Are You Ready For 2018?

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Newsletter
Thursday, December 28th

The wait is almost over! In just a little over a week, the SCG Tour kicks off 2018 in style in Columbus with a Modern Open! Are you ready?

If not, we can help! Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir Champion, Ari Lax, is reinventing the way playtesting works—after all, more team events and more format variety in tournaments means you have to evolve! Pete Ingram is cornering his approach to Modern to ensure he's ready for the Columbus main event. As for Pro Tour Amonkhet Champion Gerry Thompson? He's spending his rare weeks off brewing in virtually every format!

It has been too many weeks since we had some good tournament Magic to enjoy, but that's all about to change! We here at StarCityGames.com wish you a very happy New Year and look forward to kicking off 2018 with you at Columbus!

— Danny West, Content Coordinator

January 20-21
Team Constructed

January 27-28
Team Constructed

February 17-18
Modern

Remaking Magic Methodology
For 2018
By Ari Lax  

What you end up with is a lot of educated guesses, with various amounts of "education" behind them. Patrick Chapin once described making gameplay mistakes as just an added element of manageable randomness in the game, and testing or deck selection is similar. There are many things to look at, and even with educated pruning of obviously bad things, there's too much going on to find everything in the time given.

In the world of competitive Magic, there's a lot of inertia. I don't mean this in the way that leads someone to hit a wall and burn out, because Magic is still awesome, but people keep doing things the same way because the game forces constant artificial deadlines. The event is in three weeks, three days, and so on. Then the next event. And the next. There's a real payoff to testing for an event, and anyone who doubts that would be a fool to think otherwise, so people just keep doing the thing that's kinda good.

It feels like it might be time to try to do it differently.

The Modern World I'm Living In
By Peter Ingram  

If big mana decks are dominating, then we are going to see aggressive decks try to get under them, like Affinity and Burn. I personally think Burn isn't a very good deck and it loses to itself quite often, so I wouldn't recommend that deck for anyone, but if we see a rise in those decks, then Jeskai Control seems like a good choice.

If there is one deck that I would guarantee a player will play against at an SCG Open, it would be Jeskai Control. I spoke about this in my last article; people can't seem to get enough of whatever the best midrange deck is. So if Jeskai one of the decks that is the next level, what is the next next level? The answer would be Lantern Control and Tron. So it seems we are back where we started.

Find Invitational Qualifier Events This Week!

'Tis The Season To Be Brewing
By Gerry Thompson  

One of the best reasons to play Jund over something like Abzan was the closing speed. Raging Ravine and Lightning Bolt are excellent at ending games quickly, so you need a good reason to eschew the red entirely and play B/G. Field of Ruin is a fine compromise, although any B/G/X deck should be tuned to the metagame you expect. If there's no necessity for Field of Ruin and B/G/X looks to be in a fine spot, you can add red or white as necessary.

For now, it looks like straight B/G could be the way to go.

Jund doesn't necessarily think it can control the game at all points, and it's important to recognize that's the case with every B/G deck. Willy Edel tends to build his Abzan decks with a more aggressive slant than most, and while I like that approach, the strength of B/G/X without red tends to be the ability to lock the game up in a different kind of way. Typically that involves having a permanent or battlefield state your opponent can't deal with. With cards like Tireless Tracker and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, this deck does a good job of that.