Wednesday, June 4th – When I was asking various friends what I should play for the Star City $5K, Adrian Sullivan and Ben Bleiweiss both told me I should play Green/Black Elves. Green/Black Elves?! How boring!! That archetype has been out there kicking around since Lorwyn was released, and I’m always drawn to the shiny and new.
Tuesday, May 27th – The last time I went to battle at an Elder Dragon Highlander game, I got horribly color-screwed nearly the entire game and vowed to play Mono-Green the next time around in the hopes that mana troubles wouldn’t be nearly as bad. Green isn’t exactly known for its powerful multiplayer cards, so I wanted to use that notion as camouflage to lull people into not really regarding me as a threat.
Wednesday, May 21st – In the first age of Magic, Blue was dominant for two perceived reasons: its ability to counter spells, and its ability to draw cards. These elements were considered to be “in-flavor” for Blue, when in reality this was giving one color dominion over two fundamental, basic mechanics of the game – playing cards and drawing cards.
Wednesday, May 14th – I had a good time at this weekend’s Magic extravaganza, the Star City Mega-Magic Weekend. For those of you who did come out and were kind enough to come up and introduce yourselves and let me know you enjoyed my column, I really appreciate it. Nothing feels better than meeting you all face to face and hearing positive feedback. You all rock!
Wednesday, May 7th – In case you’ve been under a rock for the past few weeks, you may not know that Star City Games is holding a blow-out weekend chock full of Magic starting this Friday, right here in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia. I’ve lived in Richmond all my life, and I thought it might be helpful to provide some tips for getting around for those of you who are not familiar with River City.
Wednesday, April 30th – Last week I wrote about the Persistence mechanic, touching on some ideas and concepts that I hope inspired some of you to give the Persistence cards a try. In the deckbuilding forums I’ve seen a lot of folks adopting my Juniper Order Ranger idea into Persistence engines.
Wednesday, April 23rd – I hope you were able to attend the Shadowmoor prerelease this past weekend; here in Richmond, quite a crowd mustered out to get their first taste of the new cards, and first impressions seemed to be that Shadowmoor Limited is chock-full of fast beatdown, along with synergies and combos that are often hard to handle.
Wednesday, April 16th – Last week I talked about how I’m totally bored of current Standard, and I’m wanting to make decks for future Standard, the Standard of the upcoming $5K Mega-Magic Weekend tournament that Star City’s holding on May 10th right here in Richmond. To facilitate that, I began going over the cards officially spoiled as chronicled on the Shadowmoor minisite, and I appreciate all the great comments and feedback from you all in the forums.
Wednesday, April 9th – I can’t help it; now that we’ve started getting serious previews of the upcoming set Shadowmoor, I’m totally bored of current Standard. I want to make decks for future Standard, the Standard of the upcoming $5K Mega-Magic Weekend tournament that Star City’s holding in my backyard on May 10th… Warning: contains spoilers.
Wednesday, April 2nd – For the last EDH, I played a rather ridiculously tricky and powerful Experiment Kraj deck, so this time around I wanted to be more or less straightforward. Yes, I had some powerful cards, but I didn’t work in any infinite combo engines. The sickest thing I had going was Kiki-Jiki and either Reveillark or Karmic Guide…
Wednesday, March 26th – My life is full-tilt boogie busy, but I’ve been making an effort lately to play in more sanctioned tournaments, for all the usual reasons – it’s fun, it helps keep my play skills from atrophying further, and gives me at least semi-relevant stuff to write about. One side benefit I was looking forward to was an increase in the number of Magic Player Reward cards I’d get mailed to me…
Wednesday, March 19th – While restocking my trade binder the other day, I ran across a foil Jhoira of the Ghitu, a card that I’ve always found intriguing but had not yet fully tested out her potential. The foil Jhoira looks awesome – her eyes flash and it’s like she’s radiating power!
Wednesday, March 12th – Last week I detailed how I drove Adrian Sullivan’s beautiful Ferrari right into the ditch, and afterwards jumped into a draft, in which I did pretty well. I don’t talk about Limited much here because a) I don’t do it often, b) I’m not all that good at it, and c) I have a lot more fun building Constructed decks. Still, I do enjoy the occasional Limited games, so I wanted to let you all know how it went and elicit any advice from those of you out there who are much better at the format than I.
Wednesday, March 5th – When last we left our hero – me – he was torn between varieties of mid-range G/B/x decks to play at the Richmond PTQ last Saturday. There was the strong allure of his homebrew Doran deck featuring the quick-kill potential of Tireless Tribe. There were also more stock versions floating around that presumably had more testing behind them and were more reliably “correct†in their build. Should he instead play one of those decks?
Tuesday, February 26th – Today I was supposed to tell you all how I did at the big $5K Star City Standard Open down in Charlotte, North Carolina. With any luck, I would have kicked ass and been featured in the Magic Show making my way to the Top 8. At least, that was the plan…
