CategoryMagic The Gathering

Magical Hack: Choose, but Choose Wisely

My goal for this week is to weave all of these things together for a look at the States metagame and the choices that are going to be present and inherent in each archetype. I’ll also give a few hints as to how the key contenders match up against each other, and we can go from there into creating an assumed picture of the metagame as well as the suggestions that can come from it as to how to succeed. I like looking at the whole picture and figuring out the so-called “rules of the format”, and that’s something that may be profitable here as well. It may also be highly premature, so we’ll see how firm our conclusions are before taking that particular step.

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Watching the Clock

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Metagame Clock. Anyone? Bueller? The Metagame Clock is what’ll help me get a grip on things. Maybe it’ll help you as well, as some last-minute reading that puts things in perspective.

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2005 Championship Deck Challenge: Grand Theft Magic

Welcome to the 2005 Championship Deck Challenge!
Yesterday, Teddy Card Game promised to write about the deck he was taking to States if the guy who designed the deck gave him permission to do so. That designer is none other than Seth Burn, and Seth has decided to reveal the deck himself! If you are still undecided about what you are playing at Champs, and are looking for the latest in hot tech plus a heavily tested decklist, look no further!

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2005 Championship Deck Challenge – Tuned Decks Part II: Pre-Champs Tournament

Welcome to the 2005 Championship Deck Challenge!
This past weekend, Mike had the rare chance to put his States deck to the test in an actual Ravnica-legal Standard tournament packed with Neutral Ground regulars. In today’s article, Mike discusses what he learned by playing in that tournament, and shares the decklist he’ll be playing in this weekend’s State Championship!

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An Announcement Regarding Untold Legends Of The Million Dollar Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour

Haven’t seen your favorite weekly series of reminisces lately? Master Cunningham explains why and when you can expect it to be back.

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Legacy Super Grow, Part III: Tuning the Maindeck and Sideboard

When I sit down to play a game of Magic, nothing delivers the goods like Super Grow. Because the things I enjoy doing the most in this fine game, namely, drawing tons of cards, countering everything thrown at me, and beating my opponent bloody with cheap and arbitrarily large creatures is what 3cThreshold does best.

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SCG Daily: Sealed Dissection, Day Four

Another day, another Sealed pool. With than two weeks for Ravnica, are you ready for the Prerelease tournaments? Polish your skills and see how your thoughts stack up to Eli’s. As a bonus to today’s offering you also get an incredibly Japanese Vulturous Zombie combo deck to ponder for States. Wild tech? Yesiree!

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2005 Championship Deck Challenge: Introducing The Spanish Inquisition

Welcome to the 2005 Championship Deck Challenge!
Lifegain gets a bad rap. Really, it does. Those of us who started off as casual players remember one of the first things we learned when moving to a competitive scene is that Lifegain Sucks. So what would you say if I told you there was a potentially tier 1 deck for States that attempts to abuse lifegain to kill your opponent?

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Cock It and Pull It – The 2005 Championships Metagame

Year after year Teddy Card Game has provided the most accurate skinny on exactly what the Championships metagame will look like. He’s at it again this year with updated decklists, metagame percentages, latebreaking rogue options, and delectable cheesecake. This is the most wide-open Standard format in years… if you don’t read this article, you could be missing a crucial piece of information you need to succeed this weekend.

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Fear and Resurrection

“What the hell is that?” You’d be surprised how often those five words have scrolled across my mental marquee in the last few weeks. As a rough estimate, I’d say four thousand. That’s slightly less than the amount of years it feels like I’ve been in the land of the Magic dead.

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SCG Daily: Ravnica Sealed Vivisected, Day Three

Before we examine today’s card pool, let’s take a look at how one of the rules of Limited has shifted.

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The Beautiful Struggle: Fun With Weathered Wayfarer

I wanted to bring you some red-hot new tech for States, I really did. I had an idea, and it had synergy, and it served a strategic goal, and it sounded just crazy enough to work. Sadly it didn’t work, at least not in the way I wanted it to. I thought I’d share the idea with you, though, so you can play with it yourself and maybe create a States-winning deck on your own.

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2005 Championship Deck Challenge – Tuned Decks Part I: Critical Mass Update

Welcome to the 2005 Championship Deck Challenge!
If you had asked me one week ago, I would have told you that the deck featured in this article was my 100% recommendation for Champs. After this weekend I think the deck I posted last Friday may be the best deck in the format, but this deck is still really good and can easily take home a Top 8 slot.

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Four Ravnica Cards, Four Ravnica Decks!

The master of wacky decks arrives once again with some casual decks that abuse the latest cards in fascinating ways! Want an infinite Tolsimir deck? How about a way to abuse Grozoth? Abe provides the goods, starting now!

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Legacy Prep: Building Blocks, Landstill, and a Request for Chris Romeo

Unlike Vintage, Legacy deck construction hinges more on “building blocks” rather than individual broken cards. It means that despite the huge card pool, there is actually a very restricted range of available tools (read: good cards) to use, many of which are highly conditional. Today I’m going to give you an extensive breakdown of the various building blocks available to Legacy deckbuilders and contribute a fresh deck of my own for your perusal.

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