I have played Magic a long time. I’ve won a (small) collection of Top 8 pins from PTQs, and a lot of cards. I’ve judged at Worlds and PTs, and have been paid in cards. I’ve written over a hundred articles on Magic, and have been paid in cards. I have a really, really big collection. And I’ve been playing for a long time. I had never played online. This week I will take you through the highs and lows of my first Magic Online experience.
Some multiplayer groups don’t allow table talk between teammates. Communication in a team environment isn’t about taking away an advantage from the opponent – it’s about working together to make a solid team that can win based on better skills, not less mistakes. Would you rather watch two football teams continually fumble the ball…. or would you rather watch great teams make shoestring catches, stellar breaks, and diving tackles?
Once upon a time, aggro decks actually succeeded in Vintage. Then people got smart and started playing the really good cards in the format instead of trying to simply beat for two every turn. Why do aggro decks fail today and what can be learned from these important flaws? That’s the topic we’ll be addressing today, class, so follow along.
What happens when everyone starts to remove the artifact removal from their maindecks in Standard? Adam shares his thoughts on this topic today, including an Isochron Scepter deck that could be very problematic in the end.
Despite a slow start, the 5-Color Casual Challenge provided some solid articles on the 250-card format by the end of the week. Brian Epstein’s excellent 5-Color: The Metagame As We Know It came close, but in the end amusing writing once again took the $20 prize. Jonah Sutton-Morse and Mr. Anderson’s Twenty Cards That Go With Contract was a solid article that discussed what did and didn’t work in the format… and it was both fun and easy to read. Thus, they take the prize!
So what’s next week’s Casual Challenge? Something that’s sure to generate a flurry of submissions:
The Three Most Annoying Cards Of All Time.
Now, the last “Top Five” challenge did phenomenally well in terms of generating submissions, but by the end of the week our readers’ eyes were glazing over from “Card: Description. Card: Description.” Thus, remember that the prize will most likely go to the person who provides the most interesting variant on the format. This doesn’t have to be just multiplayer; feel free to discuss the three most annoying cards in format X, or a look at cards that cause confusion for all the wrong reasons, or a historical overview of what cards were considered annoying, and why.
So give us your most hated cards, and the decks that go with them, and you might win $20! Send your article in to Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2 today!
I love the Avengers. The super-hero team of Marvel’s Mightiest Heroes has been a favorite of mine for a long time, going back to my childhood in years past. I have virtually every Avengers comic printed, including most comics printed that include an Avenger in them. For this final entry in our deck-a-thon, I decided to figure out whether it was possible to build a Magic deck based around the Avengers theme, with unique cards for each character.
After a recent bit of forum criticism, the editors of this site challenged Nathan to write again, since his previous works had all been quite solid. Nathan proved more than up for the challenge this week, writing about a stone-cold rogue deck for the end of the Extended season and including an impressive amount of goofy humor to boot. If you like Magic, you will probably like this article.
In this continuing deck primer on one of the oldest decks in Vintage, Steve takes a look at all of the components that make Multi-Colored Control successful, and includes a tournament report from a recent event where he put his updated build to the test and landed squarely in the finals.
Say there was this hot girl in your office that played Magic and you needed to build her a Standard deck that was cool, but still had a chance to win. What deck would you build for her and why? That’s the dilemma Romeo faces this week, but once you’ve finished the article, we’d like to know your deck choice for this particular scenario.
A simple, concise, and helpful primer on your DCI Rating including how they are calculated and quirks you might encounter along the way.
Various and sundry people have written in suggesting that perhaps the decks I am offering in the series are a bit too expensive for most people to play. Since I try to be receptive to reader wishes, today I am going to try and build a solid, playable, winnable budget U/B control deck. I chose U/B control because I haven’t played one in a while, and I am itching to play a deck of my own. As such, I will be building with an eye to possibly playing myself.
This article will focus on:
5-Color is a format that is polarized into archetypes. There are pure control decks that destroy combo and live in fear of the Armageddons that aggro packs. There are wacky Dream Halls decks that seek to draw their entire decks on turn 4. There’s aggro, with nothing in the deck costing more than two mana outside of mana-denial cards like Ruination, Winter Orb, and the aforementioned Armageddon. This is a format that requires 250 cards – there must be more variation than that!
…because if it’s not, its writers certainly are. We’ve only had a single article for this week’s Casual Challenge, which means that at this point, Jonah Sutton-Morse and Mr. Anderson are a lock for the $20 prize. Send in your 5-Color article to Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2 by 5:00 on Thursday for your chance at the prize!
How do you weather one of the worst Magic slumps of your career? By returning to your roots, of course, and piloting a deck that fits like an old pair of house slippers to a consistent set of wins. Today Rick discusses the midifications Rock decks have had to make to compete and gives a complete matchup analysis against all the major decks in the field.
