New Magic Judge Promos Revealed

At Pro Tour Philadelphia this weekend, the Magic Judge community revealed these two new promotional cards: Mana Crypt and Doubling Season. They look super cool. Check these bad boys out!

 

 

Don’t forget to check out the official coverage of Pro Tour Philadelphia, as the brand new Modern format is on display all weekend. Follow your favorite pro Magic player as he/she battles for fame and glory!

 

UPDATE: Samuele Estratti Splinters the Competition at PT Philly!

Congratulations to Samuele Estratti, 2011 Pro Tour Philadelphia champion! He bested finalist Josh “Wrapter” Utter-Leyton in the finals with his Blue/Red Splinter Twin combo deck against Josh’s “Counter-Cat” deck.

Combination decks were all the rage over the course of the weekend, between Splinter Twin decks, Pyromancer Ascension, Storm-based decks, Through the Breach, Hive Mind and more. Perhaps one of the biggest stories is Samuel Blacks “Poison Shoal” deck, the goal of which is to deal ten poison damage as quickly as turn TWO!

Aggressive strategies were not left out in the cold however, as Zoo and Affinity both put up very respectable numbers.

Finally, it is interesting to note that not a single Cloudpost deck even cracked the Top 8! The big bogey man in the room appears to have suffered a sound beating at the hands of the numerous combo decks, Zoo and Affinity.

Can the format adjust and right itself? Will Control decks make an appearance in the future? Is Modern just going to be another combo-centric format? Only time will tell!

 

Official Coverage

Top 8 Player Profiles

Top 8 Modern Decks

All Modern Decks, 18 Points or Better

Fact Sheet

Magic Pro Tour Philadelphia Changed from Extended to “Modern”

In quite the shocking move, especially considering how close the event is, Wizards of the Coast has announced a format change from Extended to new format Modern for Magic Pro Tour Philadelphia to be held the weekend of September 2nd to the 4th. While extremely unexpected, WotC did announce at this years San Diego Comic Con that they did intend to support and move forward with the Modern format they tested at the Community Cup, but no one surmised it would be so soon.

Included in the announcement is a complete ban list:

• Ancestral Vision
• Ancient Den
• Bitterblossom
• Chrome Mox
• Dark Depths
• Dread Return
• Glimpse of Nature
• Golgari Grave-Troll
• Great Furnace
• Hypergenesis
• Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• Mental Misstep
• Seat of the Synod
• Sensei’s Divining Top
• Skullclamp
• Stoneforge Mystic
• Sword of the Meek
• Tree of Tales
• Umezawa’s Jitte
• Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
• Vault of Whispers

The following cards are new editions: Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, Dread Return, Glimpse of Nature, Hypergenesis, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Mental Misstep, Stoneforge Mystic and Valakut the Molten Pinnacle. All of these cards are key in some sort of deck. For an explanation as to these additions as to why WotC decided upon the format change for the up coming Pro Tour, Tom LaPille explains all this and more in his accompanying article found here.

This author is greatly disappoint with some of these additional bannings, specifically Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, Stoneforge Mystic and Jace. While all are powerful, in a format that is vastly more wide open (and in a largely untested format to boot) none of these cards ought to be specifically dominating. None of these cards create instant wins like Hypergenesis or a Scapeshift-fueled Valakut can. Moreover, in a larger card pool, solutions to these cards ought to be readily available. The addition of Hypergenesis and Glimpse of Nature doesn’t surprise me, though Dread Return does. It is good of the DCI to recognize that combo decks could be a problem, but attacking powerful cards just because they’re powerful doesn’t seem like a good idea.

While my enthusiasm for this format has faded due to the new additions to the banned list, only time and the Pro Tour itself will tell us how this format stacks up to the rest. For now, it looks like I will not be blowing the dust off my Bitterblossom’s after all.