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I was shocked to discover how low the attendance was at the last PTQ I missed. It wasn’t just that event, either. Attendance was low everywhere. I just didn’t get it. It was a cool new format, the cards people would get in the event were from the new set – yet people were just not turning out in numbers. My confusion lasted until about a week before the Grand Prix, when I finally cracked open my first Mirrodin Sealed deck, and ground to a halt; I had absolutely no idea how to build a winning deck out of these cards.

Finally, I understood: This set is so different from past formats that many players probably haven’t figured out how to build a good deck from their card pools, and who would want to play in a PTQ if they can’t build a deck? So I figured I’d better show people what I found out.

Basically, what happened was that I was sure I was running red for most of the draft, and my second color continued to evade me as I was continually passed high picks in other colors. In the end, I accumulated an excellent set of cards to compliment my red – thirty-seven playables – with the problem being that I had about an equal number for each of the other four colors. Quite a predicament! So how would you build it?

Again, what should we do? Innovate towards faster kills, meaning Turn 1? I think there’s a point where you know where the metagame is taking you, and you should take the wheel from the driver already. I mean, we now have a format where a 2/1 for one mana has long since been too weak. My point is that Type I is too fast, and that proposing to slow it down is not a move to make Type I less competitive; it’s a move to make Type I more realistic.

Type One is becoming more and more in its dynamics like Type Two, and some Type One players don’t like it. What it really boils down to is that a good many players have invested in a format they thought was casual – and although they built good, competitive decks, tested them and tuned them, even went to GenCon to play it out, what they now have come to realize, is that Type One has finally arrived, and it wasn’t what they bargained for.

Welcome to my fiftieth article for StarCityGames! I have been a Featured Writer for this site for a little over a year now, and I thought that I’d do something special for this article. I was reading through Mark Rosewater’s article on how Mirrodin is supposed to be an open-ended set when my article idea hit me – one combo for every article published. Fifty Mirrodin combos, some with really old cards!

In my last article, I built three sample Sealed decks – and I promised that I would playtest and offer any insights gleaned. I received two rebuilds of the third deck I presented… And so I went back and played ten games each against a God deck to see which builds were optimal!

I opened my fair share of good cards from the set and was able to build a nice W/R artifact deck – but you have probably already guessed that it was the Leonin Skyhunter that really caught my eye. The last time I remember opening a prerelease flying bear was Gaea’s Skyfolk – another personal favorite of mine from Apocalypse. Nothing beats a 2/2 flier for two******, but maybe that’s just me. What makes the Leonin Skyhunter all the better is that it is the work of the artist Kev Walker. He has been creating fantastic Magic art for some time now, and I’ll have to admit, he’s my current favorite. With this card, he proves once again that he is at the top of his game.

The hum of the fan is heavy in my ears, but there’s nothing stirring besides the air. The other occupants of the house are at rest, and the manner in which they arrived at that state of calm varies from person to person. Nate Heiss is comatose out on the front porch, trying to shake off a brutal drinking game session that concluded with a double-upchuck as the grand finale. Josh Rider is laid out on the floor in Mike’s room with his eyes rolled back into his head. It would take nitroglycerin suppositories to move him from that spot. Jeremy Darling is now flat on his face on the small couch, a stark contrast to his robust activities for the last two hours – namely, sitting on the back porch trying not to succumb to alcohol poisoning. Poor guy. Two hours of good times, two hours of trying to coax your body to leave you a functioning liver. Liquor is a harsh mistress.