Islandhome #48

==ISLANDHOME #48==

January 28th 2009

==IN THIS ISSUE...==

Peppersmoke

Conflux Prerelease

Conflux Prerelease Tips

==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==

Saturday: Conflux Prerelease (See below for details.)

I won't be at Grim or FNC this weekend, but chances are some kind of event will take place at both locations.

==PEPPERSMOKE==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

So I had a minor health scare last week at FNC, but don't worry! It was a mere -1/-1 effect, so I'm okay. Thanks for everyone who lent their sympathy when I got back, and thanks to John Madonia and Ed Palm for helping to keep the event running in my absence. It was comforting knowing I wouldn't come back to the event and see the tournament had descended into anarchy and cannibalism.

==CONFLUX PRERELEASE==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

A prerelease is once again upon us! In only three days, you'll be ripping open fresh new packs of Conflux! The prerelease program has changed a lot since you last remember it, the most important being that there is only one, big flight instead of the usual multiple flights throughout the day. The "one big flight" thing is something I always felt should have been tried, as it lets you play against a wider variety of players than just the thirty-two or so that signed up for your flight. I do wish there were more than four rounds for such a large event, but that's what side events are for!

Registration for the sealed deck event will open at 9, and hopefully start at 9:30. The entry fee is $30, and with that, you get three packs of Shards of Alara and three packs of Conflux. Wait, isn't that a lot of packs? Well yes! Wizards has done away with tournament packs, so now you get three packs of Shards of Alara instead of a tournament pack of it. It's the same number of cards as were in a tournament pack, just with one less uncommon and one more common. Of course you also don't get the basic lands, so we'll be providing them for you free of charge.

There'll be four rounds in the main flight, and prizes will be given out based on your record. 3-1 gets six packs, 3-0-1 gets nine packs, and 4-0 gets twelve packs. Waaaay better than the piss-poor prize support Wizards forced on us for the Shards of Alara prerelease.

Three-player team events are gone as well, replaced with the ever-popular Two-Headed Giant format. Registration for this event starts at 1 PM, and costs $22 per player. Each team will get four packs of Shards and four packs of Conflux with which to build two 40-card minimum decks. Then they'll play three rounds of 2HG, with 2-1 getting six packs, 2-0-1 getting ten packs, and 3-0 getting fourteen packs.

Side events will be held based on product availability and player interest, starting at 11 AM. These will be sort of mini-flights, three round eight-man sealed deck tournaments for $30, where the prize payout is 7-5-3 instead of the main flight's 12-9-6.

The Long Island prerelease will be held at the Four Points Sheraton in Plainview, NY, 333 South Service Road off the LIE. I'll be head judging it once again, so come down and get your first taste of Conflux!

==CONFLUX PRERELEASE TIPS==

Author: Brian J. Paskoff

The full spoiler for Conflux is out on MTGSalvation , and now that we more or less know what every card does, it's time to get metagaming! (I say "more or less" because it's a well-established fact that as complete as a spoiler seems, there are always some key differences in cards between the rumored versions and the printed versions.) Your first order of business, of course, is limited, as it'll be the very first thing you do with the set. Like most second (and third) sets in a block, Conflux is very strong for limited play. With less variety of cards in a pack, Wizards has to make sure not to print too many "useless" cards, or the set will be no fun to draft. Also, while the big set contains the "staple" cards - things like your basic counterspells, spot removal, etc., smaller sets tend to have cards that are more specialized, and Conflux is no exception.

You may find yourself straying from the comfort of a shard's three colors more often in Conflux. There's still a lot of support for Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya, but the mana fixing and five-color effects present in Conflux will make you want to find ways to produce all five colors of mana. Strangely, there isn't much acceleration in Conflux; most of the mana fixers either filter mana (such as the reprinted Mana Cylix) or get lands from your library into your hand. Each color has access to a spell that has "basic landcycling", an ability that lets you pay a cost, discard the card from your hand, and search your library for a basic land card. While the spells themselves aren't very powerful, you may want to include them in your limited decks. Early game, they might give you a land you need. Late game, they'll either grab you a splash color or let you play them if you don't need a land anymore. The white one pumps and untaps your creatures, the blue one is a five-mana counterspell, the black one absorbs four life from your opponent, the red one deals five damage to a creature for six mana, and the green one gives you eight life - none of them are terribly useless, but nothing you'd want to include in your deck if they didn't also Sylvan Scrying for two mana.

A while ago on the official site, Wizards promised to explore things more thoroughly rather than leave behind old abilities and bring tons of new ones in with every set, and that's definitely true here. Only basic landcycling, domain, and five-color spells and abilities are new here, while the abilities and mechanics from Shards of Alara are more fleshed out. In Bant, there's more creatures with exalted, but none that give an extra push to lone attackers like Rafiq or Battlegrace Angel. It seems Wizards is being cautious about making exalted too powerful. Esper has lots more artifact creatures, including its own Goldmeadow Stalwart, and Esper Aggro looks to be an amazingly fast strategy in ALA-CON limited. Grixis of course gets more unearth creatures, this time with more abusable comes into/leaves play effects. There's more devouring in Jund, my favorites being a new Nantuko Husk-like creature that can "devour" creatures while it's in play, and a creature with both flash and devour that will make for some devastating "damage on the stack" tricks. And Naya has more "5+ matters" effects, only this time they're on spells as well as creatures.

I'll have more Conflux limited strategies after the prerelease, because it's hard to know too much about it without seeing it in action! In the meantime, here's some general advice to help you succeed at the prerelease:

• Read your cards! Especially the new ones. You're playing with new cards for the first time, and while you might know everything a Shards of Alara card does from the picture alone, you won't have the same instinct with Conflux cards yet. Many times a player will mistake a sorcery for an instant, or vice-versa. "Invisible" triggers like exalted might screw up your combat if you don't realize one of your opponent's creatures has it, and you could potentially leave yourself tapped out while not realizing your opponent has a game-winning unearth creature in their yard.
  
• 40 card decks are the bare minimum, and you should stay at 40 whenever possible. The only time I recommend going as high as 41 cards is when your mana curve is high and you need the extra land; don't try to squeeze in an extra spell. The tried-and-true spell-to-land ratio is 23 spells, 17 lands. Of those 23 spells, between 15 and 18 should be creatures, since nearly every game will be won in combat.
  
• Use your mana fixers. Mana fixing in Shards/Conflux is really good, with Obelisks, Panoramas, tri-lands, Mana Cylix, and others. Staying within a shard and splashing a bit for the other two colors is probably a good idea.
• Sideboard between games AND rounds. Since prereleases are limited tournaments that don't use decklists, you're allowed to change your deck between rounds. Use your experiences with the new cards each round to fix your deck for the next one using your sideboard (any cards in your sealed pool that aren't in your deck).

Good luck to everyone attending the prerelease this Saturday!

==GUEST ARTICLES==
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==

January 3rd - April 19th: PTQ Season for PT Honolulu

The next PTQ season kicks off January 3rd, and the format is Extended!

PTQs in our area this season:

February 21st - Edison, NJ
March 14th - Philadelphia, PA

No details for New York PTQs are available yet.

April 3rd - April 5th: I-Con 28
Magic events will once again be held at I-Con, which is at Suffolk Community College's Brentwood campus this year. I'll have news about what tournaments are going to be run as we get closer to April, but just like last time there'll be cheap drafts and constructed events all weekend long!

==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

==FIN==

See everyone this weekend!

Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!

-Brian Paskoff
L1 NY

Islandhome #47

==ISLANDHOME #47==

January 21st 2009

==IN THIS ISSUE...==

Mike Palm
Extended Comes to FNC!
Conflux Prerelease

==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==

Friday: FNM Booster Draft at Brothers Grim ($13 entry) @ 7 PM
Saturday: Standard Constructed at FNC ($5 entry) @ 1:30 PM

This Saturday is a special event at FNC: Dress for Success! The best dressed person will receive free entry into the tournament, so dust off your best outfit and bring it!

==MIKE PALM==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

As anyone who's been to FNC in the past week has noticed, Mike Palm hasn't been around lately. It turns out he fell seriously ill last week, and had to be hospitalized for a short time. Ed will be running FNC for a while, although the hours (except Fridays and Saturdays) will be cut short somewhat. Our best wishes go out to Mike Palm and the Palm family, let's all hope for a speedy recovery!

==EXTENDED COMES TO FNC!==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

In celebration of the current PTQ season, I'm holding an Extended tournament at FNC on Saturday, January 24th. Yes, that's the same day as our usual Standard event, but don't worry if you can't or don't want to play Extended - the Standard tournament will go on at the same time as the Extended one. Unfortunately the laws of temporal physics or something like that will prevent you from playing in both events at the same time, so you'll have to pick which format you want to play. Entry fee will be $5, the same as any other normal constructed event; the only difference will be that you'll be playing with older cards. We need at least eight people for a sanctioned Extended tournament, so if you want to play, start building your decks now!

I've gotten some feedback since this was first announced, with some players hating the fact that both Standard and Extended tournaments are on the same day. I thought it'd be fun to have a choice of what to play, and since there are only so many days in the week to run Magic events on, Saturday was the only day. Later on in the season I might have a Saturday of just Extended, if there's enough interest, but I want to see how much interest I get this Saturday. Everyone should bring a Standard deck too, just in case! I know Mike Evans will be playing a super secret tech deck of my own creation if there's no Extended tournament, so that will definitely be interesting and intense.

==CONFLUX PRERELEASE==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

A prerelease is once again upon us! In only ten days, you'll be ripping open fresh new packs of Conflux! The prerelease program has changed a lot since you last remember it, the most important being that there is only one, big flight instead of the usual multiple flights throughout the day. The "one big flight" thing is something I always felt should have been tried, as it lets you play against a wider variety of players than just the thirty-two or so that signed up for your flight. I do wish there were more than four rounds for such a large event, but that's what side events are for!

Registration for the sealed deck event will open at 9, and hopefully start at 9:30. The entry fee is $30, and with that, you get three packs of Shards of Alara and three packs of Conflux. Wait, isn't that a lot of packs? Well yes! Wizards has done away with tournament packs, so now you get three packs of Shards of Alara instead of a tournament pack of it. It's the same number of cards as were in a tournament pack, just with one less uncommon and one more common. Of course you also don't get the basic lands, so we'll be providing them for you free of charge.

There'll be four rounds in the main flight, and prizes will be given out based on your record. 3-1 gets six packs, 3-0-1 gets nine packs, and 4-0 gets twelve packs. Waaaay better than the piss-poor prize support Wizards forced on us for the Shards of Alara prerelease.

Three-player team events are gone as well, replaced with the ever-popular Two-Headed Giant format. Registration for this event starts at 1 PM, and costs $22 per player. Each team will get four packs of Shards and four packs of Conflux with which to build two 40-card minimum decks. Then they'll play three rounds of 2HG, with 2-1 getting six packs, 2-0-1 getting ten packs, and 3-0 getting fourteen packs.

Side events will be held based on product availability and player interest, starting at 11 AM. These will be sort of mini-flights, three round eight-man sealed deck tournaments for $30, where the prize payout is 7-5-3 instead of the main flight's 12-9-6.

The Long Island prerelease will be held at the Four Points Sheraton in Plainview, NY, 333 South Service Road off the LIE. I'll be head judging it once again, so come down and get your first taste of Conflux!

==GUEST ARTICLES==
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==

January 3rd - April 19th: PTQ Season for PT Honolulu

The next PTQ season kicks off January 3rd, and the format is Extended!

PTQs in our area this season:

February 21st - Edison, NJ
March 14th - Philadelphia, PA

No details for New York PTQs are available yet.

April 3rd - April 5th: I-Con 28
Magic events will once again be held at I-Con, which is at Suffolk Community College's Brentwood campus this year. I'll have news about what tournaments are going to be run as we get closer to April, but just like last time there'll be cheap drafts and constructed events all weekend long!

==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

==FIN==

See everyone this weekend!

Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!

-Brian Paskoff
L1 NY

Islandhome #46

==ISLANDHOME #46==

January 14th 2009

==IN THIS ISSUE...==

Extended Comes to FNC!
Drafting Don'ts: What cards to avoid

==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==

Friday: FNM Booster Draft at Brothers Grim ($13 entry) @ 7 PM
Saturday: Standard Constructed at FNC ($5 entry) @ 1:30 PM

==EXTENDED COMES TO FNC!==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

In celebration of the current PTQ season, I'm holding an Extended tournament at FNC on Saturday, January 24th. Yes, that's the same day as our usual Standard event, but don't worry if you can't or don't want to play Extended - the Standard tournament will go on at the same time as the Extended one. Unfortunately the laws of temporal physics or something like that will prevent you from playing in both events at the same time, so you'll have to pick which format you want to play. Entry fee will be $5, the same as any other normal constructed event; the only difference will be that you'll be playing with older cards. We need at least eight people for a sanctioned Extended tournament, so if you want to play, start building your decks now!

==DRAFTING DON'TS==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

Like any aspect of playing Magic well, almost as much comes from being taught as it comes from playing. And if you want to learn what cards to draft, there are hundreds of articles on the web about that very subject, where strategists will talk about the best cards in Shards of Alara limited. But after three months of Shards, along with the good judgement every one of you has about how the game works, do you really need to be told yet again that Oblivion Ring, Branching Bolt, and Agony Warp are solid picks?

There are very few articles about the bad cards, the ones that should never make your deck unless you're struggling for a twenty-third card in your Naya deck and the store's out of Swamps. It's not uncommon for players to draft the lands out of packs rather than these cards, but sadly, all too often I see them being drafted at our draft tournaments, and can only watch sadly as they make it into players' decks. I can't stop people from drafting or playing with them at tournaments, but I can give you fair warning about them so you don't make the same mistakes!

There are actually two levels of bad - there's the regular ol' "don't take this card unless your only options are another card on this list" and "bad, but with some sideboard potential - but don't put it in your maindeck unless it's maybe your twenty-third card". And then of course there's the few exceptions where a rare card is bad in limited, but you might want to take it just because it's worth a few bucks.

Ad Nauseum - With any sort of stable limited mana curve, Ad Nauseum is too dangerous to risk it. It's a rare that almost pays for the pack it's in, and is played somewhat in Eternal formats, but it's not worth more than even a decent creature if you're trying to win.

Angel's Herald - Even if you have the mythic rare the Herald's heralding, they're very rarely worth playing. Pay no attention to the idea that playing it without the mythic is a good bluff - it never is.

Angelsong - Sideboard bad; it can be useful in the Naya vs Naya mirror. The cycling actually hurts it, because if you're cycling it early you're denying yourself the out later, and giving away that you have it for later games.

Banewasp Affliction - Not only do you need to make the enchantment stick, but then you need to find another way to actually kill the creature... which will probably only shave three or four points off your opponent's life total. This is truly one of the worst cards in the set.

Behemoth's Herald - See Angel's Herald.

Bloodthorn Taunter - Not terrible, just not good, or ever really useful.

Brilliant Ultimatum - If you're spending seven mana, and all of it's colored, and it doesn't win you the game, you know you've got a bad card.

Cathartic Adept - Chances are, you're only going to mill one or two cards before you need to use the Adept to block the much better creatures your opponent's playing.

Clarion Ultimatum - Play only if you've somehow drafted a constructed deck.

Crucible of Fire - In Lorwyn/Morningtide, this card would've been insane. In a format where all the dragons are rare and can win the game well enough on their own, well....

Cunning Lethemancer - You're going to have cards you want to hold onto for long periods of time, so forcing yourself to use them or lose them isn't good.

Dawnray Archer - Exalted's nice, pinging is nice, but a 1/1 for 2U isn't.

Demon's Herald - See Angel's Herald.

Dispeller's Capsule - Never play this maindeck ever.

Dragon's Herald - See Angel's Herald.

Etherium Astrolabe - Its only use is that it's the only artifact in the format that serves as a combat trick for Glaze Fiend.

Goblin Deathraiders - It's a goblin, a three-power creature with trample... but it's never worth attacking with it because it'll die to anything. It's not bottom of the barrel, but there's always something better.

Goblin Mountaineer - It's barely good in the sideboard.

Gustrider Exhuberant - Naya's creatures don't really need the help.

Immortal Coil - If the number of cards in your graveyard is higher than your life total, you're in bad shape, and this card's not going to save you.

Invincible Hymn - If you're on the play and play this card as soon as possible, you'll go up to 25 - not a very impressive number unless you're way behind already. And if you draw it late, it's worthless.

Jhessian Lookout - You have to be really struggling for creatures to play this.

Keeper of Progenitus - In a three color format, chances are your opponent will be thanking you for powering out their big spells.

Lich's Mirror - If you're going to lose once, you're going to lose twice... unless your opponent's sole win condition is milling you with Cathartic Adepts.

Lush Growth - It looks great, until you realize that it doesn't actually accelerate you. It's better to make sure your land base is solid than to waste a spell slot on a card that does nothing.

Marble Chalice - Gaining one life a turn isn't going to win you the game any faster, it just gives your opponents time to play better cards than you.

Mindlock Orb - It's so obviously bad in limited that I can only recall one time I've ever seen anyone play it.

Protomatter Powder - Yech. There's no artifact in the set that's worth eight mana to bring back.

Resounding Scream - The only bad Resounding spell.

Sangrite Surge - +3/+3 and double strike would be broken if this was an instant, so why is it priced like it was supposed to be one?

Savage Hunger - Some of the best big creatures in Shards help themselves and other big creatures, so wasting an Aura to give them a relatively minor boost usually isn't worth it.

Shadowfeed - Why are the cards with the best art usually so terrible? Unearth creatures don't come alone, so you'd need more than a single bullet to deal with a good unearth strategy.

Skill Borrower - The only artifact you might want to use this with is Scourglass, another rare. Definitely not worth revealing information to your opponent.

Soul's Grace - Basically amounts to "prevent all combat damage target creature would deal this turn... or a turn to be named later."

Sphinx's Herald - See Angel's Herald.

Thoughtcutter Agent - 1/1s for two are rarely good. Wasting mana every turn on a useless ping when decks are fast is just plain bad.

Tortoise Formation - Since only Violent Ultimatum targets more than one permanent, this basically boils down to a bad, narrow counterspell.

Vectis Silencers - A 1/2 for 3 is mediocre, especially when you need to pay just to make it semi-useful.

Viashino Skeleton - Another overcosted creature with an ability it should have for much cheaper. I think Wizards's intention was to make it a discard outlet for unearth dudes, but that didn't quite pan out.

Volcanic Submersion - If you have five mana and your opponent is in a position where destroying one of their lands would seriously hurt them, you've already won. It's a somewhat good sideboard card against Esper decks, but nearly any other removal spell in the format is just as good in that situation.

Lastly, I'd like to give an honorary mention to Hindering Light. While certainly not bad, its usefulness is extremely narrow. And since there are few spells that target players in the format, it's only good if you know your opponent is packing lots of removal... or a Cruel Ultimatum. The only reason I mention it here is that I often see players using three of them in their decks, which is overkill under any circumstances.

==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.

==GUEST ARTICLES==
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==

January 3rd - April 19th: PTQ Season for PT Honolulu

The next PTQ season kicks off January 3rd, and the format is Extended!

PTQs in our area this season:

February 21st - Edison, NJ
March 14th - Philadelphia, PA

No details for New York PTQs are available yet.

April 3rd - April 5th: I-Con 28
Magic events will once again be held at I-Con, which is at Suffolk Community College's Brentwood campus this year. I'll have news about what tournaments are going to be run as we get closer to April, but just like last time there'll be cheap drafts and constructed events all weekend long!

==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

==FIN==

See everyone this weekend!

Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!

-Brian Paskoff
L1 NY

Islandhome #45

==ISLANDHOME #45==

January 7th 2009

==IN THIS ISSUE...==

Conflux Spoilers

==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: Chaos Draft at Brothers Grim ($13 entry) @ 2 PM

==NEWS BITES==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

PTQs for Pro Tour Honolulu have already begun, with a couple of PTQs last weekend starting the season off with a bang. While there are no decklists available yet, next week I'll have a write-up on the format and a discussion on the winning decks so you can prepare for the PTQs in our area. Speaking of which, I'm still planning on sanctioning an Extended tournament at the end of this month at FNC, so start preparing! Odds are there'll also be a Standard tournament running at the same time, so you can pick which format you'd like to play that day.

We've had a lot of fun cube drafting on Saturday nights, so if you want to join in, let me know! I'll be bringing my cube again this week for some hot action after the tournament.

==CONFLUX SPOILERS==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff

The prereleases for Conflux are less than a month away, and spoiler season is in full swing, with multiple updates to the list of rumored cards every day on MTGSalvation's forums. As of the time of this writing, there are forty-three cards in the official unofficial spoiler. As usual, players are eagerly awaiting the new set, especially after waiting so long in between the release of Shards of Alara and Conflux. With Faeries dominating a metagame that hasn't changed much at all in months, even after the usually-metagame-warping Worlds, everyone's hopeful that some big changes will come with this small set.

The Orb of Insight is up and running, and if you've never used an Orb of Insight before, typing in any word will show you how many times it appears on cards in the set. I'll let you poke through the Orb yourself, but the biggest find so far is something with a mana cost of WWUUBBRRGG - yes, that's two mana of every color.

White is apparently getting a Memory Lapse for 2W. Although it's one mana too much to compete with the classic "counterspell", it still might see play in some non-blue decks that want to delay their opponents' answers.

White's also getting a new one-mana removal spell in the vein of Swords to Plowshares: Path to Exile. Instead of giving your opponent life in exchange for removing their creature from the game, Path to Exile lets them search their library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped. While this doesn't seem nearly as good as Swords, or even Condemn in some situations, it may just replace Unmake in certain decks. Personally I'm not too thrilled about accelerating my opponent into a Wrath or Cryptic Command if I'm an aggro player facing a control deck.

The question on everyone's mind when preparing for Conflux was what answers the set would give them against Faeries. Speculation was rampant on some kind of Engineered Plague variant, but it was obvious that nearly any black or blue "answer" to Faeries would end up in the tiny hands of the Fae to be used against other decks. But now it seems we know the silver bullet - or one of them, anyway, as "countered" shows up more than once in the Orb - a red instant called Volcanic Fallout. For 1RR, you get an uncounterable instant-speed Pyroclasm that also hits players. Now sure it doesn't permanently deal with some of the bigger threats in Faeries such as Bitterblossom or Mistbind Clique (if it's already in play), but wiping the field of Faerie Rogue tokens, Spellstutter Sprites, Sowers, Scions, and even swinging Mutavaults doesn't make it easy for Faeries. And since it adds two damage to the life loss they've already taken from Bitterblossom and Thoughtseize, you're that much closer to victory. Might Faeries start splashing white for Burrenton Forge-Tender out of the sideboard? Anything's possible, and Arcane Sanctums make it somewhat painless.

Faeries does get another tool though, sure to make their sideboards. It's a miniature Undermine, a Negate-variant for UB that counters a non-creature spell and makes that spell's controller lose two life. It's a no-brainer for Faeries to replace Negate in their sideboards with this spell, and even Toast might switch this in.

Domain is making a comeback in Conflux. While Shards was focused strictly on three-color themes, now that the Shards are coming together, mana fixing is more rampant, and you'll be seeing all five colors together much more often. Domain's even keyworded on cards like Might of Alara, a functional reprint of Gaea's Might. For one green mana, a target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn for each basic land type among lands you control. The ability to give a creature +5/+5 for one mana at instant speed is quite strong, and it wouldn't shock me to see five-color aggro decks pop up trying to take advantage of this card in Standard and Extended.

Anyone who's seen the spoiled list of card names for the set has theorized what the card named "Conflux" would do, and for a while, it was speculated that the card would be a sixth basic land type, one that tapped for one colorless mana and did nothing else but add +1 to your domain spells. In truth, it's nowhere near that weird - Conflux is a 3WUBRG sorcery that lets you search your library for a card of each color and put them into your hand. It's sure to be used in five-color EDH decks... and not many other places.

For a long time, it was believed that Conflux would contain "enemy" tri-lands, ones that mirrored Shards's tri-lands but tapped for things like WUR and GWB. Now that we know three of the five lands in the set, this isn't a possiblity anymore, but that doesn't mean the lands aren't good: There's a reverse Reflecting Pool that taps for a color of mana your opponent's lands can produce, a Shimmering Grotto-like land that taps for colorless or taps to make a land you control any basic land type until end of turn, and a land that comes into play tapped, and taps for any color... but you need to pay 1 when it comes into play.

Conflux's prerelease is on January 31st, and while I'm not sure where it'll be yet, I'll be head judging Gray Matter's prerelease. Stay tuned to all the spoilers so you know what to expect on opening day!

==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.

==GUEST ARTICLES==
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==

January 3rd - April 19th: PTQ Season for PT Honolulu

The next PTQ season kicks off January 3rd, and the format is Extended!

PTQs in our area this season:

February 21st - Edison, NJ
March 14th - Philadelphia, PA

No details for New York PTQs are available yet.

==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

==FIN==

See everyone this weekend!

Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!

-Brian Paskoff
L1 NY