A Birthing Pod deck? Can it be so? Yes my friends, and it is as glorious and utility-filled as all of your little dreams had hoped! Twice now my Houston playgroup has had somebody run this list in a PTQ to Top 8 contention, to lose in the last round of Swiss. Here’s the list, with every card explained, that was used!

Joshua takes one last look at the pre-ban format, then focuses on the new Standard, discovering that a surprising card may end up defining the format.

Doug tackles the back half of Onslaught this week. Find out the best cards to make money on, from a tribal Crusade to a hungry, hungry Baloth!

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 final Cube SWOT article Usman shatters notions around Artifacts, levying ruin to the everyday average.

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.

My name is Joshua Justice. I’m technically a “Magic Pro” because I won a PTQ last year and made Day Two at Pro Tour: Amsterdam. In reality, I’m just a weekend grinder who’s been back in the game for a little over a year, and I’ve had a couple of successful tournaments. This story begins two weeks before Grand Prix: Atlanta, in a comic shop called The DeeP in Huntsville, Alabama. My plan that day was to play in a Grand Prix Trial, then move to Atlanta to start my new job.