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. 

Lens of Clarity - Release... the PRE-RELEASE!

Lens of Clarity: Release the prerelease

with Adriel Colon

Of the prereleases I have attended I was most excited for the Khans block prerelease this weekend. I love gold cards because they can mix abilities from the color pie and the power/toughness combinations or sometimes “above the curve” so to speak. Moreover, each of the mechanics in the set I find easy to use on the field and grasp for newer players with the exception of the morph mechanic for anyone who has never seen that ability in use before.

My favorite thing about the Khans prerelease has to be the art. I am stunned by much of the new art in this set and with M15 having been the typical bland (but good) art style I am happy to get back to a themed set. When Wizards leverages their considerable resources to produce new flavorful art even for reprints like Despise and Shatter, to me, I get to rediscovering them again.

BSB Podcast! -Khans-cast Part 1 & Part 2

BSB Podcast! -Khans-cast Part 1 & Part 2

Welcome back everyone! Here we have Part 1 and 2 of our massive two part Khans of Tarkir Podcasts! Enjoy, and just in time for pre-release weekend. Enjoy your clan packs, and hopefully you win all your games. Well, because winning is fun, right? It was amazing having members from the BSB community join Pete and myself on the Podcasts. Big thanks to Jason, and Zach. Maybe you will be in the next one! Tune in!

**Note: I was not able to fully edit each of the Podcast Audio, sorry about that folks. Sometimes it's just too much for me, after all I'm not an audio guru!**



Part 1: Pete, Jason, and myself.





Part 2: Pete, Zach, and myself.

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Visions from Beyond- Khans Legends

Visions from Beyond! - Khans Legends

with Samuel Wells

**Samuel Wells, the writer who brought us the column "Metagame Check" is back from a break and brings us a new column. Visions from Beyond!**

Greetings readers! I am back from the dead. Before I get into any and all things magic, I would like to explain where I am and why I haven’t been writing as much. For the past three weeks and for the next several months, I have been in Vietnam studying abroad. I am finding this an amazing opportunity to study and grow as a human.

Unfortunately, this has prevented me from interacting with magic the same way that I was over this summer. I feel like I can not be an authoritative voice on the meta-game check. So for now I will be sidelining my usual article. I also am limited in the amount of play-testing that I am able to do. That being said, I will be continue to bring more decks to you in the future. In the mean time, I will be looking at magic in broader strokes and hopefully some new insight. Without further ado, let’s talk some magic.

I picked one remarkable time to leave. Since my last article there have been huge shake ups in magic. Tom Ross won the invitational, again. This is astounding and cements him near the top for current players. We will be getting a new standard format lasting 18 months and will be spanning 3 2-set blocks. This completely warps the standard environment. It prevents decks from dominating as long, it lets wizards more aggressively reprint reprint cards, and breathes new life into a format that seemed to be reaching a low point in the overall pacing of its metagame. Did I mention more aggressive reprints? Because wizards started out with some very aggressive reprints coming in Khans. The onslaught fetches are back with a vengeance. This isn't just for standard though, we will be seeing these fetches hit modern for the first time ever. This is huge! Are we going to see an esper or grixis deck take over as the control slot in modern or will UWR still be the control deck to beat. My mind is spinning with these reprints.

But I’m not bringing you another article covering these topics, because by now everyone and their mother has covered these topics. Instead, I’m going to be covering some cards near and dear to me because to some degree they were what brought me back into magic. I will be discussing the legends from Khans of Tarkir.

Magic Mondays!- Massive Khans Update-Part 2

Magic Mondays!: Massive Khans Update-Part 2.

Magic Mondays! (Again on a Tuesday this time)

Hello everyone, time for another edition of Magic Mondays! Well...I know it’s on a Tuesday this time around. Though I want to take this time to say there will be a lot of content coming to BSB, and I have been fairly preoccupied with that. Setting up new articles/writers, making sure the Podcasts come out in a more timely manner. I will say, again, I apologize for the delay on the content here at BSB. I want to take full responsibility, but, please forgive me. I do a lot here on the back-end at BSB trying to keep this going and provide great content for everyone. I also have to come out of my comfort zone, editing audio, and making sure to proof read and re-proof read everything. Even then, some things slip through the crack. No one here gets paid or compensated (yet) and everyone who contributes to BSB is purely passion based. So, thank you again another time, for sticking with us.

That being said. Here is part 2 of the Khans spoiler (now fully spoiled) and I wanted to keep the same format. Giving Financial anecdotes along the way for each of the cards I want to highlight. I will be highlighting more cards this time around, since the set was fully spoiled.

Ascendancies:(all of them together)

I think these are all very similar in terms of playability in Standard. Outside of standard I think these could be solid addition to EDH decks, and table-top players. As far as a competitive environment, they are all mediocre. Though, Temur Ascendancy has the most promise out of the bunch. I have seen in a few places people speculating and brewing to some varying success to using Temur Ascendancy, mainly alongside Knuckleblade, Stormbreath Dragon, and Sagu Mauler. Which seems fairly solid, giving giant 4+ power creatures haste, and also giving you some cards along the way. I would have to say it stops there, the other Ascendancy cards will inevitably go into the junk rare bin. I could really be wrong, but comparing these to a format of Goblin Rabblemaster, and Courser of Kruphix, I think there’s better things to do with three mana. The one thing any of these (again mainly Temur) has going for them is the fact that they give 2 devotion to multi-color gods, which can buoy their effectiveness *maybe* in Standard. Though more so in EDH/casual games.

Financial Anecdotes: I really can’t say much about these other than being in the .25c rare bins. Even if Temur Ascendancy does end up getting more attention and is a playable card, I can’t see it peaking more than 2$, if that. I think there’s just better rares that will soak up more of the value of the set than these cards. Fetches/Mauler/Knuckleblade just to name a few.