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Pro Tour Dark Ascension (#PTDKA) Live Coverage and Analysis

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| Deck Lists#ptdkafantasyPT |  video | text | qsRSS | @quietspec

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#ptdka Decklist:  All Video Features So Far!

21:13 EST Saturday | Kelly

Click here

for all of the deck lists from the Video Deck Techs that we've found so far!

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#ptdka Decklist:  BW Tokens

20:44 EST Friday | Kelly

As featured in a video deck tech with Jasper Johnson-Epstein!

I must kill it! I mustn't kill it!

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Colorless Spell Lands

8:05 PM EST Saturday | Doug

One aspect of the colorless rare lands like Moorland Haunt and Kessig Wolf Run is that they are relatively cheap. We're talking $3-5, even after they were bumped up by $1 this weekend. This may seem mystifying; these are lands that are casually really popular and they see a bit of tournament play.

The previous analog for this has been Academy Ruins. Ruins was relatively cheap all through Block and Standard, though it saw play in several control decks. Ruins continued to be cheap for several years after that! Even play in Legacy, recurring Engineered Explosives, wasn't enough to budge it - only Commander did that. It's still only about $6.75. That said, it was $1 for all of 2009.

I predict these spell-lands are going to make the same slow price rise as Ruins did, especially because they are even better than that lousy wrecked Academy. In Commander, effects that give your guys trample or deathtouch are incredible! Kelly and I are taking a long bet on these sorts of cards. The G/B land is not stellar, but all of the others are very interesting.

It's odd that you can have a card like Blinkmoth Nexus sit at $20 for ages, but Moorland Haunt never really goes above $5.

CURSED!

7:11 PM EST Saturday | Doug

We are going into Game 3 between Denniz Rachid and Shouta Yasooka. Denniz is on UW Tokens/Humans and Shouta is on B/U Vampires and Ratchet Bombs. Denniz locked G1 away with his tokens, but G2, he just got cleared out by Curse of Death's Hold. Here's the scenario: he's got three tokens and a Snapcaster in hand and Shouta gets the Curse around Mana Leak pretty comfortably. The race stops right there. Shouta stabilizes at 4. Denniz feels the game is getting away from him and has to throw Snapcaster into a Ponder to see what he can line up. He's got Geist of St. Traft, but Shouta now has Bloodline Keeper making a pile of tokens. That Geist is only a 1/1 with a 3/3 at this point, which won't get in for lethal against Shouta's Vampires.

A second Curse from Shouta wipes the board and Denniz scoops it in. Let's see if he has anything in this last game to fight off a seriously powerful card.

I've been talking about CODH for a long time, since it is an incredible counter to token an small-dude strategies. Shouta used it to singlehandedly win a game he was set to lose. It's still a bulk rare, but with UW Humans seeing more attention, I wouldn't be surprised to see Curse become a major sideboard contender.

#ptdka Decklist:  BW Tokens

8:44 EST Friday | Kelly

As featured in a video deck tech with Rob Dougherty (4-1 in Standard after Day 1)

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

4 Lingering Souls

4 Midnight Haunting

2 Sword of War and Peace

1 Eslpeth Tirel

2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

4 Doomed Traveler

4 Honor of the Pure

4 Intangible Virtue

4 Champion of the Parish

4 Gather the Townsfolk

3 Oblivion Ring

3 Swamp

3 Vault of the Archangel

4 Isolated Chapel

13 Plains

1 Shimmering Grotto

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#ptdka Decklist: Channel-Fireball wRG Ramp

5:40 EST Friday | Kelly

As featured in a video deck tech with Eric Froelich (2-3 after Day 1).  Talk about it on Facebook!

Fur is murder. Murder most foul.

4 Rampant Growth

4 Primeval Titan

2 Green Sun's Zenith

1 Thrun, The Last Troll
1 Acidic Slime
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Sphere of the Suns
2 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobyte
4 Galvanic Blast
3 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Slagstorm
5 Mountain
2 Plains
5 Forest
4 Copperline Gorge
4 Rootbound Crag
2 Kessig Wolf Run
4 Inkmoth Nexus

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4:48 EST Friday | Kelly

The QS control room during #PTDKA

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3:33 EST Friday | Kelly

Check out the new Judge Foils, Sword of Light and Shadow and Karmic Guide!  Gotta love the throwback sword for the "we know how banding works" crowd.

Source: StarCityGames Facebook

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2:19 EST Friday | Doug

The Pro Tour hype really revolves around two cards: Lingering Souls and Delver of Secrets // Delver of Secrets. Let's look into that a bit more... ever since Sorin and Lingering Souls were spoiled, people started packing their decks with token machines. It's a proven strategy. We've also seen the Delver decks, with Sword of War and Peace and Runechanter's Pike, come out of left field for a great tempo strategy. We've even got some friendly wagers going on in the QS Insider Forums about whether the Top 8 will have more Ratchet Bombs or Lingering Souls. Currently, people are favoring Ratchet Bomb over the white Sorcery, but time will tell.

Speaking of Ratchet Bomb, I feel that a lot of deck performance here will depend on whether the token decks have a good solution to the Bomb. Tokens got crunched last week at the SCG: Richmond $5K because everyone seemed to have Bombs on their board. The T32 decklists, here, are a good briefing of what we'll see.

Courtesy of Arthur Halavais (@ahalavais), here are floor prices for cards today. Bear in mind that every dealer at a PT jacks up their prices beyond what's normal.

Liliana of the Veil $35

Geist of Saint Traft $25

Sword of Feast and Famine $38 (!)

Garruk, Primal Hunter $18

Garruk Relentless $18

Thrun, the Last Troll $14

Black Sun's Zenith $6

Phyrexian Obliterator $15

Surgical Extraction $7

Gut Shot $5

Sorin, Lord of Innistrad $60

Sword of War and Peace $50

Havengul Lich $18

Hero of Bladehold $18

Lingering Souls $3

Huntmaster of the Fells$20

Grafdigger's Cage $7

Geralf's Messenger $6

Seachrome Coast $20

Isolated Chapel $9

5 thoughts on “Pro Tour Dark Ascension (#PTDKA) Live Coverage and Analysis

  1. I do trust all of the ideas you have presented to your post.

    They’re very convincing and will definitely work. Still, the posts are very short for novices.

    May you please prolong them a little from subsequent time?

    Thanks for the post.

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