Ben Bleiweiss is back to give you the straight dish on which cards will be the most valuable and most sought after from Saviors of Kamigawa. If you’re going to the prerelease tommorrow, this is a must-read article! Find out what cards to trade for, which cards will be valued more highly by casual and competitive players, and more!
Debate has raged for years over whether the Pros would ruin Vintage if they ever bothered to pay attention to the format. Finally, after an argument over dinner with Randy Buehler, Teddy Card Game had had enough. Armed with one of the most powerful writing forces ever assembled and culminating with the Power 9 Shooting Stars in Rochester on June 11th, he decided to test that theory by asking our Pro Tour writers to work on the Vintage format and see if they can break it. This is an event that simply cannot be missed, as whatever the result is, it will reverberate throughout the Magic community. Appropriately enough, it all starts today with the master of broken decks, Zvi Mowshowitz.
Part two of Steve’s Combo-Control blowout takes a look at the hottest decks in Vintage, decks that you absolutely must be prepared for if you plan to play at the Power 9 in Richmond this weekend. Smennen tells you what makes these decks tick, looks at the strengths and weaknesses, and then takes a peak at what the future might hold for the combo-control archetypes.
Sometimes you can find that pivotal moment in a draft where one choice – usually a choice that goes with conventional wisdom – leads you to drafting a deck slightly worse than if you had chosen a different path. In a strong article today, Nick highlights one such moment in a recent draft and furthers the debate on the “Best Card vs. Best Pick” dilemma.
Want to know about the latest deck the former Vintage World Champion piloted to yet another Waterbury Top 8 finish? Looking for stories of delerious SUNY: Binghamton college students threatening people at Denny’s with butter knives? Or maybe you just want another fun and amusing report by perhaps the most-entertaining Vintage writer around. Whatever you are looking for, this article has some of everything and is awesome sauce approved.
What’s that you say? You want the story of how Gadiel won the Pro Tour, directly from the horse’s mouth? Okay, if you insist, but only on StarCityGames.com, the home of Pro Tour winners.
One of the things that strikes me as odd in Constructed decks — and Standard decks in particular — is the lack of Two-Headed Dragons. I often consider different cards to be “good” than most players, but Two-Headed Dragon seems like an obvious omission to me. So why aren’t more people playing it… and more importantly, why should you be playing it?
When I originally posted my Splice list, which I playtested right up until the week before the Pro Tour that I top 8’d in, it was discarded as being unplayable. My team was afraid of the lack of win conditions and the time issues in a Pro Tour, where draws count as losses. But I stuck to my guns and kept posting the list, claiming that it wasn’t losing to any single deck. This claim was true…. until we sideboarded.
Along with Tooth and Nail, you have Mono-Blue Control, Blue/Green Control, Ponza, and Green/Black Cloud Control leading the pack of what comprises Standard. White Weenie exists and you have a few other types, but in general, this is what you see the most of.
One deck in particular has been very enjoyable for me to play and today I’m going to talk about that very competitive deck, plus give you a glimpse of a fun deck for PTQ and FNM players alike.
Zvi Mowshowitz. The new decklists. The format review of Kamigawa Block Constructed and advice on what to play now. You know you want it…
When looking at a new Standard season, it’s always a good idea to peak back at the previous year’s Block Constructed Pro Tour and see what ideas you can take from that tournament. Today Flores uses Masashiro Kuroda’s winning deck from Kobe and turns it into what may once again be one of the best decks in the format.
Deciding to play the right deck is critical to Type One success. This article is going to provide a comprehensive overview of the six best Mana Drain decks in the format. It will trace the trends in development thus far and bring us to some very recent design innovations. The trend that was already in the making has suddenly blossomed at the same time as the restriction of Trinisphere, resulting in the most broken Drain combo decks ever.
While Kenji Tsumura and Gadiel Szleifer were battling for $10,000, Rick was over playing in the $2,000 Amateur Standard event and learned quite a few things about how Red decks work in this environment.
A Gifts Ungiven deck that uses Goblin Charbelcher and Mana Severance, but completely removes Goblin Welders from the deck? Can that possibly be good? Our favorite Frenchie Vintage writer thinks so, and there’s a good chance that you’ll see more than a few people running it at the Vintage Megaevent in Paris this weekend!
I’ve now spent… must be close to a hundred hours on MODO. I just can’t imagine getting back into Magic without this tool. Without a store nearby to play in, it would be impossible. Without being able to test my deck a couple hundred times before Regionals, it would be impossible. Without being able to see what everyone else is working on and how the metagame is developing, doing well at a sanctioned event would be the equivalent of buying a Powerball ticket. And yes, I’m still working on the Elf deck – but that’s not the only deck I’m working on…
