| Ladies and gentlemen, meet Team Lotus. Columbus is a city that has seen a lot of Magic tournaments. From Grand Prix won by Flash Hulk to Pro Tours won by Affinity, The Biggest Small Town in America has had its fair share of spells cast within its convention halls. Complete and utter team domination—and that's exactly #SCGCOL last weekend. After coming up just short on qualifying for the Players' Championship in 2015, Chris Andersen decided that while winning by himself was fun, winning with friends is even better. So Team Lotus was founded, and after a slow start to 2016, these gentlemen heated up at #SCGCOL. With Top-32 performances from Andersen, Kent Ketter, and Jessy Hefner, a Top-8 finish from Andrew Tenjum, and a victory from Jacob Baugh, Team Lotus is now the most dominant team on the SCG Tour. The question, of course, is for how long? With rumors surfacing of new teams being built in Long Island, NY, and Raleigh, NC, things are only getting more competitive on the SCG Tour. I'm excited to see these teams take shape in time for #SCGLOU, but #SCGRegionals is the first stop for those looking for SCG Points. Remember, #SCGRegionals is the only place that one can acquire SCG Points this weekend, and locations are filling up at a pace that we've never seen before, so if you're looking to qualify for a #SCGINVI or the #SCGPC, #SCGRegionals is a can't-miss event! I just hope, for your sake, that you don't get paired against a member of Team Lotus. — Cedric Phillips, Media Manager @CedricAPhillips |  |  | Beating Four-Color Rally As if it wasn't clear before, Jacob Baugh's win at #SCGCOL solidified it - Four-Color Rally is the deck to beat in Standard. So how does one overcome the power of Collected Company, Rally the Ancestors, and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy? Super Sunday Series champion Sam Black explains. |  | Your Format Sucks: Modern With the #SCGRegionals coming up this weekend, Modern is the name of the game for Mark Nestico. But Mark thinks Modern sucks. Now, for what it's worth, Mark thinks a lot of things suck, but now he's coming after Modern? He sure is, and he's doing it with his usual biting wit for all to enjoy. |  | Kalitas Jund At #SCGCOL Four-Color Rally appears to be the deck to beat in Standard, but some new cards from Oath of the Gatewatch have gotten Brian Kibler's attention. Sylvan Advocate, Goblin Dark-Dwellers, and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet are all extremely powerful cards that The Dragonmaster put into a powerful Jund killing machine! | | | If you're like me, then you're already planning on heading to one of the StarCityGames.com Regional Championships to plant your flag! Although the temptation to play Modern's new boogeyman is strong (hint, hint), I think doing so is actually a trap. Everyone else is expecting G/R Tron and Eldrazi to dominate, so why don't we play a deck that has solid matchups against them both? Personally, I'd rather play some Blue Moon: | | Blood Moon is the bane of greedy mana bases everywhere, but also the bane of people trying to do unfair things with said lands. G/R Tron has merely embraced the big mana, but Eldrazi was born from it, molded by it. That deck didn't play a basic until the game was already won. We'll be only too happy to punish them for that. The scourge of Blood Moon has wrecked many a game plan with glee, and if everyone in the metagame is trying to do greedy things, then we're their conscience. Main-deck Roast is not even a popular plan in Standard, but with cards like Tarmogoyf, Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler being popular in Modern, we need an efficient answer. Large creatures don't need much time to win the game, and we're ill-equipped to deal with them once they resolve as we don't have Path to Exile or Terminate. Many of those large creatures can be kept in check by Blood Moon, but Tasigur and the Angler are easy enough to cast. There are few things that feel better than bouncing a shockland Turn 2 on the play with a Boomerang. Yes, read the card again. The word "nonland" is not written on it anywhere. Plays like this often cost both players tempo, but with Blue Moon, we aren't actually missing anything to do this. Boomerang is also a great answer to resource-intensive threats like Tasigur or creature-based combo decks like Infect. Also, we get to play that sweet, sweet Richard Kane Ferguson art, so we got that going for us. Shadow of Doubt is one of my favorite "Surprise!" cards that nobody plays around the first time, then goes to great pains to play around the second time. The most obvious use is to counter a fetchland activation, but it's just as good against Scapeshift, Gifts Ungiven and Expedition Map. Since it is never dead, it is worth a spot, and sometimes you can get people that forget about it once it is in the graveyard for us to flash back with Snapcaster Mage. Our sideboard gives us a plan against decks where Blood Moon isn't as good (Hate Bears, Merfolk, Soul Sisters and Elves) while also letting us play some effective hate cards in certain matchups, like Batterskull and Chandra, Pyromaster. Chalice of the Void is a great help against a variety of combo decks as well as aggro, and I am willing to shut off my Serum Visions and Bolts to blow up their entire plan. Take Blue Moon to #SCGRegionals this weekend, and hopefully you'll be standing alone atop the standings! — Chris Lansdell, @lansdellicious | | Oath of the Gatewatch Standard is two weeks old, but it's clear that Andy Ferguson gets it. The Collected Company master has strung together back-to-back Standard Open Top 8s with decks based around the powerful four-mana Instant, most recently taking second place at #SCGCOL. The Cincinnati-based engineer is the fourth player this season to go back-to-back and joins Jeff Hoogland, Brian Braun-Duin, and Todd Stevens in the SCG Tour Leaderboard Top 16 for his efforts. Now that Ferguson has climbed the leaderboard, can he become the first player to make it three straight Top 8s at Louisville in a couple of weeks? As the Standard format shifts, so does the SCG Tour Leaderboard. Jacob Baugh of Team Lotus edged Ferguson in the finals of #SCGCOL and launched himself into the Top 16 on the back of Four-Color Rally, giving the most-played deck in Standard its first Open title. Baugh now joins his fellow Lotus teammate and #SCGCOL Top 8er, Andrew Tenjum, in the Top 16. Baugh also has a Classic Top 8 this season to go along with his second Open win, pairing last week's win with a victory back in 2010. |  | | Tom "The Boss" Ross didn't waste much time getting back into the Top 16 of the SCG Tour Leaderboard. After his dominance in 2014 with back-to-back Invitational wins and his strong year in 2015 which saw his return to the Players' Championship as well as his second Open trophy, Ross used a Top-4 finish at #SCGCOL to return to the land of two byes. Ross used R/B Dragons to fly over the competition and joins BBD, Gerry Thompson, and Todd Anderson as Roanoke representatives in the Top 16 in the Player of the Year Race. If a fifth player is going to make back-to-back Open Top 8s this early in 2016, Ross seems like a great bet. The Jessup brothers made their moves this past weekend in Columbus as well. Danny took down the Modern Classic with Infect, jumping to No. 13 on the SCG Tour Leaderboard while Andrew took second in the Legacy Classic with Elves, breaking into the Top 32. Danny is looking to make it back to the Players' Championship this year as his younger brother shoots for his first time in the end-of-the-year tournament. The next stop on the SCG Tour is #SCGRegionals, where players across the country look to plant their flag and collect SCG Points. Find the Regional Championship closest to you, and make your move in the Player of the Year Race while battling Modern for prizes and glory! |  |   If you would like to unsubscribe and stop receiving these emails please click here. |
0 comments:
Post a Comment