Splashing blue is one thing. Splashing blue in a 75 card deck with no sideboard just for Fog Bank, on the other hand, is some next level Platinum-Mythic Ranked Player deckbuilding.

One of the GOATs hanging up his brushes for health reasons.

I got a super cool gift today from @volrathxp.bsky.social!

With the number of legends in Universes Beyond sets I think Wizards needs to sunset "legendary matters" as as theme. It's a cool gimmick in a world where legends are scarce, but incredibly boring when we're getting like 150 legends a set.

Almost accidentally put a day/night card in my Commander Clash deck for this week. Thankfully I caught it before recording. I'm not tracking that...

I really like how Final Fantasy sort of feels like Time Spiral or a Horizons set in the sense that there's a ton of one-of mechanics.

Apparently Richard qualified for One Piece Nationals going 8-2 in a 1k player event yesterday.

Bwahahahahaha

Sorry everyone, no stream today. I'm still a bit under the weather and trying to catch up on Youtube stuff after being away last week for the wedding. We'll get back to normal next week.

What was your all time favorite Standard format?

Unlimited Black Lotus, with original receipt from 1997... www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/c...

The Time a Pizza Saved Standard www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQE9...

Super random question: anyone know a good way to ship at PC tower? My new PC broke (probably the motherboard?!?) The good news is it's under warranty. The bad news is need to ship it to the company for them to fix it.

Leaving tomorrow night for Texas for my little brother's wedding. I got a bunch of stuff recorded ahead of time, but will probably end up missing one video, just as a heads up.

Going to battle against viewers for tomorrow's stream. If you want to get on the list send me your Arena info and the format you want to play (stream is roughly from 11am EST - 2pm EST). Can leave your info here if you want, or you can email it to me at [email protected]

Monstrous Rage's weekend. 75% of T8 of 55 player MTGO challenge. 62.5% of T8 at Regional Champs 3. 62.5% of T8 of 66 player MTGO challenge. 25% of T8 of 32 player MTGO challenge. 0% of T8 of 88 player MTGO challenge. All in all that's 18 of 40 top eight slots, or 45%.

What's a word that you only know how to spell correctly because of Magic?

I'm going to have to play more Pauper. I forget how much I enjoyed complaining about Tron since it died off in Modern.

Land destruction, but commons only! www.youtube.com/watch?v=dExX...

I swear that Wizards primary goal for Alchemy is to get me to play it at least once.

According to Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Final Fantasy is already the best selling set of all time and it doesn't even release until June. www.polygon.com/tabletop-gam...

I'd really encourage people to skip the foil version of the new Chaos Vault Secret Lair if they don't want $60 foil drops to be the new normal. Seems like a test run to see if we're actually willing to pay an even higher premium for pringles.

I think some people misunderstand my feelings about stax and MLD in Commander. It's not that you can't build decks to beat those things, it's more that building decks to beat those things requires removing a lot of flavorful and fun cards, and Commander is a format I play for fun.

I feel like there might be a gap in the bracket system between brackets 3 and 4. Where does "play whatever you want, but don't stax me or blow up all of the lands" fit? Is it bracket 3 with a discussion about why you are playing more game changers? Is it bracket 4, but "be nice"? I'm not sure.

Mardu seems legit.

Both Richard and Crim are traveling today so I'm pulling in a special guest for the podcast. @covertgoblue.bsky.social will be joining me to talk Tarkir: Dragonstorm, bannings and more! Episode will be out later this afternoon.

It’s magical Christmas land, but technically a possible T1 win in standard yes? @theasianavenger.bsky.social @saffronolive.bsky.social @mtggoldfish.com

For other fans of @saffronolive.bsky.social's arena content here is my playlist. I just added the 13 or so most recent videos. Its at 133 videos. Seth is one of my favorite 60 card players and arena makes things not look like a spreadsheet. youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Just realized that I have a massive trade deficit with #MTGArena.

One last thing about the bannings. During the stream Wizards talked a lot about why scheduled bannings are necessary, which I think misses the point the community makes when they complain about scheduled bannings, which is that players desire more responsiveness and flexibility in bannings.

I'm going to have to do a reaction video to this Wizards stream about bannings. It's making me want to pull my hair out, and I have a lot of hair.

Designing for Standard seems super hard at the moment. I have no idea how you make six sets a year that are good enough to make an impact on Standard but not so good that they dominate Standard and push out other sets. Glad that's not my job.

"To solve the problem we'll be releasing a Mouse Trap Universes Beyond set..."

I'd pay to make my Arena cards look heavily played all the time. Fun April fools gag though.

Metagame percentage of the two most played Standard decks by year. Current Standard is more dominated by the top 2 than any format in a decade outside of 2017, which ended up having a ton of bans (it was Kaladesh/energy/copycat Standard). Average is 35% metagame share for the big 2.

Imagine how stable Standard would be if it only rotated every 10 years and had a ban window every 5 years? No one would play it, but just think of that glorious stability.

You are playing a Tiamat Commander deck. You play Dracogenesis. What five Dragons do you tutor up to give you the best chance of winning the game immediately?

Ban list update on Monday, outside of Underworld Breach getting banned in Modern (which seems like a given at this point), what are your predictions?

I've been working on Pioneer Dredge (video coming) and have been toying with playing two lands in the sideboard with the plan being to sideboard up to 67 cards (two lands and five answers to graveyard hate) rather than cutting anything. Is this a horrible plan?

For those that don't have twitter now, LavaOx did a breakdown of the cheating allegations and feature matches of Connor Pattinson, who was disqualified in the Top 8 of the NRG Series $10,000 Standard Show last Saturday in Madison. #mtg #nrgmad docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I know the game is huge and Wizards is trying to please everyone from Spiderman fans to Funko pop Loot lovers to high rolling collectors, which might not even be possible, but at least for me Tarkir: Dragonstorm has been a huge breath of fresh air.

Love the design. I've missed Magic cards having drawbacks and I hope we see more of this in the future.

Sadly dies to Nowhere to Run, but seems good against This Town shenanigans.

Triple black is a big ask, but it seems pretty easy to go infinite with this and something like Gravecrawler.

The Tarkir: Dragonstrom basics are actually pretty sweet!

Collected Company but for non-creatures. Even at sorcery speed it feels pretty strong in the right deck. Imagine double Monument to Endurance...

Looking for something different to do while you wait for Tarkir: Dragonstorm? How about popping off with Zada on an 18 rare budget? www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEF-...

I've been watching a bunch of coverage the last few weeks and I think Ultimate Guard is the new S tier now that the GOAT duo of Patrick Sullivan and Cedric Phillips are retired from SCG.

Modern Spotlight Series from Utrecht on the Ultimate Guard Twitch this weekend. www.twitch.tv/ultimateguar...