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.

With a new format becoming available for the first time Friday, it’s time to take a quick look at what’s available. For the most part, these will be aggro or combo decks, since control decks need to be built towards the metagame. As it stands, Caw-Blade is the premiere control deck in the format, and it can be played as-is with the mere addition of Batterskull.

Arthur’s first article for Quiet Speculation is a great and thought provoking look at the next expansion, Mirrodin Besieged. His inventive and sensible evaluations of the cards and potential interactions will serve every reader well in the coming days and months events.

In this article, Usman discusses how to take a pool of cards and pare it down into a cube list that can be used for drafting using a sample section from a commons cube. Hop in!