Thursday, September 3rd – The PTQ in Vancouver this weekend was my last chance. It was go big, or go home. I wanted that victory, that qualification for Austin, more than anything. I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to win that slot. I not only decided to do something, I “docided†to do it: I put action in to match my words.
Thursday, August 27th – If you lose a game of Magic, you made a mistake somewhere. It can be in play, in mulligan decisions, or in deckbuilding. While a lot of people focus on the first two, deckbuilding errors, even minor ones, pile up over time and lead to a lot more game losses than people may realize. By building your deck better, you can give yourself the tools to play better.
Wednesday, August 19th – Have you ever had a day where you felt an unnatural surge of enlightenment? The kind of day where you rise in the morning knowing the decisions you make are going to significantly alter the rest of your life, and fall in the night knowing that your future has been set in motion. I have those days whenever an important decision is to be made. And because of them, I had the fire…
Thursday, August 13th – One deck which shouldn’t need any introduction is Faeries. The deck has controlled Standard with its winged legion since Bitterblossom was manifested into existence, and throughout its reign cards have slowly been released to counteract its dominance. With the recent addition of Great Sable Stag to the ranks of anti-Faeries cards, the empire of Faeries looked to finally be crumbling.
Thursday, August 6th – When we last left our hero, Tenth Edition was about to rotate out and U/W Reveillark was about to lose two important tools: Mind Stone and Wrath of God. What I immediately realized after playing around with new builds of Reveillark is that there were two viable paths the deck could deviate into…
Wednesday, July 29th – For weeks leading up to Nationals, the deck I had been advocating was Merfolk. It had great matchups against most of the popular decks, and stayed extremely under the radar. I had given the deck to a handful of friends to play, but the rise of elves scared a lot of people off. However, with the format as it is after U.S. Nationals, I feel like Merfolk is still the deck to play right now.
Thursday, July 23rd – There are two universal truths about combo decks: people love playing combo decks, and people absolutely hate losing to combo decks. There are few things more wretched than being removed from the realm of interactivity while you sit and watch the opponent go off. With so little time to react from last weekend people are going to overcorrect rather than undercorrect, especially at the level of Nationals grinders.
Thursday, July 16th – Over ten years ago, Mike Flores mounted the flag on the world of Magic theory when he wrote “Who’s the Beatdown†and made the claim that “misassumption of role = game loss.†As Magic has evolved over time more conceptual variation on these concepts have arisen, but the core idea remains the same.
Thursday, July 9th – The mantra of “perfect practice makes perfect†is one of the most important lessons I have ever been taught, and I have applied it to everything I try and do throughout my life. It’s simple, really: the output often ends up matching the quality of input; or, in other words, what you put into a task is proportional to the result you achieve.
Thursday, July 2nd – Everyone seems to know me as the Faeries guy, and, in all fairness, for good reason. Spellstutter Sprite has carried me to two Pro Tours and won me countless matches online. However, what’s far lesser known than my alignment with the winged menace is my affiliation with the Reveillark collective.
Thursday, June 25th – Every time you have a chance to make a decision, you have a chance to alter the fate of the game. Like I talked about last week in Decision-Point Theory, at every juncture you have the opportunity between different forks in the road, being able to make a decision and look ahead to see where each one can take you is to your benefit as a player.
Thursday, June 18th – Life is a sequence of decisions. Each decision we make will influence our life and lead to a string of new decisions, which in turn leads to more decisions, and so on. You made a decision to click on this very article and are letting these very words run loose in your mind. You make decisions all of the time without even thinking about it.
Thursday, June 11th – When we last left our hero, Grand Prix: Seattle had just ended and the quest for a tuned block decklist was in its final legs. To complicate matters, it was the week before finals, and the GP the week prior had left several University final projects uncompleted, meaning they still had to be done before venturing to Hawaii…
Thursday, June 4th – Our story begins the week after Grand Prix: Barcelona. As I thought would likely happen, the tournament signaled the beginning of a slope down for token-based decks and the uprising of Cascade Swans. With this in mind, I had planned to play Faeries at the Grand Prix…
Thursday, May 28th – Last week, I covered my initial foray with TurboFog leading up to Regionals. After extensively playing the deck since then, analyzing the effect of Grand Prix: Barcelona, and repeatedly reading and hearing misconception after misconception about the deck, I feel like the deck deserves a more in depth review.
