Gifts Ungiven

Following the spoiling of the full set list a little while ago, information has been trickling in about cards from Conflux. Some of those are unsourced spoilers, others are early previews from magazines. The official site previews start two weeks from now.

As always, the MTGSalvation spoiler is the canonical place to look for these things.

I'll take a look at some of the current standouts in the extended entry.

Wizards has finally posted the PTQ announcement page for the current season. Click here to see it.

The announcements went up surprisingly late this time, with at least two PTQs having happened already in North America (in Ontario and Oregon). This coming weekend's crop includes Atlanta, Louisville, and Seattle -- and, of course, Grand Prix Los Angeles comes the following weekend, paralleling PTQs in Mobile and Omaha (and, of course, the Sunday PTQ at the GP itself).

Sadly, the dates for Northern California PTQs are not yet fixed, but we at least know that we will have two in the SF Bay Area (i.e. San Jose) and two in Sacramento. Dates we do know from our friendly neighborhood TO are the last two GP Trials in our area, on the 10th and the 11th (click here for the Matchplay site to see upcoming TO-led events, and click here for Superstars, where other Extended events are also being run).

I'm looking forward to this season, as I'm a big fan of the Extended format these days.

...and tire of temples, you can always head over to Pulse Plaza and check out Pro Tour Kyoto 2009.

Here's the full information page

The PT itself runs from February 27th through March 1st, and if you're feeling really motivated you can come on the 26th for the last-chance qualifier, which is sealed this time around (and, per usual, will likely run well into the AM on the opening day of the PT).

Barring some wacky, last-minute business trip, I won't be anywhere near this PT, so I'll just watch the top eight (which conveniently will start at 5:45pm on a Saturday evening, my time, which totally beats out when European events start...). However, if it's reasonable for you to make it out there, I recommend it -- the public events are a lot of fun, and it's great to be able to walk right up to the feature match area and check out the pro play.

The artist guests are Jeremy Jarvis and Todd Lockwood. I'm a big fan of Lockwood's work.

There are lots of public events listed in the Gazeteer for this event (click here for the PDF), including quite a few that funnel winners into a Sunday morning Beta draft. Sounds like fun.

I'll be heading off tomorrow to one of the last two GP Trials in our area for GP Los Angeles. The GPTs start at noon this Saturday and Sunday at local super-venue, Superstars.

My tool of choice tomorrow:

The Northern California PTQ dates for the current season were announced today at the GP Trial. They are:

February 28th, at Superstars in San Jose
March 21st, at Great Escape Games in Sacramento
April 4th, at Superstars in San Jose
April 11th, at Great Escape Games in Sacramento

That's a solid four PTQs in our area, which is quite nice. I look forward to going to as many of them as possible (right now, I think that'll be all of them).

I teased my deck design for today's GP Trial yesterday. I viewed the trial as basically a test run, to give my build a shakedown run against players who had actually brought their A game.

As it happened, the shakedown run shook the deck apart, and highlighted some important problems with the deck. More in the extended.

One of the downsides of any PTQ season is the mixed bag of my strong interest in a specific format at that time, and my unwillingness to write about what I'm actually thinking about for the format, as I'd like to retain whatever edge my customization brings until I go to an actual event. There's no small amount of misplaced ego there, since I clearly can make some very bad deck design decisions, but nonetheless, as long as I'm actually thinking of playing a given build, I'm not all that excited about talking about it.

Also, I'm in a bit of design limbo now anyway, as the first PTQ in my area comes after Conflux releases, so that may completely alter my deck choice via expanded design options.

Switching gears, then, we can take a look at what's been doing well so far. Obviously, my GP Trial experience was a fascinating mix of moderately expected decks, going Affinity, Dredge, Hulk, Burn, Tron. No Zoo or Faeries there.

Deckcheck has started posting top eights from various PTQs. First, we have the top eight from this last weekend's PTQ in Louisville, which saw a mono-white deck take the win. If you've been reading Flores' new blog, you've seen a similar deck. Likewise if you've been reading the Lumbering Justice thread on the Wizards forums. The variant played by Scott Honigmann features a single Mistveil Plains so that you can't be decked to death after your life total is insurmountable, as well as two Sacred Foundries to support sideboard Boils for the mono-blue matchup. Elsewhere in the top eight, Dennis Taylor brought a burn deck with three maindecked Sulfuric Vortexes (Vortices?), which is similar to the burn deck I ran up against at the GP Trial that had all four in the main. Michael Belfatto's Affinity ran triple Shrapnel Blast and a pair of Tarmogoyfs, which is kind of interesting.

Over in Kruft, the top eight saw four Faeries decks, with Raul Porojan (a name you'll recognize if you listen to Rich Hagon's podcasts) taking the top spot. Although they weren't all exact copies, nothing stood out to me in the various Faeries builds as particularly exciting (although it's worth noting that Raul was packing triple Relic of Progenitus in the sideboard as graveyard hate). Notable among the other decks were Sebastian Knorr's Dredge and Xavier Paulis's Bant Aggro. The Dredge deck is packing an exciting new enabler (and not coincidentally, random kill condition against Elves and Storm) in Brain Freeze. Consider the fun play of land, Chrome Mox, Brain Freeze yourself to ditch six cards on turn one. Not bad. The added ability to just hold the Freeze in hand and randomly kill an Elves player is gravy. The Paulis Bant Aggro deck is a pretty straightforward aggro-tempo build with undercosted creatures equipped with Jittes and backed by cheap countermagic. Seems good.

Looking through these early lists, I'm most excited by the Brain Freeze in the Dredge deck; I love that dual purposing of the card as both strategy enabler and random kill.

This has been a week for pleasingly quirky Extended decks.

First, I direct you to this week's Top Decks article from Michael J, where he highlights Scott Honigmann's PTQ-winning mono-white control deck as well as Bradley Carpenter's quite surprising Lightning Zoo. Really, go look, especially for Lightning Zoo.

Second, it's usually worth taking a look through each week's Decks of the Week for interesting standouts. Amidst a bunch of the expected decks, I spied this build from an online PE on the ninth (click through to the extended for the deck list):

Good on Luis (Scott-Vargas), representing Northern California yet again with a back-to-back Grand Prix win.

Here's the coverage from Grand Prix Los Angeles 2009

That's Luis's third GP win, which is pretty good.

Also notable in the top eight is Asher Hecht, whose name I recognize from Top 8 Magic podcasts (and, of course, Michael Jacob and former PT champion Mark Herberholz).

Copied from this part of the day two coverage, here's the archetype breakdown for day two at the GP:

Faeries 29
Affinity 11
Death Cloud 11
GRW Zoo 9
Zoo 9
Burn 8
TEPS – Tendrils 8
Elves 7
Swath Storm 4
All-In Red 4
Next Level Faeries 3
Swans 3
Beasts 2
Gifts Rock 2
RGB Aggro Loam 2
Bant Aggro 1
BG Bitter Crime 1
Blood Cloud 1
BRW Martyr-Proc 1
Dredge 1
GB Loam Dredge Control 1
GW Hatorade 1
Martyr-Proc 1
Mono-Green Aggro 1
Seismic Swans 1
Slide 1
UB Faeries 1
UB Tron 1
UG Faeries 1

Despite the reasonably heavy lean toward Faeries, this is still a pretty diverse metagame, which means that you need to be able to make your way through a lot of different archetypes to win a major event (say, an upcoming PTQ).

Of course, Conflux could change everything. I mean, I don't think it will, but it will at least push the archetypes around a bit.

Once gain, congrats to Luis. Also, I enjoyed seeing all those Superstars t-shirts in the crowd behind Luis in his top eight matches.

With more than another month to go before the first PTQ I'll be attending in the current season, it's good to be mindful of the potential impact of Conflux cards on playable and good decks in Onslaught-Conflux Extended.

Click through to the extended entry for some thoughts on a few interesting cards. My early feeling is that Conflux will help push Burn and Domain Zoo toward success, with a possible role for some new white-splashing control decks as well.

Courtesy of Bill Stark. Thanks, Bill!

Click here for Day 2 deck lists from GP Los Angeles.

A couple weeks ago I smashed up a bad deck against the rocks of a GP Trial here in Northern California. Over on Magic The Gathering - Malaysia, Wong Qin Jin has posted this entry about a GP Trial in Malaysia for Singapore 2009.

There's no special tech or anything, just a nice vignette of what the game looks like in a card store in Malaysia. Worth a look.

As I mentioned , the industrious BIll Stark has given us all the day two deck lists from GP Los Angeles 2009. Over at Top 8 Magic, Brian has already posted deck lists for the ninth through twentieth places. I took a quick look through the list earlier today and rather than chasing top finishers, pulled some deck lists that stood out from the others.

Click through to the extended entry to see some of the more unexpected builds, including Time Spiral non-allstar Roiling Horror as a finisher in a Martyr deck, and many other intriguing card choices.

With the MTGSalvation Conflux spoiler just thirteen cards shy of complete (assuming it's mostly correct), it's time to check in again and see if this mid-Alara set is going to cause any significant changes in the current PTQ season.

I have some full notes in the extended entry, but my true standout cards are Path to Exile, Hellspark Elemental, Volcanic Fallout, Worldheart Phoenix, and Might of Alara. I discuss a few others, but these are the ones that I foresee having some real impact. Of these, Path slots into certain control and aggro/control decks. Hellspark Elemental goes into mono-red burn. Volcanic Fallout may go into certain aggro builds. Worldheart Phoenix might be a Gifts finisher. Last, but not at all least, Might of Alara goes into Domain Zoo.

So does this shift the metagame? It might make Domain Zoo a stronger contender, and it might make All-In Red decks much riskier. Perhaps we'll also see some more U/w control again, with Path going in as the super removal card in those decks.

The financial upshot here is that you probably aren't looking to pick up any rares to retain your competitive edge as Conflux spills into the Extended format.

(And, as noted, more commentary in the extended entry.)

One of the most alluring things for outside players in reading event coverage is deck lists; this is one line of reasoning behind the hybrid limited/constructed pro tours in this season. More to the point, it means that if you, as a competitor, have access to the coverage during the event, you may well have access to an opponent's complete deck list.

Over at his blog, Bill Stark talks about an ethical move on the part of Mark Herberholz and Mike Jacobs heading into the top eight at GP Los Angeles:

So let's say you're Mike Jacobs and Mark Herberholz, both champions (Heezy at the aforementioned PT-Honolulu, Mike at US Nats this past year), and you've just made the Top 8 of a Grand Prix. You both have 3G cell phones capable of accessing the Internet, and you’ve been watching the coverage of the event all weekend long. You know that some of the people who made the Top 8 have had their decklists posted publicly throughout the day, and you've had the chance to get a look at them. It hasn't really impacted your game because you assume you'll be getting your opponents' decklists now that you're in the Top 8.

It is at this time that the head judge intercedes to inform you that, no, he's made the decision to not provide the Top 8 lists to competitors in the single elimination rounds due to a DCI policy that isn't quite clearly explained. What would you do?

Click here to read the rest.

They gave Flores the most tournament-worthy preview card of Conflux, and fortunately, it works as it was previously spoiled:

And on that note, freaky baby:

(Whose ability is not triggered if you Path it. So that's one use right there.)

Here's the archetype round up from the four PTQ top eights from last weekend that have posted on the Wizards site. I'll bold the winning archetype in each case.

Rockville: 1 Burn, 1 Rock, 2 Mono-Blue Control, 1 Affinity, 1 UGW Control, 1 Mind's Desire, 1 All-In Red

Adam Levitt's UGW deck featured a MUC frame with Kitchen Finks in the main and triple Kataki in the side, as well as triple CoP: Red.

Madison: 3 MUC, 1 Sligh, 1 Tezzerator, 1 Rock, 1 Affinity, 1 UB Tron

Columbus: 2 Affinity, 2 Zoo, 1 Death Cloud, 1 Mind's Desire, 1 MUC, 1 Elves

Interesting that Affinity is still going strong even after the double top eight in Los Angeles.

Burlington: 7 MUC, 1 Elves

Check that out. In fairness, the third place finisher had Tarmogoyfs and a single Rude Awakening in his deck, hearkening back to various levels of blue last season. Regardless, that is one mirror-rific top eight.

My favorite card art from the Conflux visual spoiler.

I've got that game on my cellphone, too.