It is said that all good things must come to an end. Fortunately, rather than following up on Craig Jones skipping off to finish his doctorate, Matt Cavotta’s conclusion to “Taste The Magic,” or Aaron Forsythe’s conclusion to his run on “Recent Developments,” the only thing ending here on Magical Hack is… my vacation.
Last year, I had a few choice words to say on the subject of the Hall of Fame voting… and rather than go on again about how Mike Long most emphatically does not, double-underscore exclamation-point, belong in the Hall of Fame, I would raise the one guideline that matters when it comes to voting for the Hall of Fame:
“…The Hall does not bestow the luminous shine of greatness to the Players, it is the Players who grant esteem to the Hall.”
Time Spiral Block began this season with a small number of known “good” decks. White Weenie was the presumed eight-hundred-pound gorilla, which U/B Teachings the 799-pound-gorilla stealthily hid behind and kept force-feeding Twinkies so the Internet wouldn’t see past the Great White Hype. Mono-Red was surprisingly playable, and Red/Green worked pretty well too.
Tenth Edition brings with it many interesting things, and one of the more noticeable things it brings is two years of “X Marks The…” jokes that are inevitably going to pop up in gaming articles until we finally see Eleventh Edition. Now that we’ve officially seen all of the cards and can work with an official card-list, I’ve decided it’s prudent to take but a single week away from the Block Constructed meddling in order to try and figure out what the summer Standard environment is going to look like.
For a short while, Life from the Loam and Seismic Assault are going to be legal in Standard together, and with access to the newly-printed Horizon Canopy you might not even notice that the deck is a lot less powerful than in Extended without cycling lands. If everyone’s less powerful than an Extended deck, after all, you can make do with your still-good analogue to the ridiculously potent Loam engine.
Last week, we saw a look at Red through the lens of using Tarmogoyf to improve the aggressive potential of this archetype, in preparation for taking the deck to a PTQ. Having attended the PTQ and dropped out at 2-2, , it was more or less confirmed that being dumb will get you killed. Rather than moan on teh Intarnets about how much more favorable Wild Pair is when your opponent doesn’t win six consecutive coin-flips, we’re going to look at the deck for the PTQ that almost was…
Summer is here, and I for one shall be focusing almost entirely upon Block Constructed from now until infinity. Other than brief nods to formats of interest, such as this weekend’s Pro Tour, we’ll be playing Block until August. My intention was to hit a PTQ this weekend with a carload of fellow predators, but it seems StarCityGames.com in Roanoke is still quite far from New York City.
Sean follows on from his excellent web article last week with a practical theory that attempts to break down the Time Spiral Block metagame. Wiffle balls, mattresses, and footprints in the sand… Sean also brings us three solid-looking decks that incorporate the format’s favorite two-drop — Tarmogoyf, the Little Lhurgoyf That Could.
Picking the right deck for a tournament is essentially a matter of tactics, and as such can be analyzed carefully to determine what the most effective tactic might be, based upon a set of criteria. Let us leave any impenetrable analogies behind us, and pick up an easily-understood analogy that is quite fitting: military warfare.
Regionals is always an interesting challenge, as the role of the savvy player or designer is to accurately estimate the upcoming metagame and position themselves either to dodge the brunt of the incoming attack or to pick at the weak flank that is left revealed with a surprise assault. This is the distilled essence of everything fellow Friday writer Mike Flores believes in, when it comes to picking a deck for a tournament, saving you several thousand words to bring the essential lesson: know your enemy, so that you may better defeat them.
Apparently, last week’s Magical Hack, Dredging Up The Past, was quite a popular read… apparently Bridge / Dredge strategies had somehow evaded the public eye. With a little bit of Standard play under our belt, I presented a deck apparently most people hadn’t seen. With a full weekend of sanctioned Standard play under our belts, we’ve got quite a bit more to look at… both StarCityGames.com $1000 Standard tournament, and the German Regional Qualifiers.
On the 20th, I played in a Future Sight-legal Standard tournament… which was won by a U/B speed Dredge deck, previously unseen on the online tournament circuit but apparently popular on bulletin boards everywhere. It used Blue dredge enablers like Magus of the Bazaar and mana acceleration effects to play them turn 1. It’s currently known as “Under The Bridge,” and it’s the deck of choice today.
Sean McKeown, now officially terrified of Flash and opting out of Grand Prix: Columbus, turns his mercurial eye to the results from Grand Prix: Stockholm. He breaks down the successful 9-0 Sealed Deck builds, and investigates the make-up of the Top 8 draft decks in order to get to grips with the format. Limited play is an ever-mutating beast… do Sean’s statistics hold the key to the Top Tables?
Sean has been steadily preparing for Grand Prix: Columbus for six months… only to see his plans dashed upon the hideous altar of Hulk Flash. Still, all is not lost, and today’s Magical Hack looks to update his deck of choice in the face of the possible turn zero kill. Is there anything that can be done to slow the ascent of the diabolical green menace? Sean certainly hopes so… read on to find out if he is right!
I promised last week that I’d look into Future Sight additions for Standard and its impact on Block Constructed play, so we’ll be starting with an analysis of where Future Sight fits in with the existing Standard format and what promising new cards might spawn as-yet-unseen archetypes on their strength alone. Future Sight has a lot of cards that fit into a particular theme or niche, and a lot of different niches to fill, so we’ll look at each of those niches in turn and expand upon where you can go with that to build upon the new cards’ strengths.
