Anything But: The Impact of Deck Types

First off I would like to start by saying a belated Happy Holidays to all my readers and a preemptive Happy New Year! Before we get into things this week, I want to make a quick note and apologize for the fact that there will be no videos from me this time. While time has been short for me these past few weeks, the real motivation is that I’ve been quite sick and have had no voice for days. Rather than provide you with hoarsely commentated videos, I decided instead to attempt to restore my voice.

There is a whole theme to this week’s article based on taking a closer look at deck-types in order to obtain not only a better understanding of how decks work and how to approach them, but also a clearer look at what the current Pauper playing environment looks like. Now if you’re a regular follower of me on Twitter you may have noticed a recent discussion about Storm in Pauper. For the many months that I’ve been working on this series, I’ve used the term ‘Storm’ to classify decks using Empty the Warrens or Grapeshot as a combo finisher. Now this did require me to lump together different versions of the deck, which I deemed the appropriate thing to do because the way that the opponent attacks Storm is the same no matter which variant the Storm player is running. Well, after a bit of pressuring from SCG‘s own Alex Ullman as well as xMiMx, a respected Pauper player who you’re almost guaranteed to see in every event, I have decided finally to make the change and reclassify this single archetype as multiple archetypes. Since the beginning of the Competitive Corner I have resisted this particular change, but I respect the input from these two, and they made strong, clear points on why the change should be made. Let’s take a look and see how things look after this new split…

Another couple of weeks are back in the books and it is kind of nice to have the Competitive Corner back. It would seem that so far, the response to the new format has been positive, so I’m glad to keep it coming.

Daily Event Results 12/6 – 2/19

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I want to start by focusing on the split between TPPS and UR Storm. One of the concerns I had regarding the split was whether or not the breakdown would drop the more general “Storm” deck-type out of the top three archetypes. Pauper has a generally set big three, which is rounded out with DelverBlue and IzzetPost. While the most important thing I want to see from the Competitive Corner is accuracy of information, I also want it to provide a clear picture of what the strongest decks are. With this new split put into application, I came to realize that this was perhaps an unnecessary concern. TPPS managed a solid number-two showing, and the numbers lost to the new UR Storm classification were minimal. If you’re unaware of what the two variations of Storm may look like here are some sample lists…

Taking a look at the rest of the decks we see that Infect continued to have a strong showing as well, as it moved up a spot from last week and sat only three showings behind IzzetPost, which was in the number-three slot. Biggest drop from the week comes from MUC, which had 15 fewer showings then last week, an interesting contrast to the upswing of DelverBlue, which took that number-one spot.

Not to get back into the discussion about Wizards removing Daily Event postings, but I do feel like we’ve seen some of the creativity drop off. So far we’ve seen only one new deck in each of these two Competitive Corners with last week’s featuring a Simic deck focusing on defender interactions. This week we have a new GW Aggro deck, which brings us back to that nice homebrew feeling. I won’t begin to speculate on whether the restriction on listings is hiding decks or not, but I do find it interesting. It is nice, however, that instead of the typical handful of homebrew decks, we’re starting to see some of the classic rogues solidify a bit more. Things like Goblins have become more plentiful, Burn has managed to show up, and even FissureStorm has managed to become a Daily Event regular. This GW Aggro deck as piloted by Fliphead is quite an interesting combination of ramp and thick creatures like Blastoderm alongside a bit of life gain provided by Seraph of Dawn and Armadillo Cloak. If you’re interested in checking out the list, click on his name right up there, and it’s the last one on the list. Usually I’d link the deck directly, but that’s on pause temporarily until the MTGO Academy Deck Tech is back online in the wake of the website change.

One of the ‘enjoyable’ things that I’ve found about this new section is that I have to take time to sit down and watch replays for an entire Daily Event. Then, because Wizards doesn’t release the Daily Event results until the following day, there is a chance that the Daily Event that I just spent time looking through and recording data from could in fact be the one Wizards is releasing. Why is this a problem? Well, because that defeats the point of me taking the time to do this. The idea was to get information from a Daily Event that Wizards wasn’t covering. So if the next day I find the released Daily Event is the one that I took information from, then I have to do it all over again. Lucky me, I got the opportunity to do this three times until I found one Wizards wasn’t going to release. Oh well!

Fast Stats!
Daily Event: 4771130
Number of Players: 46
Deck Types Represented: 18
Packs Won: 105

Another decent showing for this event, which fired at 10:30 EST. We had 46 players who managed to bring 18 different deck types to the table. This time around the top played deck was a tie between DelverBlue and IzzetPost at 6 each. The event also managed to showcase a few decks we haven’t seen for awhile such as Teachings Control and Stinkweed Zombies as well as four other decks that showed up as singles. Here’s the breakdown for the event…

DelverBlue – 6
IzzetPost – 6
Goblins – 4
Infect – 4
MWA – 4
Hexproof – 3
Affinity – 3
UR Storm – 3
TPPS – 3
MBC – 2
WeeFiend – 2
Stinkweed Zombies – 1
Teachings Control – 1
EnchantStorm – 1
FissureStorm – 1
Burn – 1
DimirPost – 1

At the end of the second round, we had 12 players who had been eliminated thanks to a 0-2 start; however, two of these players decided to keep playing beyond that point. After the third round, another 11 players had reached that 2-loss point where they landed out of reach of prizes. This week our condolences go out to _Batutinha_ and sai199orz, who started strong with 2-0 records yet lost the rest of the rounds to miss out on the 3-1 prize minimum. We also had a lot of potential for a Round 3 spoiler when Pauper event regular deluxeicoff played against RBJr, who had been eliminated from the potential of earning prizes in the previous round. Unfortunately deluxeicoff managed to win outright 2-0 in the mirror match. Here’s how the matchups looked…

(In case some of the abbreviations don’t make sense, please feel free to ask in comments below for clarification. I’m working on getting the format down so all the text fits and is easy to read.)

Breaking things down to percentages does have a bit of a skewed effect this week. The deck with the best record in the event was EnchantStorm, which ended up 4-0 thanks to DoGBiscuit, the only player in the event running the deck. Beyond that showing, we also saw the only player running Teachings control end up with a 3-1 record, giving the deck a 75% win rate. Beyond these singles we saw Infect with a strong day winning almost 73% of their matches. For me the more interesting numbers came in at the bottom end of the scale. The one player running FissureStorm in this event dropped the first two matches, giving the deck a 0% win ratio; however, that is another oddity. The second-worse showing for the day was a bit more surprising, as TPPS came in winning only 12.5% of its matches. This deck is a very strong contender, and we already talked about how the deck is a regular in the top three. For it to drop the ball this hard is quite an unusual happenstance.

Like last week we had another Daily Event where only three players managed to hit 4-0, running Infect, IzzetPost, and of course DoGBiscuit’s EnchantStorm. Also ending in the money were 12 other players who managed to bring about a 3-1 record for a combined total of 105 packs won.

EnchantStorm

In this week’s deck spotlight we’re going to be talking about a deck made successful on the back of a single player. While this section is meant to focus on a specific deck that worked as a rogue homebrew, you’ll find that EnchantStorm seems to show up more often than you’d expect from a rogue deck. While usually this section will feature a deck that was seen only once during a week and is something new, we’re switching it up slightly and showing you a deck that showed multiple times, but was run by the same player all those times. The noteworthy player is DoGBiscuit, and here is his deck…

In simplest terms, thi is a FissureStorm deck approached in a different way. When you look at the deck I label as FissureStorm, the idea is that you use Nightscape Familiar and Sunscape Familiar to reduce the cost of (mostly) blue spells and then untap the Ravnica Karoo lands using Cloud of Faeries and Snap to generate a bunch of mana and storm off a Temporal Fissure to take your opponent back to Turn 0. This control aspect doesn’t work exactly like TPPS or UR Storm because in those versions, Empty the Warrens and/or Grapeshot are the finishers, whereas in FissureStorm, Temporal Fissure isn’t your win condition. The spell instead allows you to dominate your opponent by locking out their board in the same way that IzzetPost abuses Capsize, and then you swing through with your tiny creatures to eventually finish him off.

So how does this version differ? Well, the most obvious difference is in the mana generation. With the use of the familiars, FissureStorm is basically creating extra mana through cost reduction. In EnchantStorm, the deck is still generating extra mana; however, it is done with the aid of the variety of mana enchantments. The deck also gains significant advantage through a stronger use of the blink mechanic. Running a full set of return-from-the-grave creatures with Archaeomancers and Mnemonic Walls alongside Ghostly Flicker allows the deck to gain access to cards once lost. In most FissureStorm decks, you’re running minimal copies of Temporal Fissure, and because it isn’t actually your win condition, you sometimes need to get Temporal Fissure stormed off more than once in order to clear the board and allow you to attack through. With the lack of familiars, you’re granted more room for the return abilities of Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall, thus allowing yourself to reuse your graveyard.

One of the things I liked most about the deck is perhaps the single use of Grapeshot in the Sideboard. Thanks to the use of Fertile Ground, the deck actually has access to the red mana needed for Grapeshot. I can only imagine how much fun it would be for a completely blue and green deck to come out of left field and throw a Grapeshot in your face.

Now this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen this deck on the Pauper scene. The deck has actually been around for awhile. While I’m not exactly sure of when it first arrived, I will explain my experience with it over the past year. When EnchantStorm finally started showing up, there was a small buzz and a few players jumped on the chance to give it a try. It’s a typical scenario where something cool and new comes along, and the Internet just HAS to try it out. This was no different, but those who played it slowly died off until DoGBiscuit was the last man standing. It was a similar scenario for the RB version of Tortured Reanimator, and I think it works out better for the decks in the long run. These decks continue to make showings because the players who are still running them are intimately familiar with how the deck works and how the interactions work against other decks in the format. This is the case with DoGBiscuit, who regularly shows up with EnchantStorm and does amazingly with it. This week alone DoGBiscuit went undefeated twice and had three other 3-1 showings.

Taxonomy.

Taxonomy at its most basic definition is the way that species are classified in a very specific manner. The system as we know it today is often understood as a hierarchy of naming that would ensure that creatures would have only one correct name. What this means is that when someone rattles off one of those big, complex Latin names, other people immediately know the exactly what was being discussed. The classification of two different species into the same group is based upon shared characteristics and/or phylogenetic lineage.

Okay, that’s already way too much serious information for my tastes. How does this all relate to Magic? Well, in a similar manner to the essentials of taxonomy, we classify decks in order to be able to identify components of the deck and understand approaches. Throughout the almost-year that I’ve been working on this Pauper-specific series, I’ve made several changes in order to better classify decks for others. Take the past two articles alone for an example. Last week, after a bit of research, I re-classified RDW as Burn in order to better illustrate to people the differences between the two decks. This week we took my former classification Storm and broke it down into TPPS and UR Storm.

The idea behind classifications is the understanding of specific decks’ characteristics. When I classify a deck as Infect, you immediately know the deck will manifest the following basic characteristics:

* Small creature base.
* Majority of creatures will have the infect mechanic.
* Non-creature spells will be focused on creature pump.
* Mono-green.
* No removal outside of sideboard/combat tricks.

Are there some exceptions to these rules? Of course there are. However, if you’re prepared going into a Daily Event or any competitive Pauper environment, you’ll know exactly what to expect from a deck that drops Glistener Elf on Turn 1. One of the things that makes our Competitive Corner as effective as it is, is the fact that we constantly work as a community to make sure decks are properly defined.

Rewind for a bit to May of 2012. I was not very far into my new Pauper-based Anything But series and the Competitive Corner was just forming. Before this article, I took Mono-Blue Control (MUC) and combined it with DelverBlue into a single deck-type. This resulted in a significant domination by “MUC” over every other deck in the format, which was not entirely accurate with respect to data-interpretation. While DelverBlue did have a significant period of time where it basically strangleheld the Classic Pauper meta, the additional numbers from MUC made it look even more powerful than it was. This week I am once again considering my classification of MUC and wondering whether or not the category deserves to be split again. Let’s start by taking a look at where MUC and DelverBlue are today…

This list is a relatively good example of what DelverBlue looks like today with one small change. A lot of decks have started to use Frostburn Weird in place of other aggressors such as Phantasmal Bear or even Spire Golem. There are also some interesting choices in the sideboard, but that is a discussion for another day. So what are some of the characteristics that make Delver, Delver?

The Creature Base:
When talking about DelverBlue you have to start here because the creatures in this deck influence everything else. One of the biggest reasons that DelverBlue stands out from MUC is the fact that it has a substantial creature base. DelverBlue is at its very basic a blue control deck; however with such a substantial creature base the deck can actually play the aggro game very well. These are some of the creature characteristics you can expect from DelverBlue…

* Evasion – Many fliers in the form of Spire Golem, Delver of Secrets, Stitched Drake, and a number of faeries. This evasion allows you to sneak in Ninja of Deep Hours consistently and get past a number of creature walls.
* Cheap Cost – If you exclude Spire Golem, then the majority of creatures in DelverBlue are covered under the 1 or 2 mana casting cost. Even including Spire Golem you’ll be able to cast that as early as Turn 3 thanks to the ability to reduce its cost by playing Islands.
* Weenie Power – Odd name, but the basic idea is that most of the creatures that are being played fall under the “weenie” rule where they are incredibly cost efficient for their power level. Consider for example Delver of Secrets, which can be seen as a 1-cost, 3-power creature. Most “weenie” decks look to capitalize on such favorable cost to power ratios.

This last point is where the addition of Frostburn Weird comes in because it’s played for cheap, but has the potential to utilize unused mana and potentially swing for 4 damage. One of the drawbacks that most MUC decks deal with is that if you cannot use countermagic to prevent a creature from hitting the field, then you usually have few if any options to interact with that creature. In order to further control the use of that creature, you’re going to have to rely on combat, and the potential of Frostburn Weird to swing for 4 gives you that potential to deal with even the most tricky of creatures.

The Manabase:
The manabase behind DelverBlue is pretty self-explanatory. Very rarely will it include nonbasic lands, but be aware that it does have the potential, just like any other MUC deck, to bring in things such as Quicksand and/or a singleton copy of Lonely Sandbar. The most important thing, however, to note is that because DelverBlue uses that “weenie” approach to creature choice it can get away with running fewer lands. This is also granted benefit from the fact that the deck is single-colored and does not require much effort in order to find the colors you need to play the spells in your deck. Many established decks in Pauper will run from 23 to 24 lands, but when you’re able to reduce the number of card slots that are to be dedicated to lands, then you increase the number of other spells the deck can play. This makes more room for other creature or non-creature spells. When you split the focus of a deck into two game approaches (i.e., aggro, control, combo) you are usually making yourself weaker at one of both of those approaches. The reduced number of lands and increased room for other spells is one of the reasons that DelverBlue can approach a game successfully from both aggro and control game plans (since it is able to bring in additional creatures and countermagic/draw spells).

Non-Creature Spells:
This part can be simply summed up in the fact that the non-creature spells will be covered under one of two objectives. The spell will either counter a spell or draw cards. There are a few minor exceptions to this rule, which mostly come in the form of Vapor Snag, but more often than not this card is seen as a sideboard option if it’s in the deck at all. I’m not going to waste a lot of time discussing this here because we’re going to be discussing it more later on.

On the other side of things, here is an example of MUC…

This list is a pretty good example of what MUC usually looks like. One of the most important things to note about an MUC classification is that it covers a lot of different varieties. MUC is a deck that can be interpreted in a number of different ways using different creatures and spells, but at its essence MUC lists are similar in how they vary from DelverBlue lists.

The Creature Base:
One of the main characteristics of Delver is how it can be such an aggressive deck thanks to the fact that at least a third of the cards in the deck are creatures, but when it comes to MUC, this is a significant point to the contrary. It is pretty typical that MUC will run at most 10 creatures. By keeping the creature base low, the deck makes room for additional control spells, which can work to dictate the tempo of the game and protect what few creatures the deck does run. Another key characteristic is that you’ll see a lot of MUC decks running a full set of the Spire Golems, which allows the deck to have an opportunity to drop the 2/4 flier for nothing, thus leaving all mana untapped in order to play required countermagic.

The Manabase:
The lands in MUC work as another difference between the two decks and are once again a direct correlation to the creature base. As noted above, MUC uses fewer creatures in favor of more spells. This means that the deck wants to have a larger number of available lands so that it will ensure that it has the ability to cast what it wants when it wants. Another key characteristic of MUC is that it likes to run a full set of Quicksands. As I mentioned earlier, when you’re playing a mono-blue deck, you’re going to be dealing with creatures before they enter the battlefield because once they hit that board, there are very few efficient ways for you to handle them outside of combat, which is disadvantageous because you’re usually running smaller creatures. By running a full set of Quicksands, MUC now has an option to directly control creatures on the board as long as they fall within the Quicksand requirements.

I don’t want to talk much about the non-creature spell base in MUC because it’s a lot of the same. While MUC often runs more of them than Delver, they usually follow the same purposes drawing cards or countering spells. Instead we need to move onto the newest member of the MUC family, MUC Post. As I was in the process of writing this article, I came to discover that there have recently been two other great pieces that have come out discussing this deck. I want to urge you to check these out because what I’m trying to do here is not discuss the deck from a primer or deck-tech view point, but instead to take a look at its general characteristics in determining whether or not the MUC deck-type needs to be further split. So here they are for your reading/view/listening pleasure…

Dime a Dozen #12: The Real Post Blues by Jason Moore aka dimecollector. Jason takes a great look at the deck, and you can watch his videos to see the deck in action.

Pauper to the People Ep. 88. The guys over at the Pauper to the People podcast sit down with newplan, a player who is a well-known name around the Pauper community for his MUC play, and discuss the deck (it’s maybe an hour and a half in, but they have a lot of great information, so it’s worth listening to up to that point and beyond)

So let’s take a look at the deck that is garnering all this discussion, shall we?

As you can see, this deck, like all Cloudpost decks, takes the opportunity to abuse the insane amount of mana that can be generated off of the locus lands. This has a great effect on the creatures that mono-blue has access to. One of the struggles that blue has when it comes to sizeable creatures is that they require a significantly larger mana cost. It isn’t unusual for you to even see something like Errant Ephemeron in MUC Post, which is a perfect example as it requires you to pay a converted mana cost of 7 in order to play a creature with only 4 power. The use of creatures like this is unfavorable for MUC decks because they really need lands. If at any point in time, you sit down and pay out 4 to 6 mana to play a creature, then odds are good that you’re going to be completely tapping out all your lands in order to make that one play. In MUC this is terrible because you want to have not only as much mana as possible, but you want it untapped so that you can make plays during your opponent’s turn, control the game’s tempo, and make multiple plays if necessary, which is where the locus lands come in.

The list above is from newplan, who is incredibly experienced with MUC even prior to the move towards MUC Post. As I have only played the MUC Post list casually, I have no authority to question his card choices, but there are some card choices he has made that you won’t see in other MUC Post lists. I will say one of my favorite things about newplan’s deck that I really should integrate into mine is the use of Hindering Touch in the sideboard. While this spell works as a great answer to storm decks it is often left out because that 4-mana cost is heavy for most MUC decks to run, but with the locus lands, this is of course no problem. Other versions tend to like to take advantage of the extra mana to bring in some of the big mana spells that are staples of IzzetPost such as Capsize and Condescend. Here’s the list I run, for example…

Up until this point, I have linked these MUC decks and MUC Post decks together, but it has always been in the back of my mind on whether or not this was the correct move. The initial decision to combine the two decks relates back to my thoughts on combining MUC and DelverBlue. What eventually drew the decision to split those two came down to whether or not they differed on how you approach playing against them most importantly, but also if the characteristics between the two vary. So let’s take a look at how these three decks match up…

(*This is including Ninja of the Deep Hours, which can be misleading, as it does not actually draw cards unless damage is done.)

When you look at this chartm you can get a lot of information about these three decks and what one does better than the other two. The most obvious would be the creature count on DelverBlue. As we talked about a lot earlier, the fact that DelverBlue has a significantly heavier creature base than the others makes it a bit more aggressive. What balances this out with the control aspect is the use of Spellstutter Sprites, and Cloud of Faeries allows them to run countermagic on a body.

When you move down the list and look at the countermagic, things are mostly average between the three types. The count is an average of a few recent MUC lists I’ve seen, which have run upward of 16 spells for countermagic. However, I’ve also seen many lists that average more along the lines of 10-11 countermagic spells in favor of a little more draw, which puts the three on the same line. It’s important to know that when facing a generic MUC deck that you’re going to run the risk of more countermagic than with the other two, but I always keep in mind that magic number of 11. If I’m playing against a blue control deck in Pauper, I run a mental count as I play as to how much countermagic has been used so that I can guess better toward a safe time period to sneak in a spell.

As a whole, and it should not be surprising, the MUC deck runs a heavier control package. Countermagic aside, the deck uses the smaller creature base in order to make room for those additional control spells and allowing you to see those approximately 10 board control spells. Once again, these are spells that control creatures once they’ve actually hit the board. If you’re looking to have a heavier control package, then this will be your deck of choice. In a similar way, we know that DelverBlue is the deck of choice when you want to run some control but still maintain an aggressive creature base, and MUC Post can use a decent amount of draw in order to find what it needs to win games.

Once you’ve identified the meaningful parts of the decks, you start to understand how they work and how the cards interact. I’ve always said that the best way to understand how to be a certain deck is to play with that deck and learn for yourself how the pieces all work together. When you know the integral parts, you know how to attack that deck and what parts to target in order to win. For example, when playing against Storm decks, you know that there are specific cards you want to target with countermagic or discard spells. Just throwing out a Counterspell against the first card that a Storm deck plays is going to not only waste a spell, but also may even relevantly add to their Storm count.

When it comes to playing against these blue control decks there is a lot of importance that comes from your own play as opposed to specific cards to attack. As a general rule for playing against countermagic, it’s important to know when to play spells in order to avoid that Counterspell or knowing what spells to throw away in order to draw out countermagic to make it so a better card can get through later. So in contrast to our Storm example, it can be more important to know when to play your own spells as opposed to knowing that it can be more important to target a Manamorphose over Dark Ritual. That being said, there are a lot of other things you can do to play better against these blue control options. At the same time, it’s important to keep note of your opponent’s hand size in a control match so that you can again make those plays around as much countermagic as possible.

Against DelverBlue, you know that some better control plays against creatures can really benefit you. For example, with your opponent getting a low hand, it becomes more important to target Ninja of Deep Hours to keep their hand low for as long as possible. Targeting creatures in Delver can be important for denying countermagic as well when you start clearing out those faeries and making the Spellstutter Sprites more effective. I will add a disclaimer and say that one of the things that makes the deck as strong is as it is, is the fact that it does play the aggro and control game both pretty effectively at the same time. So attacking creatures can be an effective strategy; however, there is a lot of potential for them to get around those and protect the board state.

Against MUC, it’s important to be aware of the heavy non-creature base, and working around this is the most important thing. When you play this match, you know that they will have very few creatures, and won’t be looking to win the game early. If you can get around that countermagic and target what few creatures they do have, then you’ll be able to take away their win condition. It can be tough to have a deck where your win condition is restricted to approximately a sixth of your deck or less because your odds of finding it are of course decreased. As an opponent continues to take away those creatures as you find them, then it gets even tougher. Smart MUC players will be aware of this and plan carefully about when they use countermagic in order to protect those important pieces.

The MUC Post is where things start to get a bit more complicated. As opposed to just bringing in an Echoing Decay set for dealing with the one thing UR Storm has as its win condition, Empty the Warrens, you need to attack a few different aspects. This deck can rely on the same ideas of MUC where it has a smaller creature base, and if those can be controlled, then you’ll be able to take away their win condition and slow the deck to a crawl. However, it doesn’t just stop there because you’ll also want to attack the graveyard interactions the deck can abuse with the Mnemonic Wall/Archaeomancer-Ghostly Flicker combo, which can create card advantage, protect creatures, and gain almost infinite amounts of life. Finally, the deck makes you want to attack the mana base as well. The locus lands are the backbone of post decks, and the excessive amount of mana that can be generated off of Cloudpost is what allows the deck to get away with running those bigger spells such as Condescend and Ulamogs Crusher. Taking out these mana beasts will also be an effective way of keeping the deck under control, but in the same way that MUC can protect its board state, MUC Post is going to be able to protect its lands.

If you can’t tell at this point, I’m entirely leaning towards the fact that I should be splitting off BluePost from MUC, but this series isn’t about me. So now you’ve taken a look at the different versions of blue control in Classic Pauper and we took a quick look at approaches to play against them as well. Now it’s your turn to weigh in on the subject! Leave your comments below!

I just wanted to add a quick note here as we come to year’s end. The next time you hear from me, it will be 2013 and there will be lots of great things to come. We’ll be experiencing Gatecrash, which should also have great impact on Pauper thanks to the additional five guild mechanics and guildgates. Here on MTGO Academy we’ll keep checking out competitive and casual Pauper. I already have some great plans in the works including a recap of some of the Competitive Corner numbers in order to discuss deck matchups, and a massive piece on Cloudpost, which is part of my ongoing YouTube series. There I’ll be finally bringing about the rebirth of Budget Mechanics and continuing Fan Fixes, which can be sent to me at MTGOJustSin[at]yahoo.com. So once again, best wishes for the New Year to all!

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