Last week’s piece generated some substantial commotion on the forums. One thing that really stood out from that discussion, though, was that a lot of people didn’t really seem to have a good idea of what it meant to receive a signal in a draft. While most experienced players have figured signaling out, I want to take the time to really spell out what a signal is for some of my readers who might be newer to booster draft.
I’ve learned tons about 40-card Magic in the last month, mostly thanks to chats with Ervin Tormos. Said Ruski planned on writing “the definitive booster draft article,” but instead decided he’d rather just share his knowledge with friends on AIM and save himself the trouble. Well, I’m not so benevolent, and I’ve got a deadline-thumping Brit to impress, so this is going to be my side of the story…
Everyone does a “Lessons From…” piece on a tournament, especially when they don’t do all that well, and the tendency is for these to be quite sparse in the way of actual lessons. I aim to avoid that pitfall, but nothing I’m going to say will be succinct. I haven’t written the article yet, but I’m imagining that it’ll be quite long, quite drifting, and altogether broad in its scope.
This is actually going to be an “issues” article, so those of you who have already slogged through my sad attempt at Duncanesque prose can go ahead and click that little arrow if you want. But I’ve done decklists for awhile now, I’ve tackled theory, and I wanted to get down to the root of something that’s been bugging me ever since a particular incident at Alex Kim’s house – and, really, for a long time before that.
Today, Zac takes us through the changes made to Billy Moreno’s Mono-Red-splash-Korlash list for Block Constructed, a deck he thinks is particularly absurd in the current metagame. He also addresses a couple of exciting changes that Tenth Edition brings to the Standard scene. If you’re looking for tips going into either PTQS or Nationals, then maybe Zac has the answers for you!
I’ve been really theory-intensive for the last several weeks, so I’m going to shift gears today and simply talk about decks. We’ve got two rogue lists to look at – both of which were designed by other people—and a concept I’ve been toying with that I bet some of y’all could make work if you put the time and effort into it.
Enough people wanted a primer that I decided to go through with it. This won’t be your typical primer, though, because the list I played the first week of PTQs is obsolete, and I wouldn’t recommend it card-for-card to anyone. At the same time, I think it’d be extremely useful to work through the process of how I arrived at that list, what the individual cards in it are designed to do, and how you’re supposed to play those seventy-five cards in a variety of matchups.
When Fate dealt Zac a bum hand in regards to Grand Prix: Montreal, did Zac stew in his own juices and bemoan his luck to the sky? No sir! Instead, he took up a PTQ challenge down in Mobile, Alabama, and walked away with the precious Blue Envelope. He shares his winning decklist today, a deck he claims is the current best 75 in the format. If you’re after the cutting edge of Block technology, look no further!
I’m going to introduce a new theory today. I’ve found the theory both extremely useful and extremely easy to implement once you “get it.” It covers much, much more ground than I’m going to be able to spell out here, but hopefully once I supply the skeleton it shouldn’t be difficult to infer more logical extensions from the specific example I’ll be using. I’m calling it “initiative.”
There are a lot of articles out there about the testing process, but I hope to cover somewhat different ground. I want to talk about how exactly you determine what cards to cut and add. A lot of people, it seems, do a lot of testing solely to figure out matchup percentages and determine what cards are good (or bad) at what point in time. When it comes to cutting or adding cards, though, I think most people aren’t nearly systematic enough.
In my experience (I’ve played in I think seven or eight Regionals by now) the tournament is more or less a representative sample of the field, but a few trends tend to take hold. First, people love “cute decks.” It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean by that, but maybe you’ll get what I’m saying. Trendy decks. Decks that are a rage on the Internet but people are trying to keep “hush-hush.” Does Dredge fit that bill? Hell yeah.
In all honesty, you could read all the strategy in the world, scour the corners of the earth for decklists, pore through statistic after tedious statistic in an effort to dissect the metagame, and none of it would help you qualify for Nationals more than this simple four-word sentence: Play Dragonstorm and stuff. (The “and stuff” is essential, for those not in the know.)
I was not the only person who believed that the existence of Flash was good for the metagame. It set a very clear bar that all rogue decks had to be able to beat, and it weeded out many of the more random combo decks both by virtue of being “better” in the abstract and because of the necessity to try and hate it out. After Future Sight it probably gets ridiculous, but in Columbus it was simply a very good but very vulnerable combo deck that defined the metagame without unhealthily warping it.
Intentional Draws… a blight on the game, or a harmless level of strategy? Today’s Chatter of the Squirrel puts the humble ID under the spotlight. Zac attempts to drain the moral quagmire and present the dilemma in easy-to-digest terms. So, are Intentional Draws the last refuge of pure evil? Whatever your stance, this is one article that’s guaranteed to put the cat amongst the pigeons…
Zac, it appears, has achieved the impossible. He’s gone infinite on Magic Online playing 4-3-2-2 Ninth Edition drafts! If you’re looking for some Limited Magic but you’re tiring of Time Spiral, maybe Ninth Edition is the format for you. It’s certainly been good to Zac. The secret of his success? You’ll have to read the article to find out!
