Greetings, loyal subjects. Today, I will make you privy to a queen’s hidden magic in achieving her glorious look when making a public appearance. If you have not yet donned proper Theros attire, I encourage you to consult Sonja’s guide to togaset cetera. I was pleasantly surprised at the level of plebian participation I witnessed during prerelease weekend in terms of festive dress. Yet, we must always look to improve ourselves in the eyes of the gods. Our leonin adversaries are consistently kicking our asses in cosplay and in overall team spirit. I call upon you to do your duty to Akros and to Theros in general and tie one on (a bed sheet, I mean) for an event this year. My account of putting on my queen face for a tourney in Portland, Oregon is as follows. I had two hours and only the contents of my palace to use.

Working on The Eyebrows That Will Mount The World. Strong features are my trademark, so I always use dark eyeliner, thicken my brows with dark pencil, and choose a vibrant color for my lips. I’m not shy with the blush brush and the bronzer either.

The conclusions I’ve drawn lead me to a few more thoughts about the format and a few deck lists I think are worth talking about.

First, I think mono-red will be the baseline deck to beat. It is fast, powerful, and consistent, has 4 Mutavaults, and Burning Earth post-board. If that is an accurate assumption, then I think three-color control decks will be poorly positioned and likely unpopular relatively soon.

If I’m right about that, then I think some form of Selesnya will be a good deck to play to beat mono-red while maintaining good matchups elsewhere.

As for midrange and control, I haven’t figured out whether RW, RU, or RB would be the best way to go. For that type of deck, speculation isn’t really enough, but I’ve still brewed up something to think about/test with.

Why don't more people play Life from the Loam in Modern? Life from the Loam is some powerful Magic and historically has been a player in Standard, Extended, and Legacy. Yet it remains a tier 2 card in tier 2 decks in Modern and has for some time.

Consider the purpose of deckbuilding in Magic: The Gathering. Do you happen to know offhand what the idealized goal of any given deck should be?

Consistency.

The purpose of deckbuilding is to construct a tool that can replicate the same game states as often as possible while converting them into victories as often as possible. That's right—every tournament is basically the plot of Groundhog Day in microcosm.

The most obvious example of this concept is Goblin Charbelcher in Legacy. It wants to Belch you on turn 1 or Empty you if it can't Belch. There aren't any Plan Cs; there are only late Plan As and Plan Bs. Let's take a more nuanced example: U/W/R Flash from the recently deceased Standard format. Every game plays out the same way—you make land drops, remove threats, cast a Revelation, and assert pressure while continuing to ride the card-advantage train. The games might involve totally different cards and take anywhere from seven to 27 turns, but the basic pattern is identical. The only variations come from failures in execution or trumps like Aetherling.

Lately there has been a lot of discussion in the Ad Nauseam Tendrils thread on The Source concerning the Omni-Tell matchup, and given that these are two of the most popular combo decks in the format, that probably interests at least a reasonable number of you, my dear readers. At the very least looking at the matchup a little more closely should shed some more light on the inner workings of both decks.A lot of Storm players seem to have trouble with the Omni-Tell matchup, while I personally find it to be quite favorable. I can only assume that the difference here stems from taking a wrong approach to the matchup, so that's what I'd like to cover today.

Now, just telling someone "that's the way you need to go" is very hard with a deck as flexible as Storm, but there are two basic approaches you have to keep in mind for the matchup and adjust your play accordingly. Some hands all you care about is getting them dead as soon as possible and use your disruption to pave the way for that early kill before they can go off. In others you go for a grindy long-term fight in which you rip their hand to pieces with discard again and again while waiting for the necessary cards to show up in your hand slowly but surely with the help of your natural draw step. Omni-Tell is a three-card combo deck after all; they should need more time to recover than you do.

Instead of just making these few sentences into a full-fledged article, I thought I'd do something a little more interesting. I'll take inspiration from two articles I wrote roughly a year ago—a detailed report of playing a match of Storm against Delver, putting my thoughts on paper as they appeared in my head while playing the match. A lot of you liked them quite a bit, so this seemed like a great opportunity to explore how this matchup should be played while again showing off what playing Storm actually looks like from the player's point of view.

Well, enough introduction; let's get to the action!

Awaking into being, she experienced such sadness swelling in her core. Overcome with the grief of a life lost—no, many lives lost—and the spirits within the massive hydra forever extinguished, was the first of many feelings this youthful nymph would become familiar with. Arising from the grass beneath the spilled blood, Zoe stood and immediately fell to her knees to press her leafy forehead to one of the hydra's fallen heads. Her starlit hands caressed the front horn of the creature and she sang in a sad, low voice her first words in Theros. A blade had slain this majestic creature and it hurt Zoe, who was connected to all the souls of the forest. A servant of Nylea, Zoe wanted to protect the rest of her beloved beasts from the tragedy that had just occurred.

The sun set and a new day began before she stood again and took her first steps. Zoe followed a lynx into a grove of pale green olive trees and immediately understood that the grove was her home. Once inside, Zoe felt the presence of her creator. Thinking of the hydra's stillness and the dryness in her eyes, Zoe asked, "What is this sorrow? What is this world and why is it so cruel as to murder a living creature of greatness?"

Nylea spoke in a voice that sang like honey, "Mortals do not understand the beauty of the woods. We must protect our animals and our home from the folly and hatred of the humans."

"How can I protect the beauty, Master?"

I hope all the Greek food isn't giving your Commander decks indigestion.The release of new sets is one of the most exciting moments to be a Magic player. Heads are filled with dreams of Xenagos, the Reveler alongside Wort, Boggart Auntie, or what Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx can do in a monocolored deck. The new tools that will fill decks, like Curse of the Swine as great blue removal, are easy to discuss simply because they never existed before.In fact, I could spend an entire article just pointing out the new cards I love most, and why:

• Nighthowler is finally a way to get two Lhurgoyfs for the price of one, and I really like Lhurgoyf.
• Fleecemane Lion and Pharika's Mender are useful tools that fit right into the strategies of their respective colors.
• Reaper of the Wilds seems custom-created to get me to play Ghave, Guru of Spores yet again.
• The cycle of Temples upgrade one of my favorite monocolored lands (New Benalia) for a more multicolored world.
• As a lover of strange-but-surprisingly-powerful Equipment, Prowler's Helm is my new Trailblazer's Boots.
• Burnished Hart is my preferred style of mana ramping for monocolored decks (putting the lands directly into play).
• There's a killer cool whip and a New Spear for my white token decks.

Listing sweet cards isn't as exciting as playing Magic, however, particularly in Commander.

Within the trove of all things new there are always new standouts among the legendary in the set. These new commanders are where many Commander players start their journey. While you may be a grizzled veteran of multiplayer and Commander like me, it's clear from the feedback the rest of you share that newer sets are precisely where Commander begins.

Those new legendary creatures are the shining points of Commander in Theros. We've alreadylooked at a few but there were plenty more to show off. Fortunately, you were up for the challenge.