The Season One Invitational is here!

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Newsletter
Thursday, June 29th

Hour of Devastation gets closer to us every day, and some of the cards are unbelievable! But while the rest of the Magic world gets ready for the next big Standard shuffle, a huge crowd of players is already shuffling up the unknown current Standard for this weekend's Season One Invitational! Whether you're going for a lot of money this weekend in Roanoke or you're itching for the return of Nicol Bolas to battlefields everywhere, we've got the story! Patrick Chapin has the Grixis goods you'll need for Week 1 of the set release! Meanwhile, Emma Handy has her best tips for playtesting the smart way, and Ross Merriam explains why this weekend may be defined by a Standard card that hasn't even begun to dominate yet!

— Danny West, Content Coordinator

Brewing With
Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
By Patrick Chapin  

Now, there's a lot of competition at the five-spot in Standard, but Dark Intimations has one more thing going for it: an extra loyalty counter for Nicol Bolas.

How big a deal is a loyalty counter? Well, sometimes it will be wasted for sure: if they Cast Out your Nicol Bolas during your end step, for instance. However, whenever Nicol Bolas survives a situation it would have died, there's a good chance, that's a game-winning advantage. What's more, an extra loyalty counter means Nicol Bolas is threatening to ultimate a turn earlier. Hell, sometimes it'll be enough to just deal 14 damage to them over two turns!

Okay, Dark Intimations is sweet, harkening back to the days of Cruel Ultimatum, and now, we've finally got our Nicol Bolas.

Season One Invitational Weekend June 30 - July 2

July 8-9
sealed & 2hg sealed

July 15-16
Standard

July 22-23
Team Constructed

You Must Playtest Correctly!
By Emma Handy  

In my most recent article, I went through a few "tried and true" sayings in Magic and talked about why they didn't quite hold true anymore. Discovering why many of these don't apply today didn't come overnight. It was through a method of playtesting that I regularly practice when playing online: I explain everything.

I touched on this in the opening of the article, but the largest difference that I see between good players and great players is that great players tend to have reasons for every single decision they make. Sometimes the explanation is easy, and sometimes it takes a personal essay in dialogue form to justify a play.

The instance that this tends to be the most applicable is in a deck with a low number of a specific kind of resource against a deck where that resource will be stretched. For example, a deck with a low number of removal spells needs to understand which creatures to pick off when playing against an archetype with a higher density of creatures.

Two Big Question Marks,
One Tournament
By Ross Merriam  

In this metagame, position on the battlefield is of the utmost importance, and few cards have the immediate impact that Glorybringer has. Any time your opponent taps out they have to be worried about you killing a premium creature and potentially a Planeswalker. If they leave up mana for a removal spell, you should have another option, forcing them to use it on an inferior threat or fall behind. This is going to be one of the best cards in the format going forward, and while I highly doubt it is ever banned, it's the kind of card I can see regretting not playing in hindsight.

As a home for Glorybringer, Temur Energy makes a lot of sense, since it has a mana creature to power it out ahead of schedule. Mana acceleration and rare/mythic Dragons have a long pedigree in Standard, one I'm quite familiar with. I'm also familiar with the rest of the shell, having played it in Four-Color Saheeli and Temur Marvel over the last six months of Standard.