Building Blocks

Nine archetypes, alike in legality, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene...

Jumping back to 2013, we're taking a look at a GP that featured the best of the best when it came to Innistrad/Gatecrash standard.  On tap for this episode - Bonfire of the Damned, Angel of Serenity, and Geralf's Messenger!

Sometimes when a two card combo presents itself, it's simultaneously powerful enough to be the centerpiece of a deck and odd enough to be completely off the wall.  This is one of those scenarios.  Seismic Assault is certainly a unique card - excess lands can be turned into damage, but when combined with Swans of Bryn Argoll, it turns into quite the concoction.

Gaining life as a competitive endeavor is a common trap a lot of newer players fall into.  Typically, this style of deck has issues converting the life advantage into game winning scenarios.  This deck, however, shucks that trend.  When the metagame is overly saturated by aggro decks, this strategy becomes much more appealing.  Even if it does take absolutely forever to win.

Our last question and answer episode was all the way back in July, and it's long past time we did another one.  On the docket today, our biggest white whale for deckbuilding, the best underrepresented tribe, most memorable organized play moment, and a couple more that I won't spoil here.  Enjoy!

When talking about the best Standard combo decks of all time, any list that doesn't include this one is incomplete.  In all likelihood, it was the first one to truly dominate a format, so much so that even 25 years later, we can still talk about it with reverence.  How did it work?  Well, a bunch of mana generation, and exploiting some very old school rules.

With Neon Genesis releasing this weekend, we're going to step back to 2006 to talk about one of the best Standard decks the last time a Kamigawa set was legal!  Featuring an assortment of value creatures along with the eponymous Ghost Council of Orzhova, Ghost Dad filled a spot in a truly wild metagame.

With Alrund's Epiphany recently hitting the ban list, we're taking a walk back through Standard history to look at the other turn spells that have graced the format.  Why was Epiphany only the second turn spell to feel the wrath of WOTC's hammer, and how does it compare to its predecessors?  Spoiler alert, pretty well.

Hello everyone!  Jason's still feeling under the weather, so I decided to do this one solo.  When I was thinking of a solo topic to cover this week, I had a couple ideas - most underrated Elves of all time, best non-evergreen mechanics, how to build Aristocrats in any given metagame, but the one I decided to go with was to chart the journey of one of my favorite cards of all time.  Trading Post didn't quite get the recognition it deserved upon initial release (easy to do when Thragtusk, Rancor, and Thundermaw Hellkite are all in the same set) but it endeared itself to many people, myself included.

If there was one card we'd use to describe our collective Magic interests, it'd be Life from the Loam.  On the surface, it looks like a card you'd never play.  A two mana sorcery that requires lands in your yard and doesn't directly impact the board doesn't blow you away with pure power.  The key, however, is to turn those lands into actual advantage using a very odd keyword from Eventide.  Join us all the way back in 2012 for the first Modern GP, and the myriad ways that people have taken full advantage of Loam.

Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is a very powerful card.  So powerful, in fact, that it was on the initial ban list for Modern.  Why was it so feared as to be on the same list as Hypergenesis, Skullclamp, Umezawa's Jitte, and Golgari Grave-Troll?  The answer is Scapeshift.  When you combine the two cards, it creates a very consistent win condition.  But how to tie the deck together, that is the question.  Easy, Cryptic Command!