Why do you Judge?

People ask me the same question all the time. Sometimes they're skeptical, wondering what could possibly drive me to do this thing. Other times, they're genuinely curious, as if they're considering asking if they could do it too.

“Why do you judge?”

It's two in the morning and I wake up, lightning in my veins. I get a quick shower and jump into the car. Six and a half hours to Philadelphia, eight hours to DC, an hour to Providence. There's Edison, Somerset, Worcester, Albany, Baltimore, Long Island. I've been to them all in the last six months. Today's a long trip, and I set the seat back before loading up driving music and the GPS.

I'm on the floor. It's infectious, being at an event. There's so much at stake for so many people. For some, they're playing to stay on the train. Others just want their big break. Most are there for fun, but they wish they could be there – at the top tables. People are buying, selling, trading, and playing every format under the sun. And where are we?

A judge walks by and throws up a quick hand. I high-five him. It's a judge thing. It's important for morale. I know that he blew a call a few rounds ago, and it's important that he keeps his spirits up. We've got eight rounds left, and sides are just getting going. Floor coverage is spotty, but it seems like we're holding it together. Standard hasn't changed much in the last few months, and the interactions are still mostly the same from the rules side of things.

I'm alive when I'm judging in all the ways that I am not in the rest of my life. At home, I'm withdrawn, reclusive, tired all the time. I half sleep because I use no energy to be alive. I'm unemployed, depressed, and procrastinate like it's the only thing I know how to do. Failures come quick and often, and I feel like I'm spiraling around a drain with each one. They compound, making the next one all the more certain. It's a constant fight to motivate myself.

On the floor, I have purpose and direction. I'm always doing something in a furious frenzy, anxious to finish helping one person, and get to the next thing. I feel indispensable, important. I'm the center of attention for so many – Judge Blacks make you more visible to everyone. Failures just spur me on – like they're daring me to be better than I am – and I know on some bedrock level that I am capable of it. I sleep like a corpse at events, because I know that I need my sleep to continue being me.

At events, I'm delirious with happiness. I'm laughing with friends, I'm challenging my mind and body. I'm fixing things that need to be fixed – often on timetables that leave no room for error. And at the end of the day, exhausted, someone asks what we're doing for dinner.

Not if we're doing something. It's a foregone conclusion. It's been nearly 12 hours on the floor and the only thing on anyone's mind is how can I spend more time with these people most effectively. You feel exhausted, but we still go to get drinks. We crack packs and draft. We play Laser Tag, or just hang around and joke about all the nonsense we'd experienced all day.

And when I go home, the first thing I do is make sure that I've applied for literally every event I can reasonably work in the foreseeable future, because I love Judging so damn much. It's the people, the challenges, the excitement, the raw energy that you can't quite seem to get any other way.

I love it. And I hope I'll never have a reason to stop.

BW Midrange for SCG Worcester

Hey guys, this weekend is SCG Worcester, featuring a Saturday Team Sealed Open and a Sunday Standard Open. I'll be playing in the latter, so I'm going to be building a deck. What follows is the process by which I came to my deck, which I think is pretty sweet and well positioned for the weekend. I started writing this on Wednesday morning, and spent the majority of the morning building, testing, and discussing it with friends. Here's the result - hope that it's interesting.

-----

It's Wednesday morning, just before noon. This weekend, I'll be working SCG Worcester. I'll be judging the Team Sealed on Saturday, but I was unable to get on staff for Sunday's standard. As a result, I'll be jamming a few games of Standard in the new format, and that means I need a deck. Last week, I promised that I'd run you guys through the process of building my deck, and deciding some of the more important choices.

I've been keeping up with some of the articles that have been spoiled, and there's a ton of decks that people have been tossing around. I think that, when building a deck, it's important to first define what we're expecting to see. That will let us tailor what we're doing to try and combat it as effectively as possible.

Burning Earth and Red Deck Wins

This is the definition of 'Format Warping'

We're coming off of a multicolored block, and multicolored cards are going to make up a significant portion
of the field. As a result, I definitely think that Red Deck Wins (or some red-based aggressive deck) running Burning Earth is one of the more solid choices. Burning Earth has been shaping the metagame. A ton of people are going to try and jam three colored decks, but ultimately, I feel like too many of them are going to auto-lose to Burning Earth for me to be comfortable running them. Some would argue that you could devote sideboard slots to combating the card, but I'm not a fan of that method against aggressive decks in particular. There's too many ways that you're dead anyway. If you draw yours and they don't, then you have a dead card against the creature threats. If they get Burning Earth and you don't, then you're just dead. If either you both draw, or neither draws, you're fine, but that gives us a lot of situations where our sideboard card isn't terribly useful. When we could also combat this by just building our deck in such a way that it doesn't fold to a commonly played enchantment, getting greedy with our lands feels like a losing proposition. Given all this, I'm leaning towards a two color list.

Drawing Cards for Fun and Profit

Also worth noting is that Control decks have lost significant ground, but not the core of what made their decks work. They still have a powerful suite of removal spells backed up by Sphinx's Revelation. They have a powerful cadre of planeswalkers – Both Jaces, Chandra, new Elspeth – that are sure to give anyone fits. Most of all, they have the most resilient finisher since Jace, The Mind Sculptor: Aetherling. I've seen countless people posting UW Control, UWR Control, and Esper Control lists, trying everything from recreating Flash to a new Ashiok-centric list.

A Look at What We've Lost

The hole that Innistrad left in the format is gigantic. Without Huntmaster, Geist of St. Traft, Olivia Voldaren, Lingering Souls, Unburial Rites Checklands, Kessig Wolf Run, two different Garruks, Snapcaster and most importantly Thragtusk, nearly every card in the format needs to be re-evaluated. Like it or not, Thragtusk was the heart of every midrange deck in the previous format, and without it, we're going to need to find another way to stabilize against aggro decks while still putting threats on the table to pressure Control.

Not Going to Miss This Guy

I'm a midrange player at heart. I don't have the wherewithal to battle to time every round with a control deck. I hate the lack of options that an aggressive deck gives me. While I'll prefer my lists to have a strong pro-active plan, I don't want them to be easily trumped by what the control decks are doing. If you'd like, you could describe it as 'Big Aggro' or something along those lines.

As the general archetype that has lost the most, I think that Midrange is also the area where the most effective brewing could come right now. Control and Aggro both have their paths laid out for them, but Midrange was set adrift on the currents and left to fend for itself.

For those that follow me, you also know that I adore Orzhov colors. I play it in Legacy, and I've been trying to make a grindy BW Midrange deck work in Modern. (No successes yet – more on that in a later article). While I may be insanely biased in this, I do think that there currently exist the tools in Standard to build an incredibly powerful BW deck, with a powerful pro-active plan that is difficult to deal with. Between the powerful cards we have access to from RTR Block, plus a couple of choice weapons from Theros, I think there's something here. I'm initially attracted to Elspeth, Obzedat, Blood Baron of Vizkopa, and the wide array of very versatile removal spells that are available to the colors.

First Tries

So, keeping in mind that I want to avoid losing directly to Burning Earth, while still being able to fight a three-color control deck and put up a healthy toe-to-toe fight with anything else that comes my way, I came up with this initial list:

Those of you who are paying attention will notice that there's only 56 cards in this list. I could think of a couple things to fit into those slots, but at this point, there's enough of a shell to start sending to people to figure out what they like and don't like about the list.

I can not state enough how valuable a testing team is when trying to come up with a list to take to a tournament. I also can't stress enough how important it is to have multiple groups like this – because they won't have the biases of the others. The groups that I spoke to had the following to say:

Group A:

Another Elspeth, and then 3 early removal spells. Probably another Doom Blade, another Devour Flesh, and maybe a 1-of Merciless Eviction.

Group B:

Add an Elspeth, a land, and probably more removal spells. Also, this deck seems like it needs more Desecration Demon.

Group C:

Your curve doesn't even start till turn 3. Try something earlier – like Tithe Drinker or Baleful Eidolon

Group D:

I tested this deck already. Alms Beast doesn't do what you want. Desecration Demon is also pretty bad in the list. Trying Archangel of Thune, and early results are good.

Group E:

I think you're just cold to RDW. They'll just run you over. 4 Cheap Removal spells, possibly cut Thoughtseizes for more, or play my UW Deck. Seriously. I'm not using it Sunday.

Of the five, we had an enormously divergent set of responses. I'd like to note that two of these people are regular SCG grinders, and the other three have been playing Magic since the Weatherlight Crew were regulars on the cards. Judges are prevalent among the list, but don't make up the majority of it. Suffice to say it's a decent cross section of people you'd talk to at an SCG Event.

First, something that multiples of them had to say – I do like the second Elspeth. It shores up our late game and makes us have a good amount more inevitability. I decided to go with the more removal spells option here. A couple of people talked about that, and I'm inclined to agree with them. I added in an extra Doom Blade and Devour Flesh. For the last card, I was torn on another removal spell, but since we're still testing, I opted for the one-off Merciless Eviction. If it ended up not playing dividends, we could always cut it for removal.

That gave us the following list to test with:

At this point, I've got a list, with no sideboard, and that's what I'm going to test with. This is the kind of deck that wants to at least have reasonable game 1's against the field. It's not like a control deck where Game 1 is your weakest, and it only gets better from there. Since the field is pretty wide open – with a number of styles of control, aggro, and midrange all being tested extensively – I feel like we're going to have a generalized sideboard to handle broad archetypes, rather than a focused one aimed at specific cards and game plans.

I test on Magic Workstation – partially because I don't have cards on Magic Online, partially because Theros isn't available on Magic Online, and partially because it's quick and easy. If given the chance, I'd be testing in real life with friends, but unfortunately, my friends have jobs and such – and I'm a little time crunched for this deck. Future iterations will go through a gauntlet of whatever does well at Worcester – in person.

Testing – Round 1

My first match is against a GW aggro deck that comes out the gate quickly. I'm shocked by how much life my deck goes through, between Read the Bones, Shocklands, and Thoughtseize, I do almost as much damage to myself as my opponent does in the first game, and he takes me down. Second game I play a lot more conservatively, and despite a mulligan to six cards, I win. Third game is a nail biter, where my Obzedat and Blood Baron come online just in time to take over the game. I take control at one life, and swing back up to 15 before he leaves the room. Not a clean win, but I noted some misplays and am confident that the sideboard will help the aggro match up a lot.

Second match is against a BWR list very similar to the one that GerryT has been peddling around. While his red cards are extremely powerful in game 1, in games two and three, his mana base fails him. Once drawing him a Come Into Play Tapped land when he needed one extra mana, and the other time just locking him off red. Another flaw in playing three color decks at the moment is that sometimes, your deck just kills you, and they don't even need a Burning Earth.

Final match with this version was against a UW Control deck. I played it pretty conservatively, but after a Thoughtseize took his only Sphinx's Revelation, and he couldn't find an instant-speed answer to Obzedat, he crumpled.

C-C-C-Changes

I was very happy with the first run of the deck, however, I did notice a few clunky bits. I disliked how Alms Beast didn't actually seem to do much. While the synergy with Erebos was pretty awesome, I'm only playing two of the God, and it seemed like my friend was correct – Alms Beast is never really the Abyss that I wanted. Most often, it ate a removal spell and we moved on.

I also wasn't very happy with how the deck preformed against the aggro match ups. While we won the matches against GW, I felt like a good draw could provide us issues if we're only relying on removal. (Voice of Resurgence, in particular, was fairly annoying to deal with.) I decided to make a couple of changes for the second iteration of testing, trying out some tech that a friend of mine has been working with.

Finally, I was hemorrhaging life the entire time, and I wanted to do something about that before making any huge changes. Removing one Read the Bones for more removal seemed like the best option.

Changes:

+3 Tithe Drinker

-3 Alms Beast

+1 Devour Flesh

-1 Read the Bones

Testing – Round 2

We're still working without a sideboard here, because I don't really have a good enough feel for what people are testing and working with. After those changes, I went back into the trenches for a couple more matches.

Boros:

Soldier of the Pantheon is extremely strong in this deck, and with the help of an Anthem, he takes Game 1. I was heartened by the fact that I was about a turn away from balancing out, but just couldn't get there quite quickly enough. In game two, I draw a ton of removal into a Blood Baron, and he can't handle it. Game three is much the same, except with an Obzedat instead. Didn't need to cast the Elspeth that I almost certainly would have sided out. Hammer of Purphoros strikes me as a very strong card here. It nearly won him the game after I'd firmly established control.

GW:

This went a lot like my first round did, except that he had a Scavenging Ooze and I played around it VERY poorly. He won in three, but I think I could have played significantly better and not time walked myself multiple times over the course of the match by playing into his responses.

Esper:

His lands ended up crushing him in the first game, and he never really got rolling the second after a mull to six. A turn five Obzedat ends up going the distance after he can't respond to it.

Esper:

The first two matches, we trade games – him narrowly losing the second, and me the first after a mulligan to five. The third match was one of the best games of Magic I've ever played and went all the way to turn 35. In an epic match dominated by a number of different cards, I feel like I really got a feel for the match up. He was leaning hard on Jace, Aetherling, Blood Baron, and Sphinx's Revelation, while I had Read the Bones, Obzedat, my own Blood Baron, and Elspeth.

Fittingly, the changes I made to the deck all came into play, with a Devour Flesh killing off his early blocker to allow a lot of early damage through via Tithe Drinker (responsible for over 20 points of life swing over the third game). Merciless Eviction ended the life of one of his Jace's, and the second Elspeth (after the first was Thoughtseized away) killed off two of his Blood Barons and made the three tokens that finished the job.

I couldn't be happier with the deck's performance in this game. The scry effects felt very relevant (both Read the Bones and Temple of Silence), the manabase never gave me significant trouble, and the late game felt powerful.

Given the strong showing, I'm going to work on a sideboard now. While I was playing these games, I noticed that I constantly wanted some more early blockers against the aggressive lists, though the removal seemed about right. On the other side of the coin, a little more card draw would have been very useful against control. Sin Collector was a card that I was considering for the main deck, if control was very prevalent, but I think we can make room for it in the side.

I've got a bunch of cards with varying use against varying decks here. I'm not specifically targeting any archetypes, but I made sure that I've got cards useful against a couple different types of aggro, as well as other midrange match ups (attrition based) and control match ups (resiliency based). This is honestly the part of the deck that is gonna undergo the greatest amount of change from week to week, especially this week, when we're in a Day 0 format with no established decks. Obviously, in the future, we're going to want to metagame a little bit more against some of the decks you're likely to see.

-----

That's it for me this week everyone. Tune in next Wednesday to see how the deck did (assuming that you don't see me on Coverage this week). How did you like the deck? Let me know in the comments - either here or on Reddit, Twitter, etc. Also, let me know what you thought about the article. It's quite a bit longer than my typical article, and I'm interested in hearing what you guys thought about it.

Highest Impact Cards in Theros

 As is traditional around these parts, in the week before the prerelease for any given set, I'm going to be going through each color and listing a couple of notable cards that I think are going to make significant waves in Standard (and older formats, if relevant).

Theros, from where I'm standing, is currently poised to be one of the most powerful sets in recent memory. Typically, the fall rotation is dominated primarily by what cards are no longer around. And we're certainly losing quite a few notable cards – Thragtusk, Restoration Angel, Blood Artist, the Checklands, among others. With that said, I think that enough of the cards in Theros are individually powerful enough to start carving the format into a different shape on their own.

WHITE

Starting with the bastions of purity, I've got to admit that I am not especially impressed with the spread. While laying a plains is one of my fondest joys in life, I'm not seeing a ton here for constructed. Nevertheless, there are quite a few gems that are notable.

Chained to the Rocks

Any card that costs one white mana and exiles a creature is worth looking at. While this does have some very significant downsides, being sorcery speed and requiring you to be playing some manner of Mountain (plus not having said mountain destroyed at a later date), I feel that this card is nevertheless one of the most efficient removal spells ever printed. There's a chance that with the weak land destruction in Modern, that this could see play there. If not, it will find a home in Standard for as long as Red and White are playable in the same shell.

Elspeth, Sun's Champion

There have been a lot of words written on this card in both directions. The detractors claim that a six mana

planeswalker is most likely not playable. While I disagree for purposes of Standard, I have to admit that for older formats, she's clearly useless. In Standard, however, she's clearly powerful. She can create her own personal army, and defend herself better than any walker ever printed before. Her minus is situational, but occasionally extremely useful. Her ultimate, while perhaps not as 'instant win' as some, is still extremely powerful. I feel like she is going to be played in many control decks who want a more defensive finisher than Aetherling (who does little to stabilize, and 'costs' 7 mana). Also look out for the soft-combo with Purphoros!

Fabled Hero

Fabled hero is the next in the obligatory line of '1WW Double Striking 2/2 with relevant set ability' that seems to be popular in large sets nowadays. While this guy feels less aggressive than Silverblade Paladin, he's still capable of swinging for more than enough damage to get the job done. I'm not sure if this guy sees play, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

Soldier of the Pantheon

At one mana, a 2/1 with multiple upside abilities is usually worth looking at. When those upsides directly involve being a safety valve for the entire previous block, I start to stand up and take notice. If someone makes a fast Wx (probably Boros or Selesnya), then this guy will absolutely be in it.

Spear of Heliod

Speaking of cards that are strong in aggressive white decks, this thing is everything Glorious Anthem always wished it was (except for Legendary). Adding in conditional removal to an already playable card makes a potent threat. The downside here is that you can't stack them up like you can with traditional anthems, which makes this a little bit harder to use. Still, I think the upside probably outweighs the downside. How often do you really need to cast multiple of the same Anthem in your turn 3-4 Boros deck?

Honorable Mention: Heliod, God of the Sun

I am not a fan of Heliod. I think that paying four mana for a 2/1, even if repeatable. I think that Vigilance is not as strong as putting lifelink here, and I think that there are better things to be doing in white for this kind of mana investment. He could see some fringe play, but I'm not going to be putting my money on him.

BLUE

Blue is in an interesting place with this set. While their rares aren't quite as powerful as I might like, they have a LOT of powerful commons and uncommons. I'm going to go through the top five, in my eyes, but there's gonna be a substantial Honorable Mentions list for this color, and they likely won't break the bank.

Swan Song

Clearly the standout of the set, Swan Song gets significant attention because, in older formats, the 'downside' on this card is pretty negligible compared to the power level of what this card is doing. In Legacy, this hits an absurd amount of cards, in archetypes that have been fairly strong as of late. This is a great card against Sneak Attack, Snow and Tell, Dream Halls, any deck casting brainstorm, and is even passable against decks that it's not an absolute house against. Give this card 6 months, as Legacy is slow to adapt, and you'll start seeing it with some regularity.

Thassa, God of the Sea

This is another one that I like in older formats. A friend of mine who plays Merfolk in Legacy is excited about this card, and the problems that it solves for the Fish deck in general. I'd expect it to see play. It's also in an interesting place as far as Standard goes. The kind of card advantage that this affords you over the course of a game is not to be underestimated, and getting your beaters through repeatedly is another powerful effect that we don't normally see in this context. At only three mana, Thassa could develop into a significant role player.

Dissolve

A strict upgrade from Cancel, this should slot nicely into all the places that Dissipate had been for the last year. Scry 1 is a nice tack-on that tends to play into exactly what Blue wants to be doing – gathering information and stopping their opponents.

Plus, have you seen the art and quote on this card? It's gorgeous. Props to Wesley Burt for some great art, and to the creative team for making me smile.

Voyage's End

Bounce spells have always been on the fringe of playable. Stapling Scry to one, in a set that seems to care about Auras other effects that bounce is traditionally good against, makes me thinks that this could see play.

Fate Fortold

While this card does look pretty odd and janky, I'm mentally comparing it to Think Twice that happens to be cheaper and pushes your opponent away from attacking for feat of getting you an extra card. Obviously at Sorcery speed, it has it's weaknesses, but this is one that I'm keeping my eye on, at least for testing purposes. Let it be known that I think this is, by far, my weakest pick, and I'm speculating a little bit on it.

Honorable Mentions to: Annul, Bident of Thassa, Omenspeaker, and Stymied Hopes

These cards I all expect to see Standard play, with the exception of the Bident, which will see EDH play.

BLACK

Black's power seems to be fairly concentrated. There's a number of cards I could care less about, and I didn't need to make any cuts for my list of five. However, those five cards are all A-listers that deserve to be on the list.

Erebos, God of the Dead

Erebos is a strangely designed card. It's two significant effects stapled to t o an indestructible sometimes-large-body. While the life gain clause needs the right kind of meta to shine (like, say, the metagame we've seen over the last year), drawing cards is always potent. With cards like Obzedat and Blood Baron gaining significant amounts of life, Erebos could be a major engine.

Hero's Downfall

While Murder hasn't seen a whole lot of play, Murder doesn't kill planeswalkers. Dreadbore has been a staple of the format for a year, and I'd happily pay one more mana for instant speed on an effect like this – in the right kind of deck.

Read the Bones

This card is actually bonkers. Barring Sphinx's Revelation, this is likely the most powerful draw spell in

Standard. Scry 2, followed by a double draw is easily worth 3 mana – and it's easy color commitments make it particularly exciting to me. Be careful about slamming 4 of these into your deck in an aggro heavy meta, but if predictions come true and the format slows down, this is probably where you'll want to be.

Thoughtseize

Enough words have been written about Thoughtseize to fill a book. It's been a modern and legacy staple for years. It's going to see significant play in Standard in just about every Black deck that cares in any way about interacting with their opponent. Omitting it from this list was nearly unthinkable.

I can't wait for my opponents to not understand when it should and should not be used. (I strongly suggest any Star City Premium subscribers to read Mr. Duke's excellent treatment on the card, which can be found HERE.

Whip of Erebos

This divine weapon has an extremely useful static ability, and a fairly powerful, if difficult to evaluate secondary ability. I think this card is at it's best in slogging creature match ups, where reanimating a Lifebane Zombie,taking another one of their creatures, and then beating for a six point life swing is the best game you can expect. I can see this being a 1 or 2 of in a large number of creature based black decks.

RED

Red has a few really awesome cards in this set that have be wavering in my loyalty to BW. More and more, I look over at Red longingly, wondering when I'll get awesome 3 mana board wipes and not need to worry about the early game because it solidly belongs to me.

Anger of the Gods

This card compares very favorably to Slagstorm, which a number of you will probably remember as a card

that killed everything not named Titan. The exile clause is especially useful at the moment, since it happens to remove Voice of Resurgance profitably. It doesn't answer Obzedat or Blood Baron, but the majority of Green, White, and Black should be sent packing. Expect this to see heavy play mainboard, and heavier side.

Hammer of Purphoros

One of the critical problems that Red decks have traditionally had was that they are entirely at the mercy of their draws. One of the reasons that Burn exists as a deck in Legacy (albeit an underplayed one) is because they can directly convert their lands into additional damage with Fireblast. While this card is far from Fireblast, it has the same feel – converting lands to board position. It should help red decks to stop flooding out in the late game while delivering the last few points of damage. Synergizes very well with the God himself.

Magma Jet/Spark Jolt

I fully expect these to be the primary cards in the format that keep the aggro decks in check. They're extremely efficient burn spells, and the scry that comes attached can't really be underestimated. Magma Jet was an all star last time, and I don't expect it to be weaker this time around. Which of these sees more play will be a meta call, depending on what the toughness of creatures looks like. I'm personally inclined towards Magma Jet though.

Purphoros, God of the Forge

If there is going to be a combo enabler in Standard, this is going to be the card that does it. Pinging on ETB is one of those things that gives me terrible flashbacks to Valakut, and having that stapled to an undercosted body that also provides team-wide firebreathing makes me think there might be something here. If only there were more effects that put multiple bodies into play...

Stormbreath Dragon

The heir to the throne formerly occupied by Thundermaw Hellkite, Stormbreath Dragon has it all. He's got haste. He's got evasion. He's got a decent body and an ability that isn't entirely useless. Moreover, they stapled protection-from-most-Modern-removal to him, and it looks like we've got a great card on our hands. I would personally expect this one to start high at the prerelease, and not go any lower for a good long while.

Honorable Mention: Lightning Strike

A functional reprint of Searing Spear is unexciting, but perfectly serviceable. Depending on the relative toughness of creatures seeing play, this could be a heavily played card.

GREEN

While Green is arguably the strongest color coming out of the previous block, with it's strong aggressive plan and difficult to answer threats, I honestly do not see very much to help Green in Theros. I feel like both Nylea, Goddess of the Hunt, and her weapon, Bow of Nylea, are not as strong as the other color's options. This, plus a distinct lack of strong support cards, leaves me with only three cards I feel are worth talking about.

Boon Satyr

Boon Satyr would be an entirely average creature without flash. However, the addition of Flash to almost any creature is one of the most significant keywords that can be given. It turns a fairly one-dimensional creature into a combat trick (both offensive and defensive, thanks to Bestow!) It gives the creature pseudo-haste, even stronger with mismatched Power/Toughness. Furthermore, it's aggressive cost – both to cast and to bestow – makes it a prime candidate for Standard play.

(EDIT: Name fix thanks to /u/NorinTheWary)

Polukranos, World Eater

Polukranos is a strong creature. Starting at a 4 mana 5/5, his stats are already slightly above the curve. With the addition of his Monstrous abilty (perhaps enabled by a slew of mana dorks or Xenagos), there is the very real potential for him to single handedly take over the game and then end it swiftly. While I am not a personal fan of the creature, or the design, I am forced to admit that a monstrous Polukranos is no doubt going to kill me at some point.

Sylvan Caryatid

Everyone likes Utopia Tree. More people are going to like a 0/3 Utopia Tree with Hexproof. With the loss

of Farseek, this card is primed to fit into a large number of decks and fill all your need to cast 4 mana spells on Turn 3, this time without the blowout of having it removed by a timely Searing Spear.

MULTICOLORED

For a set that's nominally monocolored, Theros has a number of very powerful, unique multicolored cards. Some of them are sure to slot into Legacy Decks, while others will no doubt fail to make a splash in any format. Nevertheless, these certainly deserve a special look on the coattails of Return to Ravnica.

Fleecemane Lion

We've come a long way since Watchwolf, and this card has a whole lot of upside tacked on to it. With a very affordable Monstrous cost, and a pretty solid ability tacked to it, Fleecemane Lion seems like an ideal way to put early pressure on and keep it there. While Call of the Conclave isn't exactly thrilling everyone with it's P/T ratio, it also can't grow into a literal monster. It is worth noting that this directly competes with everyone's favorite Voice of Resurgence, but I think there's room for both to exist in the format.

Prophet of Kruphix

Seedborn Muse has always been an exceptionally strong card. While places to abuse it might be limited in Standard, but Seedborn Muse and Yeva have seen some EDH play. I see no reason that this won't see play in any deck that can support the colors.

Spellheart Chimera

This guy is interesting. With flying, trample, a decent back end, and great synergy with the kind of things that Blue and Red love doing, there's a decent chance that this guy breaks into either standard or modern. At a 3 drop, he's a little expensive for Legacy, but in the right circumstance, I could see it happening. Watch this guy.

Steam Augury

Even an awful, gives-opponent-better-choices, multicolored Fact or Fiction is still actually a Fact or Fiction, and it's still great card advantage for 4 mana. It's playability is going to be tied directly to the primary control colors that are playable, and both Blue and Red are high on my list in that category.

(EDIT: Mistyped the mana cost here. Thanks /u/not-even-in-flames)

Xenagos, the Reveler

This walker has what it takes. He's got an ability to defend himself, he's got an ability that's great when you're ahead. His ultimate is fairly powerful for how fast you can get to it, and most importantly, he costs 4 mana. This guy reminds me of Garruk Relentless in a lot of ways, and while he's clearly destined for a slightly different deck than baby Garruk was, teaming up with Domri Rade is enough to make a powerful team in standard.

Official PSA: A Red/Green Planeswalker Deck is called “Super Smash Brothers”, just like how Bant/Naya tend to be called Super Friends. Grixis Walkers is called Legion of Doom. Spread the word.

Honorable Mentions: Ashen Rider, Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, and Tymaret, the Murder King.

Ashen Rider is a strict upgrade to Angel of Despair almost anywhere it exists. (Exception: Kaalia EDH). Ashiok is notable as a planeswalker, but it doesn't defend itself and is really hard to extract any kind of real value out of. Could see play in the control mirror. Tymaret could see Legacy play in a Goblin-Bombardment style grindy list, or just as an awesome EDH general for people who love awesome names.

ARTIFACTS AND LANDS:

There's really only one notable here, beyond the Scry Lands, which are awesome. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is going to be an EDH staple, and not much else. It requires too much work to be actual acceleration, and colored mana is too much in demand to reasonably justify it in any other format.

Thanks for reading everyone, and I hope that your prereleases go well. How do you think I did? Did I miss your favorite card? Chime in in the comments below, or over on Reddit. I'd love to hear your feedback, and chat about cards. Tune in next week when we start brewing for the new format. I hope to build a BW Midrange deck for use at SCG Worcester, so we'll see!

In Defense of Scry Lands

Hey there everyone. It's been a while since I've written one of these things, but I feel like last night's spoiler merited me 'coming out of retirement' per se. Up until this point, I've been a huge fan of Theros. For those who don't know – I studied quite a bit of Classical history during college, and so Greek and Roman Mythology is a near and dear subject to my heart. I think that the design team has really stepped their game up with creating resonant flavor for a large portion of the cards in the set and I'm really digging the references to commonly told stories.

With that said, last night, we had a spoiler, as we are expected to during this season. It was one that people had been waiting for – the new dual lands for Theros. There were high hopes, and from the initial reaction, it doesn't seem like the public is terribly much in support of them.

For those who haven't yet seen them, here they are:

Now, I'd first like to go on the record and say that Wizards clearly did at least one thing right here, and that's the art. I am blown away by the detail in some of these pieces. I think that the Black/White one specifically hits all kinds of great resonance, and Noah Bradley has done a gorgeous job with Temple of Mystery. Luckily for us, he posted a high-resolution version of Reddit, so you can see all the majesty.

However, just looking at the internet and taking a quick temperature gauge, it would appear that there's a healthy group that is very outspoken against these Scry Lands. I disagree with them, but I do think that they're presenting their arguments in a coherent and fair manner, so it's probably worth addressing the points in a more systemic manner. I've noticed that the complaints with regards to these lands have fallen into a number of categories, and I'm going to do my best to talk about each one.

I'd like to remind everyone that my goal here isn't to change your opinion. If you don't like the lands, that is your choice. This article is meant primarily as an educational tool – to try and explain why these lands have been printed right now, and provide some broader contest in both the upcoming Standard, Limited, and design environment.

THEY ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY ENTER TAPPED

Yes. As you've all obviously noticed, these lands do not have any option to enter the battlefield untapped. You can not use them the turn that you play them – at least not for mana. This is admittedly a downside to playing them. You will most likely take a tempo hit when you play them.

Actually, let's take another look at that part. Tempo hits. I'm sure the majority of you are familiar with tempo – at least in Magic. In short, it's the momentum of the game – who's putting pressure on, who's defending. To quote a famous term – Who's the Beatdown? Playing a tapped land loses you tempo because you can't use that mana to advance your board state that turn. You've lost some of your momentum.

There's an assumption here though. It's subtle, but it's definitely present. You only lose that tempo if you were going to use the mana to begin with. While people have pointed out that you really do want to hit your 1-2-3 curve exactly, there's plenty of times that you won't be able to – or want to. If you have an overloaded slot in your hand (say, two 1-drops, but no 2-drop) then you can easily slot the land in there, allowing the downside to 'ground itself out' in a way. It doesn't affect you, and you get the free benefit of scrying away that T3 1-drop you were about to draw and hate – or the fifth land you were going to draw – or you can see that you're about to draw the awesome removal spell, so you can afford to not make a bad block this turn and save your guy.

Is entering the battlefield tapped a downside? Yes. It's clearly less good than it otherwise could be. But that downside can be mitigated through good play, which (if you're a good player) is the kind of thing you should like. (It means you'll win more often, because you make the right choice more often).

THEY ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY FAVOR CONTROL DECKS

This is actually a really interesting discussion, and I'd love to have a more in depth talk about it. This seems like the kind of thing that is perfectly up the alley of /r/spikes – so maybe you guys can grab this and run with it in the comments.

First off, I hear this complaint, but I don't think it's reasonably more problematic than the Scars lands were favored towards aggro decks – that is to say, very little. Secondarily, I think it's important to note that I don't actually agree with this line of thought – and I think that is actually the more interesting debate to have.

So, are Scry lands predisposed towards Controlling (or late game oriented) decks? Well, first, let's think about why that might be. Late game decks tend to use more powerful single cards – focusing on using their general and specific answers to find one of the few cards that will eventually win them the game. Given long enough, a control deck will out-draw you, and then utilize answers to control the field, finally ending with a difficult to stop creature bashing your face in. Right now, that creature is probably an Aetherling, or a Jace, Memory Adept, but what form that death takes is frankly irrelevant.

So, what does Scry do for a control deck? It allows them to have more precise selection of the cards that they draw. This allows them to get the correct mix of answers, threats, and land that is critical to them not stumbling in the early game. That all sounds pretty good, and admittedly, Scry 1 isn't a cure-all, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

What does it do for the aggressive player then? Well, in my opinion, it does the same thing, but with a more pronounced end. You see, filtering and library manipulation are already a part of a control deck because their answers are generally more potent. You can afford to spend two cards to find your Supreme Verdict if the one board wipe wins you the game. Aggressive decks, on the other hand, don't generally have that luxury. They need their threats to be able to go the distance from the beginning. As a result, they can't generally afford the card slots to run grade-A filtering. The result is that some minimal amount of filtering – provided for free – should actually benefit the aggressive deck.

We can see this in the design of certain mechanics. The reason that Blue looting is stronger than Red looting (Draw, then discard vs Discard, then draw) is because when they play tested both versions, it turned out that giving red the marginal extra power was having a disproportionate effect on the outcome of games.

It's possible that – in this case – the tempo loss will end up eclipsing the additional filtering, but I'm hopeful that some savvy deckbuilders will go the distance and at least test them.

THEY ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY ARE RARES

This is actually one of the few arguments that has nearly nothing to do with the actual game of magic, and much more to do with the abstract needs of Wizards and set design. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that rarity is a signifier of power level, which isn't necessarily true.

That's not to say that rares aren't powerful, but it's not the reason that the cards are at rare. There are powerful cards at every rarity – Delver of Secrets and Lightning Bolt at common, Wasteland and Lingering Souls at Uncommon, Birds of Paradise and Varolz, the Scar-Striped at Rare, and Geist of St. Traft and Elspeth, Knight Errant at Mythic. Those are just the first ones that came to mind – I'm sure if you thought for a while, you could fill every rarity with quality, competitive, playable cards. I'm positive that if you thought for a moment, you could think of plenty of Rares and Mythics that weren't remotely playable (Archangel's Light – here's looking at you.)

If it isn't power level dictating what rarity things are at, what is it? Recently, one of the prime answers has been complexity. With the onset of the New World Order (a design term coined by Mark Rosewater) the design teams have been extremely cognizant of how complex a card is at any given rarity. This is why we don't see repeatable combat tricks terribly often at common. It's why we don't see many persistent, static effects at uncommon. Each set has a given number of complexity points to spend at the lower rarities – and no doubt the majority of those were spent on Bestow in this set.

However, I don't believe that complexity alone would have pegged these as rare. For that, you're going to want to go to a deeper reason – one that underpines the entire set.

This isn't a multicolored set. It just isn't. Uncommons are the most important slots in a given set for helping to shape the way that a Limited environment plays out. It's where you can place some complexity, while still ensuring that there is a reasonable chance of someone opening it during a draft. Uncommons are the limited heavy-lifters, and spending five slots there is a difficult thing to justify for lands that seem to directly conflict with the strong mono-colored theme that is being communicated by Theros.

So, why even have dual lands? If they wanted to promote a mono-colored environment, why bother to include them. Ultimately, that comes down to the other balance point of a set – Constructed formats. (In this case, Standard.) We saw this previously, where despite Innistrad block supporting Allied colors – the lands were Enemy Color Checklands. This was because Development noted in their playtests that those lands needed to be in Standard to achieve some noted goal. We can assume, therefore, that Scry lands are critical to some goal in the development of the Standard environment. Perhaps they're trying to slow the format down. Perhaps they're trying to reduce variance when playing with high-variance card types like Auras.

Also, I know this is going to be difficult to believe, but this is actually good for Standard and Limited. These lands will have a constant and high demand for the full two years they exist in standard. Having that constant demand in packs will make the prospect of opening 3 packs for a draft every week into a less-terrible prospect from a value standpoint. By ensuring at least 5 more rares with value, Wizards helps to protect against a bad set from a sales perspective, while also providing constant, even value to players.

Ask yourself – if there had been a new cycle of color fixing lands in M14, would you have been more likely to buy a box?

When this question was asked to Mark Rosewater, who was the head designer on the set, he had this to say:

“Plain come-into-play tapped lands (meaning that’s all they do) are default uncommon. That’s the baseline. Then depending on the set things can move around a little.

In Return to Ravnica, we had the gates. The gates were common because in a multicolor block it’s crucial for limited that the mana fixing show up high in as-fan (as-fan talks about how many of something you get in each booster taking rarity into account) so to match the needs of the block we pushed the cards down a rarity.

The scry lands are the tap-lands plus. (Yes, the gates had the gates subtype but that mattered, especially in constructed, very little.) I know some of you don’t value scry 1 highly, but as I think time will show, in both constructed and limited, it’s more significant than it might seem at first blush. This pushes them to somewhere between uncommon and rare.

To figure out which way they fall, we look at the set they are in and the needs of the set. Theros limited is the opposite of Return to Ravnica. There is a little multicolor but mostly at higher rarities and mana fixing is way less important in Theros limited. This means that the momentum pushes the opposite way. Uncommon is very valuable space for making limited have longterm replay value and we would rather have five other cards there than the dual lands so the environment pushes them upwards instead of down.

There are obvious numerous other factors, but this is the impact that each set had on the decision about where to put its dual lands.”

I hope that this post helped some of you think about the Scry lands in a slightly less negative manner. I know they aren't the Nimbus Maze cycle, or the Horizon Canopy cycle, or even a cycle of Fetches like some were speculating. I hope that those of you who are dismissing them as 'just guildgates' will actually give them a try. Scry is deceptively powerful, and I, personally, am looking forward to trying them out.

Until next time everyone,

Andrew

The only things certain in life...

I have not been a huge proponent of Modern. Since it came out, I've looked for just about every reason under the sun to not play it. I was invested into Standard. I was investing into Legacy. I didn't have time to play the decks that I had. I didn't know anyone else who played, or anywhere to play it.

Most importantly, the critical problem was the same one that I've had with dozens of other formats (especially certain eras of Standard). I just didn't like any of the decks.

Modern has always struck me as a format with a misguided principle. Wizards wanted it to be a haven for the best hits of Standard, but somehow managed to ban all of the decks that people would be most excited to duke it out with. There's plenty of argument to be had about the current ban list, what should be added to it, what should be removed, and I certainly have opinions on the topic (perhaps even opinions that I'll mention before Gatecrash's Ban and Restricted announcement is sent out) but that's a conversation for another day.

Today, the important thing is that I've found a deck in Modern, or at least an archetype. For those who have followed this blog for a while, I play a White/Black Aggro-Disruption deck in Legacy that's commonly known as Yards Pale Ale (a variation of Dead Guy Ale). It's a primarily spell-based deck backed up by a White-Weenie core. I love the deck. I think it is a magnificent creation. I couldn't be happier with it.

For those who have been reading for even longer, you may remember my Knights deck. The time was Caw-Blade era Standard, just when people were figuring out how good Stoneforge Mystic was in a deck with Swords, and adding Jace to it only made it stronger. This was before Dismember and Batterskull. The deck wasn't completely over the top yet – it was just strong – like Valakut.

Back in the day, I played a (in hindsight) awful brew built around Knight Exemplar. It utilized Student of Warfare, Hero of Bladehold, Mirran Crusader, and a couple of less pristine examples of awesomeness. See, I was remarkably bad at combat math – so I wanted all my creatures to either be First Strike, Indestructible, or better. Knights gave me a way to do all of them.

I added blue because it seemed like the only thing that would beat me was board wipes before I was established. Counterspells would fix that. Blue also gave me access to a number of clone effects for my exemplar, and preordain (a card I did not appreciate at the time, but now sorely miss.)

For being so rough, I loved that deck, and so when I saw that a White-Weenie strategy was doing well at a couple of events, with the nominal archetype name “Death and Taxes”, I was obviously interested.

Here is an example of a version of the deck that won two Daily Events on Magic Online on subsequent days. It gets to play a ton of cards that I'm excited to work with, and has a ton of lines of play that intrigue me.

Now, one of the major things that this list relies on is it's ability to land-lock an opponent. Between Mindcensor and Arbiter, they can seriously restrict the amount of searching that an opponent can do – turning off fetch lands and other search effects right as the game starts.

I'm not sure if I like this tactic, but it's certainly something to fool around with. Admittedly, it's a strong line of play, but I tend to like my games of magic to be interactive – and that normally means some level of letting them have the ability to cast spells. I'm sure that my more Spike minded friends will disagree, but there's a reason that the designers have scaled back on Land Destruction effects in recent years – it's not very fun to play against, and I like everyone at the table to have fun.

There's plenty else we can do with a deck like this though. While Stoneforge Mystic's ban removes the ability to tutor up a Batterskull (or Jitte, were it unbanned), there are plenty of other options for a Death and Taxes shell to take advantage of. You could skew towards a trickier deck, featuring Flickerwisp and Stonecloaker to rebuy some of your effects, providing grinding value. Alternatively, adding a second color is definitely possible.

The current list, running a plethora of plains, provides players with a preciously pristine land base, not prone to removal. Adding a second color would make it more unstable, at the benefit of some flexibility.

I've seen some people discuss the addition of Green for some powerful options out of the GW Hate Bears list that Kibler has been using – Smiters, Leiges, Gaddock Teeg, etc. I've also seen Blue discussed, favoring a counterspell package to strengthen the deck against Combo and add in some draw and selection spells.

Something that I haven't seen is Black, taking a page out of my Legacy deck's book and running powerful creatures like Dark Confidant and Tidehollow Sculler, backed up with black removal spells. This is likely the direction that I'm going to end up taking the deck, because the playstyle flows so nicely with the kind of gameplan that I enjoy.

As for those of you who are still skeptical on the Modern format, I'd implore you to at least look at the format, see past the field of Jund and into the deep seas of innovation behind it. Who knows, maybe we'll see a ban out of Jund – or an unban to break the format open again. Regardless, there's something for everyone in Modern, if you'll just look to find it.

I'd like to give one last quick word to THIS thread on Reddit – it provided the initial list that sparked my interest in Death and Taxes in Modern.

Until Thursday, may all your spells resolve.