The Long & Winding Road – Vintage Double-Shot
Monday, October 12th – Matt Elias brings us 5,000 words of tournament Vintage action! He takes two decks to two separate tournaments, with mixed results…
The Long & Winding Road – Zendikar: Vintage Predictions
Monday, October 5th – I’ve purposefully avoided writing about Zendikar, because if you’re like me, you can only take so many preview articles before you tune out completely. Despite my intent to avoid writing such an article, I have had a large number of requests to discuss the set in reference to Vintage (and specifically any changes to Ichorid and Oath), so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
The Long & Winding Road – The Best Deck
Monday, September 28th – The question I’m asked most often in relation to tournament Magic is simply, “What is the best deck?†This is commonly phrased as, “What is the best deck in [some specific format]?†For me personally, this question is usually in reference to Vintage and Legacy…
The Long & Winding Road – The Undead Survival Guide
Monday, September 21st – Just as zombies have a simple objective (eat the living), Dredge decks are mechanical and rote as far as how they play, and their objective is also simple: discard cards that have the Dredge mechanic into the Graveyard, and then draw cards to rapidly move as much of the Library to the Graveyard as possible.
The Long & Winding Road – Vintage: Old Favorites, New Tech
Monday, September 14th – As promised, this week is entirely about Vintage. I’ll look at the Oath of Druids deck I played on 8/29 and 9/5 with a full tournament report from the N.Y.S.E. II, and present an alternate version of Oath that takes the deck in a slightly different, and promising, direction.
The Long & Winding Road – Tournaments, Dealers, and Karrthus
Monday, September 7th – This week, I’m going to expand upon some comments I made last week regarding the health of tournament Magic, and look at the dealer / player dynamic. I’ll also discuss some updates on Oath and Ichorid in Vintage, leading into a full Vintage article next week.
The Long & Winding Road – M10 Success and Vintage Revival
Monday, August 31st – This is a really exciting time to be playing Magic. M10 has been a huge success, the Standard format is relatively healthy (despite some degree of dominance by Vivid Land / Reflecting Pool decks), interest in Legacy and demand for Legacy events is higher than it has ever been, and the Vintage metagame is going through a state of flux.
The Long & Winding Road – Eastbound and Down
Monday, August 24th – Of all the tournaments at GenCon, I was most excited for Vintage Champs. It had the most players that I knew, either in person or online, and it was also the format that I had practiced the most…
The Long & Winding Road – Great Expectations
Monday, August 17th – One of the things I’ve learned about myself is that I have extreme difficulty managing my expectations. I know that I am not alone in this respect. For whatever reason, during certain tournaments I feel a considerable amount of pressure to succeed, and come in with an expectation of success (whether or not it is warranted).
The Long & Winding Road – Your Format Sucks
Monday, August 10th – One of Josh Silverstri’s last articles on SCG was about how your Standard deck sucks, entitled – wait for it – Your Deck Sucks. Josh went through and dismantled every deck in Standard at the time. Today, I thought we’d go a step further, because it isn’t so much that your deck sucks, but rather that your format sucks.
The Long & Winding Road – N.Y.S.E 5C Stax: Preface
Wednesday, August 5th – For my 25th article, I wanted to do something a little bit different, and although this article focuses on Vintage (and 5C Stax in particular), there is a lot here that is applicable to all Magic players for any format. I believe you’ll enjoy this piece regardless of your interest in Vintage.
The Long & Winding Road – M10: Boston Market
Monday, July 27th – I’ll be honest: I’m not normally a fan of articles that present a sealed pool and ask you to consider what you’d build. Often, the general decisions are pretty obvious, and some of the finer points come down to personal preference. Having said that, I’m presenting that exact type of article this week.
The Long & Winding Road – Oath versus Tezzeret: Vintage Testing
Monday, July 20th – Last week, I provided some tournament-winning Vintage lists to assist in making a testing gauntlet. This weekend, the ICBM Open was held in Chicago, which will undoubtedly give us some updated lists to add to such a gauntlet. While we wait to see what information we can glean from the results of this tournament, I thought it would be interesting to show some detailed testing between Double Dragon Oath and a potential Tezzeret update.
The Long & Winding Road – The Vintage Gauntlet and M10 Sealed
Monday, July 13th – Over the next 6 weeks, there are some exciting Vintage events occurring in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and of course Champs at GenCon. In an effort to collect some of the newer tech floating around the web, I’ve compiled a few deck lists for your perusal.
The Long & Winding Road – Vintage Elves!
Thursday, July 9th – On The Mana Drain forums last December, Rich Shay wrote the following, which is one of my favorite statements of all-time from a tournament report: “I have a first turn Llanowar Elf. He casts Ancestral