What Is Battle Royale?

Four esteemed StarCityGames.com writers.

Each given a fifty-dollar budget and two weeks to build a Standard-legal deck.

All players must use StarCityGames.com pricing to keep budgets consistent.

They will duke it out in six intense rounds on Magic Online.

And only one will claim the title of Battle Royale Champion.

Who Will Fight In The Arena?

Our reigning champion Gavin Verhey returns to the ring. Last time he fought and defeated the likes of Todd Anderson Matt Sperling and Max McCall using a mono-black Vampires build (where he got spend-y with exactly one copy of Verdant Catacombs). He beat Mono-Green Infect Todd's own Vampires build and Pyromancer Ascension. Read his report here.

Gavin has been a pillar in the community often seen on Twitter in SCGLive coverage as a commentator and on Magic Online where he hosts Overextended events (check out his website entirely on the unofficial format). His ability to brew and optimize decks at PTQs and for entirely new sometimes made-up formats proved useful in the last Battle Royale event.

Will he be able to defend his title against the new blood?

The Contenders…

Ben Lundquist aka "Benny Beatdowns" has Top 8ed multiple Grand Prix and was last seen learning the important lesson to Just Play Stoneforge Mystic. Unfortunately that lesson cannot help him here. (Not only is the card banned but one copy of the card at the pre-banning price would cost him 30% of his entire budget!)

Sean McKeown has been writing on Magic websites since the dawn of time (okay maybe sometime after that) and has recently started up his own Commander column on the site where he often takes reader submissions and tells them how to solve their Commander deckbuilding woes. He is far from unfamiliar to Standard however and hopefully his ability to be budget-conscious in one format will translate here.

Most people recall Jason Ford as the Grand Prix winner of GP Atlanta. A quiet new force to be reckoned with Jason writes deep and honest tournament reports such as this one and challenges people's ideas on this game we all love. As he makes his foray into the Pro Tour scene how will he face down in a competition that the DCI would never recognize in a million years?

How To Get Involved

The rounds will be streamed live next week on this Livestream channel.

Join us on Wednesday June 29 at (tentatively) 6:40 pm EST. Make sure to follow the hashtag #SCGBattle for updates on Twitter and follow @mulldrifting for more relevant information.