Gifts Ungiven

Have you been reading this blog for a while and enjoying my articles, especially those that emphasize building novel deck concepts and developing them over time?

Then you'll enjoy In Development, my new column over at ChannelFireball.com. My focus on this column will be creative deck building and deck development in a competitive play environment - something longtime Gifts Ungiven readers will be familiar with.

...and if you haven't been reading ChannelFireball.com already, why not? We have new articles today from Gerry T, Josh Silvestri, and, naturally, me. Give it a look.

Also, never fear -- I'll still be posting here on all those topics that don't fall within the scope of my column, along with putting up a pointer each week to the column, with a little insight into the column's topic. This week I'm looking at Clarity of Purpose, and how we can tell whether a deck is worth building or a card is worth playing.

Head on over to ChannelFireball.com to read my latest In Development column, Developing a Context. This week, the discussion focuses on giving form to an unplayed Standard environment, and putting together deck lists to face down the challenges of our imagined Standard.

I do recommend reading the whole article rather than just skimming for the deck lists, as the former will be rather more informative than the latter.

Also, on a wholly related side note, Ascension is so far proving to be a house in the G/W Walker build in testing. More on that next week.

My latest In Development, Red Teaming, is up at ChannelFireball.com. This week, I discuss how to give a deck concept a shakedown cruise, and settle in on one control and one aggro build.

Outside of the column, work has been eating my brain a bit in the past couple weeks. Thus the lack of Gifts Ungiven posts. There should be some in the coming days, as even though I'm on a business trip, I finally have some time to do a little more additional thinking about formats new and old, so there may be actual posts.

My latest column, Tensions in Sideboarding, is up. Click on over to CFB to see what is likely to be the only Magic article this week (or quite possibly this year) that uses Excel.

Also read about my first ever competitive misplay, circa Ice Age or so. Have you been killed by the combo the site you're writing for is named after? I have.

Thursday's Daily Deck List at the mothership is the Nayamorphic build that I've been talking about over at ChannelFireball.com. If you'd like to learn how the deck came to be, click here, and if you want some advice on building a sideboard to go with it, click here

I'm looking forward to seeing how much uptake this generates (if any). It's neat, at any rate.

This week's In Development focuses on post-Reflecting-Pool mana bases for 4+ color decks. If you enjoy my posts that are full of analysis and references to older formats, then you'll like A Series of Harrowing Decisions.

This week's In Development is Building Up From Good Enough, and it's all about how we can work to improve a design that's already working pretty nicely. The subject matter these week is Nayamorphic, and at the end of the day we keep some things, lose others, and come out with a better deck.

This week's In Develoment has gone up, and the subject is Building the Enemy - looking at recent deck lists and figuring out how that should influence our own design choices. It also includes a brief tournament report from a recent County Championship winner in the U.K.

I've included some "liner notes" for this week's In Development in this post. Click through to the extended entry to see my current gauntlet, culled from the Decks of the Week data I talked about in my column.

Remember when I reviewed how Gifts Ungiven was used through multiple Extended seasons? This week, I'm pitching the wisdom of doing that kind of review generally as we head into the new Extended PTQ season for San Juan.

In Building Your Extended Reference Library I've put together not only that pitch, but also a whole bunch of links to prior seasons and worked examples of what useful things we can learn from them.

Enjoy.

Yesterday, Jonathon Loucks detailed a novel approach to making a Gifts Ungiven deck by deciding on the Gifts packages first, and then assembling the deck around it.

This week's In Development, cleverly titled Wishing for Gifts, takes a look at my favorite deck, Gifts Ungiven, and the possibilities we can find in a Gifts Ungiven deck with Glittering Wish giving us access to a wishboard.

It's proselytizing time at In Development, with this week's column titled You Should Play in a PTQ. Click on over to hear my pitch for PTQs as a darn good time, first and foremost.

This is a fun little video from ChannelFireball that also happens to show off the Superstars venue. Once a grain storage facility and later an art gallery, it's a giant warehouse-style place with lots of space to play. If you're planning on going to the $10 sealed event this weekend, you'll be playing in that building.

This week's In Development is up, and it's all about my Johnny-tastic time at last weekend's PTQ. Click on over to read about how I ended up losing a tournament but winning at life with the help of a 10/10, a 1/1, and a funky enchantment.

So, this week's In Development is all about those new duals, with a foray into Tectonic Edge as well.

The comments are fun this time around, too. Am I a rare card shill? I think my neglect of Baneslayer says no, but you can be the judge. :)

This is a great interview with Tomoharu Saitou, discussing his Hypergenesis deck with the assistance of everyone's favorite bilingual Judge (and GP Trial winner) Riki Hayashi.

I need to buck up my own language skills; then maybe someday I can help interview a Korean player for CFB. While you all wait for that to happen, I recommend checking out the rest of the excellent GP Oakland coverage at ChannelFireball.

After a week off due to illness, I'm back in print with this week's In Development that's all about GP Oakland.

I had a great time at the GP, but I think I made a fundamental error when I accepted a draw in round four. If you're interested in my take on Gifts, the ground-level GP Oakland experience, or tournament-level strategy, you may enjoy this week's In Development.

Want some Extended tips? Want to see some Pro Tour photojournalism? Check out this week's In Development, where I talk about taking on both of the PTQs held last weekend at San Diego, as well as include some pics and a link to my full, two hundred picture photoessay covering the Pro Tour experience.

I'll be heading off in a little less than an hour to the first flight of the day for the February ChannelFireball 5K down at Superstars in San Jose. If you can make it today, I encourage you to come on down and enjoy some Standard action with the great Superstars crowd while battling for, well, $5K in prizes.

Click here for more information. The main flight today starts at 10am, with a second flight at 4pm, to be followed by the top 32.

Click here to read ongoing coverage of the event. Last night's archetype breakdown is currently posted, with a strong showing for Jund, Naya, and U/W Control.

I'm slowly regaining my coherence this morning after a long day yesterday at the ChannelFireball.com February 5K event. I made top sixteen using a Junk (that is, B/G/W) deck that I'll be writing about in my column this week.

You can see me and the deck in action in the coverage of the Swiss rounds, here. And I do mean, "see," as in addition to being the round two feature match, there's a picture of me playing at the bottom of the page.

If you look at the archetype breakdown for the main flight, I'm the sole "Junk" representative there.

I exited in the round of sixteen (which you can also read about here) after a somewhat harrowing, one-and-a-half hour match against an Unearth deck. I must admit I was not particularly thinking about Unearth when I put my deck together for the tournament. I lost in the round of sixteen to Magic TV host Tristan Shaun Gregson, who was playing Boss Naya.

I'll have more on all of this in my column this week. I had a great time all day Saturday, sparring with the kind of fun crowd I've come to expect at ChannelFireball and Superstars events.

Also, for those who are in the greater Bay Area and also into Legacy, you may be happy to hear that Superstars will now be hosting regular Legacy tournaments. You can read more about that here.

This week's In Development is Stoneforge Mystic Junk at the 5K, which is a pretty straightforward title. I top 16ed our most recent 5K using a W/B/G deck featuring that new lovely Standard power card, the Stoneforge Mystic.

I had a great deal of fun with this deck -- and hey, won some cash, too. Head on over and check it out.

Grant was my opponent in the round of 32, playing the genuinely frightening Unearth deck.

As he describes, his deck just doesn't interact with most of the field. When I realized what he was playing, I had a brief flash of panic before I devised my game plan against him. Our match took an hour and a half, and was by far the longest in that round.

Grant's a nice guy, and I really enjoyed our match - it was among the best I'd had all day.

Video coverage of the ChannelFireball February 5K is up. Here's my match in the top 16 against Tristan Shaun Gregson (of Magic TV fame) playing Boss Naya:

For the record, I didn't have to die that turn in game two. As I mentioned in my column earlier this week, I literally miscounted my mana and, having done so, made the "aggressive" play that made no sense. Ah, well. It was midnight.

I think these videos turned out quite well. Head over to the ChannelFireball YouTube channel to see videos of several matches from the top 32, including the finals, all with quality narration by Eric Levine.