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AuthorTalen Lee

Talen Lee is a dedicated casual player who is often at a loss for nice things to say about himself. Owning a long-standing interest in the theory of the game since his inception, he nonetheless is quite happy to say 'Rar' when he turns his creatures sideways. Talen hasn't yet been arrested for stabbing forum-dwellers in the neck with a fork.

SCG Daily – Casual Dissension Review Part 2

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were tangling with the Blue-and-White of the Azorius guild, with a handful of Simic refugees sneaking in. I figured I’d spare you all a wrathful analysis of the reaction to the Azorius Guild. I will summarize for those who are really interested:

“You could give people a chocolate-coated Pernicious Deed which dispensed free-thinking and exceptionally available Swedish Lingerie models, and they would still complain about the activation cost.”

SCG Daily – Casual Dissension Review Part 1

Ah, set reviews! The article you write when you’re not writing an article! The structure is already laid out before you, and all you need to do is find a hundred and seventy-five ways of saying “Could be good in limited.” Better still, most set reviews are nauseatingly long (and, when you’re not Rizzo, most dailies are by definition short), which means that splitting it into five pieces is a saucy little way to rip through the set without getting everyone thoroughly fed up on the matter.

Ma1ntaining a Direct10n — 0nly 17.95!!!

Today’s article title stems from one of the more creative pieces of spam I’ve found in my inbox. It seems that this particular e-mail stemmed from a company who specialised in telling people who may or may not have the appropriate need exactly how much money they could save investing in pills and a crème that, combined, would lead to the spontaneous coalescence of a lardge pebnis.

Food For Thought: Witchety GWUB

Today, Talen brings us a fun deck with explosive potential… based aound a four-color creature from Guildpact. Can a Nephilim deck really do well in the evolving Standard metagame? Read on to find out…

Learn From The Best

Who let the pros get their hooks into Standard? Don’t they know Zoo is bad, and that control is always the best strategy in this format? I mean, what kind of craziness is it that leads to a deck that runs dudes who attack for three taking the top 8 of a format? I mean… what the hell? Who listens to the pros?

Guilty pleasure time: I do.

Food For Thought: U/R Ninjas

“Single Blue Ninja seeks aggressive, no-nonsense partner, not afraid of challenges, obstacles, or getting their clothes dirty. Economy is prized, and heading home so that I can swing is always appreciated. Reciprocal swinging is encouraged. Contact attached.”

Get The Hell Out Of My Casual Room, You Self-Centered Jerk

You gain nothing from beating Johnny New Guy and his tribal Nephilim Deck. You learn nothing. You learn that oh wow, eight Wraths, Knell, Kokusho, and Mortifies are some good against aggro decks. My god, what kind of idiot are you? You needed to test the Nephilim Tribal Matchup?

No, you didn’t.

Food For Thought: Enshrined Memories

How the hell do you keep yourself busy during a fallow period of time? I figured I had a month to take up a challenge. A decent, rough, and generally pain-in-the-rear kinda challenge. A challenge befitting the kind of man who molests brick walls with his forehead.

Casual Deckbuilding Principles

You want to build your own decks, if you’re a casual player. You check out my articles, and instead of copying out one of the decklists I mention, you look at it, and see the principle that makes it work, then go and do something using the same idea. That’s how casual players work; we don’t want to suck at the game, we want to do our own thing. So here’s how I go about building decks.

The Inevitable Guildpact Casual Critique

Talen (and special guest) take an in-depth and humorous look at Guildpact. You won’t regret reading this one…

On Savage Twister:
That is not a ‘savage’ twister. That isn’t even a bad-mannered bloody twister. That there is the My Little Pony of twisters. I mean, sure, if you can handle your opponent thinking you keep your playset in special rainbow-colored sleeves, give them little gifts and grooming sessions, and refer to them as “Majesty” and “Seaspray”…

Nine Junk Rares

You don’t care about my tastes in music.
You don’t want to hear me quote lyrics from people funnier than me.
You sure as hell don’t care about my copy of BASEketball.
You came here to read about Magic.

Sharing is for Sissies!

About once every three months, readers absolutely demand a good rant about the color wheel where someone complains loudly about the fact that Blue remains very good in spite of supposedly neutering from R&D. This is one of those articles, so you know, Green mages rejoice and such…

Lifestyles of the Casually Competitive

So, what are you playing in the casual room? By “the casual room”, I quite literally mean Magic Online’s (henceforth referred to as MODO) casual room (henceforth referred to as “that den of whiners who seem to beat me all the time”). The New Players room and Tournament Practice Room are their own concerns – I, and others I know, spend most of our time tooling around in the casual room. Because we wanna have fun.