Loading the Silver Bullets...

In case you have not come across the term "Silver Bullet" with regards to card games before I believe an explanation maybe required.  The term Silver Bullet comes from the old Werewolf movies where the only way to kill the wolf man was to shoot him with Silver Bullets.  This makes Silver Bullets a very specific answer to a very specific problem.  This happens in card games all of the time and results in things like Grafdigger's Cage which was supposed to be a silver bullet for Snapcaster Mage/Birthing Pod.

The problem with Silver Bullets is that they tend to be either too good or not good enough.  An example of this is Thragtusk - created as an answer to Snapcaster/Vapor Snag/Unsummon.  It has done such a good job of answering them that no one plays delver in standard and everyone is playing Thragtusk!

WotC have approached their new flagship eternal format of Modern with the Silver Bullet mentality at the forefront in the form of the Ban Hammer.  Following the initial Modern Pro Tour Wizards banned a whole lot of cards in Modern in September 2011, to prevent the turn 2/3 kill scenario of certain decks and the turn 4 Emrakul using 12 post.  Then in December 2011 they banned Wild Nacatl and punishing fire as these were felt to be unbalanced in the format.  We would go on to see more banning in the form of Bloodbraid Elf, Seething Song and Second Sunrise.  Last weekend saw the first Modern GP since Second Sunrise has been banned so Eggs was not on the menu.

The Sun ain't gonna shine anymore.

Magic players abhor  a vacuum and this has made Melira Pod a tier 1 deck and saw 3 of them in the Top 8 of GP Portland.  The question has to be asked if Wizards will now see this as too dominant and  we will see Birthing Pod on the banned list next?

What exactly do you do?  "I combo with Persist!"

One of the other Modern decks of note was Scapeshift - which goes and gets a whole bunch of mountains and kills you with Valakut the molten pinnacle.  Valakut was originally banned in Modern but Wizards decided that as a deck it would be fine.  If Valakut is "fine" I would like them to unban Bitter Blossom and Jace, the Mind Sculptor too.

Die to my mountains of power puny mortal!

Modern is supposed to be the answer to the tricky Eternal format and the Restricted list, but seriously how long do we have to keep paying for the mistakes of Chronicles nearly 20 years ago?  Now, with the imminent release of Modern Masters there is concern as to how much product is actually going to be available in the shops and if there will be any for people to buy.  Also with the 4 cards spoilt so far Tarmagoyf and Dark Confidant are the only ones you actually want to find in a booster and both have been printed as mythic rares.

Patrick's right from now on Bob will be known as Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. 

Full spoilers do not start till next Monday for Modern Masters but at £6.29 a booster there has to be some concern over the value of the cards and if they are going to get banned as Bloodbraid Elf has already been despite being in the set.

I can't help but feel that the answer is to get rid of the Restricted list and do a massive print run set of Legacy staples and stick with a format which has had all of its teething troubles already.

I'll be back Friday with another blog and FNM this week is Standard, see you then.

Crossing Borders...

The blog has had a funny turn this week.  I started to write a thing about Modern and then was told to expect 2 guest blogs so I kind of stuck it all on the back burner and did nothing.  Now, a little later than I expected here is the first guest blog from the one and only Joe Alexander - enjoy I know I did.

5.45

No, not the converted mana cost of my last dragons maze draft, but the time the alarm clock went off on 11th May 2013.  Last season Ian Richardson and myself made the journey to Cardiff to play in an RTR sealed PTQ.  Despite average results a great time was had and we said we would be back.

When word got round of cool trading, a very winnable event and the prospect of a good old road-trip  interest in this season's standard event quickly blossomed and by 6am on the morning of the event we had 13 people heading in cars to Wales. Well we would have if there had not been some technology issues, but by 6.30 we had 12 people heading down to Wales.

I can only report the journey to Wales from the perspective of our car, but highlights included discovering Avril Lavigne on Rob’s Ipod, a rendition of Gangnam style including the riding of an invisible horse and the complete incomprehension of the Welsh language by our resident Malaysian MODO machine Quinton “quinbot” Lip.

Although Quinton was unable to comprehend the need to write every place name twice in a language spoken by next to nobody and the amount of L’s and W’s needed he was able to quickly grasp some of the more bestial rumours put forward about the welsh by the English.

Once at the venue we were able to meet up with the rest off the Sheffield team and get our decks in order. For some members of the team this was easy than for others as Ash had intended to buy some key cards for his deck from a vendor, but ironically the Welsh shop was out of dragons so he spent the 30 minutes before the event trading into a playable deck.

Explaining to the Welsh why our motto is "Winter is coming"!

131 players sat down for round one of the event and after the first round things were pretty even across the team, with success and bad beats in equal measure. At this point things began to go wrong. At the end of round 2 the team regrouped around the room and news started to filter that everyone had ended round 2 with a record of 1-1. The only player who had avoided this was Ian, and Fabian (to nobody's surprise,) was still playing. Ian had found that smashing people in the face with red and green creatures was working as effectively for him as it had for missing team member Jimmy Wild in the month preceding the event.

A crowd began to gather around the only table still playing. Extra turns had been called and the board was close. Team Sheffield's representative, Fabian, playing his humanimator deck had 1 turn to win. With most of his combo in the bin, including an unburial rites and a angel of glory’s rise the odds were against him as he began to flip over cards from his grizzly salvage. A land and 1 of 4 cartel aristocrats in 5 cards.

First card over was a Cartel Aristocrat! 4 cards to show any land card, this would allow Fabian to go infinite and win in extra turns. Second card was a none land,

and the third...

And the fourth...

with encouragement from Rich Fuller Fabian picked up the last card without looking and slammed it onto the table, both he and his opponent knew that if he revealed a land he won the game.

But no. After 4 misses (at odds around 90% of hitting,) Fabian entered the draw bracket.

I feel that I should congratulate Firestorm games at this point. There play space is fantastic, although mainly geared towards tabletop gaming and having a bar at the back of the room is a super touch. It was after round 2 that I had a burger from the BBQ that was out back, and from a player perspective not having to leave the sight for some sustenance was a bonus.

My dreams of top eight (and I must have been dreaming to think I was in with a shot,) ended in round 3 when I was beaten by a stack of bad limited cards.

I should clarify, I was beaten by the 2nd place competitor at the PTQ in London earlier this year with his super synergistic U/B zombies deck. Using Bloodthrone vampire and Corpse Blockade as sacrifice outlets and Diregraf Captain and Blood Artists to gain advantage from the sacrificed creature he is able to loop Gravecrawler deaths for the price of 1 black mana. I did feel like I had a shot in the games we played, but my greed of playing a turn 4 Griselbrand when on 8 life only to have it killed when I could have left up an Azorius Charm showed that there is still gains to be had from playing synergistic decks rather than just powerful cards.

After round 3 some members of the team started to drop out as there left top 8 contention. Unfortunately drafts had not been announced so a couple of hours of trading faced those who had left the main event.

Trading in a new city is a main reason to travel to these events and many people came away with cards that they have not been able to trade for in Sheffield. I managed to build 5 cards closer to my legacy goblins deck by trading away some unplayed standard cards and also got a good portion of a new modern deck after having my last modern deck nerfed. The other advantage of trading in a new city is the little rarities you find that you have not seen before, such as Mark finding a foil Werebear.

Rounds 4 and 5 were the turning point for many members of the team, with people winning more and more, the drafts started so players who had dropped had more to do and the room was becoming a little less crowded and the business end of the event started to kick in.  Ian was still forging a path and Quinton and Rob had also found themselves in a stronger position.

The final 3 rounds saw some heartache for Ian as he lost his Win and in match round 7. The Final round also put Rob and Quinton against each other. After 7 hours of magic it would be back to playing a familiar opponent, who knew the other deck inside out.

A shout out has to be made to Mark, who not only drove one of the cars but also managed a winning record with a deck he had picked up less than 2 weeks before.

Having stayed and picked up prizes (which were heavily weighted towards winning records, which although a good way to encourage competitive play is heartbreaking for grinders such as myself,) we headed into Cardiff to find some food.

Our route took us into central Cardiff on a Saturday night, where there were plenty of sights to keep 12 men interested.

At this point we struck gold.

The Red Hot World Buffet is a hungry PTQ players dream.

I have no idea what this is a picture of...

As an all you can eat Chinese you can fill your boots before the long journey home.

But I don't like chinese I hear you cry,

Well what about Italian,

or Tex Mex

or Indian

or Sushi

With an Ice cream stall

And cake.

Joe Unleashed!

Everyone knows magic players like a 2 for 1, and with its mix of food the Red hot World Buffet offers the ability for a 6 for 1, and as its all you can eat it is a guaranteed blow out.

The bar was also a hit, selling cocktails as big as your head and the colour of screen wash (and according to some people at the table tasting about as good).  The milkshakes come in some interesting shaped glasses, the jelly and waffles taught us an interesting lesson in people proficiency at a variety of skills an Fabian managed to create the world most ethnically diverse sandwich.

Nana bread, with shredded duck, Hawaiian pizza forming the top slice, with a Sushi topper. Reviews were (surprisingly,) positive

Time to head home, but not before our primary school teacher started a game of tag which only ended when a unsuspecting woman got made “it”.

The journey home took a detour over the Severn bridge and at 3.30am when i arrived through my door I was still thinking about the standard breaking decks we had developed on the way home.

I don't want to give away all the secret tech, but i feel safe in saying that if Ian’s master biomancer/ legions initiative deck starts crushing the pro tour you heard it here first.

So we look towards Manchester, hope for the same good turnout and a little more success, and if anyone knows of an all you can eat buffet with a dragon in it let me know...

Thanks Joe for a cracking article - I will be back with the Modern blog and details of Games Day next weekend on Monday.  Have a great weekend and enjoy Pro Tour!

A Busy Schedule

So Dragon's Maze is with us and a week of SCG open is behind us.  The new set does not seem to have effected standard massively - Junk Re animator is still THE deck that boasts the best win percentages - it now has Sin Eater main deck to take out those Cremates and other counters to unburial rites. Jund has added Sire of Insanity as its ability to top deck is far better than its opponents and at 6 mana it can cast everything.  UWR has added 3 copies of Ral Zarek - this may mean that he keeps some of his value and for the moment he is at $35 but no one seems to be interested at that price.

Is now a card in case you thought it wouldn't be...

So what is this blog about then?  I'm glad you asked - we are kind of busy for the next month or so in the Magic calendar so I thought it might be a good idea to bring all the stuff together in one place and let people know what is going on MTG wise.  I decided to just list everything chronologically first and then comment on events afterwards:

Date	Event
11/05/2013	PTQ Theros - Cardiff
11/05/2013	Monthly win a box - Patriot Leeds
11/05/2013	Dragon's Maze win a box - Chesterfield
12/05/2013	Steel City Magic - Patriot Sheffield
17/05/2013	Pro Tour Dragon's Maze - San Diego Starts 5pm GMT
18/05/2013	Pro Tour Dragon's Maze - San Diego Starts 5pm GMT
19/05/2013	Pro Tour Dragon's Maze - San Diego Starts 7pm GMT
25/05/2013	Dragon's Maze Games day - Patriot Sheffield
26/05/2013	Dragon's Maze Games day - Patriot Sheffield
01/06/2013	PTQ Theros - Manchester
02/06/2013	WMCQ - Manchester
08/06/2013	Modern Masters release drafts
09/06/2013	Modern Masters release drafts
22/06/2013	Invitational Qualifier - Patriot Games Sheffield

So as you can see there is a lot going on in the old Magic scene!  There will be further details on the invitational qualifier in the next few weeks.  The Dragon's Maze game day will have the usual Standard/Draft tournaments each day and will cost £10 for the whole thing.

You need to have scored 300 Planeswalker points in the last year to qualify for the WMCQ - if you are unsure send me a message and I will let you know if you are qualified or not.  I hope to have the full details of Modern Masters drafts soon when we know how much product the shop is getting.

Spoilers due the week before release...

That's all I have time for - hope to be back next week if I have the time.

Drafted!

I know - 2 blogs in 2 days what the hell?  Due to a slight communication problem yesterday the plans for Saturday's drafts have had to be changed.  On Saturday there will be "draft packs" available from Patriot Games for £10 which will consist of;

• 2 x Dragon's Maze Boosters.
  
  
• 1 x Gatecrash Booster.
  
  
• 1 x Return to Ravnica Booster.
  
  
• 1 x Random Promo (Maze's End or Foil Plain or Breaking//Entering.
  
  

1 of the Dragon's Maze boosters is prize support and will either go into a pool or remain as a flat 1 per player depending on the nature of the draft you are in.  

Having purchased your draft pack(s) from Patriot Games you will then follow this map to a local pub!

The drafts themselves will be in the Old Queens Head which is next to the bus station in Sheffield and is an amazing pub with a strong history of gaming who have been kind enough to let us draft there.  Details of the pub can be found here.  They are open from 10 am have a wide range of drinks including Tea and Coffee and do really nice food at a reasonable price.  The place has just undergone a full internal refurbishment and is very comfortable inside with superb Magic playing tables!  If there are a lot of us they have said we can use the function room upstairs which comfortably seats 30.

To help gauge numbers for the pub I will put a "are you coming" thing in the Sheffield MTG Facebook group here.  Obviously you will not be able to eat or drink anything in the Queens Head that was not bought there.

Any questions PM me on Facebook...

Stylin', Profilin', Limousine Riding, Jet Flying, Kiss-Stealing, Wheelin' n' Dealin' Son of a Gun!

Well that was quite a weekend.  We ran the maze and got lots of shiny land - somewhere I have some achievement cards that do stuff to my planeswalker points bits - I should probably get round to doing something about those at some time this week.  Congratulations to Rob Tinsley for dominating the whole thing on Saturday and going undefeated on the day.  Also congratulations to Adam Pollard who was "officially" the winner of the pre-release on Saturday daytime after an ID in the final saw him top of the board on count back.  Congratulations also got to Henry Hart for winning the Sunday pre-release, its great to see someone who has learnt to play through relax develop into such a strong player.

My apologies to my opponents over the weekend - I seemed to be suffering from an inability to play any spells due to a lack of land most of the time and was not much opposition.  We had 139 players participate in the pre-release over the weekend at patriot Game Sheffield.  I think the whole guild booster thing is a great idea, but it does massively skew the actual sealed format with the guild boosters dictating rather than helping you with your card and deck choices.  Having said that top marks go to Wizards of the Coast for the attention to detail in the packaging and little extras for the events giving something for almost everyone to get excited about.

This all leads me into today's blog and it's ridiculous title.  As you may well know if you read this on a regular basis I have a love of professional wrestling and the weird and wacky characters that inhabit that world.  I am in fact going to see Mick Foley (Cactus Jack/Mankind/Dude Love) today who is doing a talk about his experiences in the WWE and WCW at the City Hall in Sheffield.  The full quote for the title goes:

"I'm Ric Flair! The Stylin', profilin', limousine riding, jet flying, kiss-stealing, wheelin' n' dealin' son of a gun!"

Slick Ric - not known for his subtlety... 

These characters are developed to help the wrestlers "get over" with the audience weather this is as a heel (bad guy) or a face (good guy).  Over the weekend a number of people have commented on both mine and Rob's play style and the fact that Rob can particularly put people off and make them screw up just by talking to them.  This is a left over from our years of playing Raw Deal, where trash talking your opponents into a loss was almost as legitimate a win condition as actually playing cards against them.

It is part of our play style and that is what I really wanted to talk about today.  Everybody has a play style and this is reflected in the way they play cards and their deck choices.  Certain elements of your play style are fixed because they are part of your personality but many change as you play more and try out new tactics and ideas.

Many players, when they begin playing competitive magic, will opt for an aggressive deck with lots of fast little creatures and direct burn to face spells.  Some find that this does exactly what they want to do in Magic while others develop into different strategies.

Knowing and developing your play style is an essential part of getting better at playing magic.  Your personal play style is something which you need to discover for yourself and will change to a certain degree over time as your experience grows.  I like what I call "toolbox" decks which have multiple answers to different things based on the meta game at the time.  I tend to shy away from decks that go all in on one particular plan as should your opponent have an answer to it you just lose if you do not have the flexibility to go somewhere else with your deck.

Lightning Cow - a popular "answer" at the moment.

So next time you are building a deck or even playing with one think about what your deck choice says about your personal play style and look to do things that enhance it.  Eventually you will find that knowing how you want your deck to play will greatly inform your card choices and help in all aspects of your game.

Apparently this is MY card for this set as I already opened a play set...

This Friday is the official release of Dragon's Maze and it is legal to play in tournaments from then.  FNM Relax has pauper as the format and competitive are playing Block Constructed.  there will also be a draft with DGM-GTC-RTR as the boosters and everyone who participates at  any of these events will get the release promo of Breaking//Entering;

As it is release weekend we will have draft pods all day Saturday and Sunday but there are a number of events on so come down early to get a place, from 10 am Saturday and 11 am Sunday.

Entering the Maze

I was quite concerned about Dragon's Maze after Gatecrash.  Gatecrash was a substandard set in comparison to Return to Ravnica and had few cards outside of the shock lands that you really wanted to own.  Then we were treated to the description of Maze's End:

I think the artwork is stunning, but that is the only good thing about this!

I know lots of you think it will be really great fun to build a deck with this as your win condition, but for the sake of your own sanity please don't do it.  With the perfect hand etc the earliest you could actually manage to pull this off is turn 8.  If you had just played normal land and 1/1 guys each turn by turn 8 you would have done your opponent 33 damage by the end of turn 8...

Fortunately Maze's End was not a fair representation of the cards in the set, adding in the consideration that we get "bonus" shock lands in the set (all be it at about 1 a box) and suddenly the worst thing about Dragon's Maze is the name.  So now that the whole set has been spoilt here, I thought I would look at some of my personal favourite cards from Dragon's Maze.

I think this should have a stylised S on its back.

I really hated the Delver of secrets decks of last year.  They were miserable to play against and all about flipping delver on turn two and ridding it to victory.  Wizards of the Coast obviously hate Delver too but I feel that this card in Dark Ascension would have made the whole Innistrad era a better play experience for constructed.  Expect this to see play in Legacy until people stop playing Delver of Secrets.

You can't touch this...

So a 3/2 flyer for 4 mana - seems ok in limited.  Oh but wait it has hexproof?  Now that is a bit different.  For those of you that didn't play M12 limited Aven Fleetwing was a 2/2 flyer with hexproof for U3 which with the help of the odd enchantment frequently won games.  Playing white in a deck with flyers is almost a given so the extra white mana in the casting cost is negligible.  Sticking a Holy Mantle on this gives you a 5/4 flyer with protection from creatures and players (technically).  Alternatively just add;

Haven't I seen this before?

Creature enchantment don't see much play.  The chance to being two for oned is usually too much of a risk, however occasionally a creature enchantment is worth the risk.  In Invasion 13 years ago we got just such an enchantment in Armadillo Cloak - for WG1 your creature got +2/+2 Trample and you gain life for the damage it does.  Now Unflinching Courage which does almost exactly the same thing...  I have no idea why Wizards didn't just reprint Armadillo Cloak, maybe they thought we needed something extra for Uril the Mistwalker EDH decks?  Speaking of reprints;

Killing is my business...

Kill spells, we love them and they are a major part of MTG.  This baby has always been popular when in standard and now makes a welcome return with very cool art work.  Better in Jund than Murder because you don't need to hit double black, it also has the fringe benefit of destroying key runes, Door to Nothingness and Gilded Lotus as well.

Whatever it was, no.

Ok so your opponent has a whole bunch of mana and look like they are working up to that combo to kill you  - not anymore!  Also you have to love a spell which is basically Counter Spell and Silence put together for the same cost as Counter Spell and Silence!

I'm not a big fan of split cards they tend to either be over costed copies of existent spells or only have one half you would ever actually play.  I really like this as a utility card though; been taking a beating?  Then a bit of willing kills their guys if they attack/block and gains you life.  Are you the Beats?   Well lets see how they feel about blocking your indestructible vigilant hordes, or vise versa.  The Fuse mechanic is a great addition to the split card format and seems to work well with the cards in this set.

Combo!

Dimir had by far the best mechanic in Gatecrash and then had a terrible selection of cards with which to use it.  For 2 mana this seems to be full of possibilities to me.  Sticking this on Invisible Stalker opens up a whole bunch of broken things to do each turn.

I just love me a good mutant frog...

This may not seem like an obvious pick especially as I am going to suggest this as playable in standard.  "What? - but it is just a big derpy man that does nothing when it comes in!"  This is true but bouncing a creature every turn seems good when you are a Frog Beast as Cavern of Souls naming Beast gives you uncounterable Thragtusks every turn and Kermit here bounces Thragy back to your hand or a 3/3 beast token and 5 life every turn, and I still have a 5 mana Frog titan :-)

Trolling Legacy players just got even more fun.

I really like the creature cycles in this set, they seem to contain a fair amount of solid limited cards without having them at Rare.  The rare cycle is of course the Legendary Guild Champions who are running the Dragon's Maze.  I like nearly all of these champions although few of them will see play in constructed.  two of the exceptions to this are Ruric Thar, The Unbowed (great you don't dare kill it) and this guy.  So I sacrifice my Thragtusk (or Species Gorger) to regenerate Varolz and then pay UG3 next turn and Varolz is a 8/8...  I have also noticed that he is a Troll whose name ends in ROLZ, hmmmm.

There are actually a whole bunch of other cards I could mention here - I've not even really looked at the mythics and as we all get copies of Maze's End at the pre-release it hardly counts.  Don't forget that this Saturday and Sunday is pre-release, it is always a good idea to pre-reg for this and that can be done here.

I hope to be back with another blog on Friday - see you then.

A road less travelled

I have a bad history with Pro Tour Qualifiers.  It was following a PTQ that I quit Magic for good and didn't actually play any games for 8 years.  I have had some bad experiences in recent years at PTQs, the details of which I won't go into, which have led me to be less than keen at participating at times.  However, I thoroughly enjoyed the last Sheffield PTQ and was really looking forward to this one.  I wasn't disappointed.  The venue was fantastic and the staff helpful and friendly.  An amazing turnout of 198 people (the biggest ever UK PTQ) made the day into a joy, capped off with a superb judge team led by Ed.

It is at this point that I need to offer some congratulations to some of the local and not so local players.  Congratulations to Luke Southworth for winning and Paul Calver for a close second.  Paul beat me in the third round and this is his second top 8 at a PTQ in the last 2 weeks so I am sure it is just a matter of time before he wins.  Both Paul and Luke earn themselves a spot at the invitational in October and we look forward to welcoming them for the weekend.  A massive well done to Fabian Quinn, Steve McAleer and of course Robert Tinsley for making the top 8.  Last, but by no means least is a well done to Abbey Moore who managed to 4 - 0 in her first ever PTQ before finishing at 5 - 3 at what is not only her first PTQ but first real taste of competitive play.

Highly honourable mentions need to go to Richard Fuller and Jimmy Wild for excellent showings again and being just outside that mystical top 8.

The top eight deck lists can be found here thanks to Mana leak and can I personally apologise to the Meta Game guys who did the coverage and got my deck list instead of Rob's.  The fact I had given it the name "Great White Hunter" as the creatures in it had a Zoo kind of value feel to them (Restoration Angel, Thragtusk, Loxodon Smiter etc) and that I always had to go and hunt for the white mana to cast my spells.  Yet again a bad pun that only I would ever understand, or possibly you would understand if you could look into my mind for a second.  However, most people in that category are under some form of 24 hour a day psychiatric observation.

I wanted to do something other than the standard review of - this is how the tourney went type of article, so I am going to use something we do in education called reflective practice.  This is where you analyse what went wrong (and right) in a teaching situation and learn from it to develop your skills/delivery.  Firstly lets look at my match ups:

Round 1 Keith Owens (Bant Control - Win)
Round 2 Thomas Morrissey (Esper Control - Win)
Round 3 Paul Calver (Primespeaker Bant - Loss)
Round 4 Matt Trindall (Aristocrats Act II - Win) 
Round 5 Ross Silcock (Turbo Fog Planeswalker control - Loss)
Round 6 Jordan Woodward (Aristocrats Act II - Win)
Round 7 Robert Young (Jund Midrange - Win)
Round 8 Thomas  Davies (4 Colour Control? - Loss)

The decks listed may not be quite right but they are close enough, ironically I was quite ready for a lot of aggro match-ups and in fact saw none.  I was also determined not to lose to Re-animator and ran main deck Rest in Peace after Ground Seal was just not cutting the mustard.  I'd like to thank all of my opponents as they were all great and good people to play against.  So what did I learn from these matches?  Firstly lets look at what went right:

• My deck is really good against Aristocrats.
• I have the edge in the "mirror" match (Jund Midrange) after side boarding.
• Rest in Peace is not a terrible card to run main deck.
• The fact my deck is not instantly recognisable makes my opponents play round a whole heap of stuff I don't have.

Not just effective against re-animator.

On the flip side of reflective practise is working out what didn't work:

• I struggled to deal with Planeswalkers.
• Prime Speaker Zegana is a card...
• I didn't face re-animator or Blitz.
• Liliana is not great in this format.

I turned 2 Liliana on Tom Davies from Harlequin and even after using her ultimate to remove his drown yards (and half his lands) from play he still managed to beat me.  This could just mean I'm terrible at Magic but I don't think so.  Tom is a really good player but I had him down to 1 life and just could not finish him.  I feel I need to look at some of the cards that I played and consider what would work better in the difficult match ups, always remembering the golden rule of "What would LSV do?"  

Not feeling the love this past weekend.

Lets start with Liliana.  Loxodon Smiter just makes her way worse than she should be, don't get me wrong Liliana is still a great card but I think she becomes a side board option in my deck rather than a main board one.

Say hello to my little friend...

Thundermaw Hellkite is a pretty cool card to have against Aristocrats it can be a board wipe and always seems to have extra value in the match up.  However, it seems to be just another 5/5 against a lot of the decks and does nothing in the face of Ultimate Price.  taking it out will make my deck worse against Aristocrats and I really don't want to send it any further than the sideboard but I am torn over this little fella for sure.

Raskdos' Return has been indefinitely delayed.

Witchbane Orb was a real MVP in a couple of match ups, especially in the Jund mirror.  A big thank you to Fabian for lending me 1.  I Will be keeping 2 of these in my sideboard for some time to come.  A number of cards did nothing or were less impressive than I hoped and there are a few others that I think need a place in the side or main.

That's mine, that's mine too, that's got to be mine, and that...

Zealous Conscripts to steal Planeswalkers and prime speakers seems like a good plan.  A couple of times I wish I had access to this card and I think I could have significantly changed my results with it.

Could actually just win you the game.

Boros charm seems like a great card to have in my deck where all of the options are going to be of use at various times.  Wolf run up your Smiter and give him double strike!  You killed all my guys and you are on 4 life - BOOM, kill you.  You want to kill everything or blow up my Rest in Peace or Kessig Wolf Run?  Just no.

 

Men, men, men mendy men...

I run a lot of removal in this deck and not that many men.  Having assemble the legion as a side board option gives me guys every turn and all you do is wolf run the guy that survives to get through!

I hope this look at my thought processes following the weekend is of some use to you and is more entertaining that the usual, "and then I played this, so he did this...".  This Friday at FNM it is Modern - I will be back on Monday to look at the cards in the new set ready for a weekend of pre-release on the 27th + 28th April.  See you then.