All eyes on World Championship this weekend!

Posted On 3:12 PM // Leave a Comment

Newsletter
Thursday, October 5th

The Magic: the Gathering World Championship. Sounds huge, doesn't it? Imagine playing with two dozen other players for a giant purse and a trophy they can never take away from you. Imagine the entire Magic world watching you all weekend long as you define the game with only one week of a Standard format's results to study. The prestige and the pressure will be enormous this weekend, and we want to wish Sam Black, Gerry Thompson, and Brad Nelson the best of luck in their quest for the game's most exclusive prize!

Meanwhile, a former Pro Tour Champion in his own right, Shaun McLaren, is telling you the best decks to pick for the weekend! Pete Ingram and Todd Stevens are also working on their ways to attack Standard! So what deck wins this weekend? What player wins this weekend? These are questions we can't answer yet, but one thing is for sure: With a Magic event of this size going all weekend for us to watch, we all win! May the best player conquer!

— Danny West, Content Coordinator

Andrew Jessup
Standard Open

Jacob Rodriguez
Modern Classic

Zac Elsik
Standard Classic

The Top 8 Decks Heading
Into The World Championship
By Shaun McLaren  

I'm loving the idea of Walk the Plank, even if there are some points against it and the whole planking craze is a little dated by now. As it stands, the format isn't that interested in sorcery-speed removal, and Walk the Plank is by no means Grasp of Darkness, but it's still a solid card.

Since there aren't really any Constructed-playable Merfolk, Walk the Plank can pretty much destroy every creature in the format, or at least try to. The deck can support double black mana quite well, which is the first hurdle to overcome. Having a bunch of removal in midrange mirrors seems appealing, and beyond Fatal Push, a lot of the other removal, like Never and Vraska's Contempt, is a little too costly to keep up with Ramunap Red.

Ramunap Red does have a bunch of haste creatures and the un-Plankable Hazoret the Fervent, but Walk the Plank is just cheap efficient removal when you want pretty much anything dead. I think quite often you'll be giving thanks during Planksgiving on Turn 2 or 3 against Ramunap Red.

October 21-22
Modern

October 28-29
Legacy

November 4
Modern

From SCG Dallas To
The World Championship
By Peter Ingram  

I have a strong feeling that, if you want to do well in this format, Solemnity is the card to play. Once it resolves against the Energy deck, the deck goes from a 10/10 power level to around a 6/10 power level. It can just close the game out completely.

If Dinosaurs isn't the way to go going forward, then I am also still curious what Vampires has to offer. It's a bit surprising to me that no tribal decks were even in the Top 32 of the event. This leads me to believe that not many people showed up with them. With the World Championship this weekend, I'm sure we will see a lot of innovations from the top players.

Todd Triassic: Rebuilding
Dinosaurs For Standard!
By Todd Stevens  

If you're playing a midrange deck in Standard, then it's almost impossible to do something better than Attune with Aether and Rogue Refiner. Sure, the rest of the cards in the deck can change depending on what other colors you want to play and what decks you want to beat, but this is the clear top deck of the current format. I believe Sultai Energy will most likely start to push out Temur and Four-Color Energy from the format for various reasons, the biggest being that it's the best Energy deck against control by having access to both Duress and Negate.

Control was arguably the worst matchup for Energy decks before, and it's definitely a matchup to focus on for the midrange deck. Sultai Energy also has access to Hostage Taker, which is proving to be one of the best things to do during the mid-game. I'm not counting out Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Glorybringer yet, but Sultai Energy is the real deal. In any case, making a midrange deck that's better than Attune with Aether is a tough challenge, but one we're going to try today.