Wednesday, October 29, 2008

StarCityGames $5,000 Standard Open Top 16

Title Finish Player Event Date Location
Cruel Control1st placeChris WoltereckStarCityGames.com $5,000 Standard Open2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
White Weenie2nd placeDaniel SamsonMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Faeries3rd placeAlex BertonciniMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Kithkin Backlash4th placeJustin BartlettMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Merfolk5th placeJarrett TaylorMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Faeries6th placeDan BoucherMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Reveillark7th placeMichael ScheffenackerMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Cruel Control8th placeOliver RussMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Quillspike Combo9th placeJustin ParnellMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Vengeant Weenie10th placeDavid RussMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Vengeant Weenie11th placeJames HessMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Reveillark12th placePatrick Wadsack-StewartMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Token Aggro13th placeMichael RooksMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Elves14th placeYang ZhouMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Elves15th placeJarvis YuMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States
Red Deck Wins16th placeChristian SachseMiscellaneous2008-10-26Richmond, Virginia, United States

Info on State Championships

From MTGChamps.com

2008 States/Champs



All Universal Tournament Rules and Magic: the Gathering Floor Rules are in effect for this event unless specifically overruled by information in this Format Document

Format

* Standard-constructed format
* Deck lists are required

Cost

* The entry fee for the 2008 Magic: The Gathering® State/Provincial Championships is $25.00.

Tournament Length

* 50 minutes per round
* Number of Swiss rounds based on attendance according to the following chart:

Attendance


Number of Swiss rounds

9-16


4

17 - 32


5

33 - 64


6

65 - 128


7

129 - 226


8

227 - 409


9

410 or higher


10

Advancement

* All players may participate in all Swiss rounds

Top 8

* Top 8 matches will be best 2 of 3
* Top 8 matches will have no time limit. Players are expected to play at a reasonable pace and finish their matches within 50 minutes.
* Where necessary, the standings after the Swiss rounds will still be used to determine final order in the standings

Notes

* 24K, REL Competitive
* Players are responsible for knowing all DCI rules
* Players must bring pen, paper, card sleeves and appropriate counters

Prizes

* Special foil cards and are given to each participant while supplies last.
* Top 8 players each receive a commemorative States/Champs Play mat
* Champions receive 2008 Champion Plaque, Free entry into all Premier level constructed events for 1 year by all participating Organizers, Specialty DCI Card (to be mailed later).
* Product prizes to be determined by the organizer

Registration Information

* Players who want more specific local tournament or registration information should call their local contact phone number.

Residence Requirements

* Players must be residents of the State or Province where they wish to play. Exceptions include military on temporary assignments or students with valid local ID's. In general a local proof of ID (utility bill in your name for example) is sufficient to prove residence.

==================

In a nutshell?

Entry Prize - Foil Dauntless Dourbark. Wait, WHAT? One free copy of... Poorlash? Can I just have another Imperious Perfect?

Top 8 Prize - Playmats

First Place Prize - FREE entry into EVERY Premiere-level tournament (Regionals, Grand Prix, Pro Tour Qualifier, etc.) held by EVERY Tournament Organizer in North America that also held a State/Provincial Championships. And to put it this way: Every Tournament Organizer who ran a State/Provincial Championships is like 99% likely to hold Pro Tour Qualifiers for every season.

So! Time to go playtest against Cruel Control like crazy right?

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Monday, October 13, 2008

The Post-Shards Metagame

Hey guys! Are you ready for some new Post-Shards Standard? I am! So this weekend we were treated to a ton of new decklists from both the Game in the Gulf qualifier event that took place at Roanoke, VA and a ton of Magic-League Standard tournament results! So without further ado, let's look at some of the things that were played!

First, we're going to examine the October 2nd Magic-League Standard trial. The top three decks were:
  1. Kithkin WW
  2. UB Faeries
  3. UB Faeries
Hm. Okay. Looks like the Block metagame to me. Let's look at the decklist for Kithkin:
Kithkin WW, 1st Place @ Magic-League Standard Trial 10/02/2008 [Xth-Lorwyn-Shards]

enchantment [5]

3 Glorious Anthem

2 Oblivion Ring

land [25]

3 Mutavault

14 Plains

4 Rustic Clachan

4 Windbrisk Heights

60 cards

Nothing too special here. The only Shards addition is the sideboarded Knight of the White Orchid. Not an update whatsoever. Absolutely boring... next! Let's look at UB Faeries.

UB Faeries, 2nd Place @ Magic-League Standard Trial 10/02/2008 [Xth-Lorwyn-Shards]

That's it? Shards of Alara comes out and you decide to just go +4 Agony Warp? Next! I'm skipping the third-place Faeries list since it literally rocks the same archetype. The only difference in that list? Three Infest in the Sideboard.

Okay, let's look at the Magic-League Standard Trial.

Wow! Four Toast decks, one Rock, one Doran, one Reveillark, and one Kithkin? I have a feeling none of these decks added anything more than Bant/Esper Charm in Toast, Infest in the Rock/Doran decks, Knight of the White Orchid in the Kithkin list, and for Reveillark... well, it actually added Knight-Captain of Eos in the mainboard while siding Infest as well, along with Gather Specimens.

Let's look at the Game in the Gulf Top 16! This should be exciting.

Title Finish Player Event Date Location
Faeries1st placeTim FurrowMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Cruel Control2nd placeChris WoltereckMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Cruel Control3rd placeJoseph KeavenyMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Merfolk4th placeJustin PerdueMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Kithkin Backlash5th placeMarsh UsaryMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Reveillark6th placeRandy WilliamsMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Justice Toast7th placeAli AintraziMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Red Deck Wins8th placeJoshua DrumMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Cruel Control9th placeJosh CopeMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Vengeant Control10th placeKen AdamsMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Faeries11th placeChristopher BarfieldMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Bant Control12th placeJoshua OwensMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Blightning Aggro13th placeRichard LovernMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Faeries14th placeTroy DoyleMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Cruel Control15th placeChris WallaceMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Quillspike Combo16th placeMatthew ThorntonMiscellaneous2008-10-12Roanoke, Virginia, United States


Wow, look at that! Let's just get some stuff out of the way:

Cruel Control"is essentially a Quick and Toast update rocking Cruel Ultimatum, Nucklavee (great for recursion), and still plays the Bant/Esper charms, Cryptic Commands, and five-color manabase that we've come to expect.

Bant Control is a very cool gem here. It rocks a brand-new three color archetype with Chameleon Colossus, Kitchen Finks, Rhox War Monk, and Stoic Angel. It also plays a singleton Elspeth, Knight-errant. Ponder is in here as well, a card that is seeing a lot of play.

Vengeant Control is also your new five-color Ajani Vengeant-oriented control deck that looks pretty cool as well. Merfolk are now running Firespout.

The Kithkin Backlash list is a very original, new take on Kithkin: Painter's Servant, Oversoul of Dusk, and Mr. Win-Condition Chaotic Backlash. Very original, very fun. I'd love to have a crack at playtesting that list.

Mr. #1 Faeries is playing Esper Charm, nothing more to really report on. Justice Toast is a Quick and Toast variant running Archon of Justice. As for Blightning Aggro? Red/Black (with Blightning!). Looks solid to me.

And at 16th place, something that caught my eye: Quillspike Combo. Why, how could you pull such a thing off? Rite of Consumption with Persist! That's how! This deck is amazing.

That's all for right now. Later.

Monday, September 29, 2008

More on Reflecting Pool in Standard.

Reflecting Pool Standard: What it means for the metagame, and why you should care.

Hey guys! Are you ready for Reflecting Pool Standard to start? Just four more days before Shards of Alara is released (and Time Spiral block, along with Coldsnap, gets booted from Standard). I know I delved a bit into Reflecting Pool at my last post, but let's speak a bit about WHY it's going to be a big game changer.

Fact: All forms of constructed have been dominated by nonbasic lands, the majority of them being able to either produce two colors of mana or be able to search for them. In Vintage and Legacy, you see the heavy use of the original dual lands (Bayou, Tundra, Badlands, Underground Sea, Taiga, Volcanic Island, etc.) along with the Onslaught fetchlands (Polluted Delta, Flooded Strand, Bloodstained Mire, Wooded Foothills, and Windswept Heath). In Extended, your manabase will almost always contain the Onslaught fetchlands and a ton of Ravnica shocklands (Steam Vents, Godless Shrine, Hallowed Fountain, Breeding Pool, etc.)

This is no different from Standard. In Time Spiral-Lorwyn Standard, we played the likes of Grove of the Burnwillows, Nimbus Maze, Horizon Canopy, Mystic Gate, Sunken Ruins, Gilt-Leaf Palace, Wanderwine Hub, and many many more. When Reflecting Pool was reprinted in Shadowmoor, it simply made a five-color control deck *work*.

Now imagine an entire block whose focus is three-color combinations (and rewarding you heavily for playing all three!). Can you do it alone with just basic lands and the CIPT (comes into play tapped) shardlands from Shards of Alara? Definitely not. Could you do it even with the basic fetchland cycle we've been given? Probably not. Fact is, people are going to be looking back at Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block and looking at the lands there for support. Do we look at the tribelands (Gilt-Leaf Palace, Wanderwine Hub, Secluded Glen, Ancient Amphitheater, Murmuring Bosk, etc.)? Nope. We're going to go with the uncommon Vivid land cycle, which is reminiscent of Gemstone Mine. We will also look past that and focus on the filterland cycles that Shadowmoor and Eventide brought us. These are amazing nonbasic lands that cost one of their two provided colors to activate and give you a combination of either two mana of the same color or one mana of each color. Talk about heavy manafixing.

Now consider this: Reflecting Pool taps to add one mana of any color to your mana pool that any land you control could produce. This means that with Vivid lands that still have at least one counter on them, Reflecting Pool is literally a no-drawback five-color mana provider. Along with that, you have the whacky combination of filterlands that will help you twist and turn your way into whatever combination of colors you need in casting a three-color spell.

Three colors have never been so playable and rewarding as they currently are. I'm not saying that playing Zoo in Extended or Kamigawa-Ravnica Standard isn't rewarding. Extended is all about the crazy mana fixing, and it's great that Standard has the potential to bring on something new and crazy.

We got it with Quick 'n Toast, a five-color control deck that dominated both the Time Spiral-Lorwyn Standard metagame and Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block constructed PTQs this season. That was just a taste.

Of course, why not just play the cool winning block constructed decks? Because in the end, they all fall to the new. When Ravnica-Time Spiral Standard was rampant, the top decks in the format were narrowed down to three by the time rotation was near us: Dragonstorm, Gruul Aggro and Dralnu du Louvre. They were literally rock, paper, scissors. Dragonstorm beat Dralnu, Dralnu beat Gruul, Gruul beat Dragonstorm. When Time Spiral block constructed ran around, people cashed in on a block-oriented version of Dralnu du Louvre simply titled "Teachings". It was the top deck of the season, matched only by Blue-Green beats.

When Lorwyn was unleashed on Standard, we saw an unstable metagame for roughly three months. Here was Teachings and Pickles attempting to struggle for survival, along with a whacky three-color Momentary Blink deck that built off of the tempo that Blue-Green beats had in block cosntructed. The chase rares at the time were Gaddock Teeg, Thoughtseize, Cryptic Command, and Garruk Wildspeaker. Can you guess which one is worth just a dollar now? At the StarCityGames $1,000 Standard Open, Elves dominated. Here was a Lorwyn archetype, from a set that had just been released that weekend, dominating this unknown metagame. The trend continued. A slew of new decks came out eventually: UW Pickles, an "update" from its blue-black counterpart, won Paul Cheon a Grand Prix. Red-Green Mana Ramp from block constructed was actually seeing a lot of progress (and is one of the only decks from Time Spiral that stood the test of time), people began discovering the amazing interaction between Epochrasite and Makeshift Mannequin. Faeries and Merfolk were easily brushed to the side at the time.

At the World Championships, Patrick Chapin along with his teammates Gabriel Nassif and Mark Herberholz took a new rendition of Dragonstorm that utilized the new Hideaway-enabled lands from Lorwyn and created something called Spinerock Storm. With everybody gearing up to defeat the likes of Elves and Mana Ramp, Spinerock Storm came out of nowhere and ran to a second-place finish at the World Championships courtesy of Chapin. If you were curious, Elves won Worlds with a new twist: splash white for Doran, the Siege Tower. It was, however, a fad. Once people began recognizing the threat to Spinerock Storm, the entire metagame began to hate on it. It's reminiscent of the huge hype that surrounded Dredge when Bridge From Below was printed in Future Sight. That card spiked up to over twenty-five dollars a piece. It was sure to "win regionals". The rest of the metagame didn't even give Dredge a chance. It retaliated with Tormod's Crypt and Withered Wretch.

Anyways, around a month or so later Morningtide was released. Now things were getting interesting. When Morningtide came out, a slew of new decks burst with life. One of them was Bitterblossom Control, a midrange control deck that didn't really get anywhere but raise Bitterblossom's price from $3 to a solid $7. This wasn't for long though, as Bitterblossom dropped back to the status of "okay rare" at $4. Mutavault was all the craze. They came out strong at roughly sixty a set, an obvious chase rare. In total, Mutavault was basically the only thing people really wanted to pull during Morningtide's release. Mannequin began utilizing Siege-Gang Commander (strange, I know!). Otherwise, Standard was headed towards City Champs finals. During this time, somebody put two and two together and realized: Hey, Faeries are INSANE! Bitterblossom blocks Tarmogoyf ALL FREAKIN DAY, you can Champion it with Mistbind Clique if it's about to kill you, and you have the ability to even Champion an animated Mutavault! Boom. Bitterblossom shoots up to one hundred dollars a set.

Then... Shadowmoor came out. Standard at Regionals was dominated by Quick 'n Toast, a brand-new Guilamme Wafo-Tapa concoction that brought him to a near-Top 8 finish at Pro Tour - Hollywood in May, along with a revitalized Snow-based build of Mana Ramp (which incorporated Skred) and the seemingly unstoppable Merfolk. Faeries showed up in droves. Elves turned out to be the consistent winner yet again. You can't help but think: What happened to the new Dragonstorm? How about Pickles? Teachings? UGW Blink? All of those were still legal. They didn't change. The metagame did.

That's exactly why you simply cannot rely on the strategies of the past in order to deal with the current Standard. With access to all five colors a necessity, there is no doubt in my mind that a revamped version of Quick 'n Toast is going to quickly place a stranglehold on the game early on. Red Deck Wins might pose a threat as well, along with Faeries. In the end though, it is the promising new archetypes brought on by the five Shards in Alara (Bant, Esper, Naya, Jund, Grixis) that are going to end up dominating this metagame with bold new decktypes and strategies. And when Conflux (The second set in the Shards of Alara block) hits early next year, we will gear up for another metagame-warping state.

There is only one recommendation I make for all of you who look forward to playing Standard: Stock up on Reflecting Pool, and do it fast.

WHOOOOOO Standard Blog.

Hey guys! This is my Magic blog. I'm linking this up with Alex Ruiz, your super awesome Extended and Limited specialist who will be representing this brand-new fresh Magic blog network over at http://tap-dat.blogspot.com so check him out!

Who's excited for Lorwyn-Alara Standard?

Or, as I like to call it, "Reflecting Pool" Standard?

There's no doubt Reflecting Pool is the hottest commodity right now in Standard. With Shards of Alara bringing out only common and uncommon nonbasic lands (trip-color producing ones and basic fetches), Standard looks like it's going to be dominated by Vivid lands, filter lands, and Reflecting Pool.

Verdict - Buy Reflecting Pool now, especially at $12-13 a piece. I have a feeling it will rise up to at LEAST $25 by the time States hits.

Speaking of States, here's a list I'm currently building to play at States. It's a new rendition of Zoo.

Naya Zoo
Creatures - 24
3 Boggart Ram-Gang
2 Chameleon Colossus
4 Figure of Destiny
3 Gaddock Teeg
3 Quirion Dryad
3 Tattermunge Maniac
3 Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers
3 Woolly Thoctar

Spells - 9
3 Flame Javelin
3 Incinerate
2 Naya Charm
1 Unwilling Recruit

Enchantments - 3
1 Scourge of the Nobilis
2 Shield of the Oversoul

Land - 24
3 Fire-Lit Thicket
3 Jungle Shrine
4 Reflecting Pool
2 Rugged Prairie
4 Treetop Village
2 Vivid Crag
4 Vivid Grove
2 Wooded Bastion
Total - 60


Sideboard - 15
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Naya Charm
2 Sarkhan Vol
2 Scourge of the Nobilis
1 Shield of the Oversoul
4 Stigma Lasher
Total - 15

Thoughts?