Friday Thoughts

1. I feel like my last article was pretty poorly done. 
It was hastily written and you can tell. I said I would write a more in depth report from last weekend, but I probably won't. What I will do is point out some things I noticed in the few days since I wrote the article.

First, some quotes from two SCG articles this week:

"what are the best things you can do? Off the top of my head:

1. Turn 3 Jace, Architect of Thought.
2. Thragtusk into Restoration Angel (both per Patrick).
3. A Bonfire of the Damned in quite a few situations.
4. (All kinds of stuff you can do with Thragtusk, actually... Unburying it and Farseeking it are both hot, but regular old casting it can be more than good enough)
5. Cyclonic Rift into Rakdos's Return.
6. Early miracle Entreat the Angels (for the race).
7. Intangible Virtue into Lingering Souls & co.
8. Heck, blind flipping a Delver of Secrets hasn't started being bad or anything!"

(from What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up, by Mike Flores )

and this:

"Restoration Angel is the real killer, one that isn't seeing nearly enough play right now. Granted, there isn't a great shell for her, but she'll make her return someday."

(from Cin City Aftermath, by Gerry Thompson)

Well, my deck meets 4 of the 8 things in Flores list (2,3,4, & 6), and plays the Restoration Angels that Gerry T alluded to. That's something to think about.

I've been playing the deck on modo in the standard queues which are post rotation but no one has access to RTR yet except for reprints. I haven't lost any matches, but that's to be expected.

2. Modern Sucks
I realized this as I did the fantasy PT thing on facebook (see here). It was so much easier than the Standard or the Block Constructed one. The good cards in modern are so good you can't play anything else. Also, Aaron Forsythe tweeted top 5 cards in modern dailies: Scalding Tarn, Misty Rainforest, Kitchen Finks, Island, Verdant Catacombs. I updated my list to Scalding Tarn over Misty, and also Prismatic Omen as the Enchantment. But really, the format is pretty bad. There's a couple niche combo type decks, and everything else is pick 3 colors, play the best value cards in those colors. Valakut unbanning helps, hopefully they will unban more. Matt Sperling was right on when he said they should ban fetchlands. There's no drawback to playing 3 and 4 colors in Modern, at least legacy has Wasteland. The format is fun to play, but it's not fun to build decks for. I'm sort of glad I'm not going to Seattle.

3. Team GP this weekend.
If you don't know, GP San Jose is this weekend. Team Limited. I'm pretty excited. My team is me, Will Lowry, and  Haibing Hu. We're hoping to do really well, follow us this weekend in the coverage.