Conspiracy Draft Archetypes

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

Conspiracy: Take the Crown is landing in a local gaming store near you this very weekend and Magic: the Gathering players who are fans of this draft-game format are looking forward.  For those out there, who like us, are not tip-top outside of constructed format, there are some good resources out there to help make this and following weekends fun.  First and foremost, pop on over to the mothersite to read Marshall Suttcliffe's really solid and helpful article 'First Look at Drafting Conspiracy: Take the Crown' for tips 'n' tricks.  Otherwise, scroll on down to the bottom for a nice summary we've found online.

For now, we want to bring you attention to the Ultra PRO product line-up for Conspiracy: Take the Crown set to keep your awesome pulls protected and looking slick while playing at the games table.

Playmat versions 1 - Queen Marchesa

Playmat versions 2 - Summoner's Bond

Playmat versions  - Grenzo, Havoc Raiser

Deck Protector / card sleeves - Kaya art

Deck Box - Queen Marchesa

Righto - back on track to drafting Conspiracy -

In limited, we've always thought of building sealed pool / draft akin to building our own game table monster - starting with creatures as the skeleton and other spells as 'fleshing' out the rest.  Beyond this horrible analogy, we're quite useless at strategy but we do know that certain colour combinations lend itself well to evasion, whether it is W/U flyers or Aggro Ramp with R/G.  We have noted in this set, there are a fair number of cards in black / white which lends itself more to becoming the 'Monarch' at your table and the benefits of additional card draw that come with that designation.

Redditor 'CountryCaravan' had put together a very decent guide over here which provides a decent primer and suggestions for colour archetypes to consider when drafting this set.  Good luck to all those gamers cracking Conspiracy packs this weekend.

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KTK Top Standard Decklists

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

As promised in yesterday's post here on MTG Realm, we are going to touch on the recent Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir tournament in Honolulu, Hawaii to take a measure of which way the standard metagame is shaping up.  We'll suggest that most Magic: the Gathering players participating at their local gaming gaming store's Friday Night Magic event would have an interest in these results.  At our LGS, OMG! Games, here in Barrie, Ontario we've already seen a number of similar builds to that which placed Top 8 in Honolulu.  You can pop on over to the mothersite here to get last weekend's coverage. 

Listed below are 15 deck 'archetypes' and a short description as provided by Wizards in the linky above for those players which earned 21 points or better during the PT KTK event -

Abzan Aggro - 2 decks
This more aggressive take on Abzan often forgoes Sylvan Caryatid and Courser of Kruphix for more aggressively-minded creatures, such as Rakshasa Deathdealer and Herald of Torment, trying to put opponents off balance with some of the strongest creatures at every point in the curve. 

Abzan Midrange - 12 decks
This Sylvan Caryatid/Courser of Kruphix deck is packed full of value and individually powerful spells, trying to jam many of the format's best cards into the same 75-card decklist.

Shown - Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir #1 Abzan Midrange - Ari Lax

Blue-Black Control - 5 decks
A pure control strategy, this two-color deck wants to remove all of the opponent's threats one-by-one, pulling ahead on cards with Dig Through Time and Jace's Ingenuity. Perilous Vault is the sweeper of choice, and can reset virtually any board to the control player's favor.

Black-Green Devotion - 2 decks
These green-based devotion decks try to take advantage of all of the mana that can be generated by Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. There is often a small constellation sub-theme, with black helping out via removal.

Esper Control - 1 deck
Esper Control utilizes almost all of the most powerful control spells the format has to offer, going into white for End Hostilities and some forms of life-gain. Resolute Archangel and Nyx-Fleece Ram keep your life total high.

Jeskai Ascendancy Combo - 2 decks
The format's only true combo deck, Jeskai Ascendancy uses its namesake card along with creatures that make mana to churn through its deck, casting spell after spell before ultimately killing with a large attacking creature, decking from Altar of the Brood, or any number of ways. Retraction Helix and a zero-cost spell make the combo repeatable as many times as necessary. 

Jeskai Wins (Jeskai Tempo) - 15 decks
Using a significant compliment of burn spells and hard-hitting creatures, Jeskai Wins often ends the game in a flurry of damage. It's also capable of adapting a controlling role on occasion if the situation calls for it.

Shown - Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir #2 Jeskai Wins - Shaun McLaren

Mardu Midrange - 1 deck
This midrange deck generates most of its value from its Planeswalkers, then uses a suite of removal and disruption to keep the opponent off-balance while the Planeswalkers and efficient, frightening creatures do their work.

Mardu Planeswalkers - 1 deck
This midrange deck generates most of its value from its Planeswalkers, then uses a suite of removal and disruption to keep the opponent off-balance while the Planeswalkers do their work.

Naya Midrange - 1 deck
This midrange deck generates most of its value from its Planeswalkers, accelerating them out with green mana creatures like Sylvan Caryatid. Some of the format's strongest creatures let the deck also go big.

Red-Green Monsters - 1 deck
The deck uses mana acceleration to quickly pump out some of the biggest, scariest creatures in the format, helped out by a few of the biggest, scariest Planeswalkers in the Multiverse.

Red-White Heroic - 1 deck
Brutally fast and efficient, this deck utilizes the heroic mechanic to turn small, fast red and white creatures into large, fast red and white creatures.

Red-White Tokens - 2 decks
Hordeling Outburst and Goblin Rabblemaster team up with Monastery Swiftspear and a large helping of burn to quickly drop the opponent to zero.

Temur Monsters - 1 deck
The deck uses mana acceleration to quickly pump out some of the biggest, scariest creatures in the format.

Unwritten Devotion - 2 decks
This green and black devotion deck utilizes Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to make a ton of mana, supports a constellation sub-theme, AND goes for the big score with See the Unwritten.  
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Standard Deck Archetypes

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Today we hope to start a series of posts yattering about each of the popular Magic the Gathering deck archetypes now in standard constructed. Each additional post we will provide a sample decklist representing a typical build. Standard (or sometimes still called type II) is a 60-card Constructed format consisting of the two most recent blocks and any core sets released after either of those blocks. As of the last set release (September 30, 2011), Standard consists of cards released in the following sets - Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, New Phyrexia, Magic 2012 Core Set, and Innistrad. The current keywords / card mechanics that you will find in these sets are Battle Cry, Bloodthirst, Double-Faced Cards, Flashback, Imprint, Infect, Intimidate, Living Weapon, Morbid, Metalcraft, Proliferate, and Transform.

Common Decks that are being played on those Pro-Tour circuits and at your local Friday Night Magic event include the following (in alphabetical order) . . .

Birthing Pod - This is a build centered around Birthing Pod, and a variety of utility creatures, often with enters-the-battlefield abilities, to be fetched with it.
G/W Tokens - This is an aggressive build using multiple token-producing effects to swarm the opponent, often with Intangible Virtue, Gavony Township and/or Mikaeus, the Lunarch to pump token stats.

Mono-Red - A simple but effecient deck running releatively smaller creatures and a number of spells with direct damage to a target creture and / or player.

Solar Flare - This is one of the newer controll decks which uses permission and removal, combined with a heavy graveyard theme. Popular cards in this build may have flashback with additional spell plays with Snapcaster Mage. Some creature recursion is available with Unburial Rites and / or Sun Titan.

Tempered Steel - This is a quick tempo aggressive deck which uses inexpensive artifact creatures, often with evasion (flying) being pumped by the enchantment Tempered Steel.

Tezzeret - This control / aggro deck contains quite a few artifacts and the planeswalker Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. Other versions might also use Kuldotha Forgemaster as an enabler, to quickly power out mana-expensive cretures such as Blightsteel Colossus or other win conditions.

U/B Control - Classic control deck, using permission, removal and card advantage paired with a small number of win conditions.

U/W Blade - An evolution of the previous Standard season's "Caw-Blade", a midrange aggro-control deck pairing blue permission and card advantage with white removal and creatures, and Equipment.

Wolf Run Ramp - deck which uses green mana-ramp effects, particularly Primeval Titan, to produce a large amount of mana, which is then fed into Kessig Wolf Run to produce a lethal attack (often delivered by Inkmoth Nexus).
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This past weekend was the 2011 Magic World Championship in San Francisco which saw a variety of the above archetypes including several rogue decks attempting to sneak into the current metagame. Altough the Top 8 builds were dominated by Tempered Steel, the winner was Junya Iyanaga's Wolf Run Ramp which beat out Richard Bland's GW Tokens to take the title.

Top 8 decks from World Championships from San Francisco

Conley Woods - Tempered Steel
Craig Wescoe - Geist Aggro
Jun'ya Iyanaga - Wolf Run Ramp
Josh Utter-Leyton - Tempered Steel
Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa - Tempered Steel
David Caplan - Mono-Red
Richard Bland - Tempered Steel
Luis Scott-Vargas - Tempered Steel

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Lastly,

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