The Planeswalker's Stronghold

I found the rumor season for M11 a bit sad, as it revealed that Warp World would not be included for next year. This once again leaves me without a deck concept to move forward with. I turn in desperation to the clear replacement to Warp World, the new blue spell Mass Polymorph. The concept seems pretty clear. By controlling the creatures in the deck, I can hit specific targets and effects off the Mass Polymorph. In looking at my Warp World deck, the first thing that jumps out is I need to add blue to the mana base, which means I should probably drop a color. Since Mass Polymorph only effects creatures, and not lands, my prior win condition (Ob Nix) is pretty much out, so I have little need for black. The lack of land fall triggers also removes the need for most of card advantage tricks. In fact the only thing resembling a win condition from the original deck, is the Hellkites. Getting all four Hellkites out in one hit for a win condition is pretty tough, because I have to cheat ou...

So after a very unimpressive FNM, I figure it's time to put this deck back in the lab. I only one 3 games, and only one of those was going off with Warp World. The deck just seems to be a little to slow on the ramp, and many times I had great cards in my hand I just couldn't cast. Many early turns, I had nothing to do but play a land and pass.. Even worse, there was more then once I was drawing dead on an already full grip, and having to pitch cards to the yard. Ugh! I found several list which were running Growth Spasm, and had initially dismissed it since it wasn't a permanent. After a new round of testing, I've decided I was wrong. It ramps, and puts two permanents into play. Plus it leaves extra cards in my library in a post ultimate Warp World scenario, making it tougher to get milled out with my triggers on the stack. I experimented with a second Ob Nix, but ultimately concluded that I hate the Legend rule, or more specifically the fact that it doesn't use th...

I've been out of Standard now for a long time, too long honestly. People can give a lot of reasons for not liking Standard: It's boring, It's too expensive, It rotates to fast, but the fact remains that the majority of sanctioned Magic is Standard. If you want to play in a sanctioned event with any regularity, you have to play Standard. On the other side of the coin, I've been in love with Legacy for the last 9 months or so. While nothing has changed in my love for the eternal format, I've found that I allowed myself to fall into a trap. While I have done very well focusing my limited budget into assembling an ever growing Legacy arsenal, I've nearly exhausted my resources, and don't have the funds to enter Legacy events. Doh! So it seems to me at least, that the best thing I can do to try and leverage my remaining resources, is to hit some Standard events. Now comes the real problem. You see in my mind Standard really is boring, expensive, and rotates too...