Standard: 4-0s from last two dailies

Creature decks (listed fast-to-slow):
(lands / creature curve / other spells)
- ThySaintsSurround playing Naya Humans (20 / 12-16-4 / 8) including 4 Hamlet Captains and no Avacyn's Pilgrims
- Silverwave528 playing Red (20 / 9-15-4-8 / 4) including 4 Volcanic Strength as the only non-creature spells
- Gereffi playing Red (21 / 8-15-6-4 / 6)
- werebear03 playing Rg (20 / 8-12-5-8 / 7)
- sneakattackkid playing Rg (21 / 8-12-4-8 / 7)
- Pandabeast24 playing Naya (22 / 8-8-8-6 / 8) with 4 Silverblade Paladin and 4 Rancor
- Jilesoftrees playing "big" Naya Humans (23 / 8-12-7-4 / 6) with 2 Unflinching Courage main
- normajean playing GB (23 / 6-8-10 / 13) with 2 Ulvenwald Tracker, 2 Ranger's Guile and 4 Putrefy
- Thalai playing Junk Aristocrats (23 / 7-15-7 / 8) with 4 Skirsdag High Priest main
- MagicLair playing BWr Aristocrats (24 / 8-10-6-5-2 / 5) with no Boros Reckoners and 2 Zealous Conscripts as the only maindeck red cards
- Dzy playing Edel Naya (24 / 6-10-7-3-4 / 6) including 4 Domri Rade and 4 Thundermaw Hellkite
- bone55 playing Ken Yukuhiro's Big Naya deck (24 / 4-4-8-8-4 / 8) including 4 Huntmaster of the Fells

Reanimator decks:
(lands + elves and farseeks / mulch, grisly salvage, and faithless looting / non-elf creatures + unburial rites / removal)
- orgneone playing Guadelajara-style Junk Reanimator (22+8 / 7 / 19+4 / 0)
- egdirb playing Junk Reanimator (23+7 / 6 / 15+4 / 5) with Loxodon Smiter, Farseek, and Abrupt Decay

- BigPrads playing Junk Reanimator (24+6 / 7 / 18+4 / 1) with Centaur Healer, Farseek, and Blood Baron

- Walka playing Danabeast's 4c Reanimator (23 / 12 / 17+4 / 4)

- Zwischenzug playing 4c Reanimator (23 / 12 / 17+4 / 4), Danabeast's list but with a Voice of Resurgence instead of the Sire of Insanity

- TikyTon playing 4c Reanimator (23 / 12 / 18+4 / 3) with 3 Huntmaster of the Fells

Blue-based control decks:

(lands / card draw / creatures / removal / counterspells)

- peter780107 playing UWR control (25 / 5 / 12 / 16 / 2) with no Azorius Charm or Think Twice, 2 Ral Zarek, and 2 Aurelia the Warleader

- littledarwin playing UWR control (26 / 7 / 5 / 17 / 5) with 3 Azorius Charm and 3 Think Twice

The blue control lists are a bit fuzzy to break down -- lots of cards serve multiple purposes and lots of cards are different between the two lists. Neither of them played more than 3 copies of any spell.

Lists are from the posted DEs on May 29 and 30.

PT: Why teams splinter into different decks

From Patrick Sullivan's PTDGM report:

Ten years ago*, Constructed Pro Tours were usually pretty well established formats, and the lead time for testing was pretty long. The teams I worked with usually settled on a deck with some weeks to spare, giving us plenty of time to tune sideboards, work on the mana, etc. Given the short lead time Pro Tours have now, that's simply impossible. So while we were largely undecided, most of the team seemed pretty unfazed by that; they had experienced it before. For me, it ran counter to expectations, and it was adding an appreciable amount of stress to the whole thing.

Here we are -- short lead time. Three weeks between Dragon's Maze prerelease and PT start time, new cards legal right away instead of staggered by a month, and no previous GPs in block constructed. So instead of just knowing the format from a bunch of previous events, players rely more on guesswork and taste / personal experience to figure their decks out, and Channel Fireball puts three different decks in the top 20.

It might also be true that most of the players on Channel Fireball have jobs, and all of them interrupted their testing to go play Modern at GP Portland a week earlier. "Three weaks for a pro team to break a format" isn't necessarily three weeks of all the players testing decks. I'd be interested to see if more teams start skipping GPs in the weeks before a pro tour.

PT: PTDGM report listings

Known PT Dragon's Maze reports, by finish:

1 -- Craig Wescoe
6 -- Andrew Shrout
7 -- Matej Zatlkaj
9 -- Reid Duke (premium)
10 -- Eric Froehlich
11 -- Luis Scott-Vargas
13 -- Gabriel Nassif (premium)
18 -- Brian Kibler (premium)
30 -- Larry Swasey
31 -- Matt Costa (premium)
32 -- Patrick Sullivan
40 -- Patrick Chapin (premium)
72 -- Conley Woods
77 -- Brian DeMars
209 -- Jim Davis
235 -- Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa
371 -- Bill Comminos

I'll keep updating this as I discover more reports. Feel free to alert me to more in comments -- non-English is fine.

Nice Play: Simon Goertzen casts Give

In M1G2 of his latest draft video, Simon Goertzen hits land on turn 6 and chooses to pump his Centaur token instead of drawing three cards:

(clarity: this is before playing land for the turn)

The opponent's deck has shown mostly Unleash creatures in the first game. My plan, watching, was to try and win by drawing some good spells.

Goertzen's plan, it turns out, is to use Give un-fused make a 6/6 and knock the opponent to 6 life, forcing a tough block next turn, and leaving himself the spare mana to play a Disciple of the Old Ways.

"Playing Give on the Spire Tracer doesn't make a lot of sense, because we know he has the Horror now. So we could put it on the Centaur and get in for 7, bringing our opponent down to 6, forcing him to block the Centaur next turn or have an immediate answer to it. I think that's our best line.

"The alternative would be to try to draw some additional cards here, but I don't think that's getting us very far. If we draw three here, then everything we have is basically dominated by his board, and we only bring him down to 12, so I kind of like being more aggressive here."

It's a gamble that the opponent doesn't have removal -- we haven't seen removal yet, but it hasn't really been necessary yet. We have seen a Thrill-Kill Assassin (so far uncastable) from the opponent, as well as a Psychic Strike (which might be in hand, since the opponent played no spell on turn 4).

Give + attack plays around the Psychic Strike, and by letting the Centaur get past the 3/4 blocker, it does 6 points of damage even if the Centaur doesn't live. Considering the board and the opponent's 4 cards, we don't have the best odds of winning in any case, but Goertzen makes a bold risk here to try and steal the game.

Finance: MrLuBuFu's Modern Masters price math

Via the DraftMagic.com forums, MTG Youtuber MrLuBuFu sketched some calculations for the average value of a pack of Modern Masters.

He came up with this spreadsheet (which has two columns cut off when I view in Chrome, but which works fine when I download it) and the likely figures $12.11, $10.38, or $11.28 per pack, using the cards' last eBay sale prices and different methods of scaling down for the supply increase.

His explanation video makes his calculations look reasonable, but even if they aren't, his doc is a pretty handy index of last-known-prices of the cards in Modern Masters.

Using MrLuBuFu's data, here's a table listing upcoming MM rares whose last eBay sale was for 50% of the SCG price or less:

I don't know if there are any patterns or lessons about retail to figure out here. I was a bit surprised to see Gifts Ungiven on this list.

Block: Tarsc's Big GW Tokens

Another new deck winning on MTGO is a "big" GW tokens deck in block constructed, with Grove of the Guardian, Scion of Vitu-Ghazi, and Gyre Sage.

TARSC has 4-0'd some daily events using this list:

The cards "cut" from Craig Wescoe's PT-winning deck are 4 Dryad Militant, 4 Judge's Familiar, a Rootborn Defenses, and the Civic Saber. Where Wescoe's creature curve went 12-12-4-4, this deck lines up as 4-18-4-4-3, with an extra land and 4 Gyre Sage to help cast the five-drops.

(This list also has Pithing Needle in the sideboard, like any good list should.)

Mini Gnarls went 6-0 in swiss before losing in the semifinals of a PE yesterday with the same 60 cards.

Modern: Medvedev's GW Maverick

Medvedev made the finals of a Modern PE yesterday playing 4 Leonin Arbiter and 4 Mirran Crusader:

This deck has 33 mana sources (25 lands, 4 Birds, 4 Hierarch), including a full 8 faux-Wastelands (Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge). It lost to a Huntmaster Jund deck in the final, but it beat a Scapeshift deck and a creatureless Smallpox / Seismic Assault deck in top 8.

Nice Play: LSV blocks a Wasteland Viper

In M1G2 of this draft, Luis Scott-Vargas uses a 3/3 Centaur to block a 1/2 deathtouch creature and stay at 17 life:

He says, "I think rather than taking a bunch of damage and then trading for it, I should just trade for it. The Centaur's not getting in there anyway, so no reason not to."

I would never have thought of this block. I don't know if it's right, but it's clever. It's also tough to read why the opponent would be attacking with just Wasteland Viper.

Writing: Jesse Mason is good at writing

It would be easy to miss, but Jesse Mason is probably one of the best Magic writers.

Jon Corpora's mailbag column yesterday picked Mason's GP Montreal (Hoaen) report on a best-of-all-time list and sent me down a bit of a rabbit-hole. Corpora used the phrase "high art."

Obviously it's never productive to debate the distinctions of what-makes-high-art, but the article in question, and most of the stuff on Mason's blog, has pretty clear art-lit influences. The report is structured out of sequence as a series of vignettes with all different lengths / styles, and his best blog post is sort of a pure-dialogue short story. He also runs what I assume is the world's only Magic-themed Weird Twitter account:

if simic creatures evolve from creatures without +1/+1 counters then why are there still creatures without +1/+1 counters, huh
— Jesse Mason (@KillGoldfish) May 28, 2013

Since Tim Aten's reign, the cult of Magic writing has sort of glamourized bitterness and writing about girl problems or whatever, which makes sense since that stuff hits hard emotionally, but which seems a bit pointless since you can usually get better versions of that from non-Magic writing. But when Mason gets personal, he has the sentences to back it up. Here's a confessional excerpt from his glorious GP SeaTac report:

I had friends, and I played Magic with those friends. One aspect of this would stay fairly constant through the years.

Mason also refers here to Zac Hill's stuff as "the strongest collected works of any writer to talk about [Magic]," and I'll speculate that like Hill, Mason works under a heavy David Foster Wallace influence. Wallace is obviously a really cool and good writer, and his legacy in Magic writing (and gaming-writing in general?) is kind of an interesting phenomenon that might highlight what a right-brained nerd he was.

Best pts of Jesse Mason's GP Montreal Report:

• pt VI - traders at magic tournaments. A simple, important lesson, clearly explained. There are lots of reasons trading sucks, but this is probably the biggest of those reasons.
• pt VIII - round one, against Charles-William. Funny and sad and terrifically relatable.
• pt XIV - the channel fireball people at gp montreal. Another pretty good lesson -- what makes people great at something.

Fun: Kitchen Finks rules question

In the middle of a DzyL stream chat about static abilities and M14 rules changes, someone brings this inquiry:

I'm not sure if this was a troll or just a very outgoing new player. But of all the ways to misread a Kitchen Finks, this is pretty far out there.

Finance: Against Ral Zarek

Ral Zarek is a sorcery that deals 3 damage and gives a 2-point shield.

Warleader's Helix is an instant that deals 4 damage and gives a 4-point shield.

Elias Watsfeldt recently called Warleader's Helix the best card in Standard. Ral Zarek has now missed the cut of basically every deck in block constructed.

Ral Zarek's special abilities:
- Can untap an Izzet Staticaster.
- Can be used twice, if your opponent doesn't have creatures or burn spells for some reason.

In retrospect, it should have been clear that Ral Zarek was a worse version of Warleader's Helix. Maybe standard can rotate into something with Karoo lands and Grim Monoliths someday, and then we'll say what a powerhouse card it was that we all slept on. But against Thragtusk decks or Restoration Angel decks or Burning-Tree Emissary decks or Voice of Resurgence decks, Ral Zarek doesn't do much.

Ral Zarek and Voice of Resurgence opened at close to the same price. Luis Scott-Vargas, the set reviewer of record, gave it mild approval, though he wisely placed it behind Sin Collector and Far // Away in his constructed rankings.

If anyone reading knows, please leave a comment: When Ral Zarek got spoiled, who were the bold, convincing voices saying it wasn't good enough for constructed?

Historical prices of the two hype-rares from Dragon's Maze.

PT: Ranking the PT DGM teams

Using Lauren Lee's team statistics and the top decks page from the coverage, here are the known team performances from PT Dragon's Maze, ranked by average points in the Swiss and noting the teams' deck choices.

team	avg pts	decks	top finish
South Florida	29.2	Naya	David Sharfman
European Union	29.2	Esper	Matej Zatlkaj
Channel Fireball	27.3	Red, Esper, Junk	Josh Utter-Leyton
StarCityGames	24.9	Bant	Reid Duke
Cute By Comparison	23.4	Bant, UWR	Michael Bernat
TCGPlayer	21.6	Red, UWR, BWR	Raphael Levy
Legit	20.4	UWR, Esper	Andrew Shrout
Sweden	18.3	Gates, Junk	Denniz Rachid
Wilson Gone Wild	18.3	Esper, GW	Ross Merriam
Luxurious Hair	17.5	GW, Esper, RDW	Craig Wescoe
Latin America	16.4	Naya	Felipe Tapia Becerra
Northern Walkers	15.7	Esper	Andrejs Prost
Australia	15.0		Justin Cheung
Rourix	15.0	Naya	Jose Francisco Silva
Mana Deprived	14.8		Hao-Shan Huang
Netherlands	14.6	Esper	Jan van der Vegt

The "top teams" for the event seemed to each use a single deck choice (Florida Naya, European Precinct Esper, and arguably SCG Gatecreeper Bant), while a bunch of "medium-successful" teams did OK playing different decks. From what I keep reading in the PT reports, Channel Fireball gets consistent success despite splintering into factions playing different decks, but the results from this PT really make "solving a format" look like a much better plan than just "figuring out some good decks."

Players in Lauren Lee's team listings amounted to 40% of the field, included 51% of players who went 10-6 or better and 64% of the players who went 11-5 or better. Here are some pie charts:

Standard: Composition of Junk Reanimator

A typical Junk Reanimator decklist follows this formula:

• 23 lands
• 7 mana elves (Arbor Elf and Avacyn's Pilgrim)
• 19 creatures (2 Fiend Hunter, 4 Restoration Angel, 4 Thragtusk, 3 Acidic Slime, 3 Angel of Serenity, and 3 others)
• 4 Grisly Salvage and 3 Mulch
• 4 Unburial Rites

How top 8 decks this weekend varied on this formula:

• Andres Martinez's GP-winning deck had 2 Sin Collector and 1 Deathrite Shaman in his last three creature slots. He also had a Sever the Bloodline over the 4th Thragtusk.

• Emmanuel Ramirez Sanchez's GP top 8 deck had 2 Sin Collector and a 3rd Fiend Hunter in his last three creature slots.

• Manuel Monge Hernandez's GP top 8 deck had 3 Lingering Souls and 2 Lotleth Troll, cutting the 2 Fiend Hunter. He also used 2 Craterhoof Behemoth instead of a Thragtusk and an Acidic Slime.

• Emiliano Sanchez Gonzalez's GP top 8 deck had 3 Voice of Resurgence in the spare creature slots, an Obzedat over the 4th Thragtusk, and a Blood Baron of Vizkopaas his 61st card.

• Phillip Robinson's SCG Open top 8 deck had an 8th mana elf, a 3rd Fiend Hunter, and a Sever the Bloodline. He used an Obzedat instead of the 4th Thragtusk.

• Aaron McNeely's SCG Open top 8 deck had 2 Sin Collectors and a Sever the Bloodline in the last three slots.

• Quack Quack's PE top-4 deck had 2 Voice of Resurgence and 2 Sin Collector, cutting down to 6 mana elves.

• smallsin's PE 2nd-place deck actually had a lot of differences from our formula. Smallsin used 3 Centaur Healer, 3 Abrupt Decay, and a Sever the Bloodline, cutting the a Mulch, a Restoration Angel, and the 2 Fiend Hunter. It also had an Obzedat and a Craterhoof Behemoth over 2 of the Acidic Slimes.

Here's a table comparing this weekend's Junk Reanimator decklists:

Standard: Batutinha's BWG Aristocrats

Batutinha won a PE yesterday with a BWG Aristocrats deck I've never seen before. It uses Young Wolf , Doomed Traveler, and Voice of Resurgence to make a full set 12 "Penumbra creatures."

He beat Reanimator in the final and semi-final. Hopefully a Craterhoof Behemoth was blocked and eaten by a Maw of the Obzedat during one of those games.

EDIT: Michael Hetrick's article today points out that MasoX as 4-0'ed a DE with BWG Aristocrats a few days before Batutinha's win. The only difference between the maindecks is that MasoX has a Garruk Relentless where Batutinha used the 3rd Sorin.

Video Rec: Paul Cheon, Battalion vs. Lavinia

Match 1, Game 2 of this draft on Channel Fireball is pretty satisfying. Cheon finds marginal value every turn with his army of 1- and 2-power creatures.

A screenshot:

Paul's creatures are all detained in a Voidwalk + Lavinia loop.

Block: Composition of control decks

Here's a chart showing the components of top-finishing control decks at PT Dragon's Maze.

deck	lands	draw spells	removal	disruption	finishers
Andrew Shrout	26	12	15	4	3
Channel Fireball	27	7	15	6	5
Ari Lax	28	7	14	7	4
Richard Bland	27	11	14	3	5
Andrejs Prost	27	8	14	8	3
Matej Zatlkaj	27	8	14	7	4
Dusty Ochoa	28	8	14	4	6

("Disruption" is defined here as counterspells and Sin Collectors. These examples leave out the StarCity Bant deck and the Esper deck with Precinct Captains main; for now we're looking at "heavy control.")

The seven decks in the table are all Esper, except Shrout (UWR) and Prost (straight UW). The Channel Fireball deck is a list that was played to 8-2 by Luis Scott-Vargas and Conley Woods, which has 30 of 33 nonlands in common with Matej Zatlkaj's version.

Observations on the control decks:

Removal: All the decks had 4 Supreme Verdict, and all except Lax had 4 Azorius Charm. All the Esper decks had 3-4 Far // Away, while the non-Esper decks had 3-4 Renounce the Guilds.

Mana: Lax's "28 lands" are really 26 lands and 2 Orzhov Keyrune. Ochoa's 28 lands are really 28 lands. Shrout ran only 26 lands but had 3 Prophetic Prism.

Counterspells: All the decks had 3-4 counterspells, except for Prost's deck which had 8 (Syncopate and Render Silent).

Big spells: All the decks had 4 Jace, 3-4 Sphinx's Revelation, and 2-3 Aetherling. None of the decks had Ghost Council of Obzedat.

4-0 control decks in recent block dailies:

• Youbun playing Swedish-style Maze's End control, using 26 / 6 / 21 / 7 / 0 (i.e., 21 removal spells and 0 finishers outside of the mana-base)
• JIsOrange playing a close match of the CFB / Zatelkaj deck, using 1 Maze's End and 2 Psychic Strike

Block: Composition of aggro decks

Aggro decks at PT DGM:

• The Florida Naya deck played 21 lands / 32 creatures / 7 other (going by Chris Fennell's list), and the creatures included 8 one-drops and 16 two-drops.
• The Rourix Naya deck used 24 lands / 29 creatures / 7 other (going by Jose Francisco de Silva's list and counting "make a token" as creatures). They used no one-drops and 16 two-drops, including 4 Zhur-Taa Druid.
• Wescoe's GW deck played 23 lands / 32 creatures / 5 other. He used 12 one-drops and 12 two-drops.
• Josh Utter-Leyton's Rw deck played 21 lands / 28 creatures / 11 other. He used 12 one-drops and 12 two-drops, and he had Legion's Initiative maindeck over Boros Reckoner.

Aggro decks that have 4-0'ed in the last two published dailies:

• MagicLair playing the same 37 spells as Wescoe
• xMiMx playing 35/37 of the same spells, except with 2 Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage instead of 2 of the Judge's Familiar
• Puddingtime playing 35/39 of the same spells as Utter-Leyton, with 4 Viashino Firstblade instead of 4 Frontline Medic
• Shatun playing 19 Mountains, 33 creatures, 4 Dynacharge, and 4 Mizzium Mortars (similar to Jonas Koestler's 8-1-1 deck from the PT)
• Medvedev playing a sweet Bant tokens deck featuring 4 Lyev Skyknight and 3 Rapid Hybridization

Limited: DGM Common tricks list

Play around this card.

A checklist of combat Instants to expect in DGM:
R Rubblebelt Maaka (Bloodrush)
R Weapon Surge (no Overload)
1R Weapon Surge (Overload)
WU Deputy of Acquittals
3B Fatal Fumes
4R Punish the Enemy

So in a DDD draft, any opponent with R up has two likely combat tricks: Rubblebelt Maaka (on attack) and Weapon Surge. We can count Weapon Surge as two different combat tricks, though the 1R Overloaded version is more likely to cause blowouts.

Without red mana, the likely combat tricks are just a 2/2 Flash creature and some overcosted removal spells.

(The list here is very short -- it is only the commons that can get played and affect combat at instant speed. It also excludes Mending Touch, Riot Control, and Mutant's Prey, which probably won't make your opponent's deck.)

Finance: Price Shakes in PT Week

Via MTGGoldfish, here are the cards that went up in value this week:

These are all cards that saw play at the Pro Tour. Voice of Resurgence was identified before last weekend as the best card in the set, but the "verification" of dominating games on camera boosted it from 29 to 38 tix.

(Only two of top 8, Wescoe and Castellon, actually played GW and got to use Voice of Resurgence. GW might not make it in standard, so maybe the value is to do with eternal formats and Birthing Pod Voice in Modern.)

8 of the 10 winners on this list are from the RTR block. A couple of them (Maze's End and Jace Architect of Thought) are unlikely to matter much outside of block constructed.

Ral Zarek takes the same drop Vraska and Domri Rade took after the release hype. New Planeswalker turns out not to be powerful. The other losers are mostly cards rotating from standard after this summer, plus Sphinx's Revelation.

LSV's top 16 report claims Sphinx's Revelation wasn't overpowered in the PT format. There were 18 Sphinx's Revelation in the PT top 8, but they were sort of kept in check by Aetherling, Dispel, and Sin Collector. Probably Sphinx's Revelation (and Rakdos's Return) will hold value; the PT results just reflect a format without mana acceleration.