Standard & Modern Brews for This Weekend's Cincinnati Open!

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Newsletter
Thursday, March 22nd

What the heck has been going on in Magic lately?

The past few months of Magic have been wild! Have you been able to keep up with all of it? Let me break down just a few things that have happened. Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf were unbanned in Modern and the latter has been much better than the former. G/R Ponza, a deck with Stone Rain, Molten Rain, and Inferno Titan won the Dallas Open. Ironworks Combo, a deck long thought to be dead, just got third place at Grand Prix Phoenix. Legacy is currently being defined by Grixis Delver, a deck that has no business being able to cast Deathrite Shaman. And the best way to beat it? Make an indestructible 20/20 as fast as possible—something more than one deck can do! Standard is being defined by The Scarab God, a card so OP that it might need to be put on the shelf.

And there's that whole Dominaria thing...

So, what have we been up to here at Star City Games? The same thing everyone else has been up to—brewing! Edgar Magalhaes made his SCG debut in style, by reopening Pandora's Box with his take on Amulet in Modern. It might not have Summer Bloom anymore, but Magalhaes' believes it's still more than able to compete in Magic's most diverse format. Ben Friedman thinks he found Standard's new broken combo deck, and after reading what he had to say about his newest take on God-Pharaoh's Gift, it's hard to argue! As for Todd Stevens? The Modern Master is trying to figure out why Jace, the Mind Sculptor hasn't begun to dominate his favorite format yet. Trust me Todd—you're not the only one!

With all this in mind, it only stands to reason the Cincinnati Open is going to be a madhouse this weekend. Standard, Modern, and Legacy are on the docket for our Team Constructed Open, so you know that anything can happen. Join Matthias Hunt, Ryan Overturf, Nick Miller, and the rest of the @SCGTour crew as we work our way through 15 rounds of Team Constructed chaos. The fun begins at 10:30am ET over at twitch.tv/scgtour!

— Cedric Phillips, Content Coordinator

April 7-8
Modern

April 28-29
Team Constructed

May 5-6
Team Constructed

Amulet Me Show You
How To Crush Modern
By Edgar Magalhaes  

Gone are the days of Turn-2 Summer Bloom enabling the six mana needed to cast Primeval Titan and completely blow open a game. However, contrary to popular belief at the time, that gameplan was only half of what Amulet Bloom was capable of. The ability for a Primeval Titan to enter the battlefield and essentially tutor for a Tolaria West created a seemingly endless chain of threats and answers that caused significant headaches to any deck that wasn't able to pressure Amulet Bloom quickly. Luckily for fellow Primeval Titan enthusiasts, Modern is approaching a spot where that gameplan can thrive.

People often ask me why I think Amulet (as opposed to pre-ban Amulet Bloom) is still a viable archetype. I'll be blunt—Sakura-Tribe Scout and Explore are no Summer Bloom, but they aren't as far off as one may think. The biggest Eureka moment I had when revisiting Amulet was when I thought about the matchups where I really needed to be fast. Most of the opposing decks are non-interactive and have linear gameplans of their own. As a result, they aren't interested in or even capable of interacting with the Sakura-Tribe Scout. In these matchups, the Scout does a solid impression of Summer Bloom.

Standard's New Broken Combo Deck
By Ben Friedman  

We'll touch on more Modern technology over the next few weeks as we explore Jace midrange decks like U/W Flash, U/B Midrange, Esper Souls, Jeskai Flash, U/R Breach, and Grixis Midrange, but there is more exciting news afoot in Standard, of all places. My old flame, Gate to the Afterlife, is back in a new shell that looks remarkably close to a ban-worthy engine deck.

Pre-rotation, Insolent Neonate enabled an all-in God-Pharaoh's Gift deck that popped up as a powerful strategy toward the tail end of the format, but with the loss of the Neonate, the deck lost the density of one-drops it needed to compete. The presence of Abrade seemed like it shut the door on all-in Gift decks, and the alternatives of U/B Gift and U/W Gift popped up as slower multifaceted strategies that could compete going long while presenting the opportunity for busted openings that overpowered stumbling opponents.

Fanatical Firebrand, Combat Celebrant, and the not-so-secretly busted Bomat Courier are here to say "not so fast." Let's have a look at TombSimon's list from a recent Magic Online 5-0 performance and break down why it's a powerful choice.

Why Is Jace Struggling In Modern... And What's The Solution?
By Todd Stevens  

When Wizards of the Coast announced that Jace, the Mind Sculptor was going to be unbanned in Modern, I was heartbroken. I thought that the card was much too good for the format and would dominate it, and I wasn't alone in those sentiments. Many people were worried what Jace would do to the diverse format that they loved.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor has now been Modern-legal for an entire month, and to my surprise, Jace isn't dominating the format at all. In fact, so far Bloodbraid Elf, the other card unbanned at the same time as Jace, has had a bigger impact on the format so far. So, what's happening? Why is the best Planeswalker ever printed not dominating Modern like I and many others thought it would? Well, there are many factors combining to hold back the impact Jace has had so far, so let's break them down.