New Quest

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G'Day folks and Happy Tuesday,

Across Ontario and many other provinces in Canada-Land, we were celebrating Family Day while south of the border, our American cousins were celebrating President's Day. President's Day just seems so much cooler than spending time with the fam (just kidd'n - we had a massive breakfast buffet and were quite glad to have worn our buffet pants for the occasion).

Anywhoos -
To business. We have a couple of things to get off the plate today - first up a look at Frank Karsten's mono-white Quest deck from Paris and then to the announcement in today's Magic Arcana - another Duel Deck. Strap in and let's go . . .

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Magic Pro Tour Hall of Famer Frank Karsten shares his Mono-White Quest Standard deck from Pro Tour Paris that is all about getting Argentum Armor onto a cheap creature. A deck list will be posted later this weekend. Frank came in around 47th place, which considering how vast the field was - this is not to shabby.

Frank had with great wit, called his deck "Car-Go" (after the ubiquitous rise of the 'Caw-Go' decks) as he built it in the back of his buddy's car while they were driving from the Netherlands to Paris.

Here's the vid from WoTC ->

So let's have another look as to what's in it . . .


60 Cards 23 Lands : 4 Marsh Flats, 4 Arid Mesa, 11 Plains, 4 Contested War Zone
31 Creatures : 4 Glint Hawk, 4 Memnite, 4 Ornithopter, 4 Accorder Paladin, 3 Squadron Hawk, 4 Signal Pest, 4 Steppe Lynx, 4 Kor Skyfisher
6 Other Spells : 4 Quest for the Holy Relic, 2 Argentum Armor
15 Sideboard Cards : 1 Squadron Hawk, 2 Jinxed Idol, 1 Journey to Nowhere, 4 Kor Firewalker, 3 Refraction Trap, 1 Sword of Feast and Famine, 1 Sword of Body and Mind, 2 Divine Offering








This is a great deck - it is within the budget of most casual players - even us. We already had something very similar to this ahead of the release of Mirrodin Besieged and had modified our existing deck when MBS came out - we sideboarded some extra equipment and dropped in the new Signal Pest. We went back to the drawing board and copied Karsten's exact build and took it to our casual standard metagame and was promptly chewed up and spat out after several hours against a variety of decks at our kitchen table. We might think of taking this to FNM but are shy. Anyways - like we may have said in the past, what works on a Pro-Tour circuit may fail in an epic way at the kitchen table. Pro-Tour decks are designed to win against popular archetypal builds at the tournament.

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Next up -

It's vengeance versus guile to decide the fate of a shattered plane.
Duel Decks: Ajani vs. Bolas

The leonin Ajani Goldmane scours the shards of Alara with a single thought in mind: revenge. Filled with rage at the murder of his brother, Jazal, Ajani searches for his killer. Leaving no stone unturned, his wrath grows along with his power as a Planeswalker, leading him to an ultimate showdown with the Multiverse's master manipulator. Nicol Bolas is beginning to feel effects of the eons of time and knows it will take the mana of an entire plane to rejuvenate his ancient power and set his new schemes in motion. As he expertly maneuvers the pieces of his interplanar game into place, he encounters an indomitable will bent on retribution. The battle of Alara's Maelstrom is in your hands. Determine the fate of an entire plane and the outcome of an epic conflict between two rival Planeswalkers.

Deck Design and Development: Chris Millar and Mark Gottlieb
Languages Available: English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish
Release Date: September 2, 2011
MSRP: $19.99
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And finally -
We always look forward to see where players may be taking their game next and follow popular cards. Here is a very odd / interesting list from MTG Mint Card showing the Mirrodin Besieged Top 10 selling cards as of Feb 2011 . . .

1. Psychosis Crawler
2. Black Sun's Zenith
3. Thopter Assembly
4. Contested War Zone
5. Phyrexian Vatmother
6. Bonehoard
7. Creeping Corrosion
8. White Sun's Zenith
9. Mitotic Manipulation
10. Inkmoth Nexus

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