Oh standard, I love you. Please stop cheating on me with extended.

After lucking my way into nationals I got to sit down and talk with some of the best players in the world (including the guy who won the tournament who was my only loss in constructed /angry) and this is what nuggets I have learned.

-fauna shaman will define standard when blood braid and KotR goes away.
-expect jace 2.0 to hit 125$+ this December.
-ascension isn't a deck to worry about
-vengevine is better than everyone thinks (yes, that IS possible).
-U/W is NOT the deck to beat.
-inferno Titan + basilisk collar is reeeealy good.
-if you play blue you must have mana leak
-the beast named jund is not dead.



I leave you with this nugget of wisdom from Brian Kibler "fireballs in limited are like blow jobs in real life, it's always worth paying for."

ha ha. it turns out that jund won the 5k over the weekend. who knew that deck was good?

actually, the guy that won i've met so many damned times. he's a local from minneapolis, i think.

workshoptelescope wrote:

ha ha. it turns out that jund won the 5k over the weekend. who knew that deck was good?

actually, the guy that won i've met so many damned times. he's a local from minneapolis, i think.

I told you it wasn't dead!!

Magic Jesus wrote:

workshoptelescope wrote:

ha ha. it turns out that jund won the 5k over the weekend. who knew that deck was good?

actually, the guy that won i've met so many damned times. he's a local from minneapolis, i think.

I told you it wasn't dead!!

thought you'd appreciate the tip of the hat. it's really interesting. the guy who won had a pretty rock solid list. most astonishing was the sideboarding of blightning instead of maindeck. hilarious.

workshoptelescope wrote:

Magic Jesus wrote:

workshoptelescope wrote:

ha ha. it turns out that jund won the 5k over the weekend. who knew that deck was good?

actually, the guy that won i've met so many damned times. he's a local from minneapolis, i think.

I told you it wasn't dead!!

thought you'd appreciate the tip of the hat. it's really interesting. the guy who won had a pretty rock solid list. most astonishing was the sideboarding of blightning instead of maindeck. hilarious.

Yeah I don't know if I like that juke because everyone is going to assume you just didn't see one game one.

the Bloodbraid cascade to Blightning juke is just too good to have in sideboard in my opinion. Even if they have four Vengevine/Obstinate Baloth in their deck, they still have to have the card in their hand to avoid getting f ucked over by Blightning, and you can always sideboard it out. I would think most Jund builds aren't going to maindeck Baloth either as that would make for an even worse control matchup.

I agree 100% why take out one of the decks best cards? It's not like people will say oh ho ho ho I didn't see a blighting I better side out vengevine! And honestly if they're running md baloth you should win anyway seeing as he is much worse than damn near any creature in your deck if we're looking at a quality standpoint.

yeah, it's weird that somehow that ended up being more optimal than not. i mean, dude won with that build. i guess i would have to see what the field actually looked like and then his particular matchups for it to even begin to make sense.

i looked at the top 16 from the 5k, again. the three top 8 jund lists all avoided running blightning in the maindeck, the winning list being the only one running them in the side.
really weird.

workshoptelescope wrote:

i looked at the top 16 from the 5k, again. the three top 8 jund lists all avoided running blightning in the maindeck, the winning list being the only one running them in the side.
really weird.

I'd be interested to find out how many times they had wished for it.

Magic Jesus wrote:

workshoptelescope wrote:

i looked at the top 16 from the 5k, again. the three top 8 jund lists all avoided running blightning in the maindeck, the winning list being the only one running them in the side.
really weird.

I'd be interested to find out how many times they had wished for it.

lol, as in burning wished for it.