The Ferrett drove seven hours to go to the opening of the new Star City Game center, and discovered something so wonderful that he’d gush about it even if he wasn’t employed by StarCityGames.com! But while he was there, he got in a pair of drafts where he got a crap deck and a good deck, and won with the wrong one.
Here’s a confession for you: I am not good at drafting. It’s tough to admit that when “drafting” is the default mode of most serious Magic players, but I haven’t truly gotten a draft format under my belt since Invasion. But the Mana Gods understood my plight this weekend, and handed me a draft with picks that literally built my deck for me.
Strange events in The Ferrett’s life lead to a less-than-perfect tournament environment. Read on for a tale of ugly skin and heart-pounding plays!
The new set is out, and it’s time y’all knew how I did at the Prerelease, futzing around with the glory of old cards… And the wonder of Time Shifted cards!
Time Spiral’s out – and as usual, it’s a race to see which cards are as good as they look on paper, and which cards don’t quite measure up! Are Thallids any good? Should you build a Sliver deck? And how does all of this Flash stuff affect your game? Read on and find out The Ferrett’s first take on one of the most exciting new sets to arrive in years!
There are a lot of tournaments involving complex games. Chess, Starcraft, Scrabble, you name it — someone is struggling to be the champion. The mechanics of the game vary, but the mentality it takes to master those mechanics (and then consistently convert strategies into wins) remains constant.
What David Sirlin is trying to do in this slim tome is to define that constant – to define the core elements that make someone a champion in any field. And what he discovers is both enlightening and frustrating….
So you’ve been slinging the paper cards for awhile, but just downloaded the Magic Online software. You might be under the illusion that Magic skill will translate directly to Magic Online skill… And unfortunately, you’d be wrong. You’ll dominate those who are remarkably worse than you are, of course – but all other things being equal, the person with more skill at navigating the Magic Online interface will win. So what tips and tricks does the beginning Magic Online player need to know to win?
The Ferrett, laid up sick after a long flight filled with foreign germs, plays thirty-five matches on a lazy Saturday afternoon and muses about Magic Online. And in addition to dissecting the usual Ravnica Block Sealed Deck, he asks you a vital question that might help others: How do you have MODO configured?
I watched him flail his way through the traditional route of newbie mistakes; burning on excess mana because he didn’t know about the Alt-U “Undo” trick, zipping past phases he should have had stopped, and hitting the wrong creatures. It was a shame to watch.
But you know what was worse?
The fact that I didn’t help him at all.
The Ferrett returns from Europe to discuss… death. Dying formats, dying comics, dying relatives, and endless, endless flights on planes. Which is not the standard method of writing “Welcome back” Magic articles, but hey! It has Ravnica cards, and talks about what it’s like to stay with Editor Craig Stevenson! What more do you want?
This week’s article discusses the raging debates among proofreaders, then answers the question that’s on everyone’s lips: “Can someone who doesn’t play Magic edit a Magic article properly?” And if arcane discussions of grammar aren’t enough to get your mouths drooling, this article features a control deck in Ravnica Limited, plus one of the best “Winning the unwinnable game” stories ever!
I arrived at the place I had been destined to go and found it a desolate wasteland. It was cold and deserted, an empty hall bereft of life…
No, I’m not writing fan fiction — that was what the Coldsnap prerelease looked like. There were almost no people, at least not compared to the packed tables of the Dissension prerelease. Where’d they all go? And what’s up with the deck I had to build in the interim?
The Coldsnap Prerelease has come and gone, and the cards that looked oh-so-good on the spoiler have been actually, you know, played. What Coldsnap cards were better than they appeared? (Hint: There were at least three Marit Lage deaths in The Ferrett’s prerelease flight.) What cards were worse? Click the link and find out!
In the days of yore, back when I was the managing editor of This Here Site Here, I used to hold an amnesty day, wherein all articles sent to me to be published on my birthday were published without any editing at all. This is now a proud tradition of StarCityGames.com, and it helps to make you all understand just how much work we do here to make the articles appear, you know, readable. But alas, what can I do to give myself a birthday prezzie in an article?
It’s a mixture of topics this week as The Ferrett opens a deck, opines upon his daughter, apologizes for the two wretched articles that got published last week, and discusses what the 8-0 decks from Grand Prix: Toulouse mean when you go to build your deck!
