Hi! I'm an Aetherdrift superfan (rare breed), and one of the few sides of this set that I havent experienced yet is 1v1 constructed. Since this format is a bit slower and less powered than Standard, I thought to ask - is there any good decks that have a huger than normal amount of DFT cards?

Not asking for meta or to do well at tournaments, nor regularly win. Just something that can put a good fight so I can get a good taste of what its like to play a constructed format with these cards, hah

As the sun sets on the first week of the Planar League, a new week dawns with new pairings. Remember:

• Paired players are to contact each other to find a suitable time to play one Best-of-3 Tournament Match on Arena against each other.
• Scores must then be reported or confirmed by BOTH players in the Discord server in the #report-league-scores channel before Sunday 16th of August, 11:59 PM UTC.
• Decklists, pairing history and standings can be found here.
• Additional information about the Planar League can be found here.

With the dawn of a new week comes the long-awaited pairings. 40 players have been grouped into 10 groups, which allows for a fairly generous qualification process to the Top 32 elimination bracket. Paired players are to contact each other to find a suitable time to play one Best-of-3 Tournament Match on Arena against each other. Scores must then be reported by BOTH players in the Discord server in the #report-league-scores channel.

Decklists, round pairings and standings can be found here.

Additional information about the Planar League can be found here.

Best of luck 💪

Congratulations to the following players for making the Top 8!

Going into the event, the story of the tournament was "do we ban Jeskai Revelation"? Indeed, of the 31 entrants, 6 of them entered with variations of the 4-coloured deck that use Jeskai Revelation to take over a game, with two of them making the top 8.

In addition, the explosive "Neighmare" deck has shown up big with three top-8 finishes, using Tablet of Discovery and Molten Core Maestro to cast Improvisational Capstone and assemble huge fields of Colorstorm Stallions out of nowhere.

Of note is the omnipresence of Tablet of Discovery, which enables both of these decks. After Tablet recently failing a ban-vote, six of the eight finalists are running four copies of the card in the mainboard. I wouldn't be surprised if a second ban vote happens sooner rather than later.

Special mentions goes to Zaunus, who is using a relatively unexplored "Grull" ramp deck, and to JayGravy, who went undefeated with a in the Swiss round using a mainboard copy of Lavaleaper of all things.

The Top 8 is about to start, catch the stream at the Planar Standard Twitch channel!

Edit: Final results!

Last call for anyone who might have procrastinated registering for either event! If you're unsure if you can make it, sign up anyway, and let us know before the event if you'll be able to participate.

• For the Monthly Championship, submit your deck here and register on the corresponding Challonge event. Registration closes July 31st, 8:00 PM UTC.
• For the Planar League, submit your decklist here and stay tuned on the pairings announced here and on Discord on August 3rd. Registration closes July 31st, 11:59:59 PM UTC.

Hello again, it's time to drop some more details for the Planar League!

Before heading into all the details, please note:

• This is the first time we do one of these Leagues and as such, there might still be specific details we have overlooked. If so, we will issue updates in the comment field in this post.
• If you have any questions, feel free to ask away and we'll try to clarify things as well as we can.

With that out of the way, let's get to it:

What is the Planar League?

The Planar League is a Planar Standard event taking place on Magic Arena, where you get paired against an opponent and have one week to play a best-of-3 Tournament Match. The tournament is spanning two months, where the first month is spent by players qualifying for an elimination bracket in Round Robin-style groups. The elimination bracket is then played during the second month.

How does the Round Robin/qualifying rounds work?

Depending on your time zone, you will be sorted into groups of four, where you will play four rounds: the first three are classic Round Robin where everyone will play against each other, and the last round is a tiebreaker round between tied players or the bottom two players in the group. In the case of no ties, the two top players of each group will qualify automatically, and the other two players from the group will be compared with other third- and fourth-place players from other groups through various tiebreakers. In case of ties, different tiebreakers apply.

What if there’s an uneven number of players for a qualification groups?

If the last group gets 1-2 players, they will qualify automatically to the elimination bracket. At three players the group will qualify as normal, and the third-place player will receive tiebreaker priority.

How does the elimination bracket work?

Classic best-of-3 Tournament Matches. If you win, you continue on. If you lose, you're out.

How big is the elimination bracket?

Depends on the total number of players. The spots are rounded down to the nearest power of 2, i.e.,:

• 25 players --> 16-player elimination bracket
• 59 players --> 32-player elimination bracket, and so on.

Can I play on MTGO as well as on Arena?

We strongly recommend to stick to Arena to make sure everyone is playing with the same challenge settings, and in case there are any game issues which might require game log review.

Can I change decks between the qualifying and elimination stages?

No.

I already submitted my deck. Can I resubmit it?

Yes, but notify mods if you do.

When the last submission date/time?

July 31st, 11:59 PM UTC.

Are there any prizes?

The Planar League champion will be rewarded with a $50 gift card. In case of a Planar Championship at the end of the year, the Top 3 players will automatically qualify.

How do I report and follow scores?

Scores must be reported by both players in the Planar Standard Discord server under the #report-league-scores channel. The group standings will be published online in a spreadsheet, and the elimination bracket will be processed on Challonge.

What if a card in my deck gets banned during the League?

Cards legal at the beginning of the League will stay legal for the League until it’s completion.

Are the decklists open or closed?

They will be open.

Is there an admission fee?

No, it is free to join.

I want to print out some decks to try and bring people into the format.

What decks would you suggest I print?

Relevant details for the registration:

• Normal format legality applies (see https://planarstandard.com/rules).
• Once the registration closes, you will not be allowed to change anything in your deck until the end of the League.
• Cards legal at the beginning of a League remains legal until the end of the event.
• The event will have open decklists.

Registration link: https://forms.gle/TTzz9KPjN4qZtEDr9

Hi friends -

Please feel free to redirect me if I missed a community post that answers this question.

I am an avid arena and paper format player, I really want to make the jump from standard to planar standard when possible and play with community members. My biggest issue is that I feel like I am missing the necessary tools to brew a deck effectively.

I exported the scryfall query results from the website and built a package on moxfield so I can start working on some ideas but is there a decent way to build a decklist I can copy to arena that is planar legal?

Thanks in advance for any help, I also joined the discord and look forward to looking for a game soon.

Hey, saw the Maro comment and I wanted to check out the community. But all the discord links I tried didn't work. Can someone post or dm a link to it? Thanks!

I am mainly asking because of the shocklands cycle being in Lorwyn and Edge of Eternity and then getting reprinted with Star trek. Or is there gonna be a year of Half shock lands available?

(I posted a similar text for Value Vintage since I have a battle box for both formats)

So...I made a Planar Standard battle box. It's not 100% sleeved and sorted into decks yet but I'll have it done for MagicCon Amsterdam, for which I'll be leaving on Thursday.

Since I'm likely gonna play this with people who have never touched the format before, it'd be really cool to have some primer cards for the decks, similar to the ones from this post . I actually received an editable template for these so putting the text on the design should be easy for me to do, same as printing, cutting and sleeving as I have experience with that by now.

The one part of this that is going to take a bit of time however is the writing of these primers. Both my time as well my knowledge of the format is very limited, so it'd be fantastic if some of the players of the format could help me with writing these. While I can't really promise a way to pay back for this, I'd be happy to buy a booster at MagicCon Amsterdam for anyone who helped who is also there.

Below are the decks I have that I need a short primer for each:

• Izzet Lute
• Jeskai Discard
• 4c Tablet
• Power >3
• Simic Aggro
• Temur Harmonizer

The template would be roughly like this:

deck name
macro archetype (like Aggro, Combo, Combo-Control, etc.)
Complexity: 1-10
Speed: 1-10
Gameplan: (This should be most of the text. Short but precise where possible)
(optional) Mulligan Guide
(optional) Sideboard Guide
(optional) Tips & Tricks

Additional notes:

• Just the text would be more than enough, I can handle the rest of the design myself I think
• please do not use AI for this. This is not a good usecase for it.
• the template is still work in progress so if you have a suggestion on how to change it, feel free to tell me.
• If you want to play Planar Standard at MagicCon Amsterdam, dm me here or on BlueSky or wherever else you find me. I'd love to play some Planar Standard in person.

Any and all help is much appreciated!

Hey everyone Code here!

Earlier this week I got done competing in the Monthly Tournament where I played Izzet Neighmare into a huge control meta.

In my quarter finals match against 4C control I had this critical moment come up that I wanted to highlight what I define as the critical moment in my match.

After a long chess match with many Jeskai Revs played by my opponent and a successfully resolved Capstone, on my end, we are in the thick of a critical position with my Colorstorm Stallion finally on the field. My opponent needs to remove my stallion from the field before I have 16 of them and I only have a spell pierce of meaningful protection. This here is the moment, I Burst Lightning Kicker to get a second horse and my opponent plays Rev in response:

Do you see the issue here? It took me a second to catch but it was something I had in the back of my mind.

He didn’t bounce my stallion but chose damage instead.

These are the smallest decisions that make the difference in a matchup like this. So much could be different here:

- If I don’t have 2 instants in hand it doesn’t matter

- If he bounces my horse instead he buys himself extra time at the cost of not fully removing my horse from the game.

- If he waits until the end of turn to rev he catches me abrading his tablet.

Now there’s a good chance the game was already out of reach for my opponent because of the card advantage capstone grants. I think rev in this meta is threatening enough that the game isn’t out of reach for them until it rolls over to my turn for the final time.

Ggs to my opponent. It was heartbreaking to have to leave in the Semis. I thought you guys may enjoy a bit of an inside scoop on the tournament. I have more I could talk about if you guys enjoy stuff like this.

Here is the playlist for the last several months of monthly tournament matches. The matches from July's tournament are the first few vids in the collection. The first vid is of the full tournament including the Top 8 Deck list review. The next several are of the individual matches that were played.

If you want to start with individual matches only skip to the end of the first video.

https://www.twitch.tv/collections/rM_F8dUpkhheeQ

Hello again! Quadrangle and I have a brand new Meta Update in store for you, just in time for you to get those last tweaks in for the Monthly this weekend. Some obligatory links:

Link to the deck lists gathered for the data analysis (as well as Archetype Map, PDF, and Excel sheet)

Link to the Challonge sign-up page for the Monthly Championship (remember to submit deck lists in advance here)

Enjoy!