All the Good News August 16, 2016 WRITTEN BY George Khoury

Hello Fellow Traders!

Welcome to All the Good News, the weekly update that gets you a little bit closer to understanding the Council’s Dilemma. First and foremost, a quick recap of the newest Conspiracy set’s official preview week, which started on Monday. Then, there’s a brief debriefing of the events that happened over the weekend: GP Portland, GP Rimini and the SCG Modern Open Syracuse. After the debriefing, there’s an update on the number of points PucaShield removed over its first month. Lastly, there’s the weekly reminders of the good things to look forward to or out for.

Conspiracy: Take the Reprint

While we all have a Burning Wish for a few certain cards to get reprinted, nobody expects the Inquisition of Kozilek! And it just so happens, both Burning Wish and Inquisition of Kozilek are getting reprinted in CN2.

Conspiracy: Take the Crown is getting previewed this week, and as expected based on the packaging previewed last week, not only has Marchesa, the Black Rose assumed the throne, she also crossed over from Grixis to Mardu during her ascension to Queen Marchesa.

Take a look at some of the fantastic previews revealed yesterday:

New cards like Archdemon of Paliano and Animus of Predation will make drafting CN2 a totally unique experience. In keeping with the set’s namesake, there are new conspiracy-type cards that will introduce an additional element of the unknown.

You can click here to see the Conspiracy: Take the Crown preview cards as they are added to the PucaTrade database and start adding the cards you want, need and love to your PucaTrade want list.

New Conspiracy Mechanics

The newest set mechanic, Monarch, was also unveiled. Basically, some cards explicitly state that you “become the Monarch,” and as long as you retain the title you get to draw a card at the beginning of your end step. However, if a creature deals damage to you, that creature’s controller becomes the Monarch.

Along with the return of Conspiracies, Will of the Council has been revamped to Council’s Dilemma allowing each vote to provide some gain rather than the majority-wins requirement of Will of the Council. Another new mechanic, Melee, incentivizes players to attack more than a single player each combat phase since a creature with Melee will get +1/+1 for each opponent attacked during that combat phase. Lastly, Goad forces a creature an opponent controls to “attack each combat if able” until the Goad-er’s turn and prevents the creature from attacking the Goad-er. You can read more about the new mechanics here.

WotC also updated their page explaining the Conspiracy Draft format. If you’re curious about the back-story of the design of Conspiracy, take a look at Mark Rosewater’s article “It’s Another Conspiracy”.

Conspiracy: Taking the HypeTrain to Paliano

In addition to preview season starting this week we were treated to the next chapter of the storyline. What’s more, an Australian LGS, Games Laboratory, showed off their special package received from Paliano, a work of art that really brings the Conspiracy: Take the Crown story to life. Only a handful of stores were lucky enough to be picked to take part in the Conspiracy Pre-Release (picture via facebook: click here). Don’t forget to keep an eye on social media over the weekend to see what those few lucky LGSs do to celebrate the occasion.

Last stop on the Conspiracy hype-train: The packaging features Queen Marchesa on the box and pack-wrapper art, as well as Kaya, Ghost Assassin on the pack, and a currently unnamed goblin (though it is speculated that the goblin is Daretti).

Grand Prix Portland

Over 1,700 players started on day 1 of GP Portland, and the top 100 day 1 meta shows a shift in the Standard metagame back towards Bant Company which made up a third of the top 8. However, at the very end, it was Robert Santana playing Jund Delirium who won it all defeating Travis Woo on WB Control, despite not being one of the four undefeated players at the end of day 1.

You can take a look at the Top 8 here. Top 9 - 32 can be found here.

Full coverage from WotC can be found here.

Grand Prix Rimini

Nearly 900 players came to Rimini, Italy to sling spells. Similarly to Portland, Bant Company had a significant presence in the meta and made up 75% of the Top 8. The finals was a Bant Company mirror match. Arne Huschenbeth, who traveled to Rimini from Germany, won the mirror to become GP champ.

You can take a look at the Top 8 here (which is all Bant Company and U/R Fevered Visions). Top 9 - 32 can be found here.

Day 2 metagame analysis can be found here.

Full coverage from WotC can be found here.

SCG Modern Open Syracuse

Ross Merriam defeated the competition piloting a new build of Modern Dredge featuring four Insolent Neonate and four Prized Amalgam. Two weeks prior, a similar Dredge list piloted by Justin O’Keefe won the SCG Modern Classic in Baltimore.

The Top 8 was rather diverse with five distinct archetypes: two Dredge, three Jund, one U/W Control, one Infect, and, finishing in second place, one R/G Breach deck. In light of the Top 8, the day 2 metagame breakdown provides interesting insight into the state of the Modern metagame.

You can take a look at the Top 32 here.

Full coverage from SCG can be found here.

PucaShield Update

PucaShield went into effect back on July 11th and after one full month 999,065 points have been paid into PucaShield. Landing just shy of one million points in one month seems to be a positive indicator that PucaShield will have a significant impact on point reduction over the long term.

Reminder! Future Site is FIVE Days Away

The PucaTrade team is hard at work putting the final touches on Sunday’s highly anticipated release. Dan provided an update last Friday letting us all know that things are progressing according to plan to meet the projected release date. Get those non-English, moderately played cards ready to send!

Reminder: FTV: Lore

Good News! This weekend, From the Vault: Lore will become available.

Event Reminders: RPTQ, SCG Invitational & Worlds

If you qualified for an RPTQ, these are being held this weekend. Check the schedule to see if you can attend one of the many taking place this weekend.

This weekend in New Jersey, the SCG Invitational will be focused on Modern and Standard with the final Top 8 being Modern. Live coverage will be provided by SCG via Twitch.

Lastly, Worlds is still a few weeks away, but if you plan on attending PAX West, Worlds is being held there from Sept. 1-4. There will be side events galore. Check out the Roster of players for Worlds here.

That’s All the Good News!

-GK

GK is a Modern, Legacy and EDH player that has been playing the game addicted to M:tG since 2011. Follow him on Twitter @LiberatedKarn

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