Is that an Ulamog in your pocket?

The last 9 days have been pretty magically rich. You might not believe me because it’s been that long since I’ve written anything. At first, I was actually to busy playing to compose. I’m sure I could’ve found a little time but my schedule was all kerfuffled. But for the last last half of that stretch I’ve been waiting to finalize the details of something. I probably should’ve let you guys know early so you didn’t think I had disappeared, but we’re getting close to going live again soon.

I’ll be writing for Brainburst aka magic.tcgplayer.com starting sometime this week. The blogging will continue. But I hope you can understand that I wanted to see where everything stood before I started running my mouth as prodigiously as I was.

So look for me at TCGplayer (where Mike Flores has recently signed on as well), look for me here, and look for me at 02drop.com in the near future. I’ve got a lot to say.

Breaking Block: Investing in AIG (All-In Green)

In an earlier post, I explored what I thought to be the most important axis of the new Zendikar block format, abundant high-quality mass removal. Today, I’m going to look at what I think is the second most important choke point: explosive mana. There are conservative ways to exercise curve jumping like Everflowing Chalice and Eldrazi Temple, and I looked at them in some of my earliest posts (here and here) because that is where I expect the best decks to settle.

But I’m not going to be conservative today. I’m going to present the most powerful piece of mana-bludgeoning I can devise. The exciting thing is, while I expect some hybrid conservatively-big-mana control deck to be the best performing big-mana deck, I wouldn’t be shocked if some All-in-Green iteration was a major player in the format. Green mana is on steroids this block, both in terms of power and incidental functionality, and the outputs for that mana are also wonderful. I previously noted that much of the green mana is creature based and vulnerable to the format’s mass removal.

A Session with UR Polyplosive

If you look at my Polymorph posts from yesterday (Part 1 and Part 2), you’ll notice two things. First, and most importantly in a world where I didn’t screw up egregiously, I thought the UR build would be the worst of the 3. Second, and most importantly in this world, I forgot to put Polymorphs in the deck.

So first, an updated list:

Quick Hits and Name Drops

Thanks to Bill Stark for the front page blurb at his awesome MTG news site, The Starkington Post.

BDM, Mike Flores, and Zvi Mowshowitz talk through the Top8Magic.com preview card and the constructed impact of Rise of the Eldrazi in a series of podcasts. BDM was one of the first people I told about my interest in Joraga Treespeaker; Flores doesn’t seem nearly as excited. Excellent discussions, nonethless.