In any 250-card deck, the first issue is getting the mana. In real life 5-Color, dual lands and fetch lands make that easy. Online, the dual lands don’t exist and the fetchlands are out of my price range for now. I don’t own the Cities of Brass, Tendo Ice Bridges, and so forth to help. I will have to make do with commons. That means that I am going to have to play extra forests and play a lot of green mana fixers.
I’m continuing my exploration of the more unusual Magic Online formats. Last time I talked about the highly addictive Singleton format. This week I want to look at a specialized Singleton format — Rainbow Stairwell.
I love deck building, and I love playing Constructed duels. I find it much more rewarding than leagues and drafts, so I am trying out the various MTGO constructed formats. That said, I still have very few Constructed-worthy cards, and my online Type Two and Extended decks cannot compete with Vedalken Shackles in Standard, or Vial Affinity in Extended. However, I can build decks that are competitive in other formats, especially singleton.
Pete checks in with an update about what he’s learned since his initial forays online, includes some basic trading tips for Magic Online newbies, and gives his evaluation of the usefulness of MTGO Leagues.
At this point, U.S. Regionals is about two months away. It is not too early to start looking at the format, or to start playtesting. We do know something about the format, because the French Regionals are ongoing – but there is a lot more that we do not know. Regardless, it’s time to start exploring archetypes that will likely see play in June and figure out what’s winning.
None of the cards in Portal are format-shattering; the problem is that the quantity of tutors is reaching critical mass. I define “critical mass” as having enough tutors that you can rely on having the tutors necessary to find important cards often enough to build a deck that relies on tutoring for a given card by turn 2 or 3. And what does that mean for the format?
I’m documenting my sojourn into the world of MTGO. To recap the last four days: I couldn’t play online, then I could. I was home with the flu when I started. I played in the sandbox, in leagues and in drafts. I tried some Constructed. I recovered from the flu and went back to work. Now I have a day off, and I want to try an online premier event.
This one is about dogs, Magic, Cephalid Broker decks, and Pete’s first Constructed matches. Oh, and waiting… LOTS of waiting.
My next step was to join an 8th Edition league. I had the packs and the tickets, and I mentally catalogued the cards I wanted to open. Wrath of God. Birds of Paradise (although I know the BB Birds will be appearing in drafts next fall, so that’s okay.) City of Brass. Phyrexian Plaguelord, because I loved them back in the day. Worship. Verduran Enchantress. And some of the basics, like Ravenous Rats, Rampant Growth and Wood Elves. I find the league, agree to squander my product, scritch the dogs and give them a cookie for luck, and open my packs. Rares, rares, what nifty rares do I have?
Yesterday’s installment was almost content-free. It gets better. To sum up, after years of being unable to connect, I finally got to play Magic Online. I have a budget of $100 per month, plus a little more in special circumstances. I had my account and was ready to go. Time to spend.
I have played Magic a long time. I’ve won a (small) collection of Top 8 pins from PTQs, and a lot of cards. I’ve judged at Worlds and PTs, and have been paid in cards. I’ve written over a hundred articles on Magic, and have been paid in cards. I have a really, really big collection. And I’ve been playing for a long time. I had never played online. This week I will take you through the highs and lows of my first Magic Online experience.
Since I’m never content to play someone else’s deck, I spent a lot of time trying to break Extended. Since I’m not divinely inspired and am sorely lacking in “copious free time,” I didn’t. I will present three combo decks that each fail, each for different reasons. Golden Retriever is not better than the alternatives. Snap-Witness works, but not in this metagame. Finally, Food Chain Myojin is… well it’s just plain cool.
It’s Extended season. An amazing number of decks are making PTQ T8s. Early results showed Twenty-two different archetypes have multiple T8 appearances. It’s a diverse field, and a diverse field rewards playing powerful decks that aren’t well known. Enchantress – the combo version – fits that definition. It won a PTQ last weekend and made T4 the week before, and Betrayers just became legal, meaning there may be some new tools available to help you abuse an already abusive combo deck.
What would you put in the ultimate anti-metagame deck? Akroma and Worship against RDW, plus Cabal Therapy, Duress and Cranial Extraction against combo and Scepter-Chant, a fast Planar Void against Reanimator, and Pernicious Deed against weenie and Affinity. Infinite Eternal Witness recursion would be nice, and a turn 3 kill would round it out. So, is there such a deck? Yes, actually, there is.
How did the last Extended season set up what you will see this weekend at Grand Prix: Boston and your local PTQs? Peter Jahn knows, and he has the monster stack of decklists plus a tally of early-season results to prove it!
