News

• Dark Ascension Packaging Revealed—An image from Japan prominently displays Sorin.
• In These Desperate Times—Doug Beyer fills us in on the back story for the next expansion, Dark Ascension.
• Breaking Down the Changes to Tournament Magic—Patrick Chapin celebrates the course correction of PT invites and Planeswalker Points.
• Magic the Gathering: Toolbox—Wizards announces the impending release of its official smartphone app which will include a life tracker, a deck builder, a store locator and more.
• Magic 2013 Announced—The Core Set to be released for Magic’s 20^th anniversary will feature a silver logo and the slogan, “Face a Greater Challenge.”
• Welcome to the New WPN Website—Bill Stark previews changes meant to better serve store owners and tournament organizers.

Standard and Block

• Control is not Dead: Esper Control—($SCG) Brad Nelson purports that a new brew combining Doom Blades, White Sun Zenith, and a suite of permission may be the Control player’s answer to Type Two.
• Mono-Blue Delver—Mike Cannon keeps his delver deck budget friendly with a mana base restricted to Islands and Ghost Quarters.
• Milling Myself in Block Constructed—Jacob Van Lunen builds a budget block deck that parallels the popular self-mill Innistrad draft strategy.

Limited

• Drafting like a Pro—Darwin Kastle shares his secrets for making sure his Limited decks play out like well-crafted Constructed brews.
• Getting Value from your Boosters—Grant Champion advocates four-pack sealed for high EV and showcases some interesting games.

Vintage, Legacy, and Modern

• A Beginner’s Guide to Modern—Carrie Oliver runs down the marquee permanents of Modern and showcases the format’s diversity.
• A Modern Bestiary— Alexander Shearer examines the power players in the format now that Wild Nacatl has been banned.
• The Most Modern Zoo—Owen Turtenwald’s Nacatl-less Zoo is tuned up to take on the Modern meta.
• Melira and Friends—Todd Anderson feels the time is right for Modern Melira Pod and its infinite combos.
• What You Need to Know about Modern—($SCG) Patrick Chapin’s examination of Modo’s Modern Daily Events yields some surprising insights in to the state of the PTQ format.
• Gerry T in Modern—($SCG) Gerry Thompson kicks of his series on the decks of Modern with this entry detailing aggressive possibilities.
• Ideas for Modern Tournaments—Kyle Boggemes has been a fan of Modern Zoo even before Modern was a format.  Where will he turn now that Nacatl’s been banned?
• Five Cards to Build around in Modern—Doug Linn picks five cards that should be on the radars of brewers and speculators alike.
• Modern Times Ahead—Jeff St. Pierre builds around Torpor Orb and Ghostly Prison in order to attack the meta from new angles.
• Lightning Arrestor—Adam Barnello wonders if Lightning Bolt is simply out-classed in Legacy.
• What to Play in Atlanta—Chris VanMeter on why Legacy players should take advantage of Geist of Saint Taft’s hexproof.
• Time to do Some Recruiting—Jason Hall pilots a Legacy Aluren Combo deck featuring infinite loops.

Casual and Variant Formats

• The Compendium of Casual Magic, Part 1—Adam Styborski dives headfirst into the archives of Serious Fun looking for the wide variety of casual formats explored by the column’s writers.
• Shields Up—Brandon Islieb explains how oddities and answer cards can prove invaluable in any warped metagame, from the kitchen table to the feature match spotlight.
• Death, Death, Death, Death, Lunch…—Sean McKeown gets to work on an EDH list built around Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker.
• Encyclopedia Volcanica—If you like Rafiq then Cassidy Silver suggests other Voltron generals in Ruhan and Lord of the Tresser-tron.

Theory and Miscellany

• Team ChannelFireball—PVD gives his take on what makes the CF team tick and how the individual players contribute to the team’s impressive track record of success.
• Lies to Make you Better at Magic—Jesse Mason draws a line in the sand between what’s true and what’s useful.
• Controlling Game Flow: Learning from LSV—Chingsung Chang’s close examination of a single LSV game applies the theory of resource management where players must consider what is most important: life, cards, or time.
• Core Set Challenge Results—Abe Sargent tallies the scores for those who took the Core Set challenge to completion and reflects on his own set’s design.
• Token 3D’s—Andrew Sitte creates an eye-popping Black spider token for pauper cube favorite Penumbra Spider and laments the lack of bat tokens.