As a Magic year, 2025 has been... surprising? With Universes Beyond rapidly spreading and eating at the game's identity, so much that even some "normal" sets (DFT, EoE) begin to feel hollow and disconnected, I still enjoy learning new draft environments and finding cube gems here and there...

hard to recapture that Christmas morning feeling as a 30-something, but waiting to open a mocs open pool gets pretty close!

My run last month was supposed to give me a direct entry into day 2 of this month's Arena qualifier. Woke up this morning to play and didn't have an entry, wrote to support with 3h left to enter and got ghosted. Really sad how far Arena OP has fallen in the last year.

Stuck around for an extra week after Thanksgiving to catch worlds live. Had a blast cheering everyone on and feeling fired up for Richmond now. See y'all there 🫡

Not qualified this year but still making big contributions to the team (reminding them to eat and forcing them to go outside)

10 years ago I was in college, I'd wake up at noon every Saturday and put GP coverage on one monitor, SCG coverage on the other. Nice to relive that for a weekend!

Help Paul!

Sharing my favorite brew from PT EOE testing. Retract pairs great with Weapons Manufacturing, procs all the munitions tokens and picks up your artifacts to make more. I jammed a few leagues this week and had some sick wins, give it a try! moxfield.com/decks/x3U0Zb...

My friend Dan wrote a great summary of the organizational issues with the Arena Qualifiers. wotc has announced they plan to hold arena qualifiers for their Limited World Championship. Things need to improve before then. nosferatumtg.blogspot.com/2025/11/is-a...

2 wins off the invite in the historic qualifier playing @tristan-mtg.bsky.social lotus breach. Weird format of mostly modern cards + a few niche legacy bangers. Probably some broken deck out there - I had fun trying and failing to find it! moxfield.com/decks/5cwLVa...

made day 2 of the arena qualifier, opened the client 20min before the window was supposed to open just in case something was screwy with daylight savings. Good thing I did because there were only 20 minutes left to enter??? Hundreds of players are gonna get locked out because of this @mtgarena.com

I love baseball

Hey Bluesky (that's when you'd like to be on Twitter I guess), in case there are still some unused Vivi Ornitier in the world, I'm missing three of them for Spotlight Series Liverpool this week-end!

Stayed up until 2am Friday night watching the Mariners clinch the alcs, concluded the only reasonable option was to cancel all my plans and make the drive to Toronto to see them live. Had an incredible weekend and made it home just in time for game 2!

you know it was a good magic tournament when you come home to 12 wholly unorganized stacks of cards strewn across your desk

For PT EOE I brought a weird build of Affinity and took it to a 7-3 finish! Here's my guide to the deck: 🔗 moxfield.com/decks/W88OoM... Big thank you to @tristan-mtg.bsky.social and @stefanschuetzmtg.bsky.social for their help in reimagining this archetype

Rollercoaster weekend for me. Started 0-3, ran it up to 10-4 to give myself a shot at worlds, then lost the last two rounds to miss. Still processing everything but happy to walk away with 2 more PT invites. Very happy with the affinity choice. Deck guide + tournament report coming soon.

0-3 draft but rallied in modern to make day 2. More memnite beatdowns tomorrow! #PTEOE

Third we have 3 players on Affinity. The Handshake take on this archetype omits typical inclusions Thought Monitor and Metallic Rebuke in favor of more cheap artifacts. moxfield.com/decks/5kgug7... @tangrams.bsky.social @apfriedr.bsky.social @tristan-mtg.bsky.social

For tomorrow's Pro Tour I'm playing a very sentimental card. This Mox Opal carried me to day 2 in my first ever Grand Prix - Modern Masters sealed - over 10 years ago! Some cards just stay with you.

🤝

Testing is underway at the Handshake @moxfield.com house!

The Seattle Mariners have unlocked a new winning methodology in pro sports ❌ Invest capital to build out infrastructure across analytics, player development, sports science etc. ✅ Pay a witch on Etsy $15 to cast a fortification spell on the team

9 hours later and it's time to draft!

battling it out in the biggest mocs open i can remember! good luck to all 482 sickos

couldn't quite get there. pool was nothing special

Made day 2 with the Interceptor Mechan special!

Into day 2 from the gravship (2018 honda cr-v)

had fun and even won a few matches! list I'd "recommend" here - don't think this one is taking down the next PT but you can get some turn 3 kills and have a good time 🙂 moxfield.com/decks/qlFFQx...

we're so back

if you don't love her at her 3-of-a-kind you don't deserve her at her thoughtseize->salvage->parhelion

Only a little embarrassed to admit that I've started doing this for every online event and it works extremely well

Lost my win and in for the Arena Champs. Rough way to go out but I'll bounce back. Played roots, loved the glissa tech for the weekend. moxfield.com/decks/wlA8Ql... @handshakemtg.com @moxfield.com

morning waterfall hike -> arena qualifier 7-1, pretty good saturday! I'll post my decklist tomorrow

Been trying to do more writing/reflection this year. Here's a piece on PT Final Fantasy: medium.com/@tangrams/lo...

tournament report so good they won't let you see it!

I wrote a deck guide for the UR Cauldron deck I played at the PT! You can purchase it on mfy.gg/guides/view/... It includes card explanations, how to play the deck and a SB guide for the most popular matchups. I think the deck is great now and will become even better post-bans!

Ran the tables in standard on day 2 for an 11-5 finish and an Atlanta requal. Even managed to sneak into top 32 for the cloud promo 🤑 I might be back?

Another PT in the books for Handshake. Congrats to @elikassis.bsky.social and @tangrams.bsky.social for securing foil Cloud promos with their top 32 finishes! Overall 14/15 team members requalified for Atlanta. We'll see you there!

4-4 into losing the credit card game for the full welcome back experience. Excited to draft again though!

Showtime

Always a little bittersweet packing up the testing house- we could spend weeks jamming matches and arguing about draft packs in the pool! But for now there's a tournament to go win 🤝

We got the 🐐!!

We’re so back - David Inglis @tangrams.bsky.social fell off the train for a year but earned his PT Final Fantasy invite twice over, winning a MOCS open and finishing 13th at the US RC. What does his next stint on the PT have in store?

Up far too early to catch my flight to Vegas. Still crazy that I get to just take a week away from everything to play a card game with my friends from around the world, never gonna take that for granted.

One of the simple joys in life

Getting to that tragic stage of pt testing where I have to start accepting that none of my brews are playable 😭

Decided I wanted to write up a tournament report / fun memories report, as I like the idea of writing up my most fun moments after events to remind myself of the fun times I have at these events. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Magic Connections: June 1, 2025 connections.swellgarfo.com/game/-ORZK8T...

I'm the backup feature for round 1! Battling with omni this weekend moxfield.com/decks/J_B5Mg...