After a day full of standard testing, I have 2 general thoughts. 1. UB mid players don't care about winning and are just hear to jam cards they like. 2. Badgermole cub was for sure a design mistake and one that seemed incredibly obvious early on.

I've been wanting this deck to work forever. Drum and some new lands do finally make the 5c mana stuff work, but sadly this deck just catches so much hate out of boards and isn't good enough to fight through. Doesn't help that it just dies when it fails to draw part of the combo either.

UW has also suffered from it's mana in standard, but now we have reasonable enough mana to put a deck like this into action. Momo blink with the nut draw of momo into warp + splash portal is obviously great, but the deck so far has played out well in general.

I have long held the stance that lizards was a very good aggro deck in standard but just couldn't exist because of the mana. I didn't put in a bunch of games with it today because I already had a good idea of where it was at. This is the most likely deck if I take a true aggro deck.

Giving up a bit early on this deck as I'm not confident I have time to build out this deck and have good sideboard plans. I'm sure there's some spell slinger sickos out there who could figure it out, but I'm not one of them.

I'm pretty sure some sort version of merfolk is going to be reasonable, but that said, I don't think I can figure it out for this weekend. While playing the deck, made me think pilgrimage might be the card that needs to go. Spell snare has been good.

The "did you have fun" screen is the most BM thing WOTC has ever done and they put it there on purpose.

First deck for today, UB elemental scam featuring Sunderflock. I think sunderflock can really mess up a lot of the green badgermole cub decks. Not sure if this is any better than the sultai reanimator deck, but it has some sweet draws and synergies.

Spending several hours today testing a huge range of decks for RC Portland this weekend. Lots of cool new stuff to do, so I will be posting some decks as the day goes. Hopefully I manage to narrow down my deck to a couple of choices today so I can lock in tomorrow and get the paper cards.

Now taking submissions for crazy new standard decks featuring lorwyn cards. I already have 6 obscure decks ready to test online tomorrow, so surely we can squeeze in testing 1-2 more. Need to be sure all my RC Portland opponents have to read my cards

Also, it seems like a ton of the common and uncommon cards are mostly only good in a specific deck. If you’re in the open deck at the draft table, it’s reasonable you are be happy with a lot of late picks. In my first draft tonight, I was the only merfolk drafter and easy could have had 30 playables

It’s weird how they only did 5 supported draft types for this set, when both blight and vivid can easy be their own decks, as well as mesh int other decks. Maybe they thought those decks were too complex to include. Gonna have fun cooking up stuff this format. (Had a cool URw blight deck today)

I’m 15-1 through 4 sealed flights in the prerelease weekend. First draft starts in 15 and drafting all day tomorrow. This limited format rocks.

LGS has been capping prerelease events this weekend and I have friends who couldn’t get in today. Crazy how many more people come out for in universe sets. I’m sure there’s some MBA at WOTC who has never played magic in their lives that will still tell us how good universes beyond stuff is though.

Played back to back prereleases at the LGS, went 8-0 and 16-1 in games. Loved all the synergies flying around the format. Changelings were great glue cards. Plenty of removal for the aggro stuff. Rares are good but not unbeatable. Felt great playing and will run it all back tomorrow.

Lorwyn limited is awesome. Thank you for coming to my ted talk

NEW FRIEREN AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you’re not already, you should be following @yoman5.bsky.social for his sweet deck dumps during new sets. I spent a solid 3 hours yesterday brewing decks fueled by ideas from his lists.

Another big standard tournament weekend to once again show that UB mid is a dog shit deck choice and way overplayed. It's the new jund deck. Please stop playing this if you actually care at all about trying to win.

I'm once again begging WOTC to stop giving us 67 different packs for cuz prizing because it's super annoying.

I really hope they put some sort of legacy cube on arena. Power just makes game play so much worse, even if it's cool and exciting.

I should probably be doing more prep in pioneer for the arena qualifier this weekend, but cube is back so gotta jam at least 4 drafts the first day.

So far this set is living up to the hype I had for it.

GIVE ME ALL THE LORWYN SPOILERS RIGHT NOW!!!

My LGS has posted sign ups for Lorwyn, so I've signed up for 4 sealed events plus a draft. I'm working on badgering them into adding a second draft... and maybe a third if we are lucky. INJECT THE LORWYN DIRECTLY INTO MY VEINS

As I continue to test pioneer for the upcoming qualifier, it's truly baffling how many people play such bad decks when there's so much powerful stuff to be doing. (looking at you BW midrange deck that is basically just trying to beat izzet and is an absolute shit pile otherwise)

As I've been testing pioneer for the upcoming AC, there are 2 things I've noticed that continue to be true. 1. Pioneer is a sweet format with a ton of under explored space 2. The average player is dog shit at building and improving decks, so instead everyone is just copy pasta the top 3-4 decks

This is a banger cube list. Exactly the type of cube I find to be the most fun. Great mix of cool old cards for the member berries, generic powerful cards and cool new stuff.

Working with a sinus cold because I need to save all my PTO to take trips for magic events. Not the brightest idea with work being especially busy right now

Also, now that I've been able to catch up on sleep, here's a thread for my thoughts on the timeless format. I don't plan to play it anymore, but I got deep into the format for testing, so might as well put that knowledge to use.

Here's the fixed version of my timeless deck if anyone is interested in the format or the deck. Max amalgam plus a single narco makes it much easier to beat a surgical extraction, which is the most common form of hate. Great deck to speed run dailies, just fire it off in BO1 for quick easy wins

The one thing that confused me while testing timeless for the AC, somehow it became the popular opinion that mardu energy was the best deck in the format. Myself and others came to the conclusion the deck was very mid in a busted format, but it still managed to be the most played by a wide margin.

Finally died to Matt Nass. I for sure messed up my deck build, and realized it about half a day after decks were due. The build error for sure cost me game 1 against Matt. Such is life, back to never playing timeless again.... and more importantly sleep

Won against esper Lurrus, which is just about my worst possible match up. Game 2 was a real goofy win going grief beats for a few turns before finally top decking an unmarked grave for a lethal creeping chill, then hitting the nuts t1 combo with grief + thoughtseize game 3.

Currently 2-2 in the AC and all I really want is to go to bed, but I have to pay for all these upcoming trips for that Lorwyn limited grind so we battle on.

Lost round 1 of mulligan simulator. Could not find a hand that could combo in game 3 against an mardu energy opponent who for some reason kept a hand with no interaction. What a great game.

Sleep deprived and a bit under the weather, but there's magic to play. At this point I just hope all my matches go insanely fast so I can try to get some naps in. Good thing I locked in oops all spells as my deck this weekend.

I'm hoping to dodge feature matches for this event so I don't have to turn my game sound on. You'd have to be a real sicko to play Arena with game sounds.

My goal for the AC is to get 3 wins so I get some extra money to pay for trips I’ve already booked at play all the Lorwyn limited events

All competitive magic events have to do to be really cool is make the events run as they should and give prizes as they promise, but they consistently fail on both ends for all range of arena events. Such is the struggle of being a small indie company with no resources

Pretty sure I made some small deck building errors for my deck in the AC. Not that it matters, as I picked my deck to play the least amount of magic as possible not to win anything. I hate the timeless format that much.

I’ll be playing mulligan simulator with my opponents this weekend with my opponents in the AC. May the WOTC interns look favorably on me during opening hands.

For the record, I’m team no take backsies. Team take backsies is for indecisive cowards.

Oh good, we are once again doing spoilers for a set that isn't coming out for 6 months and has multiple sets that come before it. This shit is beyond old.

Marvel Superheroes is the FOURTH set next year so why in the world are we randomly getting previews now when we know next to nothing about most of the others before it?

Timeless is easily the worst format I've ever been forced to play for a tournament. Not particularly close. Just want it to be over so I can go back to pretending this fake ass format doesn't exist.

Not that I’m surprised. They have done a horrible job balancing cards lately

After watching worlds coverage I think more cards need bans than I originally thought

My early thoughts on what needs to be banned in timeless: WTF were you thinking: strip mine ban or nerf: grief and hydroponics architect likely consider ban: entomb, dark rit, one ring keep an eye on: mystical tutor, show and tell, mana drain

They asked weird questions on the survey for AC10 about how we feel about the timeless format, which makes me think they are completely oblivious that the format is shit. How do you ever allow x4 strip mine in a format and think it's ok? Just forcing people to play a format we pay no attention to