AuthorPaul Sottosanti

Three Team CMU members headed down to the prerelease this weekend to kick some butt and take some names… And the three of them all submitted fine reports and reviews to make a very special day at StarCityGames.com. Paul uses his prerelease experience to tell you what cards are better than he thought, why you don’t need to worry about the loss of life from Zombie Cutthroat, and a little-known step in combat that just might be more relevant now thanks to Wing Shards.

Green/Black is a deck that wants to put on steadily increasing pressure in the form of larger and larger creatures backed by removal and some amounts of evasion. Creatures with an efficient ratio of power-to-casting-cost are paramount to this strategy, as there is no better way to make your opponent fold under your pressure… And Crypt Sliver has no synergy with any of the cards in Green.

The potential for card advantage exists in all sorts of places when you’re playing Echo Tracer – either by returning an enchanted creature or saving a creature (even itself!) after damage is on the stack. The problem with this card advantage plan, at least in White/Blue, is that you don’t care about being up on cards. As long as you have evasion creatures beating down on your opponent, they could have a hundred cards in their hand, for all you care.

As a quick look at my credentials, I’m qualified for Venice and I’ll be qualified for Yokohama based on my Limited rating, so I should hopefully be seen on the Pro Tour for a long time… And I’m here to tell you that as important as tempo is – after all, how many games are ended by Dirge of Dread or Wave of Indifference? – the Lancer only gives you early-game tempo when he’s blocked.

I have a fondness for quirky decks that might or might not be good enough to achieve the almighty Tier One status. Although most of the time this just means that I am repeatedly losing in testing to more established decks like Quiet Roar, occasionally I come up with a possible metagame call. But, you ask, Pedantic Learning?

He puts the lotion in the basket… Wait, that’s not Paul. Paul comes in third at Grand Prix: New Jersey, that’s what he does, and he’ll tell you how he did it in this tourney report.

Team CMU’s latest member asks a very important question: Do the pros topdeck more…. Or do they know how to put themselves into a position where the next card IS a topdeck? If you want to know how to alter your strategies to win, read this article.

We had something like seven guys from CMU (including Turian) attending this PTQ. This was my first PTQ road trip, and for the most part I’d have to say I enjoyed it. The conversation in the car on the way there was a good chance for me to just toss out any random Limited strategy…

Before the Tournament Since this is my first tourney report, I figure I should give a little background on myself. If that’s not your cup of tea, feel free to skip ahead to your heart’s content. I first got into Magic many years ago when I was playing a play by mail game run by…