Bob the Hand Builder

With Dark Confidant being one of the best 2-drop non-'goyf plays in any format, it is small wonder that he is priced around the $60 mark.  Certainly not on par with Necropotence in terms of power level, but still very good.  Suicide black loves this creature...  Some of the old legacy lists containing this creature are pretty much Necro Lite, running Hymn to Tourach, Hypnotic Specter, Nantuko Shade, Tombstalker, Umezawa's Jitte, Thoughtseize, Tarmogoyf, Sinkhole, Dark Ritual, and Wasteland.  An old Legacy's Allure article has a composite list to take a look at.

Recently in Modern and other formats, Dark Confidant has found a home in a nasty little brew called loam aggro (or aggro loam.. whatever it is...).  The deck uses card advantage extremely efficiently.  Here's a Legacy list for comparison.  Aside from the sweet lands you get to play in Legacy, things stay pretty much the same when it's ported over to Modern.  Between Life from the Loam, Dark Confidant, and Countryside Crusher, you have an endless supply of cards to pitch to Seismic Assault and Liliana's discard ability.   The deck is fairly resilient to graveyard hate and other methods of dealing with the deck's routes to victory.  Probably one of my favorite additions to the modern deck are the sweet Retrace spells the deck runs.  Raven's Crime and Flame Jab provide a great outlet for excess lands without the need to have a Seismic Assault online.  In this deck, Life from the Loam is pretty much a 2-mana sorcery speed Ancestral Recall because of the many options the deck has for using the lands you pull from it.

Bronson Magnan took the deck to a first place finish at Grand Prix Lincoln earlier this year.  It is a potent deck that shuts down aggro strategies, has lots of disruption for control and combo decks, and has a very fast clock.  I strongly suggest taking it for a spin if you get the chance.

If this present state of affairs is any indication, Dark Confidant is, and will continue to be a format-defining staple.

Paper vs. Pixels

The guys covering Pro Tour Philadelphia made an interesting point.  The metagame shaped up very similar to what was being seen online before the event.  This is unusual, as MTGO standard and paper standard are usually quite different.  As one reason for this, combo decks have a real weakness in MTGO.  Having to actually go infinite can be the death of certain types of combo decks online.  In paper magic, you can just perform the combo five times and then say some impossibly large number.  I sincerely wish they had posited a reason for this.  Could it be that more competitive Magic players are getting into MTGO and qualifying for Pro Tour events that way, or was it just a fluke?

Another factor is the availability of cards and their prices.  MTGO is always in flux and card prices stabilize very quickly.  Card prices take a lot longer to stabilize in paper Magic because transactions take a whole lot longer, and cards cannot be moved between 5 different merchants in one minute.  Keeping an eye on where MTGO prices are going on certain cards can be an excellent strategy for determining where card prices are headed in the near future, particularly if they are cards that fit into competitive decks.  Availability is a large component to the appeal of MTGO.  One can check the card prices of hundreds of merchants in a matter of minutes rather than hours.  Also, access to any card you could ever want that is in print on MTGO are at your fingertips.

Deck Preview: Puresteel Paladin

With decks like Caw-Go, Mono-White Quest, and Vengevine just a few weeks from rotating out of standard, a number of decks will need to fill the void.  One mentioned by channelfireball.com is a little Puresteel Paladin brew.  You can view the decklist here, along with a few sample games.  As mentioned, the deck has some real consistency issues.  Another list on StarCity Games had a different take.  View it here.  The deck has an interesting inclusion I really like: the 1-of Glint Hawk.  The card allows you to reuse your Mortarpods without sacrificing another creature.  It also draws a card off of Puresteel Paladin if you bounce an equipment with it and re-play it.  To replace the Squadron Hawks in the channelfireball version, this deck has another few interesting features: 2 Kor Firewalkers and an extra Etched Champion.  With a little tuning, the deck should have some serious game.