Eli Kaplan, occasional coverage reporter for magicthegathering.com, has lurked on Japan’s top 100 Limited rating lists for the last year. Sitting at the feature match table, he’s observed the Far East’s best at work. Today he relates past stories of Invasion limited and relates Japan’s old strategies to Ravnica’s new challenges.
A brief history of comparable Wizards asymmetrical card game releases and how Magic is once again breaking the established conventions. (Yes, he’s talking about Ravnica here.)
More than a few cunning plays and alterations are devised whenever a new set rears its head. Here the author submits for your approval and digestion a few noteworthy strategies and approaches to foil them. These are all relatively new gameplay situations granted to us from Ninth Edition or Saviors of Kamigawa that may crop up and ruin your Standard netdeck. Be wary of “bad players” randomly busting out “bad” cards to ruin your day.
Errant coverage writer and dethroned former “King of Gaijin” Eli Kaplan recalls his laptopless birthday weekend on the wacky vacation isle of Shikoku.
Intrepid reporter Eli Kaplan has slowly been making a name for himself by posting solid finishes at Japanese Grand Prix. This time, paired with a motley crue of teammates, he attempts to strike gold by once again proving that the Japanese players are not the only ones who can earn money at Japanese Grand Prix.
Eli kicks off the new Limited PTQ season with an examination of a sealed deck pool and the various builds that one can create from them. If you are looking for some extra practice before this weekend’s PTQs, you might want to check this out.
Once in a while it’s fun to play a rogue deck that wins. It’s also fun to take an old classic deck you’ve worked on in the past and dust it off, add a bit of new polish and shine, and see how it does. This is an article about an old favorite deck of mine called Turbo-Confinement that I’ve chosen to update for both online and real life Extended. If you are interested in something besides the usual Tog/Rock/Beatdown of the Extended metagame, have I got a treat for you!
Standard hasn’t received the same level of focus as Mirrodin Block Constructed. You can draw some conclusions from the coverage at Kuala Lumpur and Nagoya, but here’s some more detailed notes and thoughts gleaned from the floor. I make few suggestions as to how to play or build the decks here, instead just analyzing what I learned from last weekend.
Moving into a radically different metagame format by moving from the States back to Japan, I’ve done fairly well for myself with my Green/White Tooth and Nail variant. In this article, I’ll tell you the history and development of a pet deck that’s fairly competitive, and provide you with an updated decklist for Fifth Dawn. [For those who don’t know him, Eli helps provide coverage of Japanese Grand Prix and Nationals for Sideboard.com. He also attempts to teach English to Japanese students with varying degrees of success.]
First of all, these reactions are generally going to be aimed at Sealed play, since most of us are going to be playing Sealed at the Prerelease. I’ll occasionally muse about drafting – but on the whole, this is for Sealed. I reserve the right to blather more over the commons and uncommons, since you’re…
First off, this article will tell you absolutely near to nothing new or meaty about strategy, the metagame, or how to play any of the decks in this article. This is just a report to tell you a few things that happened and a few reasons why you should go play a Grand Prix in…
First off, I’d like to inform you that Tsuyoshi Fujita’s deck has improperly been monikered. Just as we don’t call a mocha latte a”Mawcha LAAT”, we shouldn’t call his deck”Rice Snack.” It should properly be monikered”Onigiri.” Onigiri are cheap, filling, and yummy. But anyway, enough about harping about Japanese food! Let’s get all patriotic and…
Looking for some good deck to play in November? If you’re a Blue addict, you may find yourself reaching for the and reflexively. Mono-blue’s Draw-Go dreams are dead, right? Maybe. But in the spirit of inquiry, we here at the Shack of Ideas humbly bring you: November Love Revolution Turbo-Chevy * (I’m a sucker for…
“Every Dog Has His Day”: A True Account of An Unintelligible Foreigner’s Seven-Year Quest And Its Culmination I hate weddings. I hate going to them, I hate sitting through the long speeches, I hate sitting in the suit. I no longer mind wearing a tie, but I still don’t like the noose. And I dislike…
Elation. The word is cheapened by overuse. Proper elation is not mere joy brought by a lucky topdeck; one needs drama, tension, and trepidation beforehand to bring the recipient to a downcast, muttering funk before an earnest prayer is fulfilled, bringing satisfaction and a sense of pure thankfulness for good grace. Elation is when you…
