SCG Daily – The Golden Age #5: An Extra Decklist for No Extra Cost!
Adam has built a lot of great and goofy decks in his first week on SCG Daily, but the likes of R/B SparkGoat may never, ever be topped.
SCG Daily – The Golden Age #4: Rabid Combat, Not Wombat
I love Rampage, but sometimes, pseudo-Rampage is even better. The trouble with plain, workaday Rampage is that it always grants creatures toughness as well as power, and as my Uncle Toby Shandy likes to say, “The only thing better than toughness is power, and the only thing better than power is Rabid Elephant.” Once Rampage was retired as a mechanic, Rampage-like effects flourished. Cards like Spined Sliver, Rabid Wolverines, and Gang of Elk improved upon Rampage by including, essentially, Bushido-when-attacking to the mix. If you want to make the most of the idea, try something like this…
SCG Daily – The Golden Age #3: My Favorite Giant
There were only thirteen of them, but their existence stretched from Legends to Mirage. That’s the length of seven sets (two large, five small) if you’re counting. If you opened a pack of Fallen Empires, Homelands, or The Dark, you’d never find one, but the mechanic they presented was a Magic staple nevertheless, a mechanic that found a home in each of the five colors. And of all the retired mechanics of the past, this one has, possibly, had the most influence on the later state of the game. What is this riddle of a mechanic I am talking about? Why it’s …
SCG Daily – The Golden Age #2: Leviathan, Too!
In the first article in this series, we looked at Sheep, Starfish, and Hippo tokens. Today, we’re going to the other extreme.
SCG Daily – The Golden Age #1
We’ve finally done it. With the new year, we’ve now made a daily article besides Ask the Judge a regular feature on StarCityGames.com. This will be a rotating post filled by a number of our Featured Writers over the course of the year designed to give you a glimpse into their daily Magical thoughts. The first installment of this new feature will be manned for the next few weeks by none other than the quirky, entertaining, and most excellent Adam Grydehoj!
Demon, You’re the Oni One for Me
Why do you draft Green? Don’t say it’s for the mana fixing. I’ve seen those pick orders that put Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kodama’s Reach over every other Green common. It’s true: Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kodama’s Reach are the best. And next comes Orochi Sustainer. But that’s not why you draft Green. Nope, you draft Green because you like fat. So why are you consistently overlooking some of the best fat in the set? Is it because it’s not Green?
Food For Thought – Geppetto’s Toolbox: Pulling the Strings of Gifts Ungiven
How has Champions of Kamigawa enhanced the possibilities of Cowardice? In the opinions of most tournament players, the new block has not in the least changed the viability of Cowardice-based decks. To these unbelievers, to these ultra-orthodox I’d-rather-draft-Shatter-than-Lightning-Coils-types, Cowardice has always been and will always be a junk rare. This, despite my best efforts. Now, I’d be the first to admit that my previous best efforts just weren’t good enough, but unfortunately, an abundance of forum posters have beaten me to it, and all I can do now is concur: This time last year, Cowardice had no place in a non-Friday Night tournament. But today, the world is different.
My Inner Troll: The Musky Taste of Failure
As the matchup analyses show, the deck probably isn’t ready for Tier 1 yet (probably not Tier 4 either), yet in my testing, it did significantly better than I had expected. True, I hadn’t expected much, but the deck’s dainty, little four-card combo was surprisingly easy to assemble and had the advantage of attaining victory with the help of numberless quantities of Bears.
Words of Wilding’s Only Good Matchup
Difficult though it may be to accept that Mark Gottlieb would ever stoop to preview a Constructed-playable card on MagictheGathering.com, this is precisely what occurred a few weeks ago. Granted, his article on Endless Whispers toiled under the assumption that the high-casting cost Black enchantment would only be played by the kind of people who use Force of Nature to deal direct damage, yet he did mention one creature worth considering, the oft-maligned Leveler. You think I’m kidding, don’t you? Well check inside for some Type Two combo insanity.
Building with Wicker #3: Elements of Wicker Man Decks
A recent example of how Wicker Man deck theory has seeped into tournament play is the presence of Disciple of the Vault in Clerics decks running very few artifacts. Here, Disciple of the Vault is made to negate one of Ravager Affinity’s win conditions. In the Clerics v. Ravager Affinity matchup, the Affinity player has to go to all the trouble of setting up a pseudo-combo kill only to discover that the Clerics player has been preparing for her own win condition and can take advantage of Affinity’s exertions. Over all, however, Clerics is not a Wicker Man deck, if only because Disciple of the Vault is a secondary (and exceedingly narrow) win condition.
Building with Wicker #2: Introduction to Wicker Man Deck Theory
Aggro, Combo, and Control decks all function best against either bad decks or good decks that, for whatever reason, do badly in a game. That all of the top decks can also win against decks that do well is beside the point; what matters is that all three major deck archetypes are geared toward punishing bad play. In response to this, we will examine how to construct decks that perform at their peak against other decks that perform at their peak. For simplicity’s sake, this will be termed Wicker Man deck theory.
Building with Wicker: Dusting off the Effigy
Some of you probably wonder just how I spend my time when I’m not trying to disparage Standard and Limited Green. The answer is simple: I try to desecrate Ravager Affinity. In this case,”try to desecrate” is not synonymous with”succeed in desecrating.” I’ve gotten so desperate that I’ve even turned to that feeble multiplayer Magic fall-back, Cowardice, thinking that if I can’t stop Affinity players from winning, I might as well make winning as annoying as possible for them. Sadly, I realize that my hopeless squabble with the best deck in the metagame is of no concern to you. I know there’s a combo here somewhere, but since I can’t find it, I’ll indulge in one of the safest genres of Magic strategy writing: The Deck Update.
I Don’t Want No Dissension, Just Dynamic Tension
Today Adam tackles the common color wisdom of Mirrodin Block Limited in an attempt to debunk some popular myths. If you aren’t reading Adam’s work, you are missing out on one of the best new writers on the site!
I’m Going Home: Playing Cowardice to Win (Every So Often)
The deck I’m going to talk about plays Lightning Rift. This deck also plays Fireball, Starstorm, and Slice and Dice. It also plays crazy cards like Choking Tethers and… Cowardice. And in the right metagame, it just might be good!
Wild and Untamed Thing: Why Not to Draft Green
I recently drafted a spectacular Green deck and smashed my opponent’s skulls in relatively short order. After the tournament was over, I got to asking myself, “How the golly did that happen?” This fleeting taste of success with Green gave me the impression that I had done something right. Unfortunately, this was, as I would later learn, wrong.