The Top Ten Magic: The Gathering Podcasts of March 2014

The jury welcomes James Hooper as its fifth member. For a full list of the jury and an explanation of its work, see the video.

The podcasts that got points but did not make the Top 10

Freeze the video at 2:18 for a list of the twenty podcasts that got points but did not make it to the list.

Previous Top 10 Magic Podcasts show

You can catch the December 2013 show here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/12/the-top-ten-magic-gathering-podcasts-of.html

September 2013 show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyC-O-dcHuM
June 2013 show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfVsUwoh8Ag
April 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH0GfwX4UFk
February 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN746QQ9ec8


The Top 10 Magic Podcasts of March 2014
More comments on the podcasts by the jury can be found in the video.


1. Limited Resources (1)  80 pts.
The very best podcast for limited.

You can find out more at lrcast.com.

2. Brainstorm Brewery (2)   58 pts
The best MTG Finance podcast out there.

Check out the podcast at their site brainstormbrewery.com

3. So Many Insane Plays (7)    45 pts
The very best constructed podcast. Focus is on Vintage, which will be on many people's mind come Vintage Masters on Magic Online.

 You can find this cast on mtgcast.com or on itunes.

4. The EH Team (5)  39 pts
A podcast about all things Magic and then some.

You can find this podcast on manadeprived.com

5. Pitt Imps Podcast (3) 36 pts
Tournaments results and strategy.

Learn more about Pitt Imps on brainstormbrewery.com The Finance Guys bought them, I guess :)

6. Heavy Meta (3) 35 pts
We have no idea what this cast is about but it sure is entertaining. News, strategy and comedy, perhaps?

You can find this podcast on manadeprived.com

7. Drive to Work (19) 34 pts
Mark Rosewater's podcast about designing the game we all know and love.

You can find this podcast on itunes or here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/drivetowork

8. Monday Night Magic (10) 27 pts
General news podcast.

You can find this podcast on mtgcast.com

9. Spike Feed (-)  25 pts
Learn to win at Magic.

Learn more at spikefeed.com.

10. The Deck Tease (-) 20 pts
Best of the interview podcasts.

You can listen to The Deck Tease here: http://www.gatheringmagic.com/category/the-deck-tease/


The community vote
Community voting begins now. Vote in the comments below. For full details, see the end of the video.

The Top Decks of Pauper: Mono Blue Control (MUC)

In this series we will walk you through the top decks of Pauper as played on Magic Online. Pauper is the Magic Online format where you are only allowed to play commons.  These are the official rules:http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/pauper

We will be using this tier page as the basis or our walkthrough: http://mtgostrat.com/pauper-tier-listing/

Today we will be discussing Mono Blue Control, hated by many under the name "MUC". MUC has been doing very well lately in the premiers, having a good matchup against many of the top decks.

Earlier installments in the series

Burn: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-burn.html
Affinity: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-affinity.htmlDelver: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delver.htmlDelverFiend: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delverfiend.htmlStompy: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-stompy.htmlUB Trinket Control: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-ub-trinket.html

Pauper Mono Blue Control sample deck list

This deck was played by Schmirglie in the premier event of March 22nd. He won the tournament.  Deck list here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/6894798

Main Deck
18 Island

3 Quicksand
4 Delver of Secrets
1 Sea Gate Oracle
4 Spire Golem
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Counterspell
2 Deprive
2 Exclude
4 Miscalculation
1 Oona's Grace
4 Piracy Charm
4 Preordain
2 Repeal
2 Repulse
1 Think Twice

Sideboard
2 Coast Watcher
3 Curse of Chains
2 Curse of the Bloody Tome
1 Dispel
4 Hydroblast
1 Mulldrifter
2 Serrated Arrows

The idea here is to just sit back, counter everything and win by your flyers eventually. Your massive card advantage is supposed to win you the game and it often does. It is draw-go control, a thing that is very rare in today's Magic. If you are a blue control player, you are going to love this deck.

Here is a video of me taking on a White Weenie deck with this list.

One question I often get is what the difference between this and the very popular Delver deck (see above) is. The two decks may look similar, as they are both mono blue and has Delver of Secrets in them, but they play very differently. Delver tries to win like a Fish deck - tempo and aggrocontrol. MUC tries to win by pure attrition. Counter, counter, draw cards, win much later. Playing both lists will teach you a lot about the Pauper format.

Schedule for Flashback drafts

Flashback drafts are back and schedule for upcomming month is below.

Odyssey, Torment, Judgment: April 2-9
Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, Future Sight: April 9-16
Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn: April 16-23
Lorwyn, Morningtide: April 23-30
Shadowmoor, Eventide: April 30-May 7

Be careful and adjust your prices in advance.

MTGO Library Bot 6.71

ML Bot 6.71 has just arrived, carrying a number of important improvements and bug fixes.

• first of all, 6.71 loads your PersonalPrices.txt and PersonalPercentages.txt faster. On some computers we observed a loading time of more than 20 minutes for these files.

• the creation of the .csv is now more robust. On March 19th, Wizards of the Coast released a MTGO update that broke the creation of the .csv on some computers. ML Bot 6.71 fixes the problem.

• the selection of the wishlist, in Buying Mode, used to fail if the first "dropdown men" (the one with Net Deck / Local Deck) was not set to Local Deck. The bot is now able to handle the menu correctly and selects by itself the right choice ("Local Deck")

Improved Inventory - Part II

This afternoon we deployed a major update to the Inventory (launched 16th March http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/inventory.html and improved a first time 18th March http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/improved-inventory.html).

Now all the cards are grouped - you can check the details by clicking on the name of a card and a submenu will open. The prices are grouped in brackets like [2.0 - 3.0] 2.7] where the first number is the minimum price among your bots, the second is the max and the third one is the weighted average.
Prices are grayed out if your don't own the card or you don'y buy it.

The story of Ajani Goldmane

Learn more about Ajani, one of the three prime planeswalkers in White:

Ajani is rumoured to be in Journey into Nyx. The reason is this Picture that was released a few months ago (Before Born of the Gods)

The speculation is that this time Ajani is White Green. He has already been multi-colored and there has never been a Selesnya Planeswalkers, so that seems very likely to me.

MTGO Library Bot 6.70

ML Bot 6.70 has been released. It's just a maintenance build fixing some bugs related to the creation of the csv.