So WOTC decided to mix things up a bit and get rid of the Extended format, aka the worst thing ever. I think this was a great decision due to the fact that the format was akin to being forced to watch year-old family videos of Wednesday afternoons—zero nostalgia, zero interest, just you sitting on your butt on in the middle of the week twiddling your thumbs. Essentially Extended had become something you had to do because WOTC said so, and that was that. However, Big Brother recognized its own flawed existence and decided to make a change instead of enter into a cold and bitter winter filled with recycled CawBlade and watch tournament attendance dwindle. I mean MTGO 16-man Extended queues don’t even fire, and the whole world is available to participate in those…..

The All About Games tournament series for EDH is underway! It occurs on the fifth Sunday of each month every month (assuming there is a fifth Sunday). Last month I chose to play Esper because it seemed to be a really strong control deck and counter magic just seems to be really good in the format. Along with cards like Mind Twist, Mind Shatter and Bribery, the tutors and counter magic make it easy to find what you need and stall until you can gain massive card advantage with a power spell. In this article I will delve into alternative strategies and ideas, as well as what I liked about the deck I played and what I didn't like.

When I first began building this deck my idea was to build a classic Haterade style deck. My target decks to beat were Faeries and the Omen Valakut deck. To beat these decks I wanted a quick clock with disruption. The key cards for both those decks are enchantments and the best enchantment removal, quick clock combo in the game is Qasali Pridemage. That was my starting point. I’ve had a secret love for the Kithkin Advisor, Gaddock Teeg since he first showed up in Lorwyn (more adorable than Willow) and I think he is a very underrated card right now. He stops Wargate, Day of Judgement, Jace TMS, Elspeth, and most importantly Cryptic Command. From there I added the fastest white and green creatures out there and targeted those that provide extra utility as well. It may not look like much, but it is very fast. Most of the creatures are bigger than what the opponent plays for the same cost and if a Liege is added to the field the opponent will be quickly overwhelmed.

There is a little known format that is growing rather rapidly on MTGO—SOM Block Constructed. This one-set format has been on the rise for a while now with daily tournament events reaching over fifty in attendance. I have always been a fan of block formats due to the lack of options available, but never anything revolving around a single set. However, there are actually a few powerful decks to choose from and be successful with. In the future, I would like to include some tournament reports as well as project what Besieged will do to the format once the cards are made known and available.

There are a lot of events coming up in 2011, and I never get the Ken Sommerville emails anymore, so I took it upon myself to create a new page that shows many upcoming events. We will also have new content coming up shortly and hopefully will be discussing Mirrodin Beseiged and extended! Keep checking back, and happy 2011!!

Last Sunday, Magic Online had its Last Chance Qualifier where the winner got to take place in the Magic Online Championship at worlds—a tournament of 12 with last place getting $4k and first receiving $25k. This seemed worth a shot as I am fairly experienced with SOM sealed and a chance at a trip to Japan and some cash would be pretty awesome.

The first thing I would like to do is apologize for the lack of content going up recently. I have been playing a lot of Scars events, but with me forgetting to save the card pools and a fried motherboard, I haven't had the time or resources to bring you new articles. I wasn't sure if I could recover my code for showing cards as images in these articles, so I have spent the last two hours rewriting it. Here is a pool I thought was really good. I ended up with an astonishing 1-3 record, the worst I have ever done in a release or prerelease event.

Qty Card Name
1 Abuna Acolyte

Here is a sealed pool I opened for one of the M11 pre-release events on Magic Online. The black and red were really horrible, but the white, green, and blue all seemed playable. I will post the list after everybody has had a chance to look this over and come up with their own builds. Pete has posted his build also below. Here is an image of the entire card pool

I was able to top 8 with this pool, and thought I had a great shot at winning the whole thing. I felt I got hosed in the semi's, and was disappointed to not have three byes. Congrats to Steve Canty for winning those. I was really disappointed with this pool at first because the rares were just so bad! 2x Leyline, 2x Land, Elvish Archdruid and Camptivating Vampire. Not to mention 3x Incite, 2x Pyretic Ritual, and 2x Goldenglow Moth. After briefly looking through it, I thought I was doomed! But upon sorting it out, it was not as terrible as I initially thought and figured I could top 8 given the small field of 17-18.