Blake is the content manager for DailyMTG.com, making him the one you should email if you have thoughts on the website, good or less good (or not good). He's a longtime coverage reporter and hasn't turned down a game of Magic in any format ever.

The Daily Magic Update is a roundup of everything Magic you should know on December 1, 2016. Today's Update is brought to you by going your own way and building your own creation. I think we call that "inventing your tomorrow" on Kaladesh, or "you do you" among youths.

Today's Must

Love in General | Gathering Magic | Sam Keeper

This is a touching piece about what it's like to depict the idea of love on a Magic card. It's an interesting exploration of how to do that on a card (or cards). This is definitely for art aficionados and Vorthoses, but worth checking out even if you're just curious how a piece of cardboard is able to show off that most lovely of emotions.

After That, Read, Watch, or Listen to These

Standard Showdown Booster Opening | MTGGoldfish | SaffronOlive

SaffronOlive cracks some Standard Showdown prize packs to see what the experience is like. Hint: watch till the very end.

Standard Testing Videos

There are two good videos of players testing out Standard decks today. On StarCityGames.com, Ari Lax visits Jeskai Control, and over on TCGPlayer, Seth Manfield tries out a midrange version of Red-Green Aetherworks Marvel. Check 'em out.

Things to Do at Grand Prix Denver | Hipsters of the Coast | Brendan McNamara

A Grand Prix shouldn't just be a heads down, grind fest where you never see anything but the top of a table and the fluorescent lights above the food kiosk. It should be an experience. Yes, you should experience everything the Grand Prix has to offer—artists, side events, cosplay, dealers, prizes, etc.—but you should also take a moment to enjoy the city. McNamara has a guide for what Magic players can enjoy when they're not casting Panharmonicons and Gearhulks.

Just a Standard Showdown | Magic the Amateuring | Maria Bartholdi and Meghan Wolff

Standard, Standard, Standard. With Standard Showdowns, Grand Prix Denver, and half of the StarCityGames.com Invitational all featuring Standard, that seems like a relevant topic for Meghan and Maria. They even crack three Standard Showdown boosters. Can they do better than SaffronOlive? (Probably not—Mr. Olive is a fortunate fellow.)

Limited Time Only 47: Kaladesh Limited with Paulo Vitor | Constructed Criticism | Spencer Howland, Manny Meraz, Michael Hinderaker, Casey Bloodworth, and Drew Walden

Constructed Criticism goes Limited?! What kind of topsy-turvy world are we living in?!

Certainly having Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa on your podcast is reason enough to take a dip in the Limited side, but this is very confusing to me. Up is down, left is right, cats and dogs, living together...

Oh, also, you should listen to this podcast anyway.

Secrets of the Planeswalker Summit | Gathering Magic | MJ Scott

Take a look behind the scenes of the Planeswalker Summit from earlier in the year. Warning: only open if you like photos of cosplayers as basically every Planeswalker ever.

What to Watch Tomorrow

A rare treat for streaming fans, the StarCityGames.com Invitational starts tomorrow—yup, on Friday. The Invitational format is a three-day event mixing up Standard and Modern with some of the best players on the SCG circuit and in the world. Coverage starts at 10:30 a.m. ET on twitch.tv/scglive. The winner receives invites to the end-of-year SCG Players' Championship and the Pro Tour, plus a bunch of other cool prizes.

What People Are Talking About

There's some concern in the Reddit thread about this that people will be let down by Yahenni's card. I won't speak to the power level, because these days unless it's Panharmonicon or Cloudblazer, I don't know what I'm talking about. But I will say the card is incredibly flavorful. What else would you expect from a card with the type line "Aetherborn Vampire." And that flavor text...

Oops, I've said too much...

Deck of the Day

This deck was another Standard Showdown–submitted deck that piqued my interest. The deck is, at its core, all about attacking with colorless creatures like Bearer of Silence, Reaver Drone, Scrapheap Scrounger, and the tokens created by Carrier Thrall and Weaponcraft Enthusiast—all with a heaping helping of Abundant Maw for some direct damage out of nowhere. Swarm Surge pumps all of those colorless creatures for the final touches.

The deck's creator said he went 2-0 before having to leave, but those two decks were Fevered Visions and White-Blue Flash, so the deck obviously has some chops.

The deck is also one of my favorite kinds of locally played decks—a "cards I own" kind of deck. This isn't a deck you'll want to sleeve up the exact 60 (the creator said, for example, that if he owned four Smuggler's Copters, he would have played four), but proof of concept for a colorless aggro deck and that there's a lot of room to innovate in Standard.

There are also some underplayed cards in here. Drana, Liberator of Malakir is a clearly powerful card that simply hasn't found a home. Odd that this particular home is leading Eldrazi into battle, but so be it. Harsh Scrutiny is another card that keeps going up in my mind. Throwing someone off their creature curve and getting a scry out of it is a powerful effect for a single mana. Finally, the single Spawning Bed is genius, and more decks should play it, especially if they need ways to mitigate flooding out (*cough* White-Blue Flash *cough*).

So, yes, you could tweak and play with the numbers a bunch and find the perfect killer combination of these cards to take down your Standard Showdown this weekend—but you could also assemble the deck you want to play from cards you have or can trade for and still find success.

At least that's what I'll keep telling myself as I create endless variations of Panharmonicon/Cloudblazer.