Hey I'm writing again. Did you spellslingers miss me? I was hoping to really inspire some people to begin writing pieces for the NG site again but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Come on people, give this site some content! Don’t mind the haters, you can never please everyone when you write, but as long as you write what you know in your heart to be true, no one can ever fault you. But be careful – the grammar police and the sentence construction Nazis are always on the prowl hereabouts.

I took a brief hiatus from playing because of some work and family commitments but I did miss drafting and I also didn’t have a decent standard deck as I stupidly thought I had a set of Blightnings for a Jund deck but as it turns out, I had sold all but two of them, and one of them is textless. Does anyone have cheap Blightnings for..ehem…sale?

Blightning decks made up 35% of the standard section of Worlds and have been a whopping presence since the Type II rotation of Faeries, Kithkin and the various Reflecting Pool control decks. Of course, we Pinoys have our own metagame and while there are Jund decks, it still takes skill to pilot a 60-card deck and those with other weapons of choice can still come out winners if they know their decks well enough.

Some people are playing Vampires and I thought about it but realized I had no Nocturni (plural for Nocturnus) and the parts for mono-black control were unreasonably priced. I also considered mono-white tokens but I had no Honor of the Pures, having sold it every time I got one because I thought the archetype was as viable as taking a shot at Anne Curtis (or since I’m much older – Eula Valdez). I also missed the memo on Ajani Goldmane’s strength and have but just one copy of said planeswalker in my binder.

I also like Andres Coimbra’s worlds-winning Naya Lightsaber Deck if not for the fact that I ain’t got no Walletslayer Angels (which has reportedly reached the mythic Tarmogoyf level of $50 per piece in the American online card seller’s virtual shelves – that’s roughly Php2350 in the local currency) or the fetchlands you need to go with it.

I still don’t get what’s so hot about Lotus Cobra. Sure you can have the mythical insane third turn Ultimatum of your choice – usually of the Cruel variety although for me, Violent Ultimatum would actually be better – but all in all, the Cobra suffers the same problem of every decent mana accelerator that’s not a Wall, it’s got a bullseye on its forehead. The mana serpent should be glad that Mogg Fanatic isn’t in Standard anymore but it’s guaranteed to die when a mountain or Savage Lands untaps, or be exiled should a plains or Sunpetal Grove do the same same thing.

So what does that leave poor old me? I looked through my cards and noticed I had three Ant Queens and four Elvish Archdruids. I had just read about Kali Anderson (she is such a chubby cutie) winning the Nashville 5K w week before worlds with a mono-green Eldrazi Monument deck starring Nissa Revane and I finally had a deck I wanted to play. Of course it would likely end up in three colors when I get my hands on it but the two color version I have was fun to play when I took it out for a playtest spin over the weekend so expect to see me playing first turn Oran-Rief, the Vastwoods (what a beater of a card!) for the next few months.

(Of course anyone with a cheap Monument or Garruk is welcome to help me finish up the deck – I need at least one more of each – and I have some tradeables. Hmm, I better watch it lest this column wind up in the excellent Trading Post section of this site.)

Going back to Standard decks – there is some good diversity in the format right now, meaning it’s quite healthy – just look at the Worlds coverage to see that there is great variety in all the 60-card formats. If you know how to play your deck well enough, as long as you don’t face a deck that was tuned specifically to beat yours – again, such as Coimbra’s deck which was built to really beat Jund – you have a shot. Just something for the Gold Rush hopefuyls to think about.

Now going back to Worlds – yes it’s the first Top 8 in the 77-event history of the Pro Tour which didn’t have a single American or Japanese player. Is the game’s center shifting again? It looks like it’s Europe’s turn to domnate and why not? They have a hugely talented player base with a high proportion of premier events within train-riding distance (the usual mode of travel in Europe) and more importantly, a strong currency to back them up. It’s no wonder Martin Juza finished second in the Player of the Year race while Austria was again close in the hunt for the team title which surprisingly went to China.

Yes, China, which only recently allowed the entry of these Magic cards into their huge market when their Department of Sports recognized it as a mind game which rewards excellence and another possible platform to show how good the people behind the Bamboo Curtain are.

Yes China, which has never had a player finish in an individual Pro Tour Top 8 before although in fairness, they’ve only recently begun attending these events. So when the trio of Wu Tong, Bo Li and Zhiyang Zhang swept their team matches to get into the semifinals where they beat a tough Dutch team. Then they upended name pro Benedict Klauser and the Austrians in the finals to come away with their first MtG trophy – maybe not as big a deal on their homefront but a big one nonetheless, specially for Wizards.

If the China market really opens up (1.2 billion possible customers and still growing alarmingly), then WotC will sit up and take notice and hopefully put up more premiere events within flying distance for us Pinoys to possibly go to. And since going to China is a lot easier than going to the land of the Rising Sun – it’s easy to see why there might be a tilt in the game’s poweraxis soon.

As for JT Porter, Ogie Jaro and Jason Ascalon, they put up a fair fight individually and as a team. They hovered around the .500 mark all tournament long and finished 17th in the team competition (one wonders what would have happened had they swept all their team matches, that would’ve given them enough points to make the team semifinals.) Of course one of their two wins was a bye, let's not forget.

Porter was our best individual performer, finishing with a 10-8 mark and winding up in 142nd place. Fifteen places below him was Ogie Jaro who had 9-8-1 while Jason Ascalon still had a decent 8-10 card. Not bad, as I’m sure they really tried their best to go further up the standings. Maybe they played in the Sunday PTQ for San Diego, just like we did last Saturday, November 21.

That PTQ served as the official end to my hiatus as I’ve started looking at my Magic cards again. Although I went 1-3-1 drop, I still had a blast. I probably could have done better had I arrived earlier but losing precious deckbuilding time because I had to pre-register the deck is something I certainly would remember from now on. In a sealed deck PTQ, it pays to come early if you hope to do well.

Hey, I’m getting lengthy. See you next time.