Yesterday I built a deck around one of my Underused Hall of Fame cards. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t do so again today. I have always liked Greater Good. As a card, I find it to be very intriguing and in today’s article I’ll explain why.
For today’s deck, I decided to mine the quarry of the Underused Cards of All Time, Volume III. After all, if I think that these cards need more play, shouldn’t I be bringing one or more to light?
Yesterday, I wrote a deck on one of my favorite Saviors cards. There are so few cards in Saviors that are worth our time that we might as well focus on the good ones. With that principle in mind, I built a deck around another gem from Saviors, Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant.
I don’t like Saviors of Kamigawa that much. Zvi recently claimed that it appeared like the sort of set he’d build if you gave him 24 hours. That’s exactly what it feels like to me as well. The only things this set will “save” you from are excitement and interesting cards. One of the cards that I really like, however, is Oboro Breezecaller. If you read either of my two previous Saviors articles, I mention that I think Breezecaller has serious potential. How can I ignore that potential when I start building my daily decks?
Hello, and welcome back to the Daily Deck-a-thon. For the week, we’ll be injecting life into the arm of Magic with your daily dosage of deck. The theme is pretty simple – I build a brand new deck followed by some comments. If you have any theme recommendations for decks this week, I’ll be happy to take a peak at them in the forums.
The month of June brings possibly the most eventful issues that Five-Color’s ever seen: the restriction of Contract from Below, the legalization of Portal (or most of it, anyway), the expansion from eighteen cards of each color to twenty cards, and errataing the Wishes. What do these changes potentially mean for Magic’s Biggest Format?
It’s Abe Sargent’s hundredth article, and he wants you to join the fun! He’s created fifty Saviors-based combos (which, by a lovely coincidence, is this week’s $20 Casual Challenge) to encourage and inspire deckbuilders everywhere… and his most-used card is blue, it’s a common, and it’s not Ideas Unbound.
With each day bringing more and more set reviews, it’s time to focus our efforts a bit. While everybody else is saying, “Good in Limited, poor in Constructed,” for dozens of cards, we’ll actually review them for a purpose. So instead of listing every card, and then saying how much it sucks in 5-Color compared to previous cards, I’ll just skip it altogether. What you get is just the good ones.
Anyone can build a deck around a power card like Survival of the Fittest… but what happens when you try to build decks around little-known cards like Invoke Prejudice and Dark Suspicions? Abe puts his deckbuilding skills to the test to dust off these oldie goldies and create a sixty-card pile that will shred the other players at your table!
Of course, there are lots of ways to gain card advantage in Abeth Edition, the alternate Core Set that I’ve created. The concept is so important that it should hardly be limited to Blue. Additionally, other colors get sweeping effects or multiple targets: Wrath of God, Wildfire, Shatterstorm, and Tempest of Light are excellent examples. But while White and Red get plenty of sweeping effects, Black and Green get hardly any. To compensate, both get some pure card drawing. Black gets Reprocess (which is hardly used) and Phyrexian Arena, which may be the first balanced Necropotence. Add in Skulltap and Skeletal Scrying and you have a solid amount of card drawing from common to rare.
In the last three sections, I explained the basic principles I would use to construct an ideal Core set that would be better than what Wizards has done, and then I listed the cards and gave a brief synopsis of each. In these next two installments, I will try to explain and defend some of the more controversial choices, and some of the principles involved in their selection.
With today’s installment, Abe fills us in on the last of the cards in his grand scheme to do Wizards one better by creating a workable Core Set! Now that you have all the cards, you can debate his choices… and tomorrow, he’ll fill you in on his playtesting.
Abe gears up for the second part of his attempt to create a Base Set that he’s comfortable with by listing his uncommons… and we can almost guarantee that some of his choices for “good beginner cards that won’t overpower the format” (Rule of Law? Humble?) are sure to be controversial.
I have spent over two months constructing, playtesting, and balancing a basic set to see if I can do Wizards one better. So let me explain the principles behind Abeth Edition, how and why I chose the cards, and what rules that Wizards has laid down that I choose to break.
Nothing is better than stories about one player dominating a Magic group with a card that no one played. After the domination begins, however, everyone starts including it in their decks. When that happens, it’s like casual group evolution right before your eyes. And here are thirty overlooked cards that might just dominate your kitchen table, if given the right chance.
