Actually I really would like to make my Gate Duty card deck and playtest it in a tourney. But I know I can't do that if it would be next week.

I'm very much ready for another tournament.

New bans:

• Emrakul, the Promised End
• Reflector Mage
• Smuggler's Copter

I used to call this format SATT with friends (Standard at the time). Good idea, hope it gains traction.

Anyone want to test w/ me on untap.in?

I know I probably sound pretty stupid right now, but what's "untap.in"?

It's a free version of Magic online, where you can playtest any cards or decks you want. The only catch is, you play like you're in paper, you have to enforce the rules yourself and do everything yourself (untapping, drawing, discarding, targetting, revealing your hand, etc). It can become quite frustrating, but it's free, so its nice.

Looks like this has lost some steam? Please allow me to inject some fresh ideas into it. Here's the rundown of a format that I used to host well over a decade ago and it was freaking amazing. I'd like to incorporate, or at least for you all to incorporate some of these ideas:

1) By call it 'standard at some point' you're essentially breaking the format. For one, not everyone remembers what 'was' standard at some point. For two, there have been numerous times when standard has had to be redefined; there was Ravager before Skullclamp and then clamp was banned so there was Ravager after skullclamp. You need to have a strict definition of what players can and cannot do.

Here's the proposal: that the format be formally defined by card pools, each containing a few sets and each with its own banned/restricted list. These card pools are engineered to coincide with standard rotations so the general theme of 'what was once standard' still applies but as a guideline and NOT a rule. The RULE is that players may choose from one card pool and build their deck entirely within the constraints of that pool.

2) Based on what I've read so far (admittedly not enough) I think the approach of deciding on what decks players can use is way off. Go back to the baseline rule and allow players to build whatever they want to build. Someone made a comment about narrowing the metagame, but this is exactly the opposite of what we want.

3) on Banned/restricted cards, you have to get away from the mentality of banning cards every time someone uses it to beat you. The only time a card should be banned is if it warps the meta in such a way that it's no longer fun. But the reality is that the strength of this format is it's self-correcting. Yes, a lot of people may play Ravager, so then the few people playing Stars & Stripes or Prosbloom will wipe the tables clean. Jitte is strong, yes, but then so is a lot of other stuff from a lot of other pools. The strength of the pools is such that it allows us to be extremely flexible. Just one example: in the (onslaught + Mirrodin) 2004 pool, you could ban Skullclamp and in the 2005 pool (Mirrodin + Kamigawa) you could ban Arcbound Ravager and all his friends. This would ensure players would still have access to some broken cards, but not necessarily be able to assemble them together. Here's another example: back in 1996, Mind Twist was banned in Standard. I've done some testing on this; it's really no that degenerate anymore. Not that it's not strong, but the rest of the pools are SO strong that we can afford to allow the 1996 pool access to Mind Twist without creating a degenerate metagame. Again, it's not the card but the context it's in that matters. Use of pools allows us to control the context.

4) on that note, why oh why would you limit the pools to the most recent sets? Dude! Go back. All the way back to 1996 and have a pool for each year. There are soooo many decks out there, some of them were broken then but weak now, some were nothing then but fare much better now. Give players the opportunity to find their own solutions. I promise you: the format will correct itself.