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.
Some point in the not too distant past it simultaneously dawned upon the Magic community that this game was going to be here for a lot longer than most of us ever expected. Long after every other fad – from the hula hoop to the pog – had faded into Americana novelty, Magic has continued to thrive. Building on the past is the theme of Time Spiral. And while set designers have mined Alpha for ideas since the earliest expansions, until Time Spiral we have never seen a set thematically centered on nostalgia. And nostalgia — or at least building upon the past — is what Vintage is all about. That’s why, good or not, Time Spiral is the first set review I’ve ever written for Vintage.
The Timeshifted cards read like a “who’s who” of star players from tried and tested decks. There is a heckuva lot of power sporting those natty purple expansion symbols, and anyone thinking they can just turn up to a Standard tournament in the next few months with a tweaked version of an existing archetype is going to be in for a nasty shock. That shock can be alleviated by actually indulging in some *shudder* history, and looking back at these decks might give some clues as to how the purple cards might impact the forthcoming Standard format.
Jeron sizes up the darkest color in all of Magic, chock-full of removal and… Well, what else does it have? Jeroen talks about the viability of Black in Limited and discovers that his Word spellchecker actually recognizes “Phthisis”!
[Time Spiral Limited Review, Part I: White] – [Time Spiral Limited Review, Part II: Blue]
[Time Spiral Limited Review, Part III: Red] – [Time Spiral Limited Review, Part IV: Green]
This upcoming weekend is the last weekend before the most of the major State Championships, and I have heard of several places that will be running unsanctioned post-Time Spiral Standard tournaments as a State Championships “warm-up”… So talking about what I have seen developing in recent weeks seems like an interesting way to have a good jam session talking about Standard and riffing on what overarching trends are developing. That said, let’s introduce you to an unlikely candidate for “The most influential land in Standard…”
I present to you, dear reader, five U/x control decks, and I ask you to consider them and perhaps comment on them in the forums. I know that they’re not all Tier 1, but each of them has a different intent and focuses on a different area of Blue-style control. Take a look, see what you think, and get to work controlling your games!
