Magic Mondays- Announcing...

Magic Mondays- Announcing...

Visions from Beyond - Embracing the Monochrome

Visions from Beyond- Embracing the Monochrome

Greetings readers! 

This is Samuel Wells, back with more Visions From Beyond. Khans standard is kicking off now and deck speculation is at its peak right now. Most decks that I have seen speculation on are people trying to make the different wedges viable. Temur monsters, Mardu midrange and the like. All of this talk about these three color midrange and control has led to me wondering, will we see viable mono colored decks in standard this season. For the purposes of going more in depth I will exclude the red aggressive decks because they are already receiving extensive talk as one of the decks post rotation. I am interested in looking at the prospects and the plausibility of devotion once Khans of Tarkir comes out.

The three main devotion decks of this past standard were mono-green, mono-black, and mono-blue devotion lists. Each of these decks have been discussed to death and many people have declared that these decks will die as RTR rotates out. The only deck that people have seemed confident about it surviving rotation is mono-green devotion.

The speculation around mono-green is centered around two creatures that people have predicted to be the best in the next standard. These creatures being Sylvan Caryatid and Courser of Kruphix. The hype for Caryatid is more for the three color midrange decks that will be popping up in the coming standard, but it is still the best ramp spell, it buffs devotion, and it it still helps to block a lot of early threats. It is everything that people have been using it for and it is not just swept away by Supreme Verdict. Having a slower board wipe really helps cards like this because you get more time to set up and go off with the deck. The card that gets the biggest boost in the upcoming format is Courser of Kruphix. Courser’s interaction with fetchlands is ridiculous. The fetchlands end up not damaging when you have Courser on the battlefield. And you get to shuffle away cards that you don’t want to draw, because courser allows you to see the top of the deck, when you have a fetchland. 

"Presents and Stuff" -Paul

Presents and Stuff

by Paul ‘Frodo’ Muller

Its Thursday! This means only one thing: it’s time for a look at competitive magic and a review of the Invitational this past week. Last Sunday, Tom “The Boss” Ross took down the invitational for the second time in a row. Talk about being on a heater! First off, I would like to congratulate him on the win. He is a prime example of how playing the decks you know can add those few percentage points to your win rate and push you over the top. He came into the weekend with everyone in the room essentially knowing 140+ of his 150 cards, and he still was able to crush the field. We all knew Ross would be on Rabble Red and Infect; the surprise, however, was not his deck but Reid Dukes'. The invitational runner up was playing four (count them - FOUR) Genesis Hydras. We've all had an idea of the power of this card, but for the most part no one had found a real home for this powerhouse until now.

**On a side note, a big congratulations to one of our strong local players, James Rynkiewicz, who placed 13th overall in the invitational and for following up that performance with a top 8 Sunday in the legacy portion of the Open series. James did much better than I did this weekend when It came to magic. **

On Saturday I started round 1 game 1 of the Open with a mull to 5 keep 1 land playing Jund walkers vs U/W control featuring Detention Spheres and no Planar Cleansing. It should be close to a bye for my deck, but variance was having none of that.. I kept my one scry land hand and . . . died with one land in play. Just one of those games. In game 2 he died horribly by way of Rakdos’ Return and 4/4 lands thanks to Nissa. Game 3 was a marathon affair which finally ended with him casting a third Revalation followed up by an Aetherling.

'Competitive Magic' -with Paul 'Frodo' Muller

Competitive Magic- with Paul ‘Frodo’ Muller

Happy Thursday to all my insane magic friends!

This weekend is SCG New Jersey featuring the invitational. It will be three days of insane magic fun, but if you're like me it's really only two days because someone here couldn't grind out those last few points (that would be me!!). However, who cares, we have an insane local tournament with standard on Saturday and legacy on Sunday. Thanks to the invitational these tournaments will be insane due to all the magic players who traveled for the invitational and had a run of bad luck on Friday. This is going to raise the level of competition in the open series even more! So, what should I play on Friday, if I'm in the invitational? Well, to start, let's address the idea that the standard metagame in an invitational is different than your average tournament.

There is usually a higher than average number of control and mono black and blue because these decks have a high amount of play to them. This meta, however, opens the door for burn, so honestly for the first time in my life I'm going to suggest burn, Will O'Neil you're welcome. In addition to burn being well positioned against these controlling decks, it has the most insane matchup vs. rabble red, thanks to cards like Searing Blood. If however you don't feel like you can play a deck like this to its fullest, I would suggest you play the deck that you know the best. The math suggests this will give you 4.7% higher win rate against an open field. So, now with standard out of the way, you still need jam legacy for four rounds. While everyone owns a standard deck, very few own legacy.

BoltSnapBolt Podcast-PTM15, Generator brew, Financial Picks!

BoltSnapBolt Podcast!




BoltSnapBolt Podcast-PTM15, Generator brew, Financial Picks!

Another awesome podcast, so tune in and get our thoughts on the latest Pro Tour-M15. As well as another great brew from Pete Casella, which also saw some flare at SSG featuring Generator Servant. All that and more, so tune in! Gooooo!

-with you always Pete Casella and myself Chaz Volpe

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Facebook at: BoltSnapBolt group, request membership and follow guidelines, would love to have new fresh members!

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Any/all questions related to blog/podcast email us at Boltsnapbolt@outlook.com

The Metagame Check- GW "Zoo"

The Metagame Check


with Samuel Wells



Hello all! I am Samuel Wells bringing you another metagame check.


The first weekend of M15 in standard has come and gone. SCG Baltimore did not see much of
new decks. Mono-Black and Mono-Blue decks ruled the day taking 6 of 8 top slots. More has been said about these decks since the Theros release than any other deck in the format. Beyond this, no major innovations were made to existing decks. Mainly for comfort with the existing archetypes in a new M15 changing meta.


One deck did catch my eye in the top 8 though. That was Andrew Boswell’s GW aggro list.


http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=70271


For anyone who knows me, this should come as no surprise to why I am excited to see a GW
aggro list making waves. What struck me about this list was the lower curve of the deck.

The Metagame Check

The Metagame Check

with Samuel Wells

Hello once again everyone! I am Samuel Wells, bringing you your weekly metagame check. With the format winding down, you would think that the format has been solved. Or that anyone could predict the decks that are going to top 8 on any given weekend.

SCG Worcester broke this mold in a major way. When we saw 6 mono­blue devotion decks make the top 16, including a one making it all the way to the finals piloted by Reid Duke. We haven’t seen success like this for mono­blue since early in its existence. So that leads to the question, what has changed to make mono­blue the deck to beat once again? Let’s check out Duke’s list...

FNMFun- Updating from Florida!

FNM Fun

with Robert Blum

Hey everyone, so it's been a crazy couple of weeks for me I have been working, traveling for work and working some more. I did however get to have an awesome experience last week for FNM.

I was traveling for business in the Ft. Lauderdale, FL area and had my Friday night free. I decided to stuff a deck in my suitcase since I was going to be all alone and free Friday night. I did some research and found that cool stuff inc. Had a huge store about 15 minutes from where I was staying.

I swing in and found the store absolutely packed at 5pm. After talking to the employees I found out the store drafts all day long on Fridays from open till close as many pods of 8 as they can fill.

I asked about FNM and was told it started at 7 and that it was $5 to enter. I also asked about prize support and was told top four split the promos and first gets a box, 2nd-4th split a second box 18, 9 & 9. I was also told everyone else from 9th-16th gets 5 packs.

The Metagame Check

Meta Game Check

with Samuel Wells



Hello! once again to this special spoiler season metagame check. As I teased last week, the
card that I see as poised to takeover in m15 is Chord of Calling. 
This should come to no surprise to people who have seen this card in action. Unlike eternal
formats, Chord will not be used to find the missing combo pieces in the deck. What Chord does provide is the ability to reliably set up some very powerful engines. I will discuss two current Tier 1.5 standard decks that have the potential to blow up with the new tools coming out in the core set.

BSB Presents-The Metagame Check!

The Metagame Check -Week One

with Samuel Wells

Hey all! This is Samuel Wells and I am going to be going over the recent shifts in the standard metagame. What caused it, how people have adapted, what it is all about. Then, I will show you some of the tools that you have in the current standard to combat the tier 1 decks du jour.

First things first. The recent scg opens have experienced an unprecedented amount of success from mono red strategies in several forms. Most notably from Tom Ross at the invitational. Mono red aggro decks have been fairly non-existent in standard since about Born of the Gods. This all changed in the last month and three straight opens were taken down by the red aggressive decks. Before that, a mono blue devotion deck took the tournament down. Which is almost as surprising because the once powerhouse mono blue has seen next to no love since Journey to Nyx. This surge marks a massive shift in the format back to hyper aggressive decks, but what made this the right time for these decks to blow up.

That requires looking at what decks were popular just prior to this surge. Three decks were ruling most of the top tables at this time. Jund monsters, Black devotion, and UW control. But Samuel, you might ask, haven’t these decks been popular for quite awhile now and were strong when mono red was losing popularity. You would be right, to a degree. The green based ramp/midrange deck to a lesser extent, but all three decks have existed since about the beginning of this standard. But there is a key difference to all of these decks that wasn’t true a month or so earlier. They are slowing down. They are all trying to play for a longer game.