The first of two articles today in anticipation of Monday’s Banning announcement. Will Jace, the Mind Sculptor stay legal? What about Stoneforge Mystic? Brook Gardner-Durbin explores what options will be available to you if either or both of the above get the axe!

Every Death Star needs a thermal exhaust port, and Jules takes you down the process and reasoning for bringing some weakness to go with your big guns in Commander!

We’ve had 2 weeks of Opens to see the impact New Phyrexia has had on the Standard and Legacy tournament scenes. I’m going to focus on Standard, since the Grand Prix this weekend is Legacy, and will almost certainly have more players than the SCG Open series gets. Waiting on that will give us a bit of a better view on the format. However, for Standard, there’s no reason to wait, especially since the format hasn’t really undergone much of a change.

In the third and final installment of his design review of New Phyrexia, Gregory discusses the Green and Artifact cards.

My quest led me down past Mirrodin, into the evil depths of Darksteel, and out along the treacherous path of Fifth Dawn. As I pressed onward, I looked back through the Scars of Mirrodin. Looking back from that perspective, it didn’t seem quite as bad. Nightmares of the Ravager long since overcome, only to be replaced over and over again. With the [card Jace, the Mind Sculptor]evil demon[/card] lurking everywhere, sometimes it’s hard to remember clearly what it was like in the past.

This time around, things are different. The story is not the same. We have [card Jace, the Mind Sculptor]the villan[/card] but no clear path to victory. In that regard the present is like the past.

Neale takes a reader’s Rafiq deck from common to commanding for head’s up play, and challenges you to do it better. Think you can handle the firepower?

Anthony Avitollo, our resident cube master, breaks down or completely blasts some of the best (and overhyped cards) for cubes from New Phyrexia!