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Vedalken Shackles

Wizards announced three more Modern Grands Prix this year, bringing the schedule to two American GPs, a Euro GP and a Canadian GP so close that I’d imagine plenty of players are hunting for their passports. Modern is a ripe field for speculation and it’s a great time to be stocking up on some hot cards for the format. This week, we’re going to take a look at what you should pick up, what you should hold off on, and what the Modern metagame will shape up to. You’re also going to get some Insider-only tech that could pay off in a big way.

We finish up a tour of the plane of Kamigawa this week with Saviors. The set’s mechanics focused on “wisdom,” as measured by the amount of cards in your hand versus another player’s hand. In theory, this sounds pretty cool; however, in practice, it meant that a player had to keep in mind both hand sizes at all times. The mechanic was unfortunate in that it rewarded players for holding onto their creatures and spells instead of playing them out. What could have been an interesting source of in-game tension wasn’t developed well enough to make it worthwhile to play with the wisdom cards. Although it was a small, poorly-received third set, Saviors has a good selection of money cards for traders to profit from.

Fifth Dawn was the third set in Mirrodin and was inexplicably focused on getting people to play all five colors. In the abstract, this is fine, but this was in a set full of artifacts that gave you advantages for running them. It would be like if Onslaught Block culminated in a set focused on super-powered spells instead of really good Tribal creatures…

Oh, wait.

Today we look into the Mono-Blue strategy from its enemy’s perspective. We’ll figure out how to fight, what actually matters as the enemy of the strategy, and take back what was stolen. Welcome to The Way of the Warrior where we Don’t MUC Around.

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Quiet Speculation