Khans of Tarkir Game Day

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

Last weekend was most likely a rather busy affair for Magic: the Gathering players.  Not only was it Khans of Tarkir Game Day but also the saw the tournament Grand Prix Los Angeles where approximately 1,700 players battled for fame 'n' fortune.  Congratulations to Daniel Scheid who took the top spot with a Red-Green Monsters decklist.  There appeared to be quite a bit of variety in decklists making it to Day Two with the popular ones being Mardu Midrange, Abzan Midrange, Jesai Wins, Abzan Aggro and Green Devotion.  One particular build was a Mardu Midrange strategy played by Brad Nelson who made it to the Top 8 playoff.

Our weekend consisted of Friday Night Magic at our local card shop OMG! Games here in Barrie, Ontario followed by Khans of Tarkir Game Day on Sunday.  We had all the cards from MTG Mint Card required for a decent Abzan Aggro weapon and did not that badly at all during Friday Night Magic landing in 7th place.  We took the same decklist to Game Day Sunday and did not even make Top 8 which either says something about the rapidly evolving nature of standard constructed or perhaps something about our mental state on Game Day - who knows.

On Game Day we were faced with a number of control builds featuring Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver which exiled our answers rapidly and beat us with our best threats.  The fast ramping mono-green lists for which our sideboard was unfortunately unprepared also had us scrambling for spot removal to no avail.  

We will go back to our Abzan Midrange list to ensure its robust for next Friday but we are already entertaining the idea of developing something along the lines of Brad's Madu Midrange or perhaps Eric Pei's mono-red Boss Sligh.  Since it first was previewed, we wanted to get together a list featuring Butcher of the Horde which provides a lot of very lovely options when you sac a critter - haste, vigilance or lifelink - all on an evasive flyer with a decent mana cost / power / toughness stats.  We're thinking that Eric's Boss Sligh (named after Paul Sligh) can drop a lot of early threats before an opponent can begin to control the board and then follow-up with final points of burn damage.

Anywhoos - an exciting time in standard at the moment and we've got to say that we are rather happy with the diversity that it has.
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