When writing my last article, I touched upon Drop of Honey in a Legacy sideboard. After playing with it for a while, I’ve come to appreciate how much awesome sauce can be packed in to one card. Therefore I decided to see what can be done with this card and built three Legacy decks designed to exploit the Arabian Nights rare.
Encouragement about the format, Oscar Tan the Revolutionary, the differences between Vintage and Legacy, a Legacy metagame overview, and even a spec decklist to try and push the envelope of creativity. The latest njx piece has a little something for everybody.
Previously, I explored some of the potential avenues of development for the up and coming Legacy Grand Prix. This time, I’m going to take a look at a more entrenched deck: R/G Beats. This deck won’t be nearly as prevalent as Goblins was this weekend at the Legacy World Championships, but it has some pretty solid game against the field and is something you need to be aware of if you want to succeed in the format.
First turn, I played a Goblin Lackey. Second turn, Lackey came across to dump Kiki-Jiki on the table, and EOT of Brandon’s turn, I copied it. I untapped and sent in the Lackey and his clone, using one free Lackey trigger to dump a Goblin Matron on the table. The Matron digs up Mogg Fanatic from my deck and I play it for free using the clone’s trigger. I then played Intruder Alarm, cloned the Fanatic a million times, and sacrificed all of them aimed at Brandon’s dome. Ah, the sweet taste of surprise.
Today StarCityGames.com brings yet another new and deserving Featured Writer to the starving, huddled masses looking for tech and a good story. Nathan Xaxson straddles the line between hard-core gamer and theorist and guy who likes to sling spells while hanging with friends at the kitchen table. We think his articles will be appreciated by pretty much everyone and encourage you to try him on for size.
Steven Menendian was correct when he argued that some may incorrectly believe Legacy to be “Extended with dual lands and Force of Will.” That’s simply not true. True, it’s not uncommon for Extended decks to make viable ports to Legacy, but that means nothing. Legacy truly is very different than Extended, and there’s almost limitless potential in a largely unexplored format… so let’s start tossing around some ideas.
Recently, Mike Flores used the term “velocity” to describe a certain type of deck behavior. In that article, however, he merely noted it as a conceptual notion, without offering any theoretical context or application. He attempted to demonstrate its presence, but in this author’s opinion and others, he did not accurately describe his observation in terms that have useful application. While what he describes is not deniable, his descriptions are ex post facto observations, and not a theory to be applied in a logistical matter to deck construction or play skill. This article will attempt to define velocity in terms that are more in line with other concrete Magic theories, and identify its application.
Over the past few years, I’ve become increasingly frustrated by the cost of Magic boosters. I remember when the MSRP was only $2.69 – a very long time ago, to be sure, but now it’s climbed by an entire dollar. That’s a lot of money for a single booster, don’t you think? Thankfully, SCG thinks so, too. If it wasn’t for SCG, I don’t think I would still buy packs anymore. I’ve recently begun to see how the rise in the price of Magic has affected my local gaming community – and I’ve heard some cries on the forums lamenting similar stories about how their gaming stores are closing down, relocating, or are not planning on renewing their Magic inventory. I found this somewhat disheartening – so I talked with a few people that I knew and wanted to find out why this was happening.
So the last time I wrote an article about porting a Vintage deck to Standard, I got quite a lot of positive feedback. With all of that, it inspired me to write this article on another potentially viable port: Stax. Don’t think it can work? You’ll be surprised at the lengths I go to in order to determine whether or not that’s true.
About once a month we get a submission so good that I (the editor) just have to rave about how good it is on the front page. This is one of those articles, and it’s guaranteed to make you a smarter Magic player.
No one doubts the impact that Rich Shay’s Control Slaver has had on the Type One metagame. The idea was simple: an opponent can’t defeat you if he or she can’t actually play. So the question is simple: if it works so well in Vintage, can we do it in the new post-banning Standard?
After a recent bit of forum criticism, the editors of this site challenged Nathan to write again, since his previous works had all been quite solid. Nathan proved more than up for the challenge this week, writing about a stone-cold rogue deck for the end of the Extended season and including an impressive amount of goofy humor to boot. If you like Magic, you will probably like this article.
A few months ago, I wrote an article on Mirrodin Standard Suicide Black. Many of you mocked me. Now I’m back to kick your head in with BraidsGroom.
Suicide Black has a basic premise: Play undercosted spells with drawbacks and disrupt your opponent, while you crush them with a stack of cardboard. The style of play is shoot first, ask questions later. It doesn’t matter that you are killing yourself in the process — because out of all twenty points of life that you and your opponent have, only the last one counts.
I have made Top 8 twice with this deck in fairly large unsanctioned tournies (eighty people). The first time, I thought I was just lucky. The second time, I figured that maybe this deck has something going for it.
