It's Undying Week, which is a perfect opportunity to unveil a Zombie deck!

Some things just won't die when they're supposed to. Today we're talking about the undying mechanic, and about how horror arises from violating expectations.

How well do you know Dark Ascension by now? Can you figure out what cards go with the flavor text below? Hover over each card to reveal the answer!

Dark Ascension changed many archetypes. Here's the first look at two.

Let me share a secret: horror movies scare me. I don't turn them on and, when possible, I actively choose to turn them off. Perhaps that's why I was so keen to build a Horde Magic deck when I learned about the format last year. And when I shared it with you, you ran with it as well. I promised we'd return sometime. We're back, and now it's personal.

Flip cards offer some fun possibilities for art and art interplay to be seen, let's take for example the Chalice of Life and the Chalice of Death. Appearing back to back the art had to be clearly related but to avoid confusion for players they needed to make it visible at a glance which side was up.

While every set I worked on had its own unique personality and challenges, I noticed several problems the lead developer of each of these sets faced every time. Unsurprisingly, I faced each of them during my trip through Dark Ascension development. Today, I'll lead you through some of them as well.

Don't call Undying "Persist with upside." Except, maybe you should after all...

Monty's taking a week off so I offered to mind the Arcanas for the week. The wallpaper is already set for Friday so just four days to talk about...

Pro Tour Dark Ascension was an amazing weekend, with a Top 8 that goes on the short list of all-time greats, with three actual Hall of Famers and one player coming onto the ballot this year. But the 9th–16th finishers would have made for an impressive Top 8 on their own, and these players warrant a closer look for their tremendous weekend as well.

It's important that every color combo has at least one strategy it can pursue.

This week's wallpaper features Jana Schirmer & Johannes Voss's noble Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, from Dark Ascension. Enjoy.

This year's Pro Tour Dark Ascension was nothing if not memorable. The Top 8, with its mix of young lions and triple Hall of Fame rings, set a high bar. In the end, it all came down to two titans of the game packing Titans. Here's an analysis of not only their decks, but all of the decks of the Top 8... and more!

Here are some of the cards in Dark Ascension I'm interested to build around.

When Innistrad introduced double-faced cards to Magic, we did an arcana that showed how some of the cards showed exactly the same location on each side. Dark Ascension doesn't have as many precse images like that, but it does have Huntmaster of the Fells, who moonlights (ha!) as a Ravager.

I've received a lot of emails asking me to work on a Burning Vengeance deck since the release of Dark Ascension. The deck gained some interesting tools that might give it some extra power. Pro Tour Dark Ascension is in the books and two decks have proven themselves to be the front-runners in the new Standard metagame. Let's test our deck against them!

Times look bad for Innistrad's humans, and some beings love every minute of it.

At 8:41 AM yesterday, Community Manager Mike Robles used the @wizards_magic Twitter account to tweet this:

Several archetypes improved with Dark Ascension—here's a look!

I've been asking questions around ideas, themes, and commanders for a sweet, community-driven Commander deck. We're almost there, but it's now up to you to piece together the final deck. (This is an adventure!)