Too long for twitter, so here’s what I’m considering changing:

-Geralf’s Messenger, +Massacre Wurm (have heard very good things about the Wurm, good so far it has been very good in testing, almost always killing something.  I’m actually pretty happy with black; Geralf’s Messenger feels like the odd man out as it should b really good in mostly-black decks.  For now, I’ll let Gatekeeper be the litmus test as for how often those decks come together.)
-Honor of the Pure,  +Ranger of Eos (Arguably better for the white aggro decks.  4 mana is so stacked though, how often will it just stay in sideboards?)
-Morphling, +Sphinx of Jwar Isle (IMO the Sphinx is a good amount better.  While Morphling can turn on/off shroud, it permanently having it seems much better than needing to leave mana up for it, especially since equipment + big blue finishers don’t tend to intersect much.)
-Vines of Vastwood, +Birthing Pod (should make green ramp better, which I’ve been slowly giving some more help.)
-Crater Hellion, +Pyroclasm (Should be better for red rampy/control decks.  Crater Hellion, in theory, is mass-removal + threat, but I’ve felt that the wrath often costed so much which obviously isn’t a problem with Pyroclasm.)
-Memory Lapse, +Ponder (Overall card quality upgrade.)

Next Third Power will be recorded next week, it should be an interesting one as it’ll be episode 25!

Pictures of my cube with Dark Ascension behind the cut.

Explanations to come later. But for now, updated pics (with Innistrad goodness) behind the cut!  [now updated the cube list on the 'cube' tab and explained changes behind the cut!]

So I didn’t realize it until Adam Styborski pointed it out, but about a year and a half ago, he did an article about redundancy on GatheringMagic… and I totally forgot about it when I did my most recent SCG article.  Is a redundant article about redundancy the most meta thing ever?

Speaking of which, I really need to update my common cube.  I haven’t even updated it with Innistrad!  So expect an update with those cards soon.  And Withdraw.  Oh man!  Also pumped to record a Third Power episode, the last time we did it was nearly 2 months ago.

Also to come, More blue changes where I’m finally happy with the intersection of compromise of blue tempo and “generic blue” for the thousandth time.  This time, I’m able to fit Timetwister, Into the Roil, Repeal and Standstill in my cube (and cuts for them were quite hard.)  Success!

Had to cut some things, namely Thieving Magpie, which seems sacrilegious, namely to Norbert.

I want to see how cube is without it as I’ve been on the decline with it (although I think Lu Xun is great) as it feels relatively weak in the grand scheme of cube for 4 mana (and I’m not even going to use the whole ‘dies to removal’ argument as that’s just awful, but feel that blue’s other 4 mana spells pack a bigger punch.)  Speaking of which, even with the blue tempo push, I don’t have room for Opposition (which is sad because I think the card’s solid, but there’s just not much room for it, especially at the competition at 4 mana.)

Since the STL SCG event was in my backyard, I figured that I’d go to get some cubing in.  TJAcre from Twitter came into town and we cubed a bunch (Snapcaster on Time Walk FTW!) and it was really fun and it was really nice to meet him in person, as well as seeing a bunch of people from the STL MTG scene who I haven’t seen in ages.  Came to the event late on Sunday to cube and mised into seeing my friend Max who I hadn’t seen in ages, cubed a bunch with him and hanging out with some good peoples at Steak and Shake until about 1:30, when I had to leave as I had to work early today (which was quite the dagger as they were planning on cubing after leaving Steak and Shake.  Boooooo.)

Here’s my haul from the event.

TJ hooked me up (for free!) with the proxy Jace and it’s just BEAUTIFUL.  Just… look at it.  Wow.  :O TJ, I am forever in gratitude.

Kibler signed the Elspeths (I’m so cool that I had him sign proxies) and Adrian Sullivan signed the red cards + Sylvan (as “Sullivan Library.”)  The rest of the cards were ones that I got on the cheap, the Psi Blast and Control Magic being upgraded from white border/ugly textless and a lot of the others were cards that I just never had, like Armageddon, FoF and Molten-Tail Masticore and I don’t see either of those cards leaving my cube any time soon.  I actually rather like the revised Armageddon, if only because of nostalgia, as white weenie with geddons was my pet deck back in the day.  Terastodon‘s another card in the ramp experiment (and possibly Rampaging Baloths, but I’ve no intention of dumping green aggro) that I didn’t get to see this weekend, but I’ve got some high hopes for it.  I’m going to post my latest iteration of my blue section and I’m thinking it’s getting to the point where I’m happy with how it is, but of course, I want to fit a few more cards in (namely blue bounce spells and Memory Lapse.)  I’m not at the 50/50 ratio, but I don’t think it’s necessary anyway and like where it is now.  Pic to come in the next update.

In other news:

The Limited Resources MTGO cube has had some nice success with drafts and I’m pretty happy with the list after tinkering with it for a bit (how did I forget Lava Hounds on my first draft of it?!)  I sent a mass-email for feedback on the current list, which should help with tweaking it further but obviously feedback here is definitely welcome.

I also updated the “Articles by Usman” link to include all of my SCG articles up until now, as it was outdated.  I also plan on changing my list and commons list once I get some more drafts, as I got some good data this weekend (<3 Skittering Skirge, Shrine of Burning Rage and UB Tezzeret, Edric got a good amount better with the blue tempo addition, etc.)

In other news, Anthony and I will be recording a Third Power episode next week, likely on Wednesday and it should be up on Thurs/Friday.  Real life has been REALLY busy, for reals.

In the last blog post, I talked about making some changes to my cube since I changed the guild system around.

I’ve updated my cube again, but as usual, I’m still tweaking some things.  So why the pics?

I’ve changed my cube’s guild system a bit because I still wasn’t happy with the system overall and felt like I could use some more fixing.

One of the complaints about the guild system is that while it groups cards according to their color pair well, it doesn’t address that multicolor cards and fixing play very different roles, which was especially apparent in the non-blue combinations that got less fixing while getting more difficult-to-cast spells.   With this build, I decided to make sure every 2-color pair got its “staple” fixers on the left, 3 multicolor cards on the right and in the middle, multi-color aligned lands/fixers.

While it may look  odd to have signets in the same section as non-fixers like Kessig Wolf Run, I think they role that they’ll perform to the intentions of the guild system to let each color pair play to its strengths and while fixing is definitely very important, I think R/G will find more use out of Kessig Wolf Run than something like Karplusan Forest/Copperline Gorge.

“Mana rocks” is a term that refers to artifacts that create mana, generally referring to 2-mana artifacts that produce a mana like Signets, Mind Stone, Everflowing Chalice, etc.

Let’s say that you’re in a stock R/U control deck (without Wildfire/Burning of Xinye) – direct damage to deal with things, countermagic, a few dragons, etc. Assume that you have no splashing going on.

Let’s assume that if you had an Izzet Signet in your deck, it’d be in your deck, but that’s pretty obvious.

However… what about the other non-obvious ideas?

Sharing 1 color = Talisman of Progress/Azorius Signet in the RU deck.
Sharing 0 colors = Talisman of Unity/Selesnya Signet in the RU deck.

Now, in a stock U/W control list, how often would you:

The Third Power #22 is up!  (link to be added when it goes up.)

Crack a Pack B is from Kranny’s Combo Cube.