CategoryMagic The Gathering

Magical Hack: Kamigawa Block, The Early Weeks

The first few weeks of a Block Constructed PTQ season are usually very interesting to watch, especially as the cards from the third set start to permeate the decks from the Pro Tour prior to the third expansion. This time around, we have progressed quite a bit on some of our archetypes of old, with at least one new “good deck” coming out of the mix thanks to the Saviors of Kamigawa cards. The first new deck is “Black Hand,” the black weenie beatdown with fattie back-up deck that is sporting such Saviors hits as O-Naginata, Hand of Cruelty, and Raving Oni-Slave… and frankly, I think people who play the deck need to make a vital choice as to how to build it.

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Kamigawa Block And The Death Of Green

Jamie discusses the issue of Magic Online account sharing, the future of post-Rotation Green, and discusses how his latest creation fared at a Kamigawa Block Constructed tournament!

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Five Months to Tweak Five Ideas: Preparing For The Legacy Grand Prix

Steven Menendian was correct when he argued that some may incorrectly believe Legacy to be “Extended with dual lands and Force of Will.” That’s simply not true. True, it’s not uncommon for Extended decks to make viable ports to Legacy, but that means nothing. Legacy truly is very different than Extended, and there’s almost limitless potential in a largely unexplored format… so let’s start tossing around some ideas.

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SCG Daily: A Worthy Sacrifice

There’s a lot going on with Kuon’s flip trigger, and all of it is pretty challenging from a deckbuilding perspective. The most obvious step in flipping Kuon is killing at least three creatures. That’s no easy feat – though black has some built-in answers with the likes of Barter in Blood, Hideous Laughter, Echoing Decay, Death Cloud, and Kagemaro, First to Suffer. Here’s the trick, though: I don’t want Kuon himself to die. So how do we break a creature-killer in what has to be a creature-heavy deck?

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Ask Zvi, Part II

Zvi answers more of your questions in this final installment, including “Are there killer combos in formats that are never discovered?”, “What’s the best combo in Standard that doesn’t involve a nine-mana sorcery?”, and “Will your love of combo inadvertently push the combo archetypes when you’re working for Wizards R&D?” Plus, the question that Zvi couldn’t answer!

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5-Color Green: The Draft Walkthrough

A couple of weeks ago, I did a drafting guide for the 5-Color Green archetype in Champions/Betrayers/Saviors. This week, I want to provide you with an actual Walkthrough, along with plenty of commentary that should help anyone trying to learn how to draft the deck better…. because there’s an important lesson in today’s draft on not compromising your mana base.

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The Beautiful Struggle: Fun With Vintage

On Saturday night, I had a rough time at my local poker game. A newcomer had arrived, and he looked like easy pickings. He was drunk as a skunk, slurring his speech and absolutely reeking of alcohol. He literally did not even know the difference between the terms “check” and “call”….
Yet I simply could not beat the guy. Time and again he would call me down and show down a better hand. When I left the game, I was pretty angry – until I realized that karma must have been paying me back. After all, earlier that day I had played in my second Vintage tournament, and somehow managed a Top 4 finish out of thirty or so people.

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Lessons From London

London was no Barcelona. I didn’t expect it to be, since before my Top 8 in Barcelona I’d had plenty of practice and knew the format cold. I had tested every card, knew what I wanted to draft, and knew where I disagreed with other players and was happy to have them go the other way. Champions/Betrayers/Saviors is a different format, and I knew I was behind the curve. Presented for your edification are some of the lessons I learned – the hard way, sadly – at Pro Tour: London.

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Ask Zvi, Part I

Zvi asked for questions… and man, did you flood him! Zvi answers questions on just about every topic around, from “How do you become a better player?” to “How far should R&D push the design envelope?” to “Why did Netrunner fail?” to “How dangerous is Blue, anyway?”

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SCG Daily: Inverting Dragons

As the person who named the Ascendants (yes, I’m proud of my creative writer gig), I’d like to point out that Homura is the first and currently only card with “Human” in its name. Unfortunately, Homura’s creature type matters even less than Erayo’s. No Monk lords exist, and there’s currently debate in R&D whether Humans will ever have a lord of some kind. But fortunately, Homura has another ability that’s a little more enticing…

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The Vintage Roundup: A Look Ahead

Stephen looks at the issues and strategies coming up for the rest of 2005 – including a look at the overall metagame, the deck that requires the least skill to pilot (and why this matters), how to use Gifts Ungiven properly in Meandeck Gifts (it’s not what you’d think), and his take on Pithing Needle. All that, and a brief look at the potential pitfalls of the 2006 Vintage Season!

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The Many Flavors Of Fish In Legacy

Fish is one of the most popular decks in Vintage, and it’s equally popular in Legacy… and one of the reasons people love it is because it’s so darned customizable. You can build it out of almost any blue/x color combination, and it does well. But how do you need to change Fish to ensure its success in the creature-hostile Legacy format?

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From Right Field: Like White On Rice

The incredible Mister Romeo discusses White Weenie decks in Kamigawa Block – including the all-fun decks “Tom Cruise” (cheap, white Samurai), “Ghost In The Machine” (featuring Spirits, in the material world), and, um, a white deck. That does something really cool, but it’s not much good, but when has that ever stopped Chris?

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SCG Daily: Public Enemy Number One

It’s time to unveil the worst, most evil, most vicious and most unfair deck in Magic history. This time out, however, it is not a deck that dominated tournament Magic for season after season. This deck was too mean to last more than a few weeks….

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SCG Daily #1: Four Spells In A Turn, Five Colors To Break It

I looooove card cycles. Love ’em. I also love deck brainstorming, pushing myself to think of ways to use a quirky card. Put these two things together, and you have a wonderful way for me to spend the next five days. Here’s how it’s going to work: I pick a card cycle from Saviors of Kamigawa that I think has potential for capital-F Fun. Then, each day this week I’ll focus on one card of the cycle and brainstorm Standard deck ideas. So, um, guess which cycle I started out with?

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