I’ve made it to the end of Ivy Lane: a five-month journey covering the main implementation of two-color pairs (better known as guilds) in my Cube. There have been two updates in that time, but the core concepts of the guilds remain unchanged. There’s an excellent chance they will remain the same for many years into the future.

The reason is that my Cube is made up exclusively of commons. While Magic design can adjust the dials on colors at higher rarities, commons tend to expose the purest possible essence of a given color. Mechanics might appear on the cards that appear more frequently, but these are hardly the most exciting or powerful executions of new devices in the toolbox. In turn, commons heavily tied to their settings tend to feel similar to cards from any other set. Take Siege Wurm as an example. The Magic 2015 Limited standout is a quintessential green card that operates along a well-worn axis: large creature with trample. Convoke can do some interesting things at higher rarities, but at common, it can only help execute the known.

Because of this, Pauper Cubes will also tend to follow these paths. Given a singleton restriction, it becomes challenging to build a mechanic-based deck in a Cube. Instead, colors—and color pairs—become historical executions of their inherent themes and tropes.

And that circles back to Selesnya and Simic. These two-color combinations are last by virtue of the alphabet, but they also presented issues as I revamped and crafted my Cube.

As I sit in a coffee shop in Portland, OR, taking a break from the SVUHQ, the art area, and Marcel’s incredible cooking, and with my eyes bugging out over TSG’s Cube, I realized that Gen Con is also this week. I realize that Gen Con is also this week, and it's about time for another primer in my Vorthos art world. It would be wonderful if I found a good way to archive information relevant to Magic players on uncertainties they'd have with artists. Maybe that's part of good Magic writing: You repeat yourself every three years with new information. College textbooks might be onto something.

Gen Con, as a convention, is among the first that opened its arms to artists. The artist alley is one of the hallmarks of the show, chock-full with awards, a major artist acting as guest of honor, and part of the spectacle that is tens of thousands of geeks in one location. Artists do need to pay for their booth spaces, but with the massive amount of foot traffic being in the middle of an exhibit space provides, seeing a decent rate of return isn't terribly difficult. Maximizing your profits, though, is an entirely separate conversation. Today, we will discuss some quick bits of information that you can pull up on your phone in the Magic area before you stop into the artist alley.

As I was watching the PTQ, I started thinking about how few of these large PTQs might be left. I thought it would be nice to document this one, particularly given how interested people have seemed to have been in getting a little more in depth information. I asked Ben if he could help me out with the standings and decklists after the event. Voila! 184 decklists...

One of the keys to making Magic fun and interesting is making sure there are always different options on how to build decks. One of the problems with a card like Thoughtseize is that, while it can keep the biggest shenanigans from making things go awry, it also punishes decks that just want to play fair—and decks that rely on synergy even harder. Except for only having Loxodon Smiter in your hand, there just isn't much that you can do to interact with the card...

One of the problems with having a constant and unconditional four-mana Wrath of God variant in Standard is that it can generate a lot of control-vs.-aggro matchups that boil down to that one play on the fourth turn. The aggressive deck needs enough juice that it can win on turn five if the opponent doesn't have the sweeper, but not so much that the sweeper doesn't matter. It means that it is usually best to take the hits from aggro until you can destroy all creatures on turn four, then either use spot removal to clean up the rest or play a second sweeper when the aggro deck tries to recover. Historically, it has been very hard for most creature-based strategies to survive two early-game sweepers, and much of those decks' matchups against control really just came down to "Do they have it or don't they?" which isn't a very satisfying way to win or lose a game.

It's hard not to use incredulous expletives when talking about the past Pro Tour season put up by the three friends known as Peach Garden Oath. Trust me, I've had to restrain myself at countless stops along the way: from Reid Duke's stunning reversal of fortune at the World Championship and his first career Pro Tour Top 8, to Owen Turtenwald's emphatic and long-awaited back-to-back Grand Prix victories, to the Pro Tour Hall of Fame induction ceremony for William Jensen that was the preamble to a record-breaking Grand Prix season and a fifth career Pro Tour Top 8.

In the week leading up to Grand Prix Portland I did a podcast with Mike Flores for Top 8 Magic and basically gave Peach Garden Oath a bye into the finals of the GP. There was no doubt in my mind those three would be playing when the elimination rounds came around. Having watched these guys play Magic (and specifically having been taken to school on Team Limited by Jensen), I thought there had never been a safer pick of a GP winner in all my years following the game.