This Week in Magic 11/25-12/1

Standard and Block

• Worlds Report—Conley Woods begins the tale of his undefeated streak with Day One and Tempered Steel. See also, PVDR
• Updated Haunted Humans from Worlds—Craig Wescoe’s world class run was powered by a UW weenie deck.
• Post-Worlds Standard—($SCG) Pat Cox played GW Tokens at Worlds, but today he’s got the entire gauntlet at his fingertips.
• The Rumors of Birthing Pod’s Death Have been Greatly Exaggerated—Andre Mateus eases out the mana, and slides Phyrexian Rager into the Birthing Pod curve.
• Tactical Magic, Round 1—Chingsung Chang pits Mono Red against Solar Flare in this detailed walkthrough that poses thoughtful questions. “Why is my opponent swinging with his Lavamancer?”
• Godo, Braid of Fire, and the Next Modern Bannings—($SCG) Patrick Chapin’s wide-ranging article was the talk of Twitter as he suggested additional bannings to shape Modern, and allow for deck diversity.

Limited

• Lessons from San Francisco—Limited players will find Darwin Kastle’s tournament report from Worlds to be quite useful as he advocates sixteen-land decks and a UR strategy, capitalizing on cards like Invisible Stalker.
• Burning Vengeance—Owen Turtewald suggests a UR draft strategy that relies heavily on the flashback mechanic.
• Magic Online release of Mercadian Masques Block—The entire block is set for its virtual release on December 5^th.

Vintage, Legacy, and Modern

• Modern After Worlds—Kyle Boggemes spends a day at the Modern zoo, and looks at how Liliana is becoming a key player in the format as well.
• A World’s Modern Analysis—Michael Martin’s meta-analysis reveals that Teachings and Jund were strong choices last weekend.
• Reviving Legacy Online—Michael Caffrey explains how Mental Misstep and the Modern format hurt online Legacy, and how Wizards could rekindle the flames.
• Building a Better Delver—Todd Anderson considers a plethora of cards that are better than Temporal Spring in RUG Tempo in Legacy.
• Adopting Abandoned Interactions—Carsten Kotter’s Intuition leads him to a couple of options for Legacy Reanimator

• Playing the Best Color in Classic—Naoto Watabe advocates players wade into the deep waters of Classic.

Casual and Variant Formats

• ‘Tis the Season to Deck—Abe Sargent’s first deck, IxiWolf, combines the transform mechanic with every griefer’s favorite illusion, but he’s only getting warmed up!
• Why Commander Works—Robby Rothe, fresh off of reading Reality is Broken, explains why Commander matters and why players prefer to keep the game going.
• The Whitest Fleece—Adam Styborski efficiently enumerates the white cards he’s chosen for the Commander Box.

Finance

• Post Worlds  Standard, Modern, and the Data—Kelly Reid picks his blue chips and sinking ships  in the wake of World’s  results.
• High-End Foils and  You—($SCG) Jonathon Medina hits the trade tables to… ooooh! Shiny!
• Nobody Knows Anything—Jesse Mason challenges the validity of the Magic Finance genre in light of new study that suggests stock traders are less likely to predict a stock’s direction than a coin flip.

Miscellaneous and Theory

• Content,Character, and Conley—Mike Flores’ entry for transformation week details Conley Woods’ ascension to rarefied air.
• The Sukenik Special—Justin Sukenik suggests that deck builders remember how vital the first four turns are to coming out on top.
• Fifteen Years, Fifteen Thoughts—Sheldon Menery’s retirement reflections include advice about owning your actions and cultivating relationships.
• Why You should Become a Judge—Justin Turner on the rewards of being a judge which go well beyond the monetary compensation.
• I Didn’t Play FNM—A Twitter campaign persuaded Jon Corpora to take a week off in his marathon of 52 FNM’s.  He’s back at this week.