Not all Champs competitions are held this weekend… some have been and gone. Blisterguy, the winner of his 2005 Champs tournament, posted an incredibly similar result this year. The top 3 decklists are within, alongside the usual plethora of Magic Online Premier Event statistics and card ticket prices…
The Champs articles keep on coming! This time it’s the turn of Mark Young. He takes us through the evolution of Urzatron decks, in both U/R and U/W, and even offers up a R/W build for those crazy enough to run with the Boros Legion… The Standard metagame promises to be extremely diverse. Are the defining decks of the format available in this article? Read on to find out!
Jeroen steps to the plate and answers a myriad of reader-posed questions regarding the format on everyone’s minds… Standard with Time Spiral! He brings us his thoughts on Counter-Burn, an in-depth look at Green/Black aggro-control, and the place of Mono-Blue Draw-Go Control in the current environemnt. This is invaluable reading for those planning to demolish all competition this coming weekend!
I recall the little debate that shook the forums here on StarCityGames after Evan Erwin wrote his Battle Royale Round 6: Live Nude Girls article. Geordie Tait, manly man that he is, leapt onto Erwin like Evan was a May bishop… All for the offence of misusing poker terminology in a Magic article. But despite that Evan was wrong, I still have a slight problem with Tait’s argument. It’s not that he’s made factual errors; it’s that he’s made theoretical ones.
Evan Erwin was on-site when the new Solar Pox deck won the StarCityGames.com $1,500 Standard Open – and he got it all on video! Watch interviews with Ken Adams, the deck’s creator, as well as a complete video of both games of the finals! You want to see how Solar Pox rebounds from having one of two Haakons Castigated out of the game, then having the rest of his hand Persecuted? Watch and see!
We all know that the tiniest mistakes can lose the game… But what kinds of mistakes might lose you that Top 8 slot at Champs? Mike Flores walks you through four sample Standard scenarios where subtle details make the difference between the right play and the wrong play. Want to know what sorts of things the pros look for when they’re deciding how to respond? Look no further!
Last time, I talked about White, my favorite creature color; this time, I’ll talk about my favorite spell color. The top Black commons are all removal spells, and the top Black creatures allow you to cast your spells either cheaply or at unexpected times. Beyond the top picks, you have to start playing fair, but the strength of Black lies in its effects, not its bodies.
So-called “straight” Counter-Burn strategies haven’t been popular in a while. Let’s face it: the tools weren’t there! Countermagic was neutered, and while the burn has always been available to set the world ablaze, both lifegain and efficient creature beats served to stymie the archetype. Nowadays, however, we have a few more arrows to our bow… And so I refine a potential U/R deck over the course of three builds, playing each against U/G Beats, Rakdos, and Solar Flare to see how they shape up!
Split second’s not the only thing to get excited about in this set: Morph and Buyback, two of Type 4’s most sought-after mechanics, have returned. With over thirty cards for consideration, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Time Spiral may be the best Type 4 set ever.
Yesterday, I laid down the rules — of sifting through old decklists, seeing what goes missing, and seeing what can fill those holes — and started work on Snow Dad. Snow Dad lost its entire engine, so it becomes a very different deck in the exchange — other decks are far more subtle shifts. We lost a card advantage engine, so we’ll use a new one — the rebel toolkit.
Last week was another Lava Blister of a Quicken Hits column. Sorry about the fact that there wasn’t a lot of Super Secret Tech, what with States coming up. Give me an Honorable Passage, though; you don’t Peek at my column for Tek. You come here for the Cheap Ass decks. Like Zombies! 2k6, the deck that I Predict-ed that I would play at States. This Surprise Deployment really Outmaneuver-ed some folks. For many, there was a simple Wave of Indifference. Today’s column is for those with a Thirst for Knowledge, those who want to know what makes Zombies run like Clockwork Gnomes.
While many people out there prefer beatdown, control, midrange, or something else, I prefer something degenerate. I don’t care if it is a degenerate beatdown deck (Affinity), control deck (Psychatog) or combo (Trix), I simply want it to be the least fair deck possible. I want to cheat as much as the rules will allow me to. And the one card that jumped out at me as being cheatastic was Mirari.
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.
We’re going to take a dance through some old decks — casual decks — and see what the transition has brought. Now, there are going to be a lot of articles like this in the coming months. Untested, undeveloped, casual decks, that are basically all just showing the really aware what not to do. For the rest of us, there’s still some good to it, because how we’re going to screw up is as important as what we’re going to get right.
Time Spiral has brought back a lot of old cards. Some had a glorious past. Some had flashes of greatness. Some are, well, Squire. We’ll ignore Squire, and look at the tournament history of the other Timeshifted cards instead. The question, of course, is whether any of these are going to make a comeback at States, or in Extended this fall.
