Thursday Miscellany

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

A bit of a mixed bag for you today so bring a compass while we wander aimlessly over a bunch of Magic: the Gathering related news.

First up - Your FNM meta

With the rise in populatiry of Esper Control in the Top 8 positions of Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir, we fully expect to start seeing these at our local gaming store, OMG! Games here in Barrie.  Specifically, look for a rise in control decks with finishers such as Dragonlord Ojutai and / or Silumgar, the Drifting Death along with a singleton of Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.  

More regional tournaments are certainly evolving this way too but we still see a decent variety of decklists making top marks like Bant Heroic, Jeskai Tokens, Abzan Aggro and others.  We think that players will be quick to react and evolve to this change with tweaked or new lists such as Sam Black's Red / Green Bees (featuring Hornet's nest) or perhaps going all out mono-red like Raphael Levy's Mono-Red Devotion with fliers such as Ashchloud & Flamewake Phoenix and Thunderbreak Regent.

Next,

Earlier this week, Marijn Lybaert with Tournamentcenter.eu, (the organizer of Grand Prix Utrecht 2015) previewed two more Modern Masters 2015 cards - Splinter Twin and Spellskite, both rather popular in modern format.

While we are yattering about GP Utrecht, here is the very cool playmat by Rob Alexander which is to be part of the organiser's VIP package and prize wall. 

Lastly,

Some news about some of the controvesy you may have heard from the Pro Tour Dragon's of Tarkir tournaments.  Quite specifically, an update on the investigation into possible cheating which was posted to the mothersite yesterday.  

Filipe Valdivia has been suspended from playing in sanctioned Magic tournaments for six months following his investigation.  Felipe Valdiva took a scryland back to his hand and replayed it to scry before using Narset's +1 ability.

Stephen Speck has been suspended from playing in sanctioned Magic tournaments for 36 months following his investigation.  Stephen Speck disqualified for presenting a 53 card deck to his opponent with a 7 card hand off to the side.

Patrick Chapin was given a game loss and we won't get into that at all as we don't completely agree with the judge's call on it and yet at the same time can clearly see the other side of the argument.

Also Jeremy Dezani disqualified for misrepresenting the game state to the judge.  Jeremy had some previous history which could be considered questionable.  In this case the incident occurred in Round 8 when judges were called to his table by the players in the match and involved a missed trigger on an Eidolon we think. After an investigation, it became clear that Dezani had modified his version of the story while discussing the incident with judges.


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