Last week, the Magic world got to see something we weren't supposed to. Some of us were excited by the unveiling, while others were understandably outraged. Since there is a general consensus that it would be a bad idea to post links to the original site, a friend and I have done our best to recreate what I saw on that webpage:

Thank's, Tim Furry

Also, there were spoilers.

131 new cards have come to light since last week, and there are certainly some game-changers. So maybe you guys want to read 652 articles about them this week—but I'm sorry to say you'll have to content yourself with 651. I'm abstaining from New Phyrexia discussion for the week.

Part of it is because I wish the spoiling had never happened. I enjoy staying up late and waiting for the DailyMTG site to update. I enjoy savoring each card individually and texting my friends with new deck ideas every day. I enjoy patiently reading the whole MaRo article until he finally drops the link. All of that loses its luster when we get a massive information dump like the one we had last week.

Another, more honest reason is that I have three and a half months to talk about cards from New Phyrexia, and I'm not ready to burn myself out two weeks before the prerelease.

Instead, I'll fill you in on the various entertaining things that have happened this week in my Magic universe. If you're patient, there will be more spicy bikini pictures to reward you at the end.

Sunday

On Sunday, I tinkered around with Shape Anew and Blightsteel Colossus. I was curious if the combo was good enough to succeed as a finisher in a legitimate control deck, so I put it in a Blue/Black shell. Here's my list:

"Anew Hope"

• Creatures (3)
• 2 Trinket Mage
• 1 Blightsteel Colossus

• Planeswalkers (5)
• 4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Liliana Vess

• Spells (28)
• 4 Mana Leak
• 2 Doom Blade
• 1 Go for the Throat
• 2 Reality Spasm
• 4 Preordain
• 4 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 4 See Beyond
• 2 Black Sun's Zenith
• 4 Shape Anew
• 1 Darksteel Axe

• Lands (24)
• 2 Island
• 3 Swamp
• 4 Inkmoth Nexus
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Creeping Tar Pit
• 2 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Halimar Depths

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Wurmcoil Engine
• 4 Flashfreeze
• 3 Disfigure
• 2 Spell Pierce
• 1 Black Sun's Zenith
• 3 Tumble Magnet

Buy This Deck

I went with Darksteel Axe over Everflowing Chalice for a number of reasons. For one, Chalice is fragile, and there's a lot of artifact hate in sideboards right now. Second, Axe plus Inkmoth Nexus equals a pretty serious clock, so you can win even without finding Shape Anew. Finally, after you fetch it with Trinket Mage, you can go ahead and equip the Wizard so that he'll trade with nearly anything or harass a Planeswalker. All of these things together make up for the fact that your combo is a full turn slower than the Chalice version.

There are only two Trinket Mages because the second one you draw is just dead. We can get away with that thanks to Inkmoth Nexus filling in for Darksteel Axe when you only have the Anew. The rest of the deck is filled with obvious choices, with the exception of Reality Spasm. That card is actually sweet here, whether it's fogging for a turn, tapping out your opponent so he can't counter your Shape Anew, or clearing the way for your final Colossal attack. It can even Time Walk your Valakut opponent when he gets to Titan mana, with any luck buying you a turn to find a counter. You don't really want to draw it until you're ready to go off, however, which is why there are only two.

The Wurmcoils in the sideboard are against Red decks, where Lifelink is more relevant than a potential one-shot kill. Make sure you Inquisition or have counter mana up for the inevitable Mark of Mutiny, though.

I did pretty well in the Tournament Practice room, but honestly, that's not because of the Shape Anew package. In a lot of my wins, I could have made do with any typical control finisher, and in fact, I lost a few games I could have won had Shape Anew been Grave Titan. Still, bashing with Steely Dan is a good time, and it could make for a successful, fun FNM. (Note: If you don't have Jace, try Foresee. It digs for the piece you need while bypassing the Colossus you really don't want to draw).

Monday

By Monday, I was bored with casting Mana Leaks and Inquisitions, but I was still in the mood to combo. I loaded up the Psychosis Crawler/Time Reversal deck I wrote about a few weeks ago and played a few games. I was overwhelmingly underwhelmed with Psychosis Crawler, and impressed by Runeflare Trap.

So I cut the chaff, and after some tuning, arrived here:

"Can't Think of a Pun.dec"

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 3 Jace Beleren

• Spells (35)
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 3 Into the Roil
• 4 Runeflare Trap
• 4 Preordain
• 4 Molten Psyche
• 2 Time Reversal
• 4 Prophetic Prism
• 4 Sphere of the Suns
• 4 Temple Bell
• 2 Mox Opal

• Lands (22)
• 6 Island
• 8 Mountain
• 4 Inkmoth Nexus
• 4 Scalding Tarn

Buy This Deck

In your opening hand, you're looking for Jace Beleren or Temple Bell. A hand with Preordain and some amount of removal to buy time can be okay, but Jace and T. Bell are your engine cards. From there you want to hit Metalcraft (that's what Inkmoth is for; you'll never really attack with it), and get to 6-ish mana. Now, if you and your opponent have enough cards in hand, you can Molten Psyche to deal a bunch of damage, followed by either another Psyche or some Runeflare Traps for the win. Remember that you can double–Temple Bell on your opponent's turn to make the Trap active, and an opposing Mind Sculptor turns it on by himself.

Time Reversal is slow, but against decks that dump their hands quickly, it's the only way to make your Red cards into win conditions.

I played game after game with this deck, because draw-sevens and 10-point burn spells are ludicrously fun. I won most of my casual games, but this deck isn't destined for competitive greatness. The fact that you can't load up on burn spells before you go off (because Psyche just shuffles them back in) means sometimes you draw seven blanks and just lose. Plus, artifact destruction, discard effects, and counters all hurt the deck—and you know your opponent will draw those cards if he has them, because you keep refilling his hand.

If you want to give it a shot, make sure you have either Pyroclasm or Slagstorm in your sideboard. Counterspells are probably a must as well. Whiplash Trap could be interesting against decks with cheap creatures, giving you +2 damage on your Runeflares and Psyches while clearing the board.

Monday was a fun day.

Tuesday

As you may know, Tuesday is Trivia Night—or it was until Garrett decided to move to Boston. See, Garrett is the only member of our little group who doesn't play Magic, so our get-togethers on Tuesday could never evolve into Magic Playgroup Night. Last week, he surprised us by announcing a sudden, career-motivated move to the city, and telling us he wouldn't be able to Trivia with us anymore. Team I Dated a Girl with a Broken Leg but I Broke it Off was devastated by the news, but at least now we can play Magic cards without the guilt of excluding a friend.

It was decided that our inaugural post-Garrett meeting should be focused on Legacy testing for Grand Prix: Providence. Seth was under the weather, and can't make it to the GP anyway, so he stayed home. That left Phil, John, Dave, and me, battling it out while watching the Celtics game.

I played against John for most of the night, running my Dredge deck against his gauntlet of TEPS, Zoo, Lands, and the mirror. There isn't much to say about Dredge you don't already know. My list is the standard Ichorid list you can find anywhere. I didn't mulligan much, won every game he didn't have a hate card, and won most of the games he did, too. It was enough to convince him to start playing Dredge, so I picked up High Tide to see what the other side is like. This matchup, like ANT, usually comes down to how many Cabal Therapy the Dredge player sees, and how good he is at naming cards. If your opponent plays Brainstorm, you have to name a card that is important enough to cripple his hand, but not so important that he tucked it away with Brainstorm. Usually it's a ritual effect or a Wish. Winning the die roll is obviously important, too.

We each won a few games before I switched to Goblins. He trounced me pre- and post-board, which made me wonder why my record against the Red deck online is so bad. I suspect it's because they always naturally draw the one-of Skirk Prospector to nail my Bridges.

I was ready to play till the wee hours, but Phil and John had other arrangements. They went off into the night, and I sat down to battle Dave. Dave favors an Elves! build similar to Matt Sperling's on ChannelFireball a couple weeks ago. He wanted me to play Dredge, so we played a few more noninteractive Game 1s. Dredge goes off on turn two more often than Dave's Elves, but the Green deck can consistently win on turn three nearly every game. This means that if the Dredge player has the nuts, he probably wins, and if he doesn't, Elves probably wins.

Fortunately, the nuts isn't particularly hard to assemble when you can mulligan to four to find it, so I won the majority of these games. Post-board, it gets a little more interesting, as I get to add Firestorm (a huge trump) and he gets his Tormod's Crypts and Relics. Since he has those, I need to dilute my deck further with Ancient Grudge.

Dave tried keeping a hand without graveyard hate that could win by turn two, but I had the Firestorm to punish him, and I won. Then he tried mulliganing into graveyard hate, but I luckily had my one-of Darkblast, which threatened to kill nearly every Elf in his deck. Because of this, he had to blow the Crypt too soon, and I won. He did steal a game when he played two hate cards and had a turn-three combo win, but I won the next by Grudging his Relic and comboing off in the same turn.

I recommended a singleton Loaming Shaman for his Green Sun's Zenith or Summoner's Pact to find, which would have made a big difference in our games. I was getting tired, and I think Dave was feeling dejected from all the ass-kickings his deck and his terrible hockey team had been through recently (boo Habs!), so I made my way home around midnight. No work on Wednesday, so I should be able to sleep in . . .

Wednesday

I'm woken up by the baby at 6:00 a.m., and I long for the days when I could sleep until noon. At least now Bryson is old enough to play by himself for a while as long as I keep my eye on him, so I get a few rounds of online Dredge testing in. Over the past few weeks, I've assembled the following chart based on my matches in the one-on-one Legacy queues.

Fifty Dredge Matches

I'm not sure what to call the Life from the Loam deck or the deck that had Moat and Peacekeeper in it since I've only been playing Legacy for about a month now. That stupid Pox deck kept following me into the queues, and I felt insanely unlucky in those two matches I lost. I don't think I should lose to a deck whose game plan is to put my hand into my graveyard and attack me with Bitterblossom tokens, but there it is . . . I did. Twice.

I'm about halfway through my second set of fifty matches, which features far less aggro and way more combo (in keeping with the recent trend of SCG Opens). I'll probably provide an update when it's finished.

Of course, the spoilers became public knowledge on Wednesday, so I spent most of the day talking about them on forums and on Twitter (@BJWOJ) when I wasn't doing dad stuff. I'll probably tackle those next week, when I've had more time to let it all marinate. I do want to mention that I don't think Mental Misstep is the end of the world for Dredge, as we already have a very reliable game plan of draw-discard-Dredge when we expect the opponent has a Force. Actually, my first thought was that it would be a decent sideboard card for me against faster combo decks, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather have Mindbreak Trap if anything.

Thursday

After work, I play a few matches with Sam Black's Venser deck. I win all of them, but the deck feels kind of clunky. The mana base is awkward, and every time I had Venser, he was either worthless or overkill. I found myself wishing he was Gideon a lot. I think the deck is trying to do too much, with Tezzeret and Venser pulling in different directions. There aren't enough relevant artifacts for Tezzeret to excel, and the blink targets for Venser just aren't good enough to rock Dr. Who.

While testing the deck, I played against SUSTAIN42, who had a novel take on the Infect deck. I didn't get his list, but I built my own based on what I saw in our games.

"White Snake"

• Creatures (23)
• 3 Stoneforge Mystic
• 4 Vector Asp
• 4 Ichorclaw Myr
• 4 Necropede
• 4 Plague Myr
• 4 Corpse Cur

• Spells (15)
• 3 Oust
• 4 Tempered Steel
• 1 Mortarpod
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1 Piston Sledge
• 3 Tumble Magnet
• 2 Mox Opal

• Lands (22)
• 4 Swamp
• 10 Plains
• 4 Marsh Flats
• 4 Inkmoth Nexus

• Sideboard (0)

Buy This Deck

Vector Asp is indeed awful. The worst part is he makes me run four otherwise-dead Swamps, but at least they open up sideboarding options. And we really do need the extra creature, no matter how bad it is. Oust is the perfect card for an aggressive poison deck, because the life gain obviously doesn't matter, and we're usually able to close out a game before the opponent can draw the creature again. Corpse Cur is better than he looks, giving the deck some much-needed reach. When you have a Tempered Steel or Sword on the battlefield, recurring Corpse Cur with Corpse Cur is even better than it is in limited.

Remembering Conley Woods's Legacy deck, I briefly tried splashing for Tezzeret, but the mana base just wasn't having it. Playing Tempered Steel on turn three is pretty critical; we need to run four Inkmoth Nexuses, and most of the dual lands available to us come into play tapped (bad for an aggro deck). In the end I scrapped the Planeswalker—if I play any, it will be Ajani Goldmane.

Friday

Which brings us to today (well, not for you, of course). I didn't brew any sweet decks, and FNM is out of the question when I have to work in the morning, but I did have a life-altering revelation.

If you look at my bio, you'll see that it claims I'm working on grad-school applications. This was true enough when I wrote it, but has been absolutely false for the past several months. Since Bryson was born last July, I've been in a kind of stasis, working for my dad every morning but doing nothing to improve my career situation. I've always had big dreams, but after graduating from college, a cynicism crept over me that had me feeling like the King of Rohan. Wormtongue kept whispering in my ear, "Why go to grad school? You'll end up in the same spot, just with different letters after your name and $60,000 more debt." I felt like I was destined to be a bread man forever; I even started to warm up to the idea. Sometimes being a father means making a sacrifice, I told myself. You should play it safe and make sure you can provide for your family.

Then Garrett moved to Boston. It shook me a little. He had a pretty good job at his dad's company. He could have had a comfortable life there, maybe not following his dreams, but at least making a living. The fact that he would uproot everything, take a job in a city where he didn't know anybody, didn't even have a place to stay yet, made me question my lack of motivation.

That was what I was thinking about when I talked to Alex today. Alex is a bread man, like me, probably a few years older. He looks like every other vendor, with the somber, scruffy face of a man who wakes up at 3:00 a.m., works through freezing New Hampshire winters, and gets no thanks for it. He looks like me.

"I'm dead tired, man," he said in the bread aisle at Wal-Mart.

"Have a good night last night?" I thought I was in line for another story about his new girlfriend, who is apparently quite flexible.

"I wish. Stayed up all night studying for an exam today."

"I had no idea you were in school."

"Of course, you think I want to do this job my whole life? F--- that."

His words were like a Pokeflute, awakening my inner Snorlax. If Alex is aspiring to more, why am I so content?

When I got home, I pulled up and finished my half-finished applications. I went to my high school and requested my transcript. I called admissions offices and e-mailed guidance counselors. This time, I'm not going to coast through school, getting good grades but never really applying myself. I'm going to take advantage of job fairs and counselors and optional lectures. I have a goal again, and realistic steps I can take to reach it.

It feels good. Learn from me.

Brad Wojceshonek

BradWoj at gmail dot com

@BJWOJ

P.S. Here are the best pictures I could get when trying to squeeze Tim into an actual Magic card bikini. I figured, being named after Tim Curry, he would enjoy a little cross-dressing, but no. I ended up having to Photoshop.