A Birthing Pod deck? Can it be so? Yes my friends, and it is as glorious and utility-filled as all of your little dreams had hoped! Twice now my Houston playgroup has had somebody run this list in a PTQ to Top 8 contention, to lose in the last round of Swiss. Here’s the list, with every card explained, that was used!

Joshua takes one last look at the pre-ban format, then focuses on the new Standard, discovering that a surprising card may end up defining the format.

With CawBlade in its recent incarnations gone the metagame is seemingly wide open.  Any number of archetypes can claim to be the new top dog, and the viability of many cards goes up without the fear of a Jace making them irrelevant or a turn three Batterskull attacking too quickly for them to come online.  Until some tournament results come in to fill in the gaps any talk about the new metagame will be little more than an educated guess, but we can still know questions need to be answered.

Geoff’s back, stoking the fires of the Pauper metagame. What deck is poised to best pounce on a world with a weakened Frantic Storm? What deck matches up well to delicious, summertime grill analogies? Find out inside!

Kyle Kloster offers us a brief report on how he earned 2nd place at the recent StarCityGames Legacy open event, a look at Reanimator’s appeal and optimal play, and suggestions for optimizing the deck.

As a veteran Merfolk player, Scott Muir brings us guidance, strategy, and reasoning to effective sideboarding with the popular tribal Legacy deck.