I wish I could get into Standard. For whatever reason, the format just never clicks with me. I think the format is really interesting; I enjoy watching streams of Standard events and of course pros running the gauntlet in Daily Events. But when it comes to playing it just doesn’t click with me. I honestly wish it would. Modern, while a good format, can be really annoying sometimes. Especially if your opponent is playing anything including Geist of Saint Traft. Or anything else with Hexproof, for

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Okay, guys, I've had enough. It's time to put this arbitrary dichotomy between tempo and control to rest. It's time to put calling every deck with creatures and removal in it "tempo" to rest. This nonsense has gone on far, far too long. I'm tired of this supposed mutual exclusivity, I'm tired of hearing "there's not control in Modern" and then having to fight over some stupid arbitrary definition of the term when I point out why that statement is wrong. I'm tired of all

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Applications for the February IQ are open and I’ve no idea what to play.

The format is in kind of an awkward state. Seething Song and Bloodbraid Elf - gone. And to think it was days after I’d been knocked out of the previous IQ, piloting Jund, the very deck that got the Elf escorted out of our precious format. Don’t expect any sour grapes from me, though. Though I love Jund as a deck I was just as sick as anyone else of Jund vs The World at every top level Modern event since..

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I feel like I have my mojo back.

The last month or two of 2012 was not kind to me. I was powering through bad builds and racking up losses left and right. I felt burnt out; like I just couldn’t win anymore. I thought maybe I wasn’t actually any good. Maybe I’d just had a little luck and I wasn’t even remotely as good as I thought I was. I’d taken round one losses two Lantern IQs in a row. I felt real bad about Magic and even wished more than once that I could take out the

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The Modern format is a mess. But it’s broken in a kind of subtle, almost tolerable way. The format remains at least functional despite what is wrong. It’s easy (and, in some respects, appropriate, as we will touch on later) to blame Jund for what is going on here but there is no need to lay blame at this point. What needs to be done is most certainly unban something that can create a bigger impact than Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. Valakut was certainly a good start and it presents a solid precedent...

As of this writing, Legacy is experiencing a touch of.. controversy. The situation surrounds the 'Sneak and Show' archetype (a deck that uses Sneak Attack and Show and Tell to put massive, evil things into play), which received a major upgrade in the form of Griselbrand. Make no bones about it, ol' RaisinBrand is better than Progenitus. Full stop, end of story. The improvement lay in the fact that Griselbrand is a Yawgmoth's Bargain on a stick. Which allows one to, oh I don't know, immediately draw...

Rakdos is the combination of Red and Black introduced in Ravnica block, used as the color scheme of the guild of the same name. The Cult of Rakdos is a sadistic congregation. It's members follow a single-minded goal of inflicting as much pain and misery as physically possible. It's leader, the mighty demon Rakdos the Defiler, spends most of his time slumbering in lava for some reason so most day-to-day functions are supervised by the treacherous sorceratrix, Izolda. The Cult of Rakdos concerns itself...

Guillaume Wafo-Tapa is a pretty cool guy.

Back in 2007, he designed a deck and called it Sonic Boom. The name seems to be a reference to a Street Fighter character by the name of Guile, who used a special move called Sonic Boom, because he happened to share a name with a certain 6/6 that cannot be blocked by two creatures or less. It was a sweet mono-Blue control deck piloted by Amiel Tenenbaum at Grand Prix: Krakow that year. Tenenbaum would take the deck all the way to the top...

Bant. The mystical combination of green, white, and blue introduced in Shards of Alara.

Bant has pretty much always been an extremely solid combination of colors. They compliment each other well. White performs much of the same functions as red in RUG, except instead of Lightning Bolt you have Path to Exile, which is a much better removal spell. In addition, you are afforded two of the best combat creatures ever printed Knight of the Reliquary and Geist of Saint Traft. The Knight,...

If I had to choose a three-color combination with which to define myself by, it'd be RUG. Red, Blue, and Green. These three colors are my absolute favorite, not close. I like RUG even more than Junk. Which might be a surprise, considering how much success I've had with that combination. More so than RUG, you might argue.

RUG simply has everything I want in a combination. I enjoy doing what the three colors are best at. I like looking at these colors. When I look at the bottom of...

I get most of my ideas from Standard.

Wolf Run RUG one of two original ideas I've brought to Modern that actually had any success. Neither are truly original, because both are ports of Standard decks. Maybe someday I'll reveal what the other one is, although some of you may already know what it is.

Wolf Run RUG began as a love affair with an idea. This idea was that Standard Wolf Run was good for the same reasons that Valakut was good. Control has a tough time interacting...

Well, well, well. My very first blog post. It's going to be a short one. Later entries may be longer if I remember to keep this thing up-to-date. Right now, though, it's all about what's going in the Modern world.

Which just happens to be Jund:

Jund
Lands 2 Forest 1 Swamp 4 Verdant Catacombs 2 Misty Rainforest 2 Marsh Flats 2 Blood Crypt 2 Overgrown Tomb 1 Stomping Ground 1 Savage Lands 4 Grove of the

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