Rich continues his excellent Draft series. The Canadian maestro turns his back on the cooling Coldsnap, and heads for the balmy waters of sweeter formats. From now until the online release of Time Spiral, Rich will draft a number of formats, from RGD to 999 to CBS to CCC… whatever takes his fancy at the time. He’ll supply each pick, from pick one to pick forty-five, and pen a brief commentary on hs deck and performace. For more detailed comments, visit the forums!
Joshua Claytor continues his comprehensive series, examining the current Standard workhorses and producing updated (and Kamigawa-free) “skeleton” version for preliminary Champs testing. This particular article delivers some of the decks operating on the fringe of the current metagame…
Time Spiral has finally been unveiled… and Magic’s greatest minds are on the lookout for top tips and hot tech. Billy, bunged with a head cold but fresh from the prerelease, takes us through his preliminary thoughts on Time Spiral, looking at the set from both a Constructed and Limited standpoint. He throws up card interactions left, right, and center. Who knows, maybe the next Standard-defining deck is born in this intellectual melee…
Julien Nuijten makes up a vital part of the Dutch National team this year, a team that many are heralding as the pre-tournament favorites. Today’s article looks at the process behind the creation of his Constructed deck, and takes us through the changes he’d make and the sideboarding plan for anyone planning on running the U/G powerhouse in an upcoming Standard tournament. All this, plus Nationals tournament game reports!
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!
Rich continues his excellent Draft series. The Canadian maestro turns his back on the cooling Coldsnap, and heads for the balmy waters of sweeter formats. From now until the online release of Time Spiral, Rich will draft a number of formats, from RGD to 999 to CBS to CCC… whatever takes his fancy at the time. He’ll supply each pick, from pick one to pick forty-five, and pen a brief commentary on hs deck and performace. For more detailed comments, visit the forums!
This article is spoiler heavy! If you do not want to know about Time Spiral before your prerelease, please don’t read this article until Sunday night!
Who here likes mana flood? I used to hate it, back when I played Pansy Salad, an 18-land elf deck, in the days of Onslaught Block Constructed with a collective cardpool between myself and my competitors that featured maybe two dozen rares total. Despised it; couldn’t imagine running anything that would actually put more land into play, certainly early because well, I had elves for that. And they did cool things, like tap to make an elf huge, or make everything else block them.
This week continues the journey on the path of the many styles of Human decks available to the mono-color world, and a sojourn into a surprise deck celebrating all that is Human. Well, within the world of Magic, anyhow. Real humans are much more boring and less worthy of discussion. Plus, they say their own piece every week in the forums, for better or worse, while exposing themselves to my raucous japes and smarmy witticisms.
Article number 150. A big, round, arbitrarily significant number. It’s time to get a little bit nostalgic, and look at how Magic, this website, and my writing has evolved since January 31, 2001. A lot has changed in five and a half years…
Sean takes us through the strategies to expect at this weekend’s Time Spiral prerelease event, and provides a number of helpful tips for those getting funky with time, a la Marty McFly circa 1985…
Due to the technical issues we experienced at the beginning of the week, we’ve a plethora of extra material today. The first such article is a return to the Extended field for Patrick Chapin. Today, he reinvents his popular Shredder deck, giving it a “Silver Bullet” style polish. Decklists, sideboarding strategies, and more… available a click away!
As we head into the prerelease weekend, excitement for the new set is at fever pitch. We say goodbye to Ravnica – and good riddance to Coldsnap – for Limited play at least. In preparation for a Brave New World of Time Spiral Limited fun, Josh looks at the sweeping changes in Limited philosophy that are required for a quick and successful adaptation to the new format…
Last week, a couple of StarCityGames.com columnists decided to speculate as to how existing Standard decks would survive the rotation of Kamigawa Block, assessing to varying degrees their respective viabilities in, presumably, Time Spiral Standard. Instead of approaching the problem of the format from this direction, Mike decided to look at the upcoming Standard from the other direction: Rather than asking how the loss of cards might affect existing archetypes, how might the new cards shape our outlook and strategies as a whole?
This week’s Battle Royale sees Sean McKeown pumped and ready for action. This comprehensive article introduces his interesting base-Green deck, and documents the lengthy process undergone to obtain the cards. You can’t doubt the prices of the cards in his deck – Sean has the receipts for each one.
