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Hey everyone. My name is Reuben Bresler. I decided to ‘Suit Up’ for today’s episode, I hope you did too.
Welcome to The Main Phase.
I hope everybody out there had a good Halloween weekend.
I know I sure did, because I thought my costume was hilarious.
Oh, didn’t I say what my costume was?
Well everyone, I went as Charizard Nixon.*
* (That would be a Charizard dressed up as Richard Nixon.)
That’s right folks, I’m your Charmander in Chief!
I am not a fire type!
Remember everyone, vote Nixon!
Anyway, moving on to news that matters to anyone at all.
The Pro Tour results are in, with a little more than one fourth of the overall field on Day 1 playing Zoo. The newly minted Wild Nacatl probably has something to do with this trend, as a 3/3 that can attack on turn 2 is nothing to scoff at.
However the second most popular deck, the most surprising (at least to me) and most successful, putting six copies of the deck in the Top 8, was Elves.
And I’m not talking rock-ish Thoughseize Chameleon Colossus Charles Gindy Elves either.
Nope, we’re talking Bill Stark, Alan Comer, Timmy-riffic Storm combo Elves with an exclamation point here!
I didn’t even know this deck was on the map, so I was quite surprised to see Glimpse of Nature and Regal Force rocking nearly fifteen percent of the overall field and then seventy five percent of the Top 8, including all of the semifinalists and the eventual winner Luis Scott-Vargas.
While this tournament will most certainly be remembered as Pro Tour: Elves, or possibly Pro Tour: LSV as he did end up winning the thing, I’m a little bit disappointed that it won’t be remembered a little bit more for the deck that he beat in the Quarterfinals, The Tezzerator.
Either way, it looks like we have a good starting point for what the upcoming PTQ season is going to look like.
And it’s going to look a lot like Elves.
In other news, the folks at Wizards have put up a few things worth mentioning on their equal parts aggravating and spiffy new website.
Firstly, the name of the third set in the Shards of Alara trilogy has been revealed, ‘Alara Reborn,’ along with the epic tagline: “The birth of one world… and the death of five.”
Oooh!
It’s a Lord of the Rings, if you ask me.
Either way, now we know what to actually call it, since referring to anything as ‘Scissors’ in a serious conversation is a little bit frivolous.
Also, there’s a little poll at the bottom of one of the pages on the Wizards’ website that asks you, the reader, to leave comments and questions about the Shards prerelease.
(They also recently sent out an e-mail with the poll in it as well.)
This is what you wanted, folks. All you people who complained about the new prerelease format of having the events divvied up between the smaller stores instead of having centrally located giant sized prereleases like the days of yore.
Or… maybe you like the new system. After all, spreading out the prereleases makes it easier for some folks who can’t go to the big prereleases a chance to play the game early as well.
So if you want to be heard, whether you are in favor of the new system or against it, this is the place to be heard.
Speaking of making yourself heard, what ever happened to the Magic Player’s Union?
A few months ago the whole professional Magic community was up in arms, thinking that the professional Magic scene was dead and buried.
Just because everything’s okay now doesn’t mean we don’t need a Union.
You know, just in case.
Well, that’s all for this week folks. My name is Reuben Bresler. I’ll see you around.
Remember kids, this is Charizard Nixon saying, “Remember to vote!”
Reubs
Reubs in the forums
AIM: CleverMonikerMan
soccerrvb@surfbest.net
(Stay tuned for a few seconds after the credits for something… well… stupid.)
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