Jund Domination in SCG $5K Richmond, Virginia

Jund does it again! Yes folks, the Shards of Alara plane continues to dominate the Standard metagame with the recent top finish at Star City Games $5000 Open event in Richmond, Virginia. The pilot was Alex Bertoncini which had previous top finishes in the previous SCG events. He faced a Jund mirror matchup in the finals against Alessandro Culotti and proved he is the better Jund master. Here’s the list that he used: Read more

How to Deal With Jund

Hi all. It may be known to you or you have noticed lately that the Jund aggro seems to be the most dominating deck in the current Zendikar Standard.

As I have checked on the recent tournaments on Magic Online and on Magic-League, the results have proved it. It seems that the new cards aren’t enough to counter the power of the Cascade spells.

However, we analyze a few weaknesses of the deck, which later on we can use to adjust to our deck building strategies. Here are a few of them: Read more

Yuuya Watanabe Wins Grand Prix Melbourne

Grand Prix Melbourne in Australia finished with Yuuya Watanabe winning on top. Yuuya defeated a fellow Japanese and Pro player Tomoharu Saito with his blue-black deck with the bomb rare Sphinx of Jwar Isle. Saito drafted a controllish black green deck with 2 Marsh Casualties, the Vampire legend Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet, and with splash for blue and red. Their record was two games to one. Here are the drafted deck list of the two. Read more

Tournament Report: Zendikar Prerelease

Hey all. I hope you all had a good Zendikar prerelease weekend opening your desired fetchlands, Planeswalkers and other good cards. I just felt bad because Saturday was also the day that the tropical storm Ondoy ravaged our nation’s capital Manila and the nearby provinces. Casualties and death are still increasing as of the moment and I hope those people affected get enough help to return their lives to normal. Read more

Tournament Report: Phil. Open Day 2 – Standard (11th place)

Hi all. It’s been one week since I went to Manila to participate in the MTG Philippine Open 2009, together with the rest of Team Iloilo. To recall, Mao and Oliver got invites to the Nationals and the Phil. Open was the side event. They started well on the Standard part but got the losses on the Drafts. On Day 1 of the Philippine Open which is an Alara Block format, I decided to pilot my friend’s 5 color aggro. I started 1-2 and frustrated, decided to drop early because I wasn’t really comfortable with the deck’s lack of removal. I just went ahead and took some pictures of the Day One happenings and promised myself to get it back on the Standard format the next day. Read more

Iloilo M10 Prerelease Pics

Here are our pics taken during the M10 Prerelease Party here in Iloilo City. It showcased the event area, some game highlights and the awards segment. To recall, I got into the top 4 (4th place actually) with a 3-1 record. John Paul got the undefeated record 4-0 and got the first place and the T-shirt prize. The other t-shirt went to Mao who got 2nd place with 3-1. Better luck for me next time on the shirt.
Read more

Tournament Report: Playing The Core (Set)

Yesterday was a fun-filled Magic2010 Coreset Prerelease for us here in Magic Iloilo community. Although the participants were lessened to 18 players, it was still an enjoyment on us opening those M10 packs and the excitement of getting the chased rares. Too bad for me as none of my starting six booster packs have the rares that I wanted. The good thing though is that the deck has a lot of limited bombs.
Read more

Blue White Kithkins For Standard

Last Friday, I decided to tweak my Mono White Kithkins deck by splashing blue for Negate. The mono white list was based from Daniel de Almeida Alves’ Kithkins list that got first place in GP Sao Paulo. Here’s my mono white kithkins list.

Mainboard
2 Mutavault
16 Plains
3 Rustic Clachan
4 Windbrisk Heights

3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
4 Cloudgoat Ranger
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Knight of Meadowgrain
4 Wizened Cenn
3 Ranger of Eos

1 Ajani Goldmane
4 Glorious Anthem
4 Path to Exile
4 Spectral Procession

Read more

Tournament Report: Alara Reborn (Pre)Release

Hey guys. Just to keep back on track on updates, I decided to share with you my experience on our local Alara Reborn Prerelease last Saturday. You might be asking why its a prerelease since the scheduled date was April 25. Its because the product shipment was held by the Bureau of Customs. I didn’t knew the real reason (and too pissed to find out) why they did that but that really forced the local retailers to change the schedule a week later. Of course, a lot of players were disappointed of that delay but government crap can’t stop Magic players who enjoyed last weekend. I’m sure most of you too as this was also the schedule for the Release events. Read more

Tournament Report: The Summer Cruise

Hi guys, I hope you had a fun weekend. I am writing this short report of my performance on last weekend’s back to back tournament. The first was on Saturday and the second was last Monday, both in Standard format. I joined the tournament piloting R/W Lark which I was trying to master/get familiar with since February.

There are actually a few different builds I’ve found on the net and the main argument is whether to use Mindstones or not. I’ve tried Saito’s build (4 Mindstones, 4 Knight of the White Orchid, 22 Lands) but I didn’t like the deck that much. Its main problem is mana screw. The other builds are basically metagame based so I used that as a reference to come up with my list. Here’s the decklist I’ve piloted: Read more

Next Page »