Well the first Shadowmoor results are in from a non wizards weekend at SCG and there are a few interesting developments. First off it seems Faeries are still king taking 1st and second in the 5k and 5 slots in the top 8 at the 2k absolutely dominant, elves took another two slots in the 5k, and Merfolk took a slot in both tournaments picking up new tools like Mirrorweave, which can be an overrun vs any blue deck with a lord of Atlantis or a reejeray in the right situation, However this is mitigated somewhat in blue matchups due to Faeries and merfolk both running 12 counters of one kind or another on average. Merfolk also picked up a fine one drop in the form of cursecatcher. There were, however, three new decks in the top 8 of the 5k that were more or less new.

Kavu Predator

[deck]Maindeck 4 Forest 1 Mountain 3 Plains 1 Fire-lit Thicket 4 Grove Of The Burnwillows 4 Treetop Village 1 Wooded Bastion 3 Flagstones Of Trokair 4 Birds Of Paradise 2 Calciderm 4 Kavu Predator 4 Kitchen Finks 3 Stonecloaker 4 Tarmogoyf 3 Gaddock Teeg 4 Incinerate 2 Last Breath 2 Garruk Wildspeaker 3 Edge Of Autumn 4 Fiery Justice Sideboard: 3 Pithing Needle 3 Riftsweeper 3 Ronom Unicorn 3 Oblivion Ring 2 Krosan Grip 1 Last Breath[/deck]

Not really new but I've always liked the predator justice combo personally ever since it made a showing in block and any time there are a bunch of X/1's or X/2's around it's a great deal -- and right now there are tons. This runs a pretty solid G/W frame. The deck got a great matchup round one of the top eight vs Elves. I'll watch to see if this was a fluke allowed by luck and a field of untested decks or if it makes a more substantial showing this time. The deck has some interesting synergies aside from the obvious cards that combo with Predator, Stonecloaker for example works well with Finks and Calciderm as well as providing a modicum of graveyard hate. Another minor combo is running a fairly large number of basic land and Flagstones of Trokair to take advantage of Edge of Autumn.

MGA (Pronounced "MGA ")

This is the whitest mono green aggro deck you'll ever see and seems really unrefined to me and I have heard the guy piloting it had incredibly lucky matchups. It takes pretty heavy advantage of Wilt-Leaf Liege as well as running heartmender. Heartmender I'm not sure about, at first I thought it was just bad but since I haven't had the opportunity to test this yet I can't say for certain. I could see heartmender being very annoying as long as it's keeping just one or two other guys around and the deck is running a heavy persist theme. Additionally the deck doesn't run Garruk, treetop village, or Tarmogoyf, Tarmogoyf has been dropped to accomodate cards with more synergy and the deck is not particularly good at growing it. I'm not entirely certain about the choice of Overrun over Garruk, the lack of village just puzzles me. The deck has very few tricks aside from the occasional persist critters and is about absolutely nothing but brute force but does that well enough I think.

[deck]Maindeck 21 Forest 1 Pendelhaven 3 Heartmender 4 Imperious Perfect 4 Kitchen Finks 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Safehold Elite 4 Wilt-leaf Cavaliers 4 Wilt-leaf Liege 4 Wren's Run Vanquisher 4 Shield Of The Oversoul 3 Overrun Sideboard: 3 Cloudthresher 3 Oversoul Of Dusk 3 Wheel Of Sun And Moon 3 Krosan Grip 3 Squall Line[/deck]

R/G Lando

There are admittedly some mana intensive and extremely greedy decks in this format though maybe not to the same extent as only a year ago. At the very least guys like fullminator mage and Magus of the Moon rarely lack for situations to be useful. The deck has a number of similarities to big mana but is somewhat sleeker. I think the deck runs too much acceleration with not nearly enough to ramp up to.Fullminator and magus both disrupt mana but don't work particulary well together when magus is out you want to take out their basics obviously but poor synergy isn't neccesarily a reason not to run both. I think the deck needs to be refined a fair bit maybe running some sweepers such as firespout instead of the spot removal but there is plenty to consider here going forward. One major issue is that it is quite lackluster on the draw vs fae right now and that's huge.

[deck]Maindeck 6 Forest 4 Snow-covered Mountain 4 Fire-lit Thicket 4 Karplusan Forest 4 Treetop Village 4 Avalanche Riders 4 Birds Of Paradise 4 Deus Of Calamity 4 Fulminator Mage 2 Llanowar Elves 4 Magus Of The Moon 4 Tarmogoyf 4 Wall Of Roots 2 Flame Javelin 3 Garruk Wildspeaker 4 Tarfire Sideboard: 1 Chameleon Colossus 2 Faerie Macabre 4 Kitchen Finks 4 Raking Canopy 4 Naturalize[/deck]

Aside from SCG Tokyo held it's regionals and... FAERIES. Mostly faeries, an elf deck, Doran, and a couple of larks. There was one deck sort of worth mentioning