CategoryMagic The Gathering

Not knowing five hundred cards and playing with and against those five hundred cards in a Limited environment is some friggin’ friggin’.

I have met a lot of casual players who are unwilling to play, or afraid of playing, in big tourneys. But the current cycle of Pro Tour Qualifiers is Onslaught/Legions sealed deck, and it is a perfect place to start playing in bigger tourneys. Here’s why.

I’ve done a good deal of Legions drafts and am have a pretty good bead on things. Legions is, of course, a set composed entirely of creatures – and due to that, many of the cards are very similar in power level, and the pick order becomes even more reliant on the holes in your mana curve. Needless to say, in Onslaught, draft non-creature spells higher than you used to, since there are only a few cards that act as spells in this set.

It’s that time again – time to see what windows the flavor text commission of R&D opened up into the world of the Magic storyline. As always, this”real story” installation is intended to give those who don’t have the time or interest to read the Magic novels a picture of what occurs in them.

The Runner-Up for The Ferrett’s”Author I Wish Would Write More Often” Award turns in his semiannual submission… And this one’s a doozy! Bored with the usual tourney reports? Well, this one takes everything you ever knew about tournament reports and stands ’em on its head, with a twist that’s way more interesting than the end of Joe Millionaire.

The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated – and I suspect that it is largely my own fault. I certainly seem to have a knack for staying qualified for the Pro Tour, but what’s the point of competing in these events if I don’t have a real shot?

Onslaught is what Fallen Empires was not: A set about creature types. But Onslaught is good, whereas Fallen Empires was woefully inadequate. I have a deck stock binder where I place rares in the binder that I use and play with, and are not for trade – and I have seven spots devoted to Ice Age cards. That’s one-half of a page dedicated to an expansion similar in size to Odyssey and Onslaught – and five of those slots are painlands!

When running, your legs tend to move in a bicycling pattern; they do not flail about wildly in the extreme positions as shown on Deftblade Elite and Glory Seeker. If I were an enemy soldier witnessing these two run towards me in battle, I would probably laugh at them, thinking, It won’t be long before these two uncoordinated twits fall over on themselves.

* Opponent 1’s turn: Your stuff untaps. Tap Savannahs and Elf, make a soldier. Tap Cradle for five mana, tap bird, make two soldiers.
* Opponent 2’s turn: Tap Savannah’s and Elf, make a soldier. Tap Cradle for eight mana, tap Bird, make three more soldiers.
* Opponent 3’s turn: Tap Savannahs and Elf, make a soldier. Tap Cradle for twelve mana, tap Bird, make three soldiers and draw a card off J-Tome.
* Opponent 4’s turn: Tap Savannahs and Elf, make a soldier. Tap Cradle for sixteen mana, tap Bird, make four soldiers and draw a card.
* Your turn: Draw a card, play land, tap everything but Cradle, make a Soldier (with two mana floating) tap Cradle for twenty-one mana, play Planar Portal, search with Planar Portal, play Catapult Master, make two soldiers. (Nineteen soldiers in play.) Tap soldiers and Catapult Master to remove four opponent creatures from play.

I’ll wager that there are very few dust-ups over a game of chess; you have no excuses in chess. Magic, on the other hand, well… There’s no other game where you have to stroke your opponent just to keep him from blowing his top at the table. How many butts have you kissed to keep things civil when there are land-drops being missed? A thousand? More? I know I’ve puckered up and smooched a few landflooded behinds in my day.

One day I noticed there were quite a number of cards that benefit all players when played. So, I thought, what if I were to build a deck that wasn’t necessarily concerned with winning per se, but that would allow me to help any players I wanted to, and that could be instrumental in deciding who would win? Well, I built it and it works. And isn’t Valentine’s Day all about gift-giving?