Monday, July 12th – The thing about tilt is it seldom just grabs you and throttles you. That’d be easy to prepare for. You could tell when it was coming and try to cut it off. Occasionally tilt will surprise you when your opponent does something entirely inane and it works out, but even then, players with enough experience should be able to shrug off a single blow.
Monday, July 5th – Jund scares the best of people away. They run into the other room, perhaps to grab their mothers or even wives to dump their problem on another pair of eyes. They grab a book and pound away, but what they don’t even realize is how ineffective their primitive tools are.
Monday, June 28th – If you’ve been to a competitive event before, no doubt you’ve heard people complain. You probably have even done it yourself. Especially in recent formats with swingy strategies and mechanics, there are some times you can legitimately complain. If you don’t have the right draw to combat theirs, you’re just going to lose and there’s nothing you could have done about it. Or is there?
Monday, June 21st – Magic is a game of adaptation. They juke left, so you need to move left. They set up a screen, and you need to slide by the pick. They bring Kor Firewalkers to their side of the table, and so you need to bring Doom Blades to yours. But what happens when things don’t go as planned?
Monday, June 14th – I have been to a lot of tournaments, and I’m used to the lifestyle. This is nothing like any other tournament. You are playing weird formats, against WoTC employees, in WoTC’s headquarters. You are working together every round, focusing not only on your game but your teammates’ as well. You are pooling as many resources as possible to be successful. Simply put, you are eating, living, and breathing Magic.
Thursday, June 10th – Today, there is a Standard PTQ! I thought about what I was going to play last night, and I was flopping between Jund, U/W, and Michael Pozsgay’s Naya Planeswalkers. Right now I’m leaning toward the latter…
Monday, June 7th – After three crazy days in DC, I am finally in San Juan. I am back on the Pro Tour again – and I hope this time I can stay on. I am only two hours in, and this already reminds me how awesome the Pro Tour is.
Monday, May 24th – Playtesting is overrated. How many Magic writers have penned down that phrase? None come to mind. But if you’ve ever spent time at a high level event, there’s a reason why you can see hundreds of pro levels worth of players running around to find a deck with less than 24 hours before a tournament – and how they can still do well at the event despite a last minute switch.
Monday, May 17th – It’s Friday morning. I crack open my eyes and rustle over to my couch to turn on my laptop. I’ve been playing Turbofog on Magic Online all week after realizing that Turbofog did everything Open the Vaults wanted to do, except it did it better and with better matchups…
Monday, May 10th – Looking for something new to play this weekend? What if I told you I had a deck that was a 90 percent favorite versus U/W Control and U/W/r Planeswalkers? What if I told you that deck was also favored against Jund? Would you play it?
Monday, May 3rd – Rise of the Eldrazi is an incredible Limited format. Wizards did a great job with this set. No color feels unplayable, most of the cards you will commonly play against are balanced, and the set gives you the tools to draft a good beatdown or control deck.
Monday, April 26th – This was my last chance. The numbers were clear: play Dark Depths and you are likely to qualify. Good players with Depths dominated the top 32 of Houston. People just didn’t respect the deck. Playing anything else was just irrational.
Monday, April 19th – Day 2 was set. After making the switch to a last minute deck choice on little testing and a frightening Day 1 where two early losses threatened to lock me out of the second day of competition, I had managed to spring my way into Day 2 by winning four matches in a row…
Monday, April 12th – Before Grand Prix: Oakland, Conley Woods showed me his Bant deck and I opted not to play it. Naturally, Conley made Top 8 and I didn’t make Day 2. But this wasn’t the first time that had happened either…
Monday, April 5th – This article doesn’t cover a new Extended deck. It doesn’t have any Jund mirror match strategies. It doesn’t contain a tournament report, or even cover some fundamental strategy for mastering Magic. Yet this might be one of the most important articles you’ll ever read.
