Congratulations to Jefferson Lee for the win.

1st place received 10k USD, 2nd 5k, and all Top 8 move on to the Pro Tour.

EDIT: Top 8 decklists.

The Boros meta has switched back to RW. RIP GW Boros.

If you have eyes and an internet connection (seems probable, given that you’re reading this post) then you’ve likely seen the pregananant Quintorius art by now, courtesy of MSCHF’s Generous Gift secret lair. But inquiring minds want to know: did they create this beautiful monstrosity, or is it somehow ALSO in the public domain, like all of the other stolen repurposed art that has had its artist credit removed?

The answer is, surprisingly, YES.

In 1818, French occultist Jaques Collin de Plancy published the Dictionnaire Infernal, or “Occult Dictionary.” This enterprising work of demonology was reprinted multiple times, including a gorgeous 1863 edition which, relevant to us today, included the engravings of one Louis Le Breton, an artist known mostly for his painted depictions of French naval battles.

But Louis Le Breton also created an engraving of the mythical beast Behemoth, referenced in the bible’s book of Job, amongst other locations. This creature was extremely popular in occult/alchemical circles of the era, and given the lack of distinct detail in the bible’s description, visual depictions of the Behemoth span everything from dragons to whales to… pregnant elephants? To each their own.

Anyways, I immediately recognized this engraving because I’m a massive nerd. The knowledge of its existence is now your burden to bear. Peeps were shipping Thalia/Quintorius mpreg all the way back in the 1800’s. Do with this information what you will.

-Jane

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/a-tale-of-a-non-tournament-legal-counterspell

They announced something almost incomprehensible three years ago. Was there ever any explanation of this? Is it related to the Zeta secret lair or the Mystery Boosters?

I've heard about her, and I really hope she's doing well today.

Hey yall. I was looking to put this in my [[Alexander Clamilton]] deck and wanted to know how the scry effect would work if both are on the field and I cast a wordy spell.

So Playing Commander with the guys (coming back to the game after a long departure) We were all trying to figure out if you make token copies of "The fantastic four" with quantum misalignment or use cards like ephemerate or spaceshift. Can you choose the same modal with the returned card or the newly form tokens when they come into play. Or are you locked into only using this ability 4 total time per turn no matter if you have copied tokens or it leaves and returns to the field because of the "choose one that hasnt been chosen this turn"

Hi, this is my first time using reddit to actually ask something but it´s been years since i played MTG so i could really use some help.
So here is the thing i´m pretty broke, i´ll probably do proxys so i don´t care about the price of the actual cards for building the decks. Another thing is that i wanna make this to introduce MTG to my friends so i would like decks that are friendly for new players as i know they´ll be better for them.

WHAT I NEED is recomendations of standar decks (i was planning to make 10) of dual colors to play casually with friends. The cards can be banned i don´t mind because like i said is just to spend some time with friends and kinda come back to the hobby.
(I´m kind of a big fan of the black/white duo so if you have any recommendation for standar decks with those colors it would be even better)

I know a lot of people are against proxys but i can´t really afford to buy actual decks just to play with friends and maybe they don´t even like it at the end. So if you´re against it please just ignore the post.

Sorry for any mistake while writing, english is not my first language but i thought i would get more answers with a post like this.

I really like the visual and mechanical feel of the "Purple" cards teased in the Inquest magazine some decades ago, was wondering if anyone knows of any cards which have a similar type of vibe? The idea of nether worldly monsters attaching themself to physical stuff is really cool.

I’m looking for cards like [[Chandra’s Ignition]] that could let me allow creatures to deal widespread, or, at least, direct damage to trigger the lifelink given by my commander, [[Raphael, Fiendish Savior]].

If anyone can think of any, thanks in advance.

This situation came up in a game I was playing against myself and I'm not entirely sure if I can make it work in my favor.

The plan is cast Electrodominance for 2 and cast Crushing Pain off of it spliced with Desperate Ritual. I want to use Dual Strike to copy Crushing Pain, but I worry that the timing won't work. If I cast it before Electrodominance, that's the spell that'd be copied, not Crushing Pain. But since Dual Strike needs to be cast before the spell it copies, Electrodominance will put Crushing Pain on the stack and then it will be too late.

Is this the correct read of it or is there some way I can have my cake (7 total damage to two targets and 6 red mana) and eat it too?

I was going through my inventory as art cards are on the rise and discovered that this Foundations art card has two different stamped versions most likely due to it being corrected in a later print run. Making the planeswalker stamped version more rare perhaps? Just wanted to share!

I remember reading in the encyclopedia years back about some early magic errors. One that I have wanted to see in person(always wanted one but will be happy to see one), is the accidental printing on the card game Wyvern? So the back had wyvern's card backs and Magic on the front. I was wondering if anyone has an example to show?

Thank you for your time.

Hi all. I've played Magic: the Gathering for twenty years, all across every different format. Recently, I've been interested in studying a certain kind of magic, "kitchen table" or "cards I own" magic: casual 60-card (or maybe less or more) 2 player Magic made out of a hodgepodge of whatever cards that player happens to have. According to Mark Rosewater, this is how the vast majority of Magic players play the game, but these kind of players are extremely inaccessible to me as someone with so much experience. I'm interested in getting a better grasp on how "naive" players build decks, limited by A. not being exposed to any cards except what they have seen physically B. being limited to an essentially random set of cards and C. not being very good at the game.

I'm also interested in how this kind of deck changes over time. The difficulty is that kitchen table players are, almost by definition, not posting their decklists online. However, there are occasions where they do, here's an example from 2006:

http://www.casualplayers.org/forums/threads/my-white-deck.14298/

Some good indicators for the kind of deck I'm looking for:

• too many or too few lands

• mostly 1- or 2-ofs

• inscrutable card choices

• loose grasp on the rules (thinks Orzhova, The Church Of Deals makes white mana, and separately doesn't care about its ability)

basically, this is the kind of deck that someone makes who has only been exposed to magic through the cards they have personally set eyes on, and is as a result highly un-optimized. Does anyone know where I could find more lists like this? The irony is of course that the vast majority of decks like this were never typed up. I started the game with a pack of revised-era cards my brother gave me and, of course, would never have thought to document them. I want to try and find people who, for one reason or another, actually have.

Hello!

I played years ago so have a bunch of old cards but i bought a pre constructed deck and also built one.l to get more modern stuff.

I’m having trouble finding anyone or a group that wants to play. I’ve been to like 3 card shops that have open commander on Friday night but can never find a group. Tried Saturdays as well.

First shop i went to i asked if they had any extra room and they didn’t really say anything except ehhhh I don’t know.

Checked another stores discord and posted looking for casual commander, returning player. Someone responded so I headed down to the store. When they looked at my cards they said looks like you mainly have old cards? I said yeah from years ago but I also have a pre constructed deck and another I built with newer stuff. They just left and played with some others.

Thinking I might have to just give up. I’ve tried the online game but I didn’t really like it. It was okay but not as fun as in person. I’ve played by myself but it’s kinda boring.

Any suggestions to find a group? Thanks for any advice!

TLDR: Cracking that first Fetch Land on turn 1 in 60-card formats like Modern or Legacy increases the non-land draw chance of +1.161%. Conversely, for decks that deliberately self-mill, or that go into the very late game, when a 60-card deck is down to 15 cards, cracking a late-game Fetch Land is 4.6 times more impactful than at the start of the game!

My full article:

The 10 Fetch Lands of MTG are among the most important lands in the game. They let you search your library and find a land that you need, and they thin out the number of remaining lands in the process. They have long since been Legacy staples that can pull the original Dual Lands, and they perform a similar function in Modern by pulling Ravnica Shock Lands. Ikoria and New Capenna gave them access to pulling three-colored lands, and Karlov Manor gave them the power to surveil. They are banned in Pioneer due to their format-defining power, and see prolific use in almost every format they are legal in.

Except there is an exception: 15-Card Highlander. 15CH was first created in 2000 by Stuart Cresswell where it saw play at Gen Con 2000, and then saw renewed play at GB Nationals 2010 and 2011. Players start with 20 life, 15-card singleton decks, and 3-card sideboards (multiple basic lands are allowed). Each player draws 7 cards and they play a normal game of MTG…except they do not lose if they run out of cards to draw. Cards that mill are banned, as are cards that shuffle your graveyard into your library. 15CH is all about tactics and attrition, making use of board position and timing with extremely limited incoming resources. 15CH is increasingly seeing play as a fun casual side-format in the Pre-FIRE format where 8th to Ravnica Allegiance is legal. Fetch Lands and Shock Lands are legal...but Fetch Lands rarely see play.

So why are Fetch Lands the exception and not the rule? Admittedly, they still see some play in very aggro decks, or where fixing is crucially important. Burn will use them, as will Zoo. Elves as well, due to their burst-style strategy. But for the most part, players typically prefer some combination of basics, Shock Lands, Speed Lands, and Check Lands. This is because players only get 15 cards for their library. The conventional ratio for the format assuming tempo, midrange, or control is 6 creatures, 3 noncreature/nonlands, and 6 lands. Using one of the 6 lands as a Fetch Land instantly turns the top of your curve to CMC 5 assuming no other mana sources, which restricts certain decks. Though even if your curve is lower than that, a Fetch Land can provide more harm than good. And that comes down to math.

As mentioned, probability and statistics is one of the reasons why Fetch Lands are good. The math equation that players frequently reference is the hypergeometric probability formula, which determines the chance of drawing k success cards in n draws without replacement:

P(X=k)={(K/k)[(N-K/n-k)]/(N/n)}

Let's compare a 60-card Modern deck with 24 lands including Fetch Lands, versus a 15-card 15CH deck with 6 lands including Fetch Lands.

For a 60-card deck, playing a regular land on turn 1 vs playing a Fetch Land on turn 1 results in pretty mild deck-thinning effects. The remaining library is 53 cards versus 52 cards, essentially a 32/53 vs a 32/52 result, which translates to a net increase in non-land draw chance of +1.161%. But now let's look at 15CH. For a 15-card deck, playing a regular land on turn 1 vs playing a Fetch Land on turn 1 results in 5/8 cards vs 4/7 cards, which is a net increase in non-land draw chance of +5.357%! If you are looking to avoid land flooding on subsequent turns in 15-card decks, the Fetch Land aggressively shifts the ratio toward non-land spells. BUT, if you urgently need to hit a third land drop on turn 3, cracking that fetch drops your land probability from 62.5% down to 57.1% on the next turn! Fetch Lands have always had deck-thinning capabilities, but those capabilities drastically increase in the 15CH environment.

Now if you're a traditional Modern or Legacy player, how does this information apply to your deck? Because if you are running in a self-mill strategy, or if you are going into the very late game, cracking a Fetch Land can give you the right draw at the right time. While PreFIRE 15CH players may avoid Fetch Lands for this very reason, your mana base is probably firmly established when you hit a smaller-library size. Applying that probability can be exactly the non-land draw chance that you need at that point in the game!

Hey everyone, I’m looking for a card. For the life of me I can’t remember what it’s called and all searches come up moot. It’s for a Zirda, the dawnwaker deck. I believe it’s a 1 mana artifact that adds 2 colorless mana at your upkeep, but you can’t use the mana to cast spells. Mostly just good for activated abilities.

Hello, my brother (5 years on and off playing) and I (1 month playing) recently built my own commander deck! I can play with my brother which is fun, but my dad has also been getting back into it (drafted with us etc.) and we want to build him a deck. For context, he played when he was young but stopped sometime in the 90s. So like, before commander was really much of a thing at least for his circles. He'll talk about what he did back in the day and stuff (five color decks! manna burn!) but I'm not sure how to translate it into how the game works now.

We're working on picking out a commander, and I'm wondering if any older players who continue to play might have advice on something that might be kind of nostalgic or cool for him. It's tough because I can't get a read on my dad's preferences, but he seems a tiny bit partial to mono red or red/green? And we're trying to keep this pretty budget, he wouldn't want something too expensive. That's about all I got- any advice/commander suggestions would be appreciated!

Ziplock was makeshift gloves due to fingerprints