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We are right in the middle of a series of Regional Championships globally, and there is a deck is standing out as a fun new combo deck, and it's even putting up results. About a month ago, I wrote about the combo that works with Unstoppable Slasher and Bloodletter of Aclazotz, and it appears that Pioneer players decided to optimize the list and sought to assemble some turn four victories. The deck is also incredibly resilient, and they found a way to get good value from drawing a ton of cards. We are starting to see consistent results with the deck in major events. When I was in DC last weekend for the RC, there were three players who played mono-black combo that qualified for the Pro Tour, although unfortunately none of those lists made the top eight of the event. This week, we are awaiting final results of Japan's RC, and we know that at least two of the decks have made the top eight, and that five of them actually made the top sixteen. We will briefly go over the version of this deck that performed the best in Japan, and then we will also take a look at how it affects Standard, as the deck features a vast majority of cards in the list that are Standard legal/playable. I'll get you a list for both formats, because there will likely be some Standard Events coming up soon! This list differs a bit from some of the other decks that play demons. Most of the other lists also play Archfiend of the Dross, because that is a big huge demon that is pretty hard to deal with. This list focuses more on prioritizing card advantage with cards like Invoke Despair and Graveyard Trespasser in the main deck. One could make an argument that we would actually move those cards to the sideboard, and then play the four Archfiends, but at this point, we aren't going to argue with the success of the list, as it speaks for itself. Key Combo Pieces

Mill is an often misunderstood and maligned archetype that gets people hot and bothered in multiple ways. As a reanimator player, I love watching my deck flip into my graveyard, but for the rest of the player base, it’s often a frustrating sensation as a world of possibilities unravels before their eyes. Well, there are a ton of cards from Duskmourn that support a mill package, and I want to focus on one today: Doomsday Excruciator. Doomsday Excruciator is a throwback reference to the card Doomsday, which strips your library down to only five cards that you hand select. The potential of this card is bananas and is the backbone of combo decks in Vintage and Legacy. Unfortunately, Doomsday Excruciator is nowhere near as good with twice the mana investment, and it doesn't allow you to select the cards you're left with, which means it just doesn't do the same thing. What the Build Around Does Well

Modern Horizons 3 brought many new , interesting and powerful cards to MTG Arena, although not all of them saw play because they were overshadowed by other , even stronger cards or because they lacked the right synergies. The best example is probably Nadu, Winged Wisdom, which in Modern was one of the absolute protagonists for a few months until it deserved the ban, while it was basically unplayed in any of the digital platform's formats due to the absence of Shuko. Another card that generated a lot of hype during the spoilers, but then didn't live up to expectations, was the reprint of Kappa Cannoneer, which was already in Neon Dynasty Commander and therefore already played in Legacy. Its power level, however, seems to be absolutely respectable, with a whole series of stats that would potentially make it in line with the Historic format, but where probably there aren't yet the right tools to support it. To find out if this is the case, today we'll try to find the most suitable home for it, brewing a full artifact version that will make it the protagonist!

Welcome Magic lovers! Today we embark on a bit of a detour from our usual focus on the Standard format in order to take a look at the landscape of the Pioneer metagame, now that the massive 1800+ player Regional Championship Washington D.C. has concluded, and how it may impact players who are engaging with the as-yet-unsanctioned Explorer format on Magic Arena. Regional Championships are massive affairs these days, with attendance and level of competition landing somewhere between a Pro Tour and the old Grand Prix system that many players enjoyed. With 1817 players enrolled in the tournament, it was one of the largest competitive events of the year, and thus yielded a ton of data, deck lists and direction for the Pioneer format moving forward. For Magic Arena players who aren't actually able to play Pioneer yet, there may yet be some interesting things to glean which could be applied to the pseudo-format that is Explorer.

Brewing decks is more than just finding a card that inspires you and picking what cards to put around it. You also have to take into account the context the deck finds itself in. If your brew is soft to the most popular deck in the format, it’s just not going to be successful no matter how consistent it is when put against different matchups. Power creep exacerbates this as the speed of the game increases, requiring your deck to either pop off faster or answer a variety of threats within even the first two turns in order to be successful. Today, I want to look at the most popular archetypes in Standard and look at play patterns we can focus on to give our janky brews a fighting chance. Red-Based Aggro

Welcome Magic lovers!   What a week! As Duskmourn spreads its shadow across Standard, Pioneer and even Modern, it's fascinating to watch each format warp and buckle under the weight of the dual cycles of powerful Overlords and Leylines. Today, let's focus on Standard, as the Regional Qualifier Championship season is just over the horizon and approaching rapidly.

We are right in the middle of a series of Regional Championships globally, and there is a deck is standing out as a fun new combo deck, and it's even putting up results. About a month ago, I wrote about the combo that works with Unstoppable Slasher and Bloodletter of Aclazotz, and it appears that Pioneer players decided to optimize the list and sought to assemble some turn four victories. The deck is also incredibly resilient, and they found a way to get good value from drawing a ton of cards. We are starting to see consistent results with the deck in major events. When I was in DC last weekend for the RC, there were three players who played mono-black combo that qualified for the Pro Tour, although unfortunately none of those lists made the top eight of the event. This week, we are awaiting final results of Japan's RC, and we know that at least two of the decks have made the top eight, and that five of them actually made the top sixteen. We will briefly go over the version of this deck that performed the best in Japan, and then we will also take a look at how it affects Standard, as the deck features a vast majority of cards in the list that are Standard legal/playable. I'll get you a list for both formats, because there will likely be some Standard Events coming up soon! This list differs a bit from some of the other decks that play demons. Most of the other lists also play Archfiend of the Dross, because that is a big huge demon that is pretty hard to deal with. This list focuses more on prioritizing card advantage with cards like Invoke Despair and Graveyard Trespasser in the main deck. One could make an argument that we would actually move those cards to the sideboard, and then play the four Archfiends, but at this point, we aren't going to argue with the success of the list, as it speaks for itself. Key Combo Pieces