1800 Or Bust, nothing – Jim’s on a quest to bash the Bath Invitational this time, and his mission is to break the Peasant Magic metagame wide open. Can you help him in his quest as he goes after it with the same zeal that he hits Standard with?
As it was Thursday, and I had only two days to go, I started looking around the net for ideas. Two stood out: Sean McKeown’s B/R Control deck and Jens Thoren’s Wake deck. I played them both against each other a bit and then gave them the acid test – Deep Dog.
To dream the impossible dream…. Jim takes Sheng Hsun Hsai’s Taipei-winning Hunting Grounds deck and attempts to transform it into a new Standard Control deck. But we gotta be honest, Jim… Without the Snake, you’re battling uphill….
At some point, you’ve probably been at a Magic tournament staring at a list of standings: Maybe you’ve won all your games, but for some reason you’re not number one. You ask around and a helpful soul takes a look:”Your tiebreakers are awful!” You’re left staring at rows and rows of decimals; somehow they determine your position… But how?
Every time a new set shows up, we get a slew of”the new Standard” articles, telling us how a whole host of new decks based around unlikely card combos will be wrecking Standard in a months time. If a deck has been eating up tournaments for a year, and it’s left intact by a rotation, why should it stop winning? Jim looks at the current top decks to see who comes out unscathed.
After what seems like months and months of playing OBC, I finally escaped but with only a week before the Bath Monthly Standard tourney – and not a moment too soon, as Jim learns some valuable lessons about Shvartsman Study!
What we did was to lay out each deck that each of us were going to play, along with the sideboard, and work out the best way to sideboard for each matchup we expected. Two of our guys went 6-2, and we’re sharing that collective sideboarding wisdom for U/G Threshold with you.
After round six rounds of OBC on Day three of Worlds, nine players had achieved the amazing feat of a 6-0 record.. Which means that a lot of people will be trying to copy those decks. Let’s look at a few things you should look at before you pick up an”undefeated net deck,” including their opponent’s win/loss record and their matches.
Okay, you got us: Technically, this is a tourney report. But realistically, Jim does such a fine job deconstructing why his UZI ‘Tog deck fails in OBC that we felt we just had to put it here. What separates the winning ‘Tog decks from the losing builds?
All right, so Jim didn’t do that well at the tourey itself… But he brought back a detailed chart of what did well, what percentages of decks did well, and what the winning decks had in them! Want to know what cards fuel the latest decks? Check it out.
Team PhatBeats has been doing some playtesting – and in addition to the usual tweaks of U/G Madness and mono-black, they share some of the less-popular decks that have been faring well in their testing…
Michael says that he won’t let Wizards R&D off easily. What for? Producing one of the most popular sets in the history of Magic? Hell – I don’t think I’m going to forgive them for that either.
Jim’s back after his annual post-Nationals break from Magic – and he’s got a new Type 2 deck he’s running through the local tourney! How did he do and what did he play?
It turns out that Gary Wise, the master of Limited had had a horrible day yesterday and was on ten points, just like me. Well, I have a chance to do my reputation some good here and whup him…. But did I?
Of the many Tog decks that were played at Osaka, there seemed to be three distinct variants – but can we recreate Zevatog in a block environment?
