At the start of the Team Standard season the easy default decks were known, but the format has proceeded past its origin by a few miles, and the best decks from Honolulu have effectively been blown in the dust already. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and as information flows around and around, a strange variety of decks are proving themselves in a format that is destined to depart in but a month’s time…
In the past few weeks, I’ve talked about a plethora of decks. This is better than that, this put up such-and-such for numbers, this is what made the Top 4 of the Grand Prix… but we’re two weeks into the season, and as you know, two weeks in is plenty of time to find out that everything you knew was wrong.
In today’s edition of Magical Hack, Sean examines both Ravnica/Guildpact Sealed deck and the upcoming Team Standard format.
In this week’s edition of Magical Hack, Sean takes a look at Team Constructed. By concentrating on the all-important dual lands, he shares his thoughts and insights on the team dynamic and presents some exciting ideas on how to get the most from the format.
There’s a saying out there that two heads are better than one, but it’s hard to say for sure whether this is true when playing Magic as a team. With the Two-Headed Giant State Championships coming up this weekend, a lot of two-headed spellslingers are looking at this wacky format – only recently gifted with the joy of official sanction – while older and more experienced Two-Headed players are looking at the wacky rules that the DCI has enforced.
My usual gig is to do a lot of math and come up a few weeks later with an enormous statistical work about the Pro Tour, but it seems my schtick has been outsourced to some very clever computer programmers who can make a metal box filled with trained monkeys do all the Excel manipulations for me instead. Well, not to be completely outdone by this article, I’ve run a few numbers myself to attempt to figure out what the most successful deck was arbitrarily, rather than by sheer win percentage.
With the release of Guildpact on Magic Online, there will now be more drafting than ever before, all available with just a click of the mouse any hour of the day (or night). So check your catheters and secure your IV drip, and put a fresh pot of coffee in the drip bag… because it’s time to lose ourselves in Ravnica, the City of Drafting.
Each day this week, your Premium writers will be commenting on the upcoming Pro Tour event, with analyses of what decks to see, how the format will shape up, and updated revisions of existing powerhouses. Today, Sean examines the popular Rats (and Viridian Rats) decks that took the Canadian Nationals by storm. Are they contenders now Guildpact is upon us?
Having discussed the Sealed Deck environment quite thoroughly, I’ve been wanting to limit my scope to Draft, to see how specifically it has changed with the addition of Guildpact. Sealed Deck is all well and good, but it’s not a format where you control your destiny; as a skill-testing format it’s certainly excellent with the current set of cards, but nothing tests your skills in quite the same way as sitting down and choosing just one card forty-five times.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few weeks, welcome to what is quite possibly the hardest Limited format we’ve ever encountered. Sean guides us through some of the more powerful cards in the environment, looking for the strongest contenders in the common slot. Plus, a little fun with the Pro Player cards…
With Guildpact on sale, it’s time to start cracking on the formats that are soon going to matter; I’ve already started taking a look at the impact Guildpact will have on the Sealed Deck Pro Tour Qualifier season. Soon after that we have Team Unified Standard. The decks that do well at Pro Tour Hawaii will greatly impact the decks that appear on most teams’ deck roster, and the point here is to get a solid start on Guildpact for Standard to get a feel for what it is we’re going to see in Honolulu.
We have officially passed through the first week of Ravnica/Guildpact Sealed Deck and Draft for the Pro Tour Qualifier format, and the Grand Prix in Richmond has a lot of useful information to mine. Sean leaps in like Jack Bauer, brandishing a gun and yelling “there’s no time!”
Sean delves deep into the new Limited world of Ravnica and Guilpact combined. Touching on the strengths of colors, and their synergies both in and out of Guild guidelines, this is invaluable to those hardy players heading for Grand Prix: Richmond.
For his first foray on SCG Free, Sean dives deep into a typical Ravnica/Guildpact Sealed Deck. Timed perfectly for the upcoming Pro Tour Qualifier season, and packed with general tips on Limited and guild-specific ideas, Sean’s thorough approach to deckbuilding demonstrates the wisdom of leaving no stone unturned.
Sean explores the pros and cons of drafting outside the current Guild archetypes, focusing on Blue/Red and Green/Red. With insight on the impact of Guildpact, this is essential reading for those wanting a head-start in the current Pro Tour Qualifier season.
