I’m in awe of people who do “The Year in Review” columns. It takes skill… I don’t even dare contemplate doing a review of what happened in 2007. Instead, I decided to review – preview – what I’m looking forward to in the coming year. Most of this will be Magic-related, but I might sprinkle in some other stuff too. What are you looking forward to in 2008
“[Expletive]! I got another crappy Hideaway land!”
How many times have you either heard or uttered this phrase whenever a pack was opened in the time leading up to Worlds? I’m
willing to bet it was at least a fair amount; those Hideaway lands seemed to be the very opposite of hidden when you were
desperately hoping to crack open a big money Garruk Wildspeaker or Thoughtseize.
Today, I’ll be talking about the Elder Dragon Highlander game held up at Richmond Comix this past Sunday. I talked about my Experiment Kraj deck last week and detailed some of the things I was trying to accomplish with my general. I made some changes to the deck since then, this is the deck I actually took to the fight…
This column will be comprised of two parts. First, I’ll be recounting my FNM run with my latest Galepowder Mage deck, sharing some thoughts on where to go from here; and second, I’ll going over my new Elder Dragon Highlander deck for the big EDH game up at Richmond Comix this Sunday.
The past two weeks I touched on “issues” and dipped into the mailbag… this week I thought I’d get back to what I find the most fun – tinkering with Magic decks! I’m going to be going to a Friday Night Magic this week up at Richmond Comix, and one thing I want to do for the tournament is further explore what I consider a sleeper power card from Lorwyn – Galepowder Mage!
It occurs to me that I don’t share the emails I get from people as much as I should, so as a tip of the hat to those of you who care enough to send your thoughts back, I wanted to include a few of them here this week, and try harder to at least share one email a week from here on.
Last week I was reading various articles on Lorwyn Limited in order to bone up for my first foray into LOR draft at FNM, so of course I checked out Nick Eisel’s Limited Lessons columns on this here site here. In his first article on Lorwyn (Approaching Lorwyn) there was a paragraph he wrote that really got under my skin…
Leading up to States, I heard a lot of grumbling about how underpowered Lorwyn was compared to Time Spiral and Ravnica. I think the results from States and Grand Prix: Krakow put that notion to rest. I’m of the opinion that Lorwyn was pretty masterfully designed – many of the cards don’t set off alarm bells when you’re just looking at the text box and stats, but when you shuffle them up in a deck and start playing with them, many of them give you that “oh, wow!†feeling.
I had a sense of pride and accomplishment walking into Virginia State Champs this past Saturday with a deck in which I had total confidence. I rarely have that feeling anymore because playtest time is so hard to come by, but this time around I had a great idea, some great playtest partners, and the time to tighten it up. If you regularly check in with You Lika The Juice you know I was working on a Saffi/Blink deck with Galepowder Mage technology…
I didn’t get a chance to playtest as much this past Friday as I’d like to; I got my wires crossed with Jay and he ended up committing to doing some Lorwyn Sealed at the local Friday Night Magic. Still, I went down there and grabbed some games in with him as I could, and think I’ve finally found the deck I want to run…
I have a funky deck idea I threw together as a lark that actually crushes the Kithkin deck fairly well as I cast about for something to stop the White Weenie menace. It’s a weird mutant blend of Haakon/Nameless Inversion recursion with Slivers, tied together by an innocent looking Bear named Woodland Changeling…
Over on the premium side of StarCityGames.com, I imagine those guys are busy testing, tuning, and working through the strategic nuances of new, post-Lorwyn Standard decks for the upcoming States/Champs tournaments that will be here before we know it. Over here on the free side, we’re all in the strategic vat together, stirring a big ol’ pot of Standard spaghetti, throwing noodles at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Regular readers know I go nuts over every new set; I literally love each new Magic set, and for at least a little while, my favorite set of all time is the most recent Magic release. The reason why I’ve been a passionate fan of Magic year after year since I cracked open my first starter deck back in 1994 is the joy of discovering new cards, and brainstorming new card combinations and deckbuilding possibilities.
Last week I mentioned strategic giants of the game Flores, Feldman, and Sullivan clashing over proper deckbuilding and how correct Flores’ 4/1 theory was. Recently Magical Hack Sean McKeown weighed in with his thoughts too. I wonder what these fine gentlemen would think about this new deck sweeping the country recently? Perhaps you’ve seen it…
Magic has remained fresh and fun for me because the number one appeal of the game is the constant infusion of new cards. This time of year is the very best because there is a large crop of cards leaving the Standard format. I tend to go on a deckbuilding frenzy, whipping out new decklists by the hour. It occurred to me that the method I go about sketching out initial decklists allows me to get a pretty good idea whether an idea has “juice” enough to warrant further exploration. So for those of you interested in the method, here’s how I do it…
