==ISLANDHOME #42==
December 17th 2008
==IN THIS ISSUE...==
Worlds 2008
PTQ Report
Rumor Season
==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==
Friday: FNM Booster Draft at Brothers Grim ($13 entry) @ 7 PM
Saturday: Standard Constructed at FNC ($5 entry) @ 1 PM
Sunday: MOX TOURNAMENT - Standard ($15 entry) @ 2 PM
This Sunday is the Mox Emerald tournament at Brothers Grim! At only $15 for the chance of winning one of the most powerful cards in Magic's history, you have nothing to lose! Other prizes will be given out as well, so bring your A-game!
==WORLDS 2008==
Author: Brian Paskoff
==PTQ REPORT==
Author: Brian Paskoff
==EURO LANDS PROMOTION==
Author: Brian Paskoff
After a short break, Islandhome is once again accepting guest articles from our readers!
If you've got an article you'd like to submit, send it to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com. Try to keep it a reasonable length - there's no word limit, but look at previous Islandhome articles for guidance - and avoid bad language and personal insults. Also try to maintain good grammar and spelling; doesn't have to be perfect, but you should see how long it takes me to spellcheck the Madonia Minute every week!
I can't promise every submission will make it into the next week's Islandhome, but I'll try to get as many in as I can, especially ones that are relevant to a previous/upcoming event.
==IN THIS ISSUE...==
Worlds 2008
PTQ Report
Rumor Season
==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==
Friday: FNM Booster Draft at Brothers Grim ($13 entry) @ 7 PM
Saturday: Standard Constructed at FNC ($5 entry) @ 1 PM
Sunday: MOX TOURNAMENT - Standard ($15 entry) @ 2 PM
This Sunday is the Mox Emerald tournament at Brothers Grim! At only $15 for the chance of winning one of the most powerful cards in Magic's history, you have nothing to lose! Other prizes will be given out as well, so bring your A-game!
==WORLDS 2008==
Author: Brian Paskoff
As another year wraps to a close, so does another Worlds, the biggest annual Magic tournament in... well, the world. Players from all over the world showed up to compete in a wide variety of formats to prove that they were the best player in the entire world (for a year at least), and after three grueling days, Finnish player Antti Malin was crowned World Champion, and the United States team of Sam Black, Paul Cheon, and Michael Jacob were champions of the Standard-Extended-and-Legacy team event.
Worlds seems to define the upcoming metagame each year, and judging by the top eight results, we're in for a slow Standard season. Five out of the top eight decks were Faeries, the other three being Kithkin, Toast, and Mono-Red splashing for Blightning. Though the entire tournament tested Standard, Extended, and drafting skills, the top eight of Worlds was played out with the participants' Standard decks. Antti Malin won with Faeries, defeating Jamie Parke's Toast deck 3-1 in the finals.
To be quite honest I'd really rather not talk about the disappointing playoffs; 5/8ths of the finalists playing Faeries is depressing. Jamie Park's Toast deck was interesting, playing Rhox War Monk in place of Kitchen Finks for a more consistent flow of life gain, and perhaps to negate the more and more common strategy of red decks sideboarding Magma Spray, and packing enough answers to Faeries that it should instill memories of the Affinity and Anti-Affinity days of Mirrodin.
One of the breakout decks of Worlds was WB Tokens. Though it didn't make it into the playoffs, it did contribute in Team USA's victory in the team event. With Cloudgoat Ranger, Spectral Procession, and Windbrisk Heights, the deck slightly resembles Kithkin. Except instead of relying on the boost of Wizened Cenn and Mirrorweaving Lieges, WB Tokens plays Thoughtseize, Tidehollow Sculler, and Marsh Flitter. Michael Jacob's Team USA deck even played four copies of Glorious Anthem, and even the obscure Head Games (I'll wait while you go search up what that does. Okay, back? Yeah, I forgot that was in Tenth Edition too.) in the sideboard. The deck is similar enough to Kithkin that it'll be interesting to see whether or not Standard has room for both of them. But as WB Tokens doesn't rely on a single creature type and is a new archetype, it has room for growth, whereas the Kithkin deck is more or less at a creative stopping point.
Extended was relatively free of the scourge of the Elves deck that was feared to carve a hole in the metagame. With only ten percent of the field playing the deck and none of them going undefeated, it feels like the deck is safe from its key cards winding up on the banned list. Aside from over 26% of the combatants playing Faeries in Extended, the format appears to be very healthy, and players should have a fun time in this upcoming Extended PTQ season.
I'd also like to congradulate Long Islander Jason Imperiale for getting 10th place at Worlds, a tremendous feat indeed... even if he was playing Faeries.
Next year's Worlds is in Rome, a little far for most of us to travel. But until then, we'll be feeling the tremors of Worlds 2008 shaking up the metagame for a long time!
Worlds seems to define the upcoming metagame each year, and judging by the top eight results, we're in for a slow Standard season. Five out of the top eight decks were Faeries, the other three being Kithkin, Toast, and Mono-Red splashing for Blightning. Though the entire tournament tested Standard, Extended, and drafting skills, the top eight of Worlds was played out with the participants' Standard decks. Antti Malin won with Faeries, defeating Jamie Parke's Toast deck 3-1 in the finals.
To be quite honest I'd really rather not talk about the disappointing playoffs; 5/8ths of the finalists playing Faeries is depressing. Jamie Park's Toast deck was interesting, playing Rhox War Monk in place of Kitchen Finks for a more consistent flow of life gain, and perhaps to negate the more and more common strategy of red decks sideboarding Magma Spray, and packing enough answers to Faeries that it should instill memories of the Affinity and Anti-Affinity days of Mirrodin.
One of the breakout decks of Worlds was WB Tokens. Though it didn't make it into the playoffs, it did contribute in Team USA's victory in the team event. With Cloudgoat Ranger, Spectral Procession, and Windbrisk Heights, the deck slightly resembles Kithkin. Except instead of relying on the boost of Wizened Cenn and Mirrorweaving Lieges, WB Tokens plays Thoughtseize, Tidehollow Sculler, and Marsh Flitter. Michael Jacob's Team USA deck even played four copies of Glorious Anthem, and even the obscure Head Games (I'll wait while you go search up what that does. Okay, back? Yeah, I forgot that was in Tenth Edition too.) in the sideboard. The deck is similar enough to Kithkin that it'll be interesting to see whether or not Standard has room for both of them. But as WB Tokens doesn't rely on a single creature type and is a new archetype, it has room for growth, whereas the Kithkin deck is more or less at a creative stopping point.
Extended was relatively free of the scourge of the Elves deck that was feared to carve a hole in the metagame. With only ten percent of the field playing the deck and none of them going undefeated, it feels like the deck is safe from its key cards winding up on the banned list. Aside from over 26% of the combatants playing Faeries in Extended, the format appears to be very healthy, and players should have a fun time in this upcoming Extended PTQ season.
I'd also like to congradulate Long Islander Jason Imperiale for getting 10th place at Worlds, a tremendous feat indeed... even if he was playing Faeries.
Next year's Worlds is in Rome, a little far for most of us to travel. But until then, we'll be feeling the tremors of Worlds 2008 shaking up the metagame for a long time!
==PTQ REPORT==
Author: Brian Paskoff
New York's Pro Tour Qualifier for Kyoto was bittersweet. It was a fun PTQ that ran smoothly and with an extremely high turnout (175 players total!), but it was also the last major event that will ever be held at Neutral Ground. For over thirteen years now, Neutral Ground has been the "mecca" of Magic, and is probably the most famous Magic store in the world; nearly everyone who has had any experience in tournament Magic has heard of the store. Even after the store moved from its original location about a year ago, stepping into Neutral Ground was like stepping into Magic legend, and many of the best Magic players in the world called the store their home during at least some point in their career. A special "thank you" to the staff of Neutral Ground for keeping the store running for over a decade and giving us all a great place to play. Hopefully someday Neutral Ground will come back in some form. Until then, New York City events will still happen... just at a different location.
As I said, 175 players showed up for the historic last Neutral Ground PTQ for a chance to win an invite to play in Pro Tour Kyoto. Limited events traditionally have higher turnouts than constructed ones, simply because the cost of building a limited deck is always the same (the entry fee for the tournament), whereas putting together a constructed deck costs a whole lot more.
Like all sealed formats, Shards is fairly bomb-reliant... though that doesn't mean bomb-dependant. True, those who opened bomby rares were better off, but play skill mattered just as much. Opening a few bombs never guarantees a top 8 spot, and I saw just as many Battlegrace Angels, Flameblast Dragons, and Hellkite Overlords at the lower tables than I saw at the top ones. The real key to victory in a limited event is knowing how to use those cards, and how to build your deck. It's easy to say you would've built a deck differently when looking at someone else's sealed pool, but constructing one yourself is a whole different story, especially while you need to get it right the first time.
Besides the rares, many commons contributed to game wins during the day. While watching matches, I started to realize that there were a few commons which were often responsible for winning games almost single-handedly. Resounding Silence is a powerful removal spell, and since many decks in the format are built around swinging with one or two powerful creatures at a time, Resounding Silence is a Fog effect combined with permanent removal. Guardians of Akrasa is a strong blocker, and although it can't deal with the many four-plus power guys in Shards, it does stall smaller creatures on the ground while pumping any solitary attackers you might have on offense. And finally, the number one common of the day seemed to be Vithian Stinger. The pinger was a problem for many players who couldn't deal with it; no one wants to waste their best removal spells on a 0/1, and so it was left alive to deal more damage on the whole than even a Bull Ceredon could do. It could ping an opponent at the end of their turn to whittle down their life total, make combat complicated by letting a 4/4 trade with a 5/5, and perform mean tricks with devouring it and then unearthing it. Even if it did get killed, it just turned into an emergency one damage sorcery spell.
As far as shards go, all the shards seemed to show up in relatively even numbers. Of course, it was hard to determine when half of the players were playing four colors. Naya was predictably the most popular, and Grixis the least, though all the other shards fell somewhere between, and it was hard to say that there was a dominant shard.
The next and last PTQ in our area is on December 27th in New Jersey, so if you haven't qualified for the Pro Tour yet, I hope to see you there!
With the prerelease for Conflux a little over a month away, it's time to start rumor season up! A few months ago, the complete Conflux card list was released with the names of every card in the set, the most exciting of which was Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. And now the art for the card has been spoiled, and while we don't know what the Elder Dragon does yet, he looks like quite a beast... and even moreso in this official wallpaper, which shows Nicol Bolas fighting the four other Shards of Alara planeswalkers.
According to a source on MTGSalvation.com's rumor mill, Conflux supposedly has a few tools in it that'll fix the standard metagame by giving us answers to Faeries.
Little else is known about Conflux at this point, but Magic developers Aaron Forsythe and Mark Rosewater talked about a couple of things regarding 11th Edition at Worlds. 11th will be black-bordered, and have mythic rares (possibly the original Lorwyn planeswalkers). They also gave some cryptic maybe-clues about the appearance of Ravnica shocklands in 11th Edition, though similar rumors were floating around before 10th Edition saw print. The lands have generic names and bring back memories of the original dual lands that started out in the game, so they seem like a logical choice.
More rumors should start trickling in during the next few weeks. Spoilers for Morningtide (last year's February set) started a little before Christmas, so we should see a similar trend this year.
As I said, 175 players showed up for the historic last Neutral Ground PTQ for a chance to win an invite to play in Pro Tour Kyoto. Limited events traditionally have higher turnouts than constructed ones, simply because the cost of building a limited deck is always the same (the entry fee for the tournament), whereas putting together a constructed deck costs a whole lot more.
Like all sealed formats, Shards is fairly bomb-reliant... though that doesn't mean bomb-dependant. True, those who opened bomby rares were better off, but play skill mattered just as much. Opening a few bombs never guarantees a top 8 spot, and I saw just as many Battlegrace Angels, Flameblast Dragons, and Hellkite Overlords at the lower tables than I saw at the top ones. The real key to victory in a limited event is knowing how to use those cards, and how to build your deck. It's easy to say you would've built a deck differently when looking at someone else's sealed pool, but constructing one yourself is a whole different story, especially while you need to get it right the first time.
Besides the rares, many commons contributed to game wins during the day. While watching matches, I started to realize that there were a few commons which were often responsible for winning games almost single-handedly. Resounding Silence is a powerful removal spell, and since many decks in the format are built around swinging with one or two powerful creatures at a time, Resounding Silence is a Fog effect combined with permanent removal. Guardians of Akrasa is a strong blocker, and although it can't deal with the many four-plus power guys in Shards, it does stall smaller creatures on the ground while pumping any solitary attackers you might have on offense. And finally, the number one common of the day seemed to be Vithian Stinger. The pinger was a problem for many players who couldn't deal with it; no one wants to waste their best removal spells on a 0/1, and so it was left alive to deal more damage on the whole than even a Bull Ceredon could do. It could ping an opponent at the end of their turn to whittle down their life total, make combat complicated by letting a 4/4 trade with a 5/5, and perform mean tricks with devouring it and then unearthing it. Even if it did get killed, it just turned into an emergency one damage sorcery spell.
As far as shards go, all the shards seemed to show up in relatively even numbers. Of course, it was hard to determine when half of the players were playing four colors. Naya was predictably the most popular, and Grixis the least, though all the other shards fell somewhere between, and it was hard to say that there was a dominant shard.
The next and last PTQ in our area is on December 27th in New Jersey, so if you haven't qualified for the Pro Tour yet, I hope to see you there!
==RUMOR SEASON==
Author: Brian Paskoff
Author: Brian Paskoff
With the prerelease for Conflux a little over a month away, it's time to start rumor season up! A few months ago, the complete Conflux card list was released with the names of every card in the set, the most exciting of which was Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. And now the art for the card has been spoiled, and while we don't know what the Elder Dragon does yet, he looks like quite a beast... and even moreso in this official wallpaper, which shows Nicol Bolas fighting the four other Shards of Alara planeswalkers.
According to a source on MTGSalvation.com's rumor mill, Conflux supposedly has a few tools in it that'll fix the standard metagame by giving us answers to Faeries.
Little else is known about Conflux at this point, but Magic developers Aaron Forsythe and Mark Rosewater talked about a couple of things regarding 11th Edition at Worlds. 11th will be black-bordered, and have mythic rares (possibly the original Lorwyn planeswalkers). They also gave some cryptic maybe-clues about the appearance of Ravnica shocklands in 11th Edition, though similar rumors were floating around before 10th Edition saw print. The lands have generic names and bring back memories of the original dual lands that started out in the game, so they seem like a logical choice.
More rumors should start trickling in during the next few weeks. Spoilers for Morningtide (last year's February set) started a little before Christmas, so we should see a similar trend this year.
==EURO LANDS PROMOTION==
Author: Brian Paskoff
So the other day when I received my latest FNM promos for Brothers Grim in the mail, I got a little extra surprise with it. Though to be fair it was only a surprise because I forgot I had signed up for it. See, Wizards is doing this promotion exclusively for FNM-hosting locations where they send out packs Euro Lands to those stores. But unlike the other promotional cards Wizards sends out, you don't get these for playing - instead, you get them for buying a full box of any Magic set!
The Euro Lands are special lands with artwork representing different locations throughout Europe. They came in three different versions depending on their wrappers, but the ones I got are the blue pack, seen here. They feature scenes of the forests of Schwarzwald, Germany, the Danish Islands of Scandinavia, the mountains of Vesuvio, Italy, the Scottish Highlands, and the swamps of Ardennes Fagnes, Belgium. This is the first time that these lands are available to players in the US, and they're quite rare. Five come in a pack, one of each land.
Supplies are limited though, so if you were planning to buy a box of Shards for someone as a holiday gift, do it as soon as possible! this promotion will be running at Brothers Grim only for as long as we have packs to give out.
The Euro Lands are special lands with artwork representing different locations throughout Europe. They came in three different versions depending on their wrappers, but the ones I got are the blue pack, seen here. They feature scenes of the forests of Schwarzwald, Germany, the Danish Islands of Scandinavia, the mountains of Vesuvio, Italy, the Scottish Highlands, and the swamps of Ardennes Fagnes, Belgium. This is the first time that these lands are available to players in the US, and they're quite rare. Five come in a pack, one of each land.
Supplies are limited though, so if you were planning to buy a box of Shards for someone as a holiday gift, do it as soon as possible! this promotion will be running at Brothers Grim only for as long as we have packs to give out.
==GUEST ARTICLES==
Author: Brian Paskoff
Author: Brian Paskoff
After a short break, Islandhome is once again accepting guest articles from our readers!
If you've got an article you'd like to submit, send it to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com. Try to keep it a reasonable length - there's no word limit, but look at previous Islandhome articles for guidance - and avoid bad language and personal insults. Also try to maintain good grammar and spelling; doesn't have to be perfect, but you should see how long it takes me to spellcheck the Madonia Minute every week!
I can't promise every submission will make it into the next week's Islandhome, but I'll try to get as many in as I can, especially ones that are relevant to a previous/upcoming event.
==THE ISLANDHOME BLOG==
One of the things I wanted to do was have an archive of past issues online so I could refer people back to them as well as let new readers peruse old issues to see what all the fuss is about. So I've archived all the old issues on the blogosphere at islandhomemtg.blogspot.com. Go and relive all the past moments of glory!
==UPCOMING EVENTS==
October 4th - December 28th: PTQ Season for PT Kyoto
The next PTQ season kicks off October 4th, and the format is Shards of Alara sealed deck!
December 21st - Mox Tournament at Brothers Grim
This December, Islandhome, in association with Brothers Grim, will be holding a giant Standard tournament. The first place prize will be a Mox Emerald, with many other prizes as well. Side events such as booster drafts and EDH multiplayer games will be held that day too, so keep reading Islandhome for more details!
December 21st - Mox Tournament at Brothers Grim
This December, Islandhome, in association with Brothers Grim, will be holding a giant Standard tournament. The first place prize will be a Mox Emerald, with many other prizes as well. Side events such as booster drafts and EDH multiplayer games will be held that day too, so keep reading Islandhome for more details!
PTQs in our area this season:
12/27 - Edison, NJ
12/27 - Edison, NJ
==STORE LOCATIONS & CONTACT INFO==
Brothers Grim
1244 Middle Country Rd.
Selden, NY 11784
Phone: 631-698-2805
Website: www.brgim.com
Friendly Neighborhood Comics
19 Udall Rd.
West Islip, NY 11795
Phone: 631-470-7984
Brothers Grim
1244 Middle Country Rd.
Selden, NY 11784
Phone: 631-698-2805
Website: www.brgim.com
Friendly Neighborhood Comics
19 Udall Rd.
West Islip, NY 11795
Phone: 631-470-7984
==FIN==
See everyone this weekend!
Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!
Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!
-Brian Paskoff
L1 NY
L1 NY
No comments:
Post a Comment