This holiday season, I’ve been thinking what an awesome time it is to be playing Magic. Standard is interesting and there are actually many viable decks, rather than the illusion of it. There are going to be competitive-level tournaments frequently that can qualify you for a PTQ. Star City has changed their prize structure and format layout to closer match a Grand Prix.

Most importantly, the store I co-own is still growing and doing extremely well. We will be able to participate in so many of these great new things happening in the game too.

It wasn’t always this way. I remember playing when the closest shop to me was at least a 45-minute drive away. Back then, prereleases were always awesome, but they were over an hour away. Big events consisted of 100-player PTQ’s, Regionals, States, and the local 30-player events on some Saturdays.

These days, at least in the US, we have more big events than a person can attend and the numbers are still growing. Most of my time these days is spent playing in events at my shop and meticulously maintaining our buylist. When I have free time, basically any weekend I can drive a couple hours to a big event. Although I have not attended many in the last six months running the shop, that will loosen up a bit as time goes on and I’m excited about the future of the game.

Thankful for Standard

While I’m not going to claim this is the best Standard format I’ve ever played in, I would have to say that it is quite enjoyable. There are a couple of ways the games play out in Standard that can be taxing, like trying to play through a chain of four-damage spells that kill you too quickly or most of your opponent's cards incidentally gaining life, but aside from the semi-regular appearance of those two sequences of events, the format has a certain eclectic beauty about it.

The main reason the format is interesting, constantly changing, and rewarding to deck builders is because Wizards did a phenomenal job of spreading out the power level of the Khans clans evenly between the five of them. Leave it to Brad Nelson to break that mold.

Brad basically took all the good cards from multiple archetypes and jammed them into a pile of sweet cards that don’t work together well at all. The benefit of this strategy is that every card in his deck is more powerful, which makes every draw step amazing.

This is dangerous path he has led us on. Now that four-color decks are known to be possible and successful, the cat is out of the bag and on the loose. No tournament is safe from unexpected cards appearing all over the place in Standard. The question is, how far can this be pushed and what is the best version?

As for me, I’ve been staying away from all of that lots-of-colors nonsense as I tend to not have the appropriate mana cards to cast my spells. What I’ve been playing has not changed much but it hasn’t stopped being the most fun thing I’ve competed with in a long time.

[cardimage cardname='Purphoros, God of the Forge']

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, I love Purphoros, God of the Forge! I am totally fine with him never being a creature and only being tons of damage from playing the cards I want to play anyway. I’ve been searching for a home for him for over a year now and this is the best shell by far. Here’s my current list.

Although the core of this Boros Tokens deck is still intact, some parts have changed. As you can see, the Chained to the Rocks are back in the deck now that Evolving Wilds has made an appearance. Even though we can Chain things, Banishing Light has proved an invaluable tool as our main answer to planeswalkers, as well as Perilous Vault.

A couple of weeks back I started to question Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker in Standard. I still think the card is amazing, but it does next to nothing against any Siege Rhino deck and I find that to be too big of a weakness. It took some willpower to come to that conclusion though because my love of the card and the flavor of the planeswalker was getting in the way of my deck building.

One day, I started to think I was wrong about Sarkhan but I didn’t believe myself. Rather than dismissing the thought though, I decided to test it out. I made a bold move for FNM and just changed the three Sarkhans to three Wingmate Roc. I thought I was almost certainly wrong about the change but what better way to test out something than a trial by fire, I thought.

[cardimage cardname='Wingmate Roc']

Since that day, no Sarkhans have entered the deck again. Wingmate Roc has exceeded my expectations time and time again. Although I’ve been lucky, I’ve never cast the Roc without getting both creatures. This run cannot last, but you have so many incidental tokens that you frequently will have a creature to attack with. Raise the Alarm is great with Wingmate also. Making two soldiers at the end of your opponent's turn into making your two birds is a frequent line of play that comes up.

The sideboard has changed a lot since last I wrote about this deck. Don’t underestimate the Magma Sprays. They have been one of the best aspects of the deck thus far. They are insanely good against Mono-Red and any Heroic deck. Combine that with Hopeful Eidolon and you will be the only one with hope of winning the aggro mirror.

One aspect about the deck that has not changed is how much it’s winning. Although I haven’t had the opportunity to test this deck at a larger event, I have been doing very well locally with it. I would confidentially recommend this deck to anyone looking to have fun and win at the same time. This deck has game against every deck in the format and can play a quick game or long one depending on what’s necessary.

Thankful for Star City GP’s

It was a normal slow evening at my shop when I heard the news from one of my friends that Star City Games was changing their format structure in their tournament series. Although I had been on their web site reading some articles and watching videos, somehow I missed the big announcement. You can imagine my surprise when one of my friends mentioned it causally that evening.

I stopped everything I was doing to inspect the details of the change for myself. Here’s what I found.

1st: $5000 (plus 25 Open Points)
2nd: $2000 (plus 20 Open Points)
3rd/4th: $1000 (plus 15 Open Points)
5th-8th: $500 (plus 10 Open Points) each
9th-16th: $325 (plus 8 Open Points) each
17th-32nd: $200 (plus 6 Open Points) each
33rd-64th: $100 (plus 4 Open Points) each
All Day Two competitors who don't finish in the Top 64: 3 Open Points
All players who don't make Day Two: 1 Open Point

So, instead of the prize payout for two events being 20,000, that’s now the total payout for the main event. Most of these events will be Standard, but some will be Legacy or Modern.

My next thought was how this compares to that of an actual Grand Prix. The comparisons are obvious because they are two-day events with high prize payouts, but how they actually break down is important. Here’s the current GP prize payout.

Place Up to 1,199 Players
1st $4,000
2nd $2,700
3rd-4th $1,500
5th-8th $1,000
9th-12th $600
13th-16th $550
17th-23rd $500
24th-32nd $400
33rd-64th $300
Total: $35,000

So the main difference between the two events is that the Star City events are more top heavy with $5000 being paid out to first. Grand Prix, with the exception of first place, pay out a bit more to each level of placing. Overall, they are quite similar and that excites me so much.

Grand Prix, or any two-day event for that matter, excite me more than other events. With Star City’s two-day events, basically everyone qualifying for day two should take home some prize money too. I am more excited to schedule some Star City events into my schedule now than I have been for the past couple of years. As far as I’m concerned, this is a great change for the Magic community.

There's a lot to be thankful for right now in this game. What things are you guys thankful about?

Unleash the Force!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com