Explore the Realm of Magic: The Gathering - Articles and Insights

This week's deck is a new take on a classic formula that takes me back to a simpler time when Standard's ban list was as long as my arm and everyone was complaining about Oko, Thief of Crowns. Another card got a ton of attention as well: Fires of Invention, and it was equally problematic. Well, Fires of Invention is perfectly legal in Explorer and, to my knowledge, isn't seeing a significant amount of play. I aim to change that with this beauty. {{ 66d25b1266d0a94740e4be1b }} The Primary Gameplan

Goblins are some of the most iconic creatures in Magic: the Gathering, present in the vast majority of planes of the Multiverse and have been around since the very beginning, with the first appearances in Alpha of: Goblin Balloon Brigade, Mons's Goblin Raiders and Goblin King (the latter wasn't technically a Goblin at the time, but I guess it counts!). I've always loved this tribe and in my many years of the game I've played it in every possible format, sometimes even just for fun when sadly the deck wasn't competitive enough for that environment. Among the many successful versions and personal brews, I have accumulated quite a bit of material and little by little I would like to show the best of it to all the little-green-men lovers out there!

With non-rotating formats, we don't always get a ton of new cards to add to existing archetypes and decklists when a new set comes out, but it is important to find any improvements we can make. I believe that I would be doing the archetype a disservice if I did not at least test out one of the new best uncommons from Bloomburrow in Bandit's Talent. This is another two mana enchantment, so it can appear a little clunky in regards to how we want to sequence our spells. What I've found is that you still always want to ideally go: Turn one, Thoughtseize. Turn two, Waste Not, and then go from there. Ideally on turn three you are resolving a Bandit's Talent, or Go Blank. We do sacrifice having Duress in the main deck from this change, but it allows us to get tons of residual value, and have mana sinks. We'll take a look at some of the changes to the last version of this deck that I made an article for three months ago, and then we will go over some gameplay! {{ 66c3220e6d01292315b35b53 }} I had to update the sideboard a bit from the last version as well, because there is a lot of graveyard stuff in Explorer right now. We are yet to see if it has also become a thing in Pioneer, so we will consider these updates tentative, and as further testing goes over the next six weeks and after the B&R on the 26th, we will be more certain on the final sideboard.

Last Sunday the Qualifier Weekend was played on MTG Arena, which for this month was Explorer format. It's a very coveted event because the very few winners will be able to get a ticket to the Arena Championship, the most prestigious event the digital platform has to offer. Specifically, the qualification for the Arena Championship 7 is being chased, which will be held on a date to be defined between October and November and will be the first one with the new formula: the number of participants will be indefinite, following the qualifications, and will no longer be limited to 32. But who are these good and lucky winners? And above all, which are the decks performed so well as to climb to the top? Unfortunately WotC doesn't release official data on this matter, limiting itself to the list of qualifiers a few days/weeks before the event, so the only thing to do was to collect this information manually through the posts released on the social platform X.

It's been 9 years since Birthing Pod was banned in Modern in 2015, and it's still one of the most iconic cards of the old format. It was possible to play it in two versions: Melira Pod, assembling the infinite combo consisting of: Melira, Sylvok Outcast (later replaced by Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit) + Viscera Seer + Kitchen Finks / Murderous Redcap; Kiki Pod, creating infinite copies of Restoration Angel thanks to Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker.

In a few days, on June 15-16 MTG Arena will host an Explorer Qualifier Weekend and right now Rakdos Vampires is for sure the most popular deck in the format. If we look at the Pioneer data we notice how the deck is the most played one with a meta share of around 18%. It is likely to assume that the meta share in Explorer is going to be even bigger as the absence of decks like Hidden Strings or Niv to Light might has a huge impact in this direction. Explorer is the least played format on Arena and people, generally speaking, don't like to invest many resources on it.  However we have to remember that on MTG Arena the Vampires packet is played in Historic and Timeless as well and for this reason it is likely to assume that many of the players who are not familiar with Explorer will just stick to this deck since they might have played it in different formats. Unless Amalia Combo (check my latest article) becomes even more popular, I would assume the meta share of the deck will be higher than 20%. If you feel like you can match a deck a fifth of the games you play I think you should at least try to understand how that deck works and maybe try to find a plan to win the matchup. {{ 6669efdc6c524973889ec723 }} What’s the deck plan?

On June 15-16 MTG Arena will host an Explorer Qualifier Weekend and Amalia Combo is a deck that needs some attention as it is among the best decks available in the format. Explorer (and Pioneer) format offers many combo available but over the past months Amalia Combo has been the most popular among them. Right now the deck is the fourth most played in Pioneer with a meta share of around 8% and I would expect a similar share in Explorer as well. Generally when it comes to combo decks you would expect them to take many turns to assemble the various pieces of the combo. With amalia this might not be the case since the deck can potentially combo on turn 3 putting our opponents in an uncomfortable position from the beginning of the game. {{ 66609b1a83502f501c975d7a }}

Next month, just a few days after the release of Modern Horizons 3 and more precisely on June 15-16, MTG Arena will host an Explorer Qualifier Weekend. I recently started to test the format and today I’m here to present you one of the decks that most impressed me among the various I played. I’m talking about Gruul Prowess. The deck has become very popular in Pioneer and recently it’s getting great results in MTGO challenges. Unfortunately Explorer and Pioneer are two slightly different formats and the absence of decks like Hidden Strings or Niv to Light greatly affects the power rankings of the other decks. Currently Gruul Prowess is the seventh most present deck in Pioneer and I can guarantee that the deck turns out to be very strong even in Explorer. After testing the deck in Bo3 events, I have an overall score of 12-3, which is not too bad considering how complicated Explorer is. The first feelings about the deck are very positive as no matchup bothered me too much. Now let’s dive deep into the deck. What’s the deck plan? The deck aims to play cheap creatures that, in most of the cases, benefits from casting noncreature spells. In this specific case we are talking about pump spells and removal spells in order to get lethal really fast while also keeping some protections for our creatures. The scary part of the deck (for our opponent of course) is that it’s not impossible to kill them on turn 3 or turn 4 but this isn’t the only strength of the deck. While putting lethal pressure on them the deck can also invalidate opponent’s gameplan. Not only this deck is able to to grow really big creatures but it can also protect them or outscale damage-based removal spells (really common spells in the format for red decks). Being fast is not always the most important thing for this deck as the presence of just 18 creatures in the deck forces us to want to be very cautious with them. In fact, even if we are talking about an aggressive deck, it is often advisable to avoid overextending or to tap out without the possibility of protecting our creatures. Once again, the deck is fast but it’s not just fast.