Swamp Gas

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

I have an apology to make, specifically to Rankle. This card is truly bananas. I should never have ignored it. Welcome back to Swamp Gas, where we continue to refine our Mono-Black Bargain list as we fight for our right to exist on the high mythic ladder. We dropped a fair amount since our apex of #319 due to excessive tinkering on my part, but with some actual real changes we've been on a 11-1 tear from about #1200 Mythic to top 350. And, really, it's all thank to this fellow. I'll talk about it in the notable changes to the list some more, but this card needs some more respect. The Updated List Only 2 Sheoldred? Heresy! you say. But not so, reader.  The Changes Cuts: Virus Beetle, Gumdrop Poisoner, a few copies of Sheoldred and Cut Down Adds: Rankle's Prank, Liliana of the Veil, Virtue of Persistence, Razorlash Transmogrant The Reasoning Let's start with the obvious: we're down to two copies of Sheoldred from our previous four, and the simple reason for that i

 Ladies and gentlemen, we've done it again. Welcome to day 4 of Wilds of Eldraine Standard, and boy howdy is it a cool place to be. Contrary to what some of the doomsayers may have said, this format is incredibly diverse so far. While the first few days were dominated by Faeries and Dimir midrange, the final steps of my climb were against a vast array of colors and deck choices, and we had some crazy games. The final boss to Mythic, for example, was an absolute nailbiter against Mono-Blue Delver where we both had lethal attacks if opponent could topdeck the right card (not only did he fail to do that, he drew the worst possible: Flow of Knowledge with my Sheoldred on board). But we'll get to that in a bit. Here's the final version of the deck! Deck Overview:     Main Deck: 4 Hopeless Nightmare 3 Cut Down 3 Go For The Throat 3 Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia, 3 Virus Beetle 2 The Witch's Vanity 4 Gumdrop Poisoner 3 Braids, Arisen Nightmare 2 Lord Skitter, Sewer King 4 She

 Welcome to the wilds, everyone! It feels pretty cool to be returning to Eldraine. I remember when the first one came out and essentially every format exploded with the sheer power of some of these cards. The return to Eldraine seems tempered slightly--the cards are powerful, but within their own strategies instead of in a vacuum. And one of those strategies was the subject of my Day 1 play: Mono-Black Bargain.  Really, the point of the exercise was to build the best shell for Beseech the Mirror that I could find. There are so many powerful things this flexible card can do, but it needs the right shell to really get off to the races. After some tinkering, here's the list I ended up on: Main Deck: Sideboard: Creatures (17) 4 Virus Beetle 3 Lord Skitter, Sewer King 3 Braids, Arisen Nightmare 4 Gumdrop Poisoner 3 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse Non-Creatures (18) 4 Hopeless Nightmare 3 Cut Down 3 Go For The Throat 1 Witch's Vanity 1 Sorin the Mirthless 1 The End 3 Beseech the Mirror 2 V