Hello everyone and welcome to the year of magic in review, this year has been quite a entertaining one with new products arising, tons of new tournaments as well as new faces to the game and heck even returning legends make a appearance back to magic every once in a while, so with that let's get started on the year in review in magic month by month.
January - With the beginning of a new season there is always tension when it comes to various things in magic, this new season began with a bang taking Extended for a ride in Atlanta, Georgia with the only set of Scars Block, Scars of Mirrodin legal at the time of the event, though it's not to say that Star City Games had it's share of excitement too with their 2011 invitational series underway a few weeks beforehand, Jason Ford took Atlanta by storm and won the whole event with a impressive record to beat Ben Stark 2-1 to take the finals with ease. We also learned a bit about Mirrodin Besieged during the spoiler season for the month with the respective factions of Mirran and Phyrexian having a different promo card for the first time in prerelease history, depending on whom you sided with the Mirrans got a sweet foil edition of Hero of Bladehold while Phyrexian players got a foil Glissa, the Traitor for taking root in the deep oil of the phyrexian menace, spoiler season was fun to say the least for this, we learned of the fact the set was split down the middle 50/50 for both sides with each side having different rares and such like Mirran Crusader and Phyrexian Crusader as well as the fact for the first time ever we had Faction Packs for the event of the prerelease for Mirrodin Besieged which was pretty cool to be honest, but back then there was still the menace of such cards like Lightning Bolt and such that delivered a lot of sweet decks in the game of magic..
February - During the month of february, we learned a lot of new things, for example we learned of the first introduction of Event Decks which were powerful preconstructed decks which could be used at a local FNM event since both decks were standard legal mind you, we also learned a old face from the Shards of Alara block came back in the form of Tezzert, Agent of Bolas which became the staple for Blue/Black short afterwards, as well as having tournaments out the wazoo, with Paris being first at the first ever Magic Weekend Paris, thanks to a rather uncouth year in the player of the year race, we had the first ever player of the year playoff bewteen the United States's Brad Nelson and France's Guillame Matingon for the title of player of the year as well as the typical stage of pro tour paris to go along with it, but thanks to a little cunning from brad nelson we had our 2010 player of the year wrapped up along with the usual winner of the event which was Ben Stark, along with a whole slew of other events during the month the first real competitive month of magic came to a head, ending the month of february in a neat fashion.
March - It was during this time magic had come to a turning point, we had just learned the third set of scars's block was going to be called Action with 2 cards officially spoiled for the set, however it was a slow month for magic as a tournament game, with only one grand prix to speak of during the month of March, which took place in Barcelona and was won by Martin Schenin late in the month of march, magic had also taken a turning point with the recent rise of a certain deck called Caw-Blade which was winning tournaments left right and center, Magic R&D however had announced a quarterly change during the month of march which affected the format of Two Headed Giant and how poison counters worked, it changed from being 10 counters to 15. We were also in the midst of Mirrodin Besieged War league's across the world which would determine the fate of the third and final set which saw the phyrexians winning at every turn to take the lead and would they dominate the world of mirrodin or fail in their quest.
April - This was one of the worst months in recent history for the game, since the leak incident happened during the last 2 weeks of the month, as well as the fact we learned that the 3rd set was going to be called New Phyrexia, worst of all the leaks were caused by a world champion and his friends causing them to get banned from the game for a while, we won't be seeing them for a while yet since the bannings for 2 of the culprits do not end for a year and the remaining two are banned for 3 years, you should not have done that, that's for sure. With the entire set of New Phyrexia basically spoiled it meant for the first time in spoiler history we knew the set inside and out 3 weeks in advance. March/April however brought us a new product in magic for it's Duel Deck series in the form of Knights vs Dragons which had a few good cards for it but not that many, i did however like the new alternate art Knight of the Reliquary that's for sure. Along with new products came new tournaments with Dallas/Fort Worth Texas seeing a standard tournament where it was perfectly legal to play Caw-Blade and Kobe, Japan seeing a extended round of events this time around, as well as Grand Prix London which leaked into the first day of May and that saw us a Scars of Mirrodin/Mirrodin Besieged Booster draft for the last event of the month of April.
May - With the month of may we saw the release of New Phyrexia which hit store shelves on the 13th of May, as well as the fact we had a few things rise and fall in terms of popularity, Infect was becoming more of a dominant threat in magic with the fact the scars block had been completed and the fact we had ourselves another Scars of Mirrodin/Mirrodin Besieged Sealed/Booster draft in Prague, then we moved from Prague to Providence, Rhode Island for the 1st of 2 Legacy events of the season, this really gave us a idea of what to expect from scars block to be popular this season and it showed why Dismember was really high valued even in Legacy of all places, however may didn't have much else in terms of interest for magic, for we moved into the first of 3 months of summer for magic in June.
June - Where to start, with Magic Weekend Nagoya arriving in the first 2 weeks of the month we were treated to a awesome Scars Block Constructed event and Scars draft which pretty much showed why Tempered Steel was still a beast of a deck which dominated scars block constructed the entire weekend, but that wasn't the only big thing happening in June, with June there was a new multiplayer product, or rather a endorsement of a already existing format called Elder Dragon Highlander or EDH, but now there was 5 pre constructed decks for the format with 51 new cards for the thing as well, i know i picked one or two of these up for kicks since EDH is now my favorite of all formats to talk about i dunno about you folks.
July - July gave us another usual core set shenigans again this time with the new arrival of 3 new walkers and 2 old returning friends, Sorin Markov and Gideon Jura whom were replacing Ajani and Lillana respectively for this particular edition, as always though the new walkers are pretty impressive since we got a few new cards for the set in terms of cards named after the walkers including the true fashion of each and every one of the colors, Game Day for this particular core set was decent since we have 2 event decks at this point in time for each set coming out, with the arrival of the core set however also brought another 2 event decks to the table, Illusions and Vampires which were both perfectly legal at the time they showed up, which isn't a surprise to me at all.
August - August is what i like to call spoilers month in magic, it usually brings a new from the vault, this time from the vault: legends arrived on store shelves in late august, we got a sneak peek at innistrad at PAX thanks to the magic conference there as per usual, along with Gen Con we got our fair share of magic during the month of august, but this also gave rise to the spoiler season for Innistrad believe it or not since we learned a few of the cards in the set at this point in time.
September - Not only do i love september as a whole, but i also love the fact it's always a spoiler season month, espically since the fall prerelease falls right around my birthday every year, sweet present to myself if you ask me. Innistrad arrived on store shelves and so did Ajani vs Nicol Bolas which was the latest duel deck in the series of awesome, but it did turn out it kinda tanked honestly, though Innistrad was a new thing with all those sweet horror tropes hitting the scene with vampires, werewolves, spirits and even humans being present in the set, along with sweet new mythic rares.
October - Usually when a fall set becomes legal for events i tend to cringe, but Innistrad was a decent set to draft honestly with cool stuff like Geist of Saint Traft and Olivia Voldaren in the set as a whole it turned out to be a nice change of pace since we all got mythics based around specific colors or tribes of creatures all except for werewolves whom got the shaft but got Garruk, the Veil Cursed/Garruk Relentless the first ever dual faced walker in magic's history which was neat. Game day for this was also kinda nice with two new event decks being present for the 4th time this year, a B/U/G style deck and a White Weenie beatdown deck being constructed for the events in question, as well as any shenigans a player can think of.
November - With november it was time for the final wizards held events of the year, a few GP's and Worlds later the japanese came out on top for the final pro tour worlds event in magic's history, congrats to them for winning it all when it counted, we got us some sweet new standard and modern style decks for the event, as well as a few other things, but with november means the holiday season is upon us and magic has a life of it's own with the holiday season.
December - The final month of magic came and went with a scandal or two, the infamous Star City Games Invitational scandal which saw the winner of the event Alex Bertocinni banned from the DCI and his prizes revoked as well with the titles going to Gerry T and Adam Prozak for player of the year and invitational winner, nice work SCG you earned a bit of respect in my eyes for doing this. The Quarterly bannings also happend with Wild Nacatl and Punishing Fire getting the ban hammer from modern as well giving zoo one less option and the Fire/Grove combo is killed off thanks to the bannings, nothing else was banned either which is a surprise honestly. We also got a sneak peek at Dark Ascension and the new Multiplayer product Planechase 2012 which comes out in June, a super fun idea to bring back which is nice to see honestly, i cannot wait to see Planechase next year.
Anyways that's it for the yearly wrap up, if i missed anything important, lemme know in the comments below, other then that Happy New Year and see you all in 2012, this is vergil signing off.
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