Without Probe, the deck has adapted by not running Become Immense, instead adding some Tarfire and Traverse the Ulvenwald. 

What was considered to be one of the breakout decks of the weekend, Eldrazi Tron, didn’t end up putting up results like people expected, taking only 4 of the top 32 spots between the top two tournaments. It’ll be an interesting deck to keep an eye on to see where it goes in the meta.

Also of note is that Dredge is also not dead, with 2 copies in the top 4 of Brisbane. The recently banned Grave Troll has been replaced with a 4th copy of Life from the Loam and 3 copies of Golgari Thug. The question is whether Modern players will continue to sideboard heavy for the deck and try to push it out of the format entirely, or if this new version will sit comfortably in tier 1 or 1.5.

This seems like it is trying to do two things:

1. Increase the number of PPTQs held by stores. PPTQs and RPTQs seem to be the big thing that Wizards is trying to push right now.

2. Diversify teams at Nationals, trying to mix up the players that are shown at the event each year, while also simplifying the path to the WMC.

Big changes to high level event structures. Here’s the TL;DR

WMCQs are ending and Nationals is returning.

Instead of three WMCQ events in each country, each participating country will have a single Nationals tournament.

National teams at the WMC will have 3 members instead of 4.

Each country’s national team will consist of the player in the country with the top Pro Point total (team captain) and the top two finishers at Nationals.

The format for Nationals (and the constructed format for the WMC) will be Standard.

In-store GPTs are being discontinued.

GPTs for Grand Prix Las Vegas will be the final in-store GPTs.

GPTs will continue only as last-chance trials on the Friday of each GP.

Sunday PTQs return to Grands Prix

There will be a Pro Tour Qualifier tournament (capped at 225 players) on Sunday at each Grand Prix. The winner of this event qualifies directly for the Pro Tour.

Commanders of Tumblr, I need you help

I’m currently in the process of working a list for a Storm based Yidris EDH deck, and I’m struggling to find out the right balance of spells, wincons, etc. and would love some feedback, I’ve posted the full list below the Read More.

Keep reading

GP Charlotte: What Happened, What I played, and What I Learned.

So for those that didn’t hear about the mess of a tournament that was GP Charlotte, I hope I can shed some light on what happened. After Round 3, there was an announcement stating that SCG was having difficulties with the pairings, as everyone was showing up as having 3 points. Due to this, Round 4 was going to be paired completely as random (meaning 3-0′s could play 0-3′s, etc). They also said they were going to try to remedy the problem before the next round began. Round 4 came and went, and the announcement went out that the problem was not going to be fixed any time soon, and that anyone who dropped then and there would be compensated with an Infinite Challenge Pass, which would allow a person to compete in any side events for the rest of the weekend. I ended up staying in the tournament, as I was X-1 at the time, but around 700 players dropped, mostly being X-4, X-3, and some number of X-2′s. 2 hours passed between rounds 4 and 5 between SCG trying to work with WoTC to restore the correct pairings and the handing out of passes to those that dropped. Rounds 5 and 6 ended up being randomly paired as well, and the program was finally fixed for Round 7. Due to all of this, the tournament organizer announced that tiebreakers were not going to get ported from day 1 to day 2, meaning that people that get paired way down wouldn’t get screwed by tiebreakers when it came to prizes and top 8′s. I ended up not making day 2, but still attended to play in some side events. That morning didn’t get started until 10 AM due to them working to fix the system. At the day 2 player meeting it was announced that they were not going to fix the tiebreakers. This is a problem as it means there are now players that will go X-2 that have no hope of making Top 8 because they played way down on rounds 4, 5, or 6. Talking to other players, most people were verbally upset, and it caused a cloud to loom over the event. Day 1 at Charlotte finished at roughly the same time as LA, which is 3 hours behind on their starting time. My hope is WoTC issues a formal apology to the players that participated in GP Charlotte for this devastating failure and promises to fix this program to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

Moving on from that, the deck that I landed on for the event was a port of a Craig Wescoe (who was at the event) that he designed during the Eldrazi Winter. Since the deck was designed, a key card came out which helped the deck pick up a lot of strength, Thalia’s Lieutenant. After a few more edits, I ended up cutting Riders of Gavony, Banisher Priest, a couple copies of Fiend Hunter, and Avancyn’s Pilgrim for Mentor of the Meek, Dromoka’s Command, another copy of Eternal Witness and Thalia’s Lieutenant. Mentor of the Meek gives the deck an efficient draw engine, a playset of Eternal Witness ensures that the Collected Companies keep coming, and Thalia’s Lieutenant ensures that your board becomes too much for most midrange and aggro decks to deal with effectively. Dromoka’s Command ended up being an all star in the deck, stopping many Lightning Bolts, Anger of the Gods, and the like. It stopped Melira Company from combo-ing off and helped deal with a few key enchantments that really helped pull the deck through some tough matchups. It ended up being an all star in the deck, and I would event consider playing a third copy moving forward.

I ended up going 3-4 with the deck. Part of the reason is due to some key misplays on my part, some sour luck, and the random pairings as mentioned earlier. I think if I had gotten in some more practice with the deck before the event that I could have easily made day 2. Many opponents commented that they had no idea how to sideboard against my deck, meaning that I had success in throwing my opponents off by bringing a deck outside the “normal” meta. In the first three rounds I was able to take down Nahiri Control and Jund, two decks I was very ready to play against. Then in Round 4 I lost to Infect, simply not being able to get to my sideboard cards fast enough. Rounds 5 and 7 were losses to Abzan Company, which I didn’t have a sufficient sideboard for, meaning I should have been more prepared for it going into the tournament. Round 6 was a loss to R/G Tron, which is a deck that I really can’t beat unless I get lucky and they don’t assemble Tron fast enough.

All that said, this deck is a lot of fun. CoCo’ing into an Eternal Witness and a card that swings tempo generally is very difficult for your opponent to deal with, and I think that the whole weekend I only missed on Company once. As I said, if I was a more experienced pilot I think I would have made it further in the tournament. I also didn’t play a couple decks I expected, like Affinity or any Burn variants. In the future I plan on porting this deck over to a Bant Zoo variant, but will play this in the meantime, because it’s just too much fun not to. All that said, it’s good to be back to having time to write articles, and I hope to produce more content soon.

A new Modern deck that I’m working on some kinks for. This build is loosely built off of Gerard Fabiano’s winning deck from a while ago, but with some changes I felt would help suit a meta closer to me. Obviously my sideboard choices might not be the best so if you want to look at other options shoot me an ask and I’ll gladly give other things that can be added against certain matchups.

A few of the changes I have made include adding a Lumbering Falls over the Creeping Tar Pit. It doesn’t have evasion so it’s worse against creature heavy decks, but the Hexproof makes it generally better against control, and not getting bolted is a plus. Liliana of the Veil over Jace, Architect mainly as something I want to try, and that is generally better in the format as a whole. Also, Clique in the mainboard as I love the flexibility of it.

I’m still working on fitting Tasigur, the Golden Fang in the mix because I feel like he belongs in this build I’m just not quite sure what I want to move around to make him fit in. 

Also just to throw this in, I’ve finally gotten settled in at college, and I’m going to do my damnedest to start writing for this blog more often. I started it out with hopes probably just a little bit too big but am going to try and get back into the swing of it. Cheers!

What’s up deckbuilders, today’s deck is a little bit of a spicy one, a Mardu tokens shell that tries to make the most out of a card a lot of people have been experimenting with, Nantuko Husk. The Husk has shown up in multiple Rally the Ancestors decks, using the self-mill and filtering strategies to put multiple hasty creatures into play on the same turn to be able to swing for lethal.

However, this deck runs off of a new card from Magic: Origins being Chandra’s Ignition. With the ability to field wipe your opponent and then swing for lethal with a 10/10 Husk after saccing some tokens to feed it, the Ignition gives us the two card combo for the deck.

The rest of the deck gives us some basic Mardu good stuff, from Goblin Rabblemaster to Butcher of the Horde to Crackling Doom, which is one of the main reasons to run a Mardu colored deck. A small amount of protection is given to us in the form of God’s Willing.

Of Note: This combo is very weak to removal heavy decks, so it’s important to have good sideboard options in Thoughtseize and Duress.

Happy deckbuilding!

Looking for Writers

Also: I’m looking for new writers to help answer questions, write articles, and all that jazz. If you are interested, e-mail me at [email protected] with a decklist and short article talking about card choices and synergies and I’ll choose a couple to join me.

Thanks again! -Sam

What’s up guys, I am back with some new Origins brews to bring to you. Today we will be tackling Standard with a new twist on an old favorite. Death and Taxes (or as it is know to some people Hatebears) is a deck that aims to allow your opponents to do as little as possible through the use of creatures with inhibiting abilities. The strategy is popular for using against Control decks to slow their ability to stop your plans.

Death and Taxes is now something that can come to Standard with the addition of a couple of new key creatures: Archangel of the Tithes and Vryn Wingmare.

One of the key components to most D&T decks is Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and while Wingmare has its Pros and Cons that go toe to toe with Thalia, the end result is the same, making your opponent have to spend extra mana on that spell they needed to help swing the game.

Archangel of the Tithes gives us two amazing abilities, one that acts like half of a Ghostly Prison, and one that will make it extremely difficult for our opponent to make efficient blocks if they want to cast things on their own turn.

Other cards in the deck include the Legacy D&T staple Brimaz, King of Oreskos, Eidolon of Rhetoric to keep your opponent from casting multiple swingy spells a turn, an ability especially effective against decks that try to go wide, and Spirit of the Labyrinth to prevent your opponent from drawing those cards that they so desperately needed.

A couple of personally chosen cards that could be easily interchangeable include: -Mastery of the Unseen: To keep making creatures on the cheap/get around Eidolon of Rhetoric -Collected Company: Because almost all the creatures in the deck are 3 cmc or less -Dromoka’s Command and Valorous Stance; For some removal when the need arrises.

Happy Building!

Suggestions and Challenges

Another thing I would like to do here on the blog is take challenges for cards to build around or theme decks. Also, feel free to leave your own decks in the ask or submission boxes if you want to see them here. My ask box is always open.

Hey guys, I'm really sorry for the long break, but I'm going to try to start getting up content up more regularly now i promise. So today I'm going to share with you the deck I took to win Fate Reforged Gameday, it's a deck that aims to abuse Hero's Blade in Mardu Midrange shell. There's a large removal package to help control the board and all of the creatures aim to be high impact on their own. When I first saw Hero's Blade I knew it could have a big impact on the environment, but it would need the right build to be useful at all. I was able to take down UW Heroic in the finals and Jeskai Fireworks in the semifinals. Now, I haven't touched the deck since Dragons came out, so I'm not really sure what new cards would fit well into it. I'm sure you could try the Dragonlords or new Khans.

And It’s Over

So, what are everyone’s thoughts on the Pro Tour? Lots of interesting decks floating around, but in the end it was R/g aggro that reigned supreme. I’ll be doing a decklist review either tomorrow or Tuesday to highlight what made the decks in the top 8 work as well as they did.

It’s Protour weekend and you know what that means

I hope everyone enjoys watching the protour this weekend to see what new, powerful, and interesting decks popup. I’ll probably be writing an article on it sometime next week if I’m not too busy.

Standard Sleeper #2

Today’s Standard sleeper is one of the new Commands from DTK that I think has been totally and completely looked over and passed. Kolaghan’s Command is insane and deserves more respect and love than I think it is getting. All of the Commands in the set are good in their own way in that they each doing something good and powerful for their mana costs, which makes since as people have high expectations for Commands given their own Lowryn counterparts. People were going nuts when Ojutai’s Command first got spoiled, and while it didn’t turn out to be quite as good as people wanted, it was still a fair and playable one.

But then what is it about Kolaghan’s Command that is so good? We will work our way from the worst to the best mode. To start, we have the “Return target creature card from your graveyard” option. Not the most appealing effect, but at instant speed it is much more reasonable when tacked on to a second option, and EoT getting back a Rabblemaster or maybe a Heelcutter doesn’t seem all to shabby to me. Then there’s “Destroy target artifact,” probably not usually going to be relevant, but there’s going to be that one time you’re going to be able to use it to its maximum ability, and it’ll feel good. Then we have a Shock clause, or Wild Slash in this Standard I suppose. And we all know how much play Wild Slash is seeing because of all the 2 toughness creatures in the format, see anything from RDW, Seeker of the Way, etc.

And then we get to the big one “Target player discards a card.” Now this probably doesn’t seem too amazing, but trust me when I say that it is. Making an opponent discard a card at INSTANT speed makes so much of a difference compared to just a Mind Rot or Tasigur’s Cruelty. It can make your opponent have to totally change their plans for the turn since they will always lose a key piece of what they had. And if your opponent is topdecking and you do this at the end of their draw step then that’s just downright dirty.

Now none of these modes are quite good on their own, but on one card for 3 mana at an instant speed is what makes this guy a sleeper. So what do you think? Are you willing to give it a chance now?

Standard Sleepers #1

What’s up guys! Trying something new tonight. Today’s Standard Sleeper for the new environment is Profaner of the Dead! Now at first glance I’m sure this card doesn’t look like much. It’s basic stats make it a simple Hill Giant, which isn’t terrible in and of itself at least for limited purposes. But Exploit is an interesting and deceptively powerful mechanic. People are already learning the power of Sidisi, Undead Vizier and the Demonic Tutor on a stick.

But what specifically makes Profaner of the Dead so good? Well, there’s two popular decks in Standard that work off of little mana and swarming with many small creatures. Red Deck Wins and Jeskai Tokens are both very weak to this card. Red Deck Wins loses Zurgo Bellstrikers, Rabblemasters, Goblin Tokens, all that good stuff. The tokens deck loses simply everything, and those cards aren’t coming back.

So what do you think, will you be giving Profaner a second look now?

The Curious Case of Narset Transcendent

Narset Transcendent was one of the most exciting and hyped card of all of Dragons of Tarkir. People were freaking out over this card saying how powerful she is and how much she was going to have an impact on Standard and Modern. Possibly even Legacy, even though that’s crazy because Legacy already has a 4-mana planeswalker that is leagues better than this one. But where does Narset actually belong in Standard. (We’re not going to get into Modern because anything like that would be too much of a stretch)

Since her release, there’s been two main decks that have utilized Narset, U/W or Ojutai Control and Esper Control. This seems reasonable as both of those decks play a large number of spells that would be totally reasonable to draw or rebound. But in this deck she still has her own number of problems. One of which is that she will rarely be played on turn 4 in any control deck, as she will usually end up dying very quickly, and since when has a control deck EVER want to be tapped out as early as turn 4? Sure it may be reasonable in formats where you can back her up with a good ol’ FoW, but really? No. And the other problem is that she, in a vacuum, will not when you the game. Yes, she will generate card advantage, which will help you win games that go long, but she herself will not win the game. To compare, think about Elspeth, Sun’s Champion, or Xenagos the Reveler, or even Kiora, the Crashing Wave. Simply stopping your opponent from casting noncreature spells isn’t going to win you the game most of the time as most decks in Standard are very creature based. So she doesn’t really fit in there all that well, and in the IQ I attended this past Saturday I was able to observe her in action in such decks, and she seemed very underwhelming, many of those decks were at the bottom tables.

So where else could she go? Well, the honest only other deck where she would seem at home would be Jeskai Tokens. Most of the creatures in the deck are made from noncreature spells and being able to have access to more of them is always a good thing. But that deck usually curves out at 4, and that’s usually for Stoke the Flames (or 8 for Treasure Cruise if you want to be picky, but you ever cast this for more than 3 it feels bad anyways). So is Narset really something that deck would want in the 4 mana slot?

So what do you guys think? I know public opinion of this card was high, but I want to hear your opinion, so lay it on me.

Looking forward to the deckbuilding. If you're every down for discussing I'm always down for talking magic on grixismtg for card options or deck ideas. I currently brew a ton and have some fun builds that just go places. Ever seen a UG deck kill turn four?

I’m always open to submitted decks if you want to submit one for me to review and discuss. I love brewing myself and my brews usually fair pretty well in the tournaments that I attended. Given that the UG deck isn’t Infect, then no, I can’t say I’ve seen that deck before.

Would you be willing to give deck suggestions on decks given to you? Also I have been having trouble with a mana base in standard because I don't want to buy fetches, would it be worth it to run evolving wilds instead of fetches?

Hello Garook! I would be more than willing to give deck suggestions, just send a link in an ask and I’ll give you the best answer I can.

As for the fetches in Standard, it depends on what type you are playing. If you’re playing a deck that isn’t damaged by being a little slow at the beginning of the game, then go right for it. Evolving Wilds is a fair alternative to fetches, though not quite near as powerful. Other cheap mana fixing can be found in the Gainlands from KTK/FRF.