a-magical-recap

[a-magical-recap]

Pro Tour Final Fantasy

Last weekend saw one of the biggest competitive tournaments of the year hosted at MagicCon Las Vegas. Pro Tour Final Fantasy had over 300 players qualify to compete over the weekend for a portion of the $500,000 prize pool and an invitation to the Magic World Championship later this year.

The results of the top 8 were a complete blowout from a pair of aggressive red decks, with 4 decks each of Red Mouse Aggro and Cutter Prowess. Every deck in the top 8 was red, and every deck was playing at least two copies of Monstrous Rage. This level of dominance from a card at such a high profile tournament has been rare in Magic's history, and provides evidence towards something that many Standard players have been saying for some time now: Monstrous Rage makes red decks too strong and too fast to reliably compete against.

(Tournament coverage continued under the cut.)

Aside from Monstrous Rage, there were two cards which were talked about a lot leading into the tournament.

Cori-Steel Cutter is by far the card from Tarkir: Dragonstorm to have had the biggest impact on competitive play, powering up Blue/Red Prowess decks in multiple formats. In Standard, it made Blue/Red Prowess the most common archetype for the past couple of months. People were certain that it would continue to do well at the Pro Tour, especially with the new addition of Vivi Ornitier from Final Fantasy, a creature which can quickly lower the opponent's life total while making it easier to cast even more spells each turn.

And the Prowess deck did not disappoint. While it wouldn't bring Ian Robb to the championship, being bested by Ken Yukuhiro's Mouse Aggro deck, Blue/Red Prowess ended up placing as a finalist (Robb), semifinalist (Toni Portolan), and two more within the top 8 (Christian Baker and David Rood).

Yukuhiro won partly off the ingenious inclusion of 4 copies of Twinmaw Stormbrood, a card which was not commonly played in the Red Aggro archetype leading up to this tournament. Yukuhiro's deck had no way to make the white mana needed to actually cast the dragon: instead, it was entirely in the deck for its Charring Bite ability, which could allow the red deck to eliminate a large threat for only a couple mana. This meant that an opponent's Vivi Ornitier was not safe, even after being buffed up with two +1/+1 counters.

Red Mouse Aggro put up basically the same results as Blue/Red Prowess in this tournament, with one finalist (PT Champion Yukuhiro), a semifinalist (Yuchen Liu), and two more in the top 8 (Andy Garcia-romo and Percy Fang).

This demonstrates that, while new sets have provided other aggressive decks with new tricks like Cori-Steel Cutter, the package of Manifold Mouse, Heartfire Hero, and Emberheart Challenger remains the threat to beat almost a full year after the release of Bloomburrow. The deck has only gotten stronger with the addition of Screaming Nemesis in Duskmourn, Burst Lightning in Foundations, and Tersa Lightshatter in Dragonstorm.

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Yesterday the name of the upcoming Lorwyn expansion was revealed to be Lorwyn Eclipsed. The set will explore what happens when the day of Lorwyn and the night of Shadowmoor blend together.

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Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast announced that they will now be sanctioning a new booster draft format called "Pick-Two".

This is the new official draft format for groups of four players, rather than the usual draft pod of eight. Really the only difference from a regular booster draft is that players pick two cards from each booster on each pick, rather than just one. Players still construct 40-card decks using any number of basic lands.

Because there are only four players, once the draft is over there are two rounds of games: an initial round, then the two winners pair up and the two losers pair up for round two.

This format has been playtested at recent MagicCons, and will continue to appear at MagicCons, because, as the article says, due to the draft taking half as long and the play only being two rounds, Pick-Two makes it easy to get in a couple games of limited in between events at a convention.

Because this is now an official sanctioned format, players might see sanctioned Pick-Two events happening at their local game store as well.

If there is any intention to bring this draft format to digital clients like Magic Online or Magic Arena, it is not mentioned in this article, indicating that this format will likely remain paper-only for the foreseeable future.

The article does clarify that Pick-Two has been playtested primarily on the play boosters that have been in use since Murders at Karlov Manor last year, but it should also work fine when played with limited formats that use traditional draft boosters.

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Yesterday, as part of news about Edge of Eternities, the Commander Format Panel announced a change to the deckbuilding rules of Commander:

Beginning with the release of Edge of Eternities, all Legendary Vehicles and Legendary Spacecraft will be legal as the leaders of Commander decks.

Edge of Eternities will feature a new artifact subtype—Spacecraft—which functions similarly to Vehicles, but rather than turning into creature for one turn, Spacecraft will permanently become artifact creatures.

In the video linked above, Gavin Verhey explains that, when designing the Spacecraft in this set (this would have been a couple of years ago), Wizards of the Coast had the idea to make a few Legendary Spacecraft that would be fun to build around in a Commander deck. They presented the idea of Spacecraft being commanders to the Commander Rules Committee, and were met with approval, as well as approving the idea of extending this to Vehicles as well.

Plans were in place to announce this change last year, so that the new rules would be in place for the release of Aetherdrift, but the chaos around the September ban announcement and the transfer of the Commander format to WotC led to this announcement being delayed for the sake of stability.

With the release of Spacecraft in Edge of Eternities, it was decided that now was the right time to introduce this change to the rules.

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Pro Tour - Regional Championships 9

A few weekends ago, the latest rounds of Regional Championships wrapped up. This was a month-long series of high-level Standard tournaments around the world, with winners earning invites to Pro Tour Edge of Eternities where they will be able to compete for even bigger prizes and an invite to the World Championship later this year.

Starting only a couple of weeks after the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, these tournaments are a great way to examine how that set effected Standard. We'll get anoter look at how the new Final Fantasy set has affected Standard this weekend at the Pro Tour in Las Vegas. But first, let's check out what decks have been dominant over the past month.

(Tournament results coverage continued under the cut.)

The main story coming out of Tarkir: Dragonstorm was Cori-Steel Cutter. If you were following my competitive retrospective for Dragonstorm, or if you've been playing Standard recently, you know that Cori-Steel Cutter is an aggressive powerhouse. In Standard, Blue/Red Prowess decks using Monastery Swiftspear and Stormchaser's Talent quickly adopted the Cutter, letting it rocket them to the top of the meta. This was especially true right as the new format began, with Prowess decks making up 3 of the top 4 decks at the Europe/Middle East/Africa Regional Championship on the weekend of April 27.

The meta began to adjust to this new threat over the next month, but Prowess decks empowered by Cori-Steel Cutter maintained a strong presence throughout the Regional Championships.

The next weekend, a couple of decks emerged to challenge the dominance of Prowess. The first, Omniscience Combo, won in Brazil and appeared as a semifinalist in the USA. This deck looks to dig through its library, tossing cards into the graveyard with spells like Roiling Dragonstorm and Moment of Truth. From there, it uses Abuelo's Awakening to reanimate Omniscience as a 1/1 creature. Once it has the ability to cast spells for free, it can continue rummaging through its library, easily removing incoming threats with spells like Temporary Lockdown and Ephara's Dispersal before winning with a big beater like Marang River Regent.

The second deck to challenge the throne was Abhorrent Oculus combo decks, which won the USA tournament that weekend. These decks primarily win through one of a pair of combos that will quickly create a massive flying threat. The first is Abhorrent Oculus, a 3-mana 5/5 flier that manifests dread on the opponent's turn, combined with Helping Hand, a spell that returns a 3-mana creature from the graveyard to play. The deck can quickly discard the Oculus on turn 2 or 3, then reanimate it the turn after, if not immediately. The other combo is Steamcore Scholar, a 2/2 with flying and vigilance that draws two cards and discards a card when it enters, with Proft's Eidetic Memory, an enchantment that makes creatures stronger the more cards you draw. With Eidetic Memory in play, the Scholar can essentially enter as a 3-mana Serra Angel with extra card advantage.

The weekend of May 11th saw the Regional Championships for Australia/New Zealand and China. The Chinese RC saw Prowess and Omniscience Combo in the top 4, while the Aus-NZ RC was a lot more varied, with other aggro and midrange decks forcing the Prowess and Oculus decks into the bottom half of the top 8. The winning deck from that event was Blue/Black Midrange, a deck that remained mostly unchanged after Dragonstorm. The tempo provided by cards like Deep-Cavern Bat, Floodpits Drowner, and Tishana's Tidebinder allow this deck to trip up more focused decks like Prowess and combo, until it can get a win with Kaito, Bane of Nightmares.

White/Black Bounce also makes a successful showing this weekend, appearing in the top 4 of both tournaments. This midrange deck also relies on using disruption pieces like Momentum Breaker and Temporary Lockdown to create stumbling blocks in the plans of Prowess and combo decks, then uses creatures like the new Sunpearl Kirin to repeatedly return these enchantments to hand, then cast them again for even more value. In the case of the White/Black midrange deck, the win condition is often Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber, which allows the deck to draw the cards it needs to repeatedly answer threats, while also summoning a huge threat to end the game.

The fourth and fifth weekends of the Regional Championships we had the second USA RC, the Taipei RC, and the Canadian RC. In these, we see a lot of familiar faces: Prowess wins the Taipei RC and appears in the top 4 at both USA and Canada; Omniscience wins in Canada, and Blue/Black Midrange and White/Black Bounce make multiple appearances in the top 4 of these tournaments. We do see that Oculus Combo is starting to lose favor, going both weekends without a top 8 appearance. Creating a single big flier is simply not enough of a payoff when you need to worry about cards like Momentum Breaker.

Mono-Red Aggro had been making occassional appearances in the top 8s of previous tournaments, but this weekend it returns to the top by winning in the USA. This aggro deck forsakes the Cori-Steel Cutter and blue draw effects, to instead focus on the package of Heartfire Hero, Emberheart Challenger, and Manifold Mouse from Bloomburrow. While it had been assumed that Mono-Red's niche in the meta had been usurped by the Prowess deck, which could simply threaten to go faster, the threat of disruption from midrange decks didn't bother it as much. Red Aggro has much more redundancy in its effects, allowing for a greater number of hiccups before its plans fall apart.

We also saw straight-up control decks claw their way back into the meta for the first time in a few weeks. Beza, the Bounding Spring provides an excellent roadblock for White/Blue Control to throw in the way of faster decks while it uses Stock Up to keep its hand full of counterspells and removal. Once the aggressive opponent has been brought under control, it can win with Beza, or a Marang River Regent. Domain Control has been a mainstay of Standard for a while now, and was fortuantely able to get back to relevance after Dragonstorm. This deck uses the powerful draw engine Up the Beanstalk combined with the Overlord cards from Duskmourn: House of Horror. As the top players around the world are finding ways to play around powerful threats like Omniscience and Cori-Steel Cutter, control decks like these are making a comeback.

And we end the Regional Championships on the weekend of June 1, with a lot of familiar faces appearing in Mexico/Central America/Carribean and South America. Omniscience Combo won the SouthAm RC and made up four of the top 8 in Mexico. Blue/Black Midrange had two decks in the top 4 in South America, and Prowess, Domain, and Red Aggro all made appearances in the top 4. And that leaves us with a Standard metagame that is still dominated by Prowess decks with Omniscience pulling up a distant second in metagame percentage. But, with high-level results showing that these decks can consistently be toppled by other strategies, we're still seeing a lot of play for Red Aggro and White/Black Bounce, with Domain Control, White/Blue Control, Blue/Black Midrange, and Oculus Combo also seeing some success.

With Pro Tour Final Fantasy this weekend, we'll have to see if the meta can shake itself out when played at the highest level, or if Prowess will utterly dominate the competition.

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 1 - 250 points

Cori-Steel Cutter

Standard (120), Pioneer (60), Modern (61), Legacy (9)

Cori-Steel Cutter is incredibly powerful in a deck that is poised to take advantage of it. It is a threat that is incredibly hard to deal with, as unless the artifact itself is destroyed, the prowess Monks that it creates will just keep on coming. With access to solid 1-mana cantrips, it becomes very easy to turn Cori-Steel Cutter into a 2-mana 2/2 with trample, haste, and prowess, putting an incredible amount of aggressive pressure on your opponent. The Cutter becomes a threat that your opponent has to answer, or risk getting quickly overrun by prowess beaters. It has greatly empowered UR Prowess decks to dominance in Standard, Pioneer, and even Modern.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 2 - 123 points

Voice of Victory

Standard (26), Pioneer (10), Modern (82), Legacy (3), Vintage (2)

Voice of Victory references Grand Abolisher, another 2-mana white creature that prevents your opponent from casting spells during your turn. While Grand Abolisher also prevents your opponent from activating abilities of permanents they control, Voice of Victory costing 1W instead of WW makes it the choice for decks that are two or more colors. Voice of Victory earned most of its points in Modern Energy Aggro, where it allows the deck to makes the opponent completely unable to interact with a dashed Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, and its ability to make tokens synergizes with Guide of Souls. It also sees play in Standard Omniscience decks to protect its combo.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 3 - 119 points

Tersa Lightshatter

Standard (85), Pioneer (26), Modern (3), Legacy (5)

Tersa Lightshatter is a remarkably powerful threat for red aggressive decks that want to fill up their graveyard. She comes into play and immediately begins to attack and dig through your library, and if you already have a full graveyard, she lets you get back some of it at random. Tersa Lightshatter has earned most of her points in Standard Red Aggro decks and Standard Abhorrent Oculus decks, where she excels at swiftly lowering the opponent's life total while digging through your deck. She's also seen play in some versions of Pioneer Red Aggro, where she fills a similar role.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 4 - 69 points

Clarion Conqueror

Standard (22), Modern (31), Vintage (16)

It wouldn't be a new Tarkir set without some cool new dragons, and Clarion Conqueror is the best of the bunch. While seemingly simple, Clarion Conqueror has an incredibly powerful effect stapled to a 3/3 flying body for only three mana. Clarion Conqueror has earned points in Standard Omniscience decks, where it can power off all planeswalkers as well as Zur, Eternal Schemer and Ghost Vacuum. In Vintage Initiative decks, it can be cast early off of Ancient Tomb and shuts down Moxen and Black Lotus. It's seen the most success in the sideboard of Modern Energy Aggro decks, where it can power off Goblin Charbelcher, Mox Opal, and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 5 - 50 points

Qarsi Revenant

Standard (47), Pioneer (3)

Qarsi Revenant is an incredibly powerful creature, with its 3 power, flying, and lifelink capable of creating huge life point swings for only three mana. In addition, its deathtouch makes it even harder to profitably block, as it can trade with a control deck's beefier fliers like Abhorrent Oculus and Marang River Regent. Once your opponent does finally manage to kill this pest, it's capable of coming back from the dead, sort of. It gives another creature flying, lifelink, and deathtouch, making it just as annoying to deal with as the Revenant itself was. Qarsi Revenant earned almost all of its points in Standard Black and UB Midrange decks.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 6 - 48 points

Marang River Regent

Standard (47), Pioneer (1)

Marang River Regent is an incredible control deck win condition that returns two permanents to their owners' hands while adding a massive flying body to the board. In addition to that, it sports the Omen mechanic also found on Scavenging Regent, allowing it to be cast earlier in the game in order to refill your hand, then shuffle it back into your deck. This makes it incredibly effective at both maintaining control of a game and closing one out. Marang River Regent has earned points in a variety of blue control decks across Standard, where it also synergizes with cards further down this list like Roiling Dragonstorm and Dispelling Exhale.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 7 - 43 points

Sunpearl Kirin

Standard (43)

Sunpearl Kirin is a cheap flash flier that returns another permanent you control to your hand. This makes it an incredible fit into Standard Nurturing Pixie decks, which already center around using cards like Sunpearl Kirin and Nurturing Pixie to return key enchantments back to their hand to be cast again and again. Sunpearl Kirin allowing them to add a flying creature to the board while also being able to bounce an enchantment at flash speed does a lot for the deck, as it greatly increases the number of options that it's able to hold up during the opponent's turn. All of Sunpearl Kirin's points came in Standard Nurturing Pixie decks.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 8 - 37 points

Mistrise Village

Standard (21), Pioneer (3), Modern (5), Legacy (8)

Similar to Cori Mountain Monastery, the cost of inclusion for Mistrise Village is very low, because in many situations it's simply a better basic Island. The ability to make one of your spells uncounterable is especially potent in a combo deck, since they can often win once they resolve a certain key spell. Most of Mistrise Village's points come in Standard Omniscience decks, where it can prevent the opponent from messing with them bringing Omniscience into play. It also earned points in Legacy Sneak & Show decks and Modern Living End decks, which both also revolve around being able to resolve a very powerful spell.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 9 - 33 points

Roiling Dragonstorm

Standard (32), Legacy (1)

Roiling Dragonstorm is a pretty solid draw effect on its own, letting you draw two and discard one, while also putting an enchantment into play. In addition to that, it returns to your hand to let you do it again anytime you put a Dragon into play. Roiling Dragonstorm earned most of its points in Standard Omniscience decks, where it can be cast repeatedly to help the deck dig through its library for its win conditions, which includes Marang River Regent, a powerful dragon spell that will bounce the Dragonstorm back to your hand to let you dig even more. Temporary Lockdown can also be used to temporarily exile it before returning it to play.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 10 - 32 points

Glacial Dragonhunt

Standard (32)

Glacial Dragonhunt is a pretty solid cantrip, allowing you to dig through your deck while also removing a creature if you don't discard a land. It then lets you do that again by casting it from the graveyard, turning it into a 2-for-1. Glacial Dragonhunt earned all of its points from Standard Abhorrent Oculus decks, where it filled a similar role to Winternight Stories: drawing cards to trigger Proft's Eidetic Memory while also discarding Abhorrent Oculus so that it could be reanimated later. The ability to do both those things while also removing a problem creature makes Glacial Dragonhunt absolutely great in Oculus decks.

While Ugin, Eye of the Storms and Glacial Dragonhunt ended up tied in points, I gave the edge to Glacial Dragonhunt, which saw more play in the Regional Championships.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 11 - 32 points

Ugin, Eye of the Storms

Standard (1), Modern (30), Legacy (1)

Ugin, Eye of the Storms is a powerful card in decks that care about colorless spells and which are capable of ramping their mana to cast it on a reasonable turn. When cast, Ugin exiles the biggest threat, granting value even if countered. Once in play, Ugin immediately begins helping you cast more spells. Almost all of Ugin's points come from Modern Eldrazi Ramp decks. These decks are incredibly capable of getting seven mana on an early turn, and Ugin supplments the deck's existing package of 7-drops that exile permanents. Ugin turns the rest of the colorless spells in the deck into removal as well, giving purpose to any extra Talismans of Impulse.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 12 - 31 points

Winternight Stories

Standard (30), Modern (1)

Winternight Stories is quite a strong card draw spell, giving you three cards for only three mana, and then doing it again from the graveyard. In a blue deck with many creatures, or with creatures that it actively wants to discard, this spell is fantastic. Almost all of Winternight Stories's points come in Standard Abhorrent Oculus decks, where it fuels the two main win conditions: it discards the titular creature so that it can be reanimated, and it draws a bunch of cards for Proft's Eidetic Memory, rapidly buffing an attacker. With Eidetic Memory, it doesn't matter that it's sorcery speed, since you would want to draw the cards on your turn anyways.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships.)