We’ve had 2 weeks of Opens to see the impact New Phyrexia has had on the Standard and Legacy tournament scenes. I’m going to focus on Standard, since the Grand Prix this weekend is Legacy, and will almost certainly have more players than the SCG Open series gets. Waiting on that will give us a bit of a better view on the format. However, for Standard, there’s no reason to wait, especially since the format hasn’t really undergone much of a change.
Strategy
Mike Hawthorne runs us through the strength and synergy of Legacy’s New Horizons, giving us a map of the deck’s abilities and interactions.
We get back to the Hunt with a all new GR aggro list developed by Kellen’s new mtg team. Fast kills are the name of the game in this deck feature.
Today we’ll begin a thorough dissection of Magic’s five colors, perfect for newcomers and a refreshing review for veterans. After exploring the Color Wheel, we’ll move onto the series’ first installment. You’ll find all the Green cards you can expect to see in Legacy alongside decklists galore.
In the third and final installment of his design review of New Phyrexia, Gregory discusses the Green and Artifact cards.
My quest led me down past Mirrodin, into the evil depths of Darksteel, and out along the treacherous path of Fifth Dawn. As I pressed onward, I looked back through the Scars of Mirrodin. Looking back from that perspective, it didn’t seem quite as bad. Nightmares of the Ravager long since overcome, only to be replaced over and over again. With the [card Jace, the Mind Sculptor]evil demon[/card] lurking everywhere, sometimes it’s hard to remember clearly what it was like in the past.
This time around, things are different. The story is not the same. We have [card Jace, the Mind Sculptor]the villan[/card] but no clear path to victory. In that regard the present is like the past.
As the first high-profile Legacy tournament since the introduction of Mental Misstep, the results leave us with a few things to consider. We’ll note the prevalence of Mental Misstep, a prominent sideboard card, the introduction of a new planeswalker, and the archetypes that thrived.
Ian Ellis gives us a second opinion of a card that may be more Hype than Hope, offering a bit of a shield to those who do not follow the popular thought and illuminates the risks for those who support it.
Jesse Onland discusses the explosiveness of Mono-Green Infect in Pauper online, a tuned sideboard and its future with New Phyrexia.
With a new format becoming available for the first time Friday, it’s time to take a quick look at what’s available. For the most part, these will be aggro or combo decks, since control decks need to be built towards the metagame. As it stands, Caw-Blade is the premiere control deck in the format, and it can be played as-is with the mere addition of Batterskull.
It’s the second part of the New Phyrexia design review. This episode features Gregory’s unique design analysis on the Red in Black cards in the newest set.
Here is part 1 of Gregory’s design review – a unique card-by-card analysis from an ex- magic designer.
Seeing the results from the National Qualifiers and thinking back on the article I wrote on Vampires, I was led back to that deck. I really love this Vampire deck and what it is capable of, I play it well, and I have had more success with it than any other deck this season. With all those things being true, how could I not play it again?
