Swamp Gas

 Seems like just yesterday we were looking at the cute and cuddly world of Bloomburrow. A lot has changed. Welcome to Duskmourne! I may be biased, but I think that black cards are the most evocative and flavorful in this set, as black is typically considered the "horror" color. I mean, look at some of these. Makes my skin crawl, which is just what I want out of my black cards! But of course, we're not just here for the flavor. This set has some incredible cards in it, and black is of course no exception. We're here to talk about them, so without further ado, let's get into it! Honorable Mention: Valgavoth's Faithful Starting right off the bat with an interesting one for our honorable mention. This is a deceptive card. On the surface, it doesn't seem that strong--it's little, it dies easily, and the ability is only sorcery speed. And yet, if you start to think about it, Valgavoth's Faithful presents an interesting play pattern. You play this on turn...

 Hello my fellow swamp enjoyers! Bloomburrow is upon us, and so far it really does seem like the new set and rotation have blown the format wide open. Brews are flowing all up and down the ladder, and I couldn't be happier. The matches are interesting, the cards seem strong but not ubiquitous or bonkers like some of the cards that rotated, and it's been a wonderful return to form after our stagnant meta previously. While Midrange is always going to be my baby, and I'm going to continue tuning it, I wanted to get down my thoughts today on an absolute abomination of a deck that I brewed up on a whim the other day that... honestly works. It works really, really well, especially in a meta in flux where people aren't ready for you but you can basically be ready for anything. Presenting... Mono Black (Token?) Control! Since this is a control deck, talking about cards on the curve doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense. Instead, I'm going to talk about groupings of ca...

 Hello there swamp creatures! It's been a while since my last post, I know. Life's been coming at me a bit, and with a stagnating Standard format there wasn't really much call for Magic from me. But with both rotation and a new set on the horizon, it's high time we start brewin'! I'll have some brews up in the coming weeks now that all the cards have been spoiled, but in the meantime, I wanted to give you my Top 5 Cards for Mono-Black from Bloomburrow! (Note: I didn't say "the top 5 black cards", I said "the top 5 cards for Mono-Black". While this will usually mean black cards in general, there may be a sneaky pick in there. Stay tuned!) Honorable Mention: Rottenmouth Viper I've seen a lot of hype for this card online, and rightly so--this is a bonkers good card. Cost reductions on strong creatures, especially with ETBs, should not be ignored lightly, and this is no exception. We already had a ETB focused deck in standard before (aka ...

Whenever I'm in a Magic community or social gathering place and I start explaining Mono-Black card choices or deckbuilding strategies or its place in the meta, I always get asked the same question: "Why do you willingly choose to play Mono-Black when it seems like there's so many better options?" It's a valid question, and one I often forget I need to answer. I forget that people usually look at a deck with a strict lens of power-level: if it's not top tier, that must mean it's bad for some reason. Competitive players should only play the strongest deck, right? But things are rarely that black and white (pun intended). There's a reason we have tiers beyond S (or 1, depending on your ranking structures). There's a reason--many reasons, actually--that despite the fact that some deck may be the strongest in any given meta, not everyone's playing it. In fact, most format-health metrics tend to suggest that, if any given deck is being played too muc...

Welcome back to the Swamp! We had our first local tournament last week, which is always really fun when there's a new format. This is store is definitely a far cry from the 30+ crowds of Endangered Hobbies in Natick, MA, but Baxter's is a delightful store with a good community. There's not very much solid jank, so the players usually separate themselves into the very casual players and the more competitive players--and, given who we are, that means we actually face meta 90% of the time because our deck eats jank alive. On the to the updated list! ` I will come out and say that, given the current meta, this is the optimized version of this list. I've done a lot of iterations with some questionable card choices, but I've settled on this list after it all and I think it has the best chance. You can find my Untapped record here . The Cards Hopeless Nightmare Likely our best possible synergy with Braids, Hopeless Nightmare is a world of value and mana efficiency all wrap...