Wednesday, April 3, 2013

My First Big Tournament

So, on Saturday, April 13, TCGPlayer is hosting a $5k tournament in Dallas (technically Farmers Branch).  So I'm trying to work out in my head what I want to play, I was thinking about the Aristocrats, but its currently 7/5 at 3 FNM's.  Seeing all the JUND/JUNK going around I thought about running that, but I hate running anything that I haven't had time to test out.  Then I thought about mono red with Reckoners/Thundermaw Hellkites/Hellriders...

Standard has just really become such a varied beast, I just don't know what to brew up, I like the idea of a fast deck that can take control and hit hard and fast and leave nothing, but I also don't want to be a dick.  I like the two decks I posted last week, but I will not have a lot of time to test them out and I just don't want to miss any mechanics or triggers at a tournament.

Those of you who are newer to magic or like me who played 18 years ago and then quit and came back, you missed a lot of content and I also didn't know all the lingo and still don't know it all.  Here is a short primer about deck types/alliances, all of this came out of the Alara block...


  • Bant - Bant is one of the five shards of Alara. It is primarily white-aligned with green and blue as secondary colors.  It is inhabited by humans, aven, rhoxes, the semi-intelligent leotau mounts, and the angels that watch over the plane.
  • Esper - Esper is one of five Shards of Alara. It is primarily blue-aligned, with white and black as secondary colors.  It is primarily inhabited by humans, vedalkens, and sphinxes, and a small race of blue-skinned sentient beings called the homunculi, among others.  It is also the native plane of Tezzeret.The most distinguishing characteristic of its inhabitants is their complete use of etherium to improve their skills and life spans.
  • Grixis - Grixis is one of five shards of Alara.  It is primarily black-aligned, with blue and red as secondary colors.  Due to the predominance of undeath, it is possible to find undead versions of Bant's leotaus and Jund's viashinos in Grixis.  Before Grixis split off from the mega-plane of Alara, things were different. White and green mana still flourished there.  The land was called Vithia, a white-aligned empire of humans and other races, a land proud of its dynasty of wise and honorable monarchs.
  • Jund - Jund is one of five shards of Alara.  It is primarily red-aligned, with black and green as secondary colors.  Most of Jund is covered with active volcanoes that add difficulty to the lives of its human, crocodrillian viashino and rat-like goblin inhabitants, but are of great advantage to the dragons that dominate it.  Life on Jund is a never-ending struggle of survival of the fittest, expressed through the devour mechanic.
  • Naya - Naya is one of five Shards of Alara.  It is primarily green-aligned, with red and white as secondary colors.  It is inhabited by gargantuan beasts, humans, elves who worship the beasts, a feline race called nacatl, and minotaurs that stalk the canyons.  After the Shards realigned and Alara was reborn, some vedalken heretics from Esper migrated to Naya, while the coatl snakes were created from the influx of blue mana.  Naya is Ajani's birthplace.


I hope that this helps clear up any confusion about what your seeing when decklists are posted, and will know where the names come from.  If you have any suggestions about what you'd run at a tournament, I'd love to hear it.

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