Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Magic with Zuby Episode 016 - Interview with Jadine Klomparens!



Hey everybody! Today Zuby is interviewing SCG pro and TCGPlayer writer Jadine Klomparens! Come by and listen in! You can find Zuby on Twitter @MagicwithZuby and Facebook as well as email him at mtgzuby@gmail.com!




Monday, April 18, 2016

Weekly MTG Update - April 18th, 2016


Another week has flown by us and this just means another Weekly MTG Update! So let's start off with some local FNM results!

I did not attend Modern Monday again due to work conflicts but I did attend FNM this past Friday and brought Mono Red Eldrazi with me below is my list:

Overall I went 1-2 and dropped. I only managed to beat BW control and lost to Bant Company and a homebrew UR thopter list.

I have a PPTQ coming up this Saturday that I plan on attending and will be preparing for it this week so expect some streams coming your way!

I'm hoping to do some more video content not just with the podcast but maybe some deck showcases in Magic Duels since I'm pretty fond of the game but we shall see. The biggest thing I need for all this is time! Which I have none of sadly.

In other news, the Starcitygames Invitational just happened and wow what a showing for Standard. Bant Company and W/x or even Mono White humans have both had very strong showings. I'm not sure how I feel about all this as the meta is still in it's infancy stages with SOI just being out. I really hope we won't be facing a similar meta to Theros/RTR where 2-3 decks are the only one's showing up. That spells trouble to me but as I said, way too early to tell.

Collected Company has become a card that has definitely shaped Standard maybe even more so than Siege Rhino ever did. Creature decks have become the go to decks and it's becoming more and more common place to run 25+ creatures right now. Even in Modern Collected Company has seen some impact mainly with Abzan and Elves. It feels like over the weekend with SCG people have forgotten to sideboard in Hollowed Moonlight, especially now that 4C Rally is no longer a threat.

So what else has been going on with MTG? I did open a box of SOI last week and below are the best pulls I got out of it!
A photo posted by @zubatron on
I must say I've been enjoying SOI draft a lot! It really makes me want to play more limited which I feel I have neglected terribly since I've gone hardcore into Standard and Modern. I did a SOI draft and below is what I put together. I feel it isn't too terrible but it was a lot of fun. Inspiring Captain is definitely a real threat to be had on the board and people kept passing them to me! At one point my deck had 3 but I had to trim it down.

Otherwise not much else has been going on with me MTG wise. I'm prepping for this PPTQ and hoping to do decently well, but we shall see! I'll be sure to do a write up on it when I get back from the tournament!


Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Magic with Zuby Episode 015 - Rotation is coming! What do I do?


On Today's Episode Zuby discusses what to do during rotation and it is super serious, so be sure to follow all of his tips! Also at one point his mind explodes, why? Listen and find out! Be sure to follow Zuby on Twitter @Zubatron and @MagicwithZuby also email him any questions and he will read them on the air! mtgzuby@gmail.com





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Sunday, April 10, 2016

Weekly Magic Update - April 10th, 2016



Another week has gone by my magic friends and we are on the brink of exploring a new Standard with Shadows over Innistrad finally having been released! My box has not come in yet but I'm hoping it will show up sometime this week. I'll be sure to post some of the more notable pulls I get!

So what's been going on in the world of Magic the Gathering you may ask? Well, with SOI finally released I participated in the first SOI Standard this past Friday and ended up going 2-1 with my redone Eldrazi Ramp which can be seen below:


I feel like this deck is probably not well suited in this Standard as it still suffers the same issues it always has is if you don't have a good opening hand, good luck even winning. I know that can be said with a lot of decks but I've felt this is even more so with Eldrazi Ramp. Some decks you can handle having a mediocre hand but if your hand is mediocre in Ramp good luck.

So the next deck I have built is Red Eldrazi beatdown which I plan on doing a deck tech very shortly. Which I haven't done one of those in awhile eh?

So then we proceeded to draft and below is the decklist I drafted:


I ended up going 2-1 and getting third place. I lost to a similar drafted deck, oh well though. I can say I thoroughly enjoyed drafting Shadows over Innistrad compared to BFZ or OGW. OGW and BFZ felt like very straight forward formats to draft where SOI so far has a lot of fun limited mechanics with delirium and madness and clues makes it for a fun draft environment. I saw someone try and draft a UB clue deck and even though he didn't do well he had a ton of fun playing it at least.

Pictured below is the rare I got from my prize pack:

A photo posted by @zubatron on

I'm also working on grinding packs in Magic Duels and I'm messing around with some new AI decks to help grind gold. It seems they have made a lot of changes to the starter decks so my mono red goblin deck I used to grind gold with is no longer good. So now I'm experimenting with some new decks to grind faster and more efficient. Once I find something good I'll be sure to post it and write about it!

That's all for now! Have a great one everybody!

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Weekly Magic Update - April 7th, 2016


So it has been a crazy couple of weeks for me personally. If you heard episode 14 of my podcast you'd understand why. Work has been getting in the way of life a lot lately! Including Magic! How rude right? Why should real life responsibilities get in the way of my spell slinging? But alas, I have to be a responsible adult and do what I must.

I've decided to make a change to how the weekly updates go. Instead of separating from weekly updates into Modern and Standard I'm going to combine them into one weekly update. This will not only help me since I've become so busy lately but I am also going to be talking about deck brews I may be thinking of writing up or cool new cards coming up as well. So we shall see how it goes in the future!

So what has been going on in the world of MTG for me? Not a whole lot honestly. I haven't had a chance to go to Modern Monday's past few weeks and I did go to the last Standard FNM this past friday but went 1-2 with Eldrazi Ramp. I had just gotten done with a 20 hour work day and didn't care that much how I did. Then it was Shadows over Innistrad Prerelease.

These were the two best pulls I felt I had in the night:




Ended up not even using either card instead I built this sweet Green/White Werewolf/Human deck which did pretty decently and what I mean by that was I went 2-0 in the first round and then dropped cause I was exhausted. This was the Midnight Pre-release. I can't do those anymore, I'm getting too old for this shit. Here's the deck I put together for Pre-release:

Other than that, I ordered a box of Shadows over Innistrad which should arrive next week hopefully so I'll be sure to post my pulls for that as well. I've also come up with my first Standard deck list for the new SOI standard. It's just Eldrazi Ramp pretty much and it may be the deck I take to the PPTQ I plan on attending on April 23rd. It can be seen below:


So what else has been going on before we end this week's update? Not a whole lot of nothing. I did a bit of tweaking to my Nin and Oloro EDH decks. Been feeling the itch to play a bit of EDH lately so I've tried to slide in some new cards here and there. I've also slowly begun the torturous process of organizing my cards again.....for the 1000th time. They haven't been organized since Battle for Zendikar came out so it's due. 

That's about it for me and hope you enjoyed reading it, I shall be back again next week with some more MTG tales to tell! Have a good one! 

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Magic with Zuby Episode 014 - We say farewell to Khans and Fate


On this episode we discuss our fond memories of Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged which are rotating out in Standard. If you have any questions for Zuby please hit him up at Twitter @Zubatron or @MagicwithZuby or email him at mtgzuby@gmail.com!!