The Star City Open in Cincinatti has given us a first glimpse into the New Standard.  After the landmark bans of last month and the release of the 2012 Core Set, we've all been dying to see what new archetypes emerge.  The usual suspects have shown up, but with some twists. Valakut was everyone's consensus […]

The post Insider: SCG Cinci Standard Watch List first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

Carlos brings CawBlade to Commander. Can this be a cacophony of cool, or a catastrophic calamity? Come check it out!

The post Of Hawks and Swords first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

I am not a deckbuilding expert.  I like to think I am pretty good at tweaking existing lists to perfect them for my expected metagame, but I am no deckbuilder.  That said, I recently attempted to build a new brew that could attack the metagame from a new angle.  I'm not going to claim this […]

The post Building A New Deck first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

To every measure there is a countermeasure, and a counter-countermeasure. Patrick Chapin wrote an article some time ago entitled Information Cascades in Magic. In it he described how information in any area, but particularly in Magic, cascades and plateaus. When everybody knows that Deck X is the best and most dominant deck, many people will […]

The post Evaluating Trumps in CawBlade first appeared on Quiet Speculation.

Blue-White Control is an archetype older than dirt.  The first deck in Magic history that didn't suck as bad as the rest was Brian Weissman's The Deck, a UW Deck that splashed red for Red Elemental Blast.  In the days when Juzam Djinn was bad because it dealt you damage, and you were lucky to […]

The post Breaking The CawBlade Mirror first appeared on Quiet Speculation.