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This thread is for discussion of this week's Latest Developments, which goes live Friday morning on magicthegathering.com.

What a cruel, cruel prank, Wizards.

Kudos for this one.

Handcuffs!!!  ROFL!!!

Be careful, Wizards, you might have to explain that one to the kiddies

If there was even a chance of me believing this they would have had to do something about the expansion symbols on the cards.  Nice idea for a joke but it failed before I got to the "article."

The name should be "Duet Decks: GideonxLiliana" or perhaps "Duet Decks: Gidiana".

ok totaly not beliveabul after all the symbols on the cards arent even the same. and it would have made more sence if it was jace 2.0 and giddion.... ya i said it jaqce 2.0 is homosexual its the only reason he would be in every guys deck and every girls too. 

Well I was so sure this was an Arcana I posted my comment in that thread.

Talk about rick-rolling yourself.

Well I guess we don;t have to talk about Magic development for the week, on the heels of not talking about Magic design for the week. So when do previews start?  

Brilliant!
Still laughing about Gideon requiring Sex Appeal , and Lili needing Handcuffs .

In all seriousness, deck releases that are geared to interact perfectly in Two-Headed Giant would be kinda cool. Those games are the best when you play with someone whose deck matches your playing style or makes up for your deck's weaknesses, afterall. Just not as "Duet Decks." Great joke.

Much like Pirates vs. Ninjas, this is yet another example of the Reprint Policy inadvertantly hosing awesome before it can even happen.

A waste of a week's article. Keep the **** obvious pranks to Arcana.

I really wish this wasn't an april fool's joke... i've never liked duel decks that much, but I think I would actually went for that one... not just because the decklists are hilarious but also because a lot of them are really, really good.

You, sir, just made my day!

could somebody call Jace? I wonder what he'd say about that... oh, and tell Gideon that it might be a bit early to already bring the chaplain along 

Be prepared for the new Offspring Decks by WotC, coming to stores in roughly 9 months!

This was a good one. Not very believable, but it was very good. It made me laugh.

Also, I think Duet Decks actually wouldn't be a very bad idea. It would certainly be fun to see what they'd do with a 2HG-tailored product (maybe next year?).

The name of this product should obviously have been "Date Decks". Other than that, well played

Tom,
I really do like your articles. No seriously, I do.

Just not this one.

If you wanted to take a break like old man BDM or be like the lazy, two-timing Flores (who's just copying and pasting SCG stuff onto the official website), just say so. We'll forgive you for not writing that week. Like what mesti said, leave that to Arcana.

But this one is just bad.

If everyone is pulling an April's Fool joke, where else can people get a reprieve? Please don't do that again.

lol thats cute,duet decks

I would totally buy that

Hahahahahahahaha. Thats actually quite funny. I thought they were going to tell us that the release of Knights Vs. Dragons would be delayed until April 2nd, but this is just as funny. 

Who else thought that the deck registrator simulator was a waste of your time?

That just made my day. That's HILARIOUS!

April Fool!!!!!!!!!!

This is really funny. Why'd they use liliana's duel deck art?

Apr 1, 2011 -- 4:34AM, Demonic_Math_Tutor wrote:

Who else thought that the deck registrator simulator was a waste of your time?

Me. I tried it a couple times.

Say it with me now:

D'awwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Edit: And I have to say, the Recumbent Bliss in the Gideon decklist has me cackling like a madwoman.

I sincerely wish this was a product.  I would so buy it.

Gideon has chastise and Liliana has handcuffs . I always knew Liliana was into this kind of thing, but Gideon was a bit surprising. Well, I guess that his three-bladed, whiplike weapon isn't only for fighting, huh?

Again, my uber-Vorthos shines through as I would totally buy something like this. 

Apr 1, 2011 -- 12:44AM, Guest872980744 wrote:

If everyone is pulling an April's Fool joke, where else can people get a reprieve? Please don't do that again.

www.tvshowsondvd.com

They have refused to participate in April Fools for several years running.

I for one appreciate the thought and effort put into this Duel Deck.  I loved it.  The Deck registration simulator is hilarious.  Especially the last card.  loved it!  The Card of the week, The Wallpaper... even naming Action "New Phyrexia" instead of "Mirrodin Pure" is pure genius.  

Thanks. 

Apr 1, 2011 -- 12:01PM, swamp_water wrote:

I for one appreciate the thought and effort put into this Duel Deck.  I loved it.  The Deck registration simulator is hilarious.  Especially the last card.  loved it!  The Card of the week, The Wallpaper... even naming Action "New Phyrexia" instead of "Mirrodin Pure" is pure genius.  

Thanks. 

The "New Phyrexia" announcement didn't happen yesterday so it very likely wasn't a joke.  Sorry to burst your bubble.

I'll happily eat my own words if the set does turn out to be "Mirrodin Pure" though.

Easy bargain for you to make  

@swamp_water: as GreenBuster said , and in case you didn't already know, they only make the jokes on April Fools Day itself.  There is no "April Fools Week," so when they made the announcement it was meant to be taken seriously.

At least this never got as bad as the "there will NOT be planeswalkers in Lorwyn!" rants that got worse and worse in the face of confirmation after confirmation and even argued the meaning of the word "prospect."

The joke could have been all good if had appeared in Arcana; in Latest Development, however, it implies something completely different.

Standard has clearly become an utter disaster as Cawblade has established as the only optimal deck to play. Budget issues are the only reason whey there are still people playing other decks, which means the worst have happened: Standard has become a format where metagame and card choice skills have been completely substituted by trading and money-ripping skills.

Extended season is over, and the format is as lonely and unplayed as it was, if not more. There are some insiders swearing that the format didn't actually degenerated in a war of overpowered standard decks of previous seasons, but even if it is true, people's perception didn't really change, and Wizards' support has shined for its absence. Even on its beginning, the format change was announced on a secondary column and it didn't got a single article dedicated on latest developments.

Legacy, the format that they are least interested on keeping alive, is on the rise with a metagame diversity that has bursted from a single card banning. Of course, they are still bent on denying bannings on the formats they really want to be played.

Infect has been annoying the hell out of competitive and casual players alike. Casual players find it broken and in limited, they only format where Spikes can't really ignore the mechanic, it has been criticised as an oppressing factor dictating how to draft or play the decks.

So what did they come up with when a really long explanation and insight is needed? A joke article lucky to have april 1st as an excuse. Guess they can't wait for the previews to happen so people can forget how bad things have come out so they can promise that it's going to be all different as soon as they release and we buy the next set.

Apr 2, 2011 -- 10:04PM, javert wrote:

Standard has clearly become an utter disaster as Cawblade has established as the only optimal deck to play.

As one of the biggest Chicken Little competitive-Standard-haters around I can officially say this is pretty absurd.

Apr 2, 2011 -- 10:28PM, ROBRAM89 wrote:

As one of the biggest Chicken Little competitive-Standard-haters around I can officially say this is pretty absurd.

Ok, but show some non-anecdotal evidence too. Here is some to prove that Caw-Blade is that dominant:

This article analyses the online results and based on the performance of the top four decks, it concludes that playing CawBlade is a strictly better strategy than any other deck.

magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=95...

This article analyses CawBlade performance and concludes that if CawBlade is getting less played is only in terms of relative numbers as the more players that enter into Standard tournaments are less likely to play it purely for financial reasons
magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=95...

This articles show the deck performance on some real tournaments and online.
magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=95...
www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/214...

It's worth noting that by now everyone nows Cawblade is the best deck and even knowing that, they can't stop the deck from getting a 59 % win rate. Survival of the Fittest decks were having a 58 % win ratio and then the card got banned. Certainly, a metagame where a banning is clearly out of question is that bad.

Apr 2, 2011 -- 10:04PM, javert wrote:

Extended season is over, and the format is as lonely and unplayed as it was, if not more. There are some insiders swearing that the format didn't actually degenerated in a war of overpowered standard decks of previous seasons, but even if it is true, people's perception didn't really change, and Wizards' support has shined for its absence. Even on its beginning, the format change was announced on a secondary column and it didn't got a single article dedicated on latest developments.

Agreed on communication, as that was a poor decision to let BDM become the spokesman for R&D. (On the plus side, a bunch more people read his article that week than normally do.) And I was as vocal as anyone, and more so than most, about the way in which WOTC "communicated" the change in Extended. I have to say I am not surprised that it is forgotten again after all that was supposedly done to stop this from happening. Disappointed, a little anyway. They could have just left Extended alone after all.

But do you have any links to the comments of people insisting that Extended was somehow more than just Standard plus the previous Standard? I know we had a few fanboys here insisting this when the change was announced, but they are hardly a reliable source of anything, and some of them are notably absent now that we've been through however many Mike Flores articles indicating the opposite. I am a little curious who's bothering to defend this format these days.